There are as many assumptions and misconceptions about global development as there are about agile development. In this article, Jutta Eckstein tries to remove these misconceptions and explain how Agile can be implemented and provide benefits in distributed software development projects.
The article starts by explaining the difference between distributed and dispersed software development teams. She then discusses the different aspects of distributed projects like the size of the projects, the number of companies involved or the distance between the developers and the customers. The article continue with the presentation and discussion of the Agile Manifesto values. Jutta Eckstein presents the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto, annotated in terms of their impact on distributed development and direct implementation of an Agile approach. The article emphasizes that “Globally distributed projects face the major challenge of how to organize iterations and releases across different sites and still ensure that something functional is delivered at the end of the development cycle. Moreover, the real challenge is not the organization of the work but the integration of the distributed development effort into one working system. Performing integration and build across teams and sites is essential.”
As Jutta Eckstein wrote, “The key to successful distributed development is establishing proximity despite all forms of distance.”
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