Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams: Senior Management Support

Cultural Issues in Offshore Teams: A Categorization based on Existing Studies

“…understanding Agile (culture), (lack of) understanding other people and political barriers. Among them, the second (understanding Agile) is detailed with three more sub-classes as described in [23,24]. The organizational change sub-class here refers to the general notion of the resistance of an existing organizational culture to understand the Agile culture effectively and efficiently.…”

“…• Key touch points between senior members (as described in [13]) (also mentioned in Table 7) Consequence: 2 nd -class syndrome [13] (also mentioned in Table 7) • Cultural ambassadors [7] (also mentioned in Table 7) Resolution: Cultural conflicts mitigation [7] • Daily meetings [9] • Bring offshore teams onshore for a few initial sprints [10] • Mutual travel [13] • Travel [9] Side-effect: Not cost-effective [12] • Continuous communication to develop a sense of mutual understanding towards each other [20] • Verbal conversation between team members [20] • An equal value system on both sites [9] • Code review for more relationships [6] • Split sprint planning into two separate times favorable to each team pair's time zone [13] • Bridge the implicit communication gap with the Scrum Master [21] Prerequisite: Deep understanding of both cultures [21] Side-effect: Too many (liaison) roles and less self-organizing team collaboration/communication, [21] General suggestions (solutions): • General definitions for culture (for reference only) [52] • Senior management requires detailed plans and schedules and focuses on risks and opportunities in projects in order to commit to supporting the teams [23] • Synergy of agile teams and senior management through "leadership-and-collaboration" management [23] • Senior management support • Accept agile values by senior management [23] • Understand agile teams [23] • Learn (about) agile teams [23] • Senior management is also responsible for creating team chemistry through hiring mechanisms [23] Practices (solutions): • Learning (by management) [23] • Provide travel facilities for offshore teams [23] • Financial support [23] • Customer liaison [23] • Prepare infrastructure [23] • Do not reward agile teams individually…”

Influences of Organizational Culture in the Adoption of Agile Methodologies in Information Systems Development A Systematic Mapping

“…Year S1 Kerstin Siakas, Errikos Siakas [30] 2007 S2 D. Strode, S. Huff, A.Tretiakov [33] 2009 S3 Juhani Iivari, Netta Iivari [17] 2010 S4 Tolfo et al [35] 2011 S5 Livari, Netta Livari [18] 2011 S6 Stavros Stavru et al [32] 2012 S7 Juhani Dorairaj, Noble e G. Allan [10] 2013 S8 Kompella et al [22] 2014 Table 3: Primary Studies List Included plans and company's major goals; (ii) proposal of actions to achieve the planned goals; (iii) the growth in value delivery through the delivery of products; and (iv) training of employees to fulfill their actions. In turn, Kompella et al [22] prepare a process divided into stages in order to align the company's OC with the emerging agility.…”

“…Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams: Senior Management Support [10] Case study that investigates into the relationship between OC and AM, the challenge of managing a multinational multiple teams spread around the world working on the same project. S8…”

A New Framework with less Ceremony for Distributed Agile Software Development

“…These methods did not change the basis of software development, but they have changed the ways of collaboration, coordination, and communication in the life cycle of the project [3]. Members in agile teams have multiple skills and these teams are self-organized and manage their work load [4], [5].…”