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Modified agile practices for outsourced software projects

Published: 01 September 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Frustration with the bureaucratic nature of the disciplined approach has led to the call for agile development. The new approach is defined by the Agile Manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/), which values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and agility in responding to change over following a prescribed plan. Agile development does not focus on process improvement; instead it focuses on customer satisfaction and employee empowerment. This is evident from reading the stated values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, which include fairly extreme positions such as "welcome changing requirements, even late in development" and "the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams."
An interesting issue arising from the call for agile development is its role in distributed development, which usually translates to offshore development. A recent study indicates that agile practices can reduce temporal, geographical, and socio-cultural distances in distributed development projects. The study researched agile development between teams located in the U.S. and Ireland, and while it reported that overall communication was improved, it also noted problems related to geographical, temporal, and even language distances. Although there are other reported successes of distributed agile development, the projects are generally small, the team members are likely familiar with each other, and the participants are largely experts or high caliber developers.
This raises a research, as well as a practical, question: can we extend the use of agile practices from small projects to medium and large projects that involve a significant outsourcing component? To address this question, we must drop constraints such as small size projects, and expert developers belonging to the same company, and examine problems arising from geographical, temporal, and cultural distances. Accordingly, agile practices may need to be modified.
In this article, the key issues of software projects with an outsourced component are first identified. These issues are then used as a background to evaluate how standard agile practices stand up when applied to larger projects. This evaluation is followed by recommendations for modified agile practices for outsourced software projects.

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Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM
Communications of the ACM  Volume 52, Issue 9
The Status of the P versus NP Problem
September 2009
139 pages
ISSN:0001-0782
EISSN:1557-7317
DOI:10.1145/1562164
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2009
Published in CACM Volume 52, Issue 9

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  • (2024)Software maintenance practices using agile methods towards cloud environmentJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.269836:11Online publication date: 5-Nov-2024
  • (2023)Enterprise architecture contribution in distributed agile software developmentSystems Engineering10.1002/sys.2173927:3(570-584)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2023
  • (2022)People as Our Most Important Asset: A Critical Exploration of Agility and Employee CommitmentProject Management Journal10.1177/8756972822107701353:3(219-235)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2022
  • (2022)The impact of project team characteristics and client collaboration on project agility and project success: An empirical studyEuropean Management Journal10.1016/j.emj.2021.09.01140:5(758-777)Online publication date: Oct-2022
  • (2022)Can Agile Enterprise Architecture be Implemented Successfully in Distributed Agile Development? Empirical FindingsGlobal Journal of Flexible Systems Management10.1007/s40171-022-00298-w23:2(221-235)Online publication date: 18-Feb-2022
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  • (2021)Managing User-Centered Design Activities in Distributed Agile DevelopmentInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwab010Online publication date: 21-Apr-2021
  • (2020)An Empirical Investigation of Geographically Distributed Agile Development: The Agile Enterprise Architecture is a Communication EnablerIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29903898(80269-80289)Online publication date: 2020
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