Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
environment changes the communication context away from an ideal face-to-face
setting to a more complex technology-mediated environment. Therefore, a fundamen-
tal GSD problem is that many of the mechanisms that function to coordinate work in a
co-located setting are absent or disrupted [12].
3.1 Coordination Framework
In this section we discuss a work coordination framework considered to be stable and
flexible enough to describe coordination issues; this is the widely known Mintzberg
work coordination model. Although Mintzberg's work coordination framework may
not be entirely suitable for investigating the use of agile methods in GSD, we use this
framework for a better understanding of the impact of GSD risks in project coordina-
tion process. Mintzberg [14] argues that there are three basic coordinating mecha-
nisms that describe the fundamental ways in which organizations coordinate their
work. These are:
Mutual adjustment:
Mutual adjustment ensures that a software development project
can achieve a suitable degree of coordination by the simple process of informal com-
munication among project stakeholders. For example, work can be coordinated when
two software developers informally discuss a particular task.
Direct supervision:
With direct supervision, coordination can be achieved through
one person issuing orders and instructions to several other people whose work is inter-
related. For example, when a team leader tells other team members what is to be
done, one step at a time.
Standardization:
Standardization can be categorized as coordination by programme,
where coordination is effected through instructions and plans generated beforehand
[26]. Mintzberg [14] notes that there are four types of standardization: 1) work proc-
esses, 2) output, 3) skills (as well as knowledge) and 4) norms. Work process stan-
dards usually specify how development team members carry out their interrelated
tasks. Standardization of output usually specifies the expected results for various
development tasks. Standardization of skills ensures that the team has a set of skills
that are enough to carry out the development tasks. Standardization of norms, within a
software development project, ensures that everyone functions according to the same
set of organizational beliefs.
3.2 GSD Challenges and Coordinating Mechanisms
To investigate the impact of GSD challenges on different coordinating mechanisms,
we review, from the literature, a number of GSD projects. In Table 1 we summarize
the key risks due to the temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distances while
using the three different coordinating mechanisms, standardization, direct supervision
and mutual adjustment. In this table, for simplicity, we note the problem encountered,
even though project context, for example, size, number of distributed teams, complex-
ity, criticality, and project domain etc., can further exacerbate the problem. In a later
section, we discuss how the use of agile practices can reduce some of the major iden-
tified difficulties.
