Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Standardization: The use of the coordinating mechanism “standardization” is seri-
ously affected by project temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distance. GSD
project temporal distance reduces overlapping work hours and synchronous commu-
nication between distributed teams. Thus, because of temporal distance, project stake-
holders may misunderstand distributed team work processes, norms, practices and
tools [15-17]. Geographical distance may also impact on the management of standard
project artefacts and may reduce trust and commitment. Geographical distance can
also create conflict if different teams have different standards for work processes,
norms, skills and outputs. Socio-cultural distance may also poses challenges by in-
troducing misunderstandings, misinterpretation of the project standards desired by the
project manager, and this may lead to task conflict and lack of shared understanding
among distributed project stakeholders [7, 9-12]. Hence from the literature we con-
clude that maintaining a common standard definition of work process, skills, norms
and outputs is difficult in a GSD project due to geographical, temporal and socio-
cultural distances. However, our case study reveals that some agile practices helped
distributed project stakeholders to maintain a common set of standards throughout the
development. These were:
The “Sprint planning meeting” which provided close interaction among distrib-
uted project stakeholders that helped to minimize misunderstanding and misinter-
pretations about project standards. The communication tool, video conferencing,
was used in this meeting which lasted for up to two hours.
“Retrospective meeting” scheduled to assess teamwork in the completed sprints,
helped to maintain a shared understanding of different project standards among
distributed project stakeholders. The customer was actively involved in the retro-
spective meeting sessions with the project management team including the Ma-
laysian based development lead.
“Coding standards” provided coding rules which were followed at both sites;
this also helped to maintain common standards.
“Test Driven Development (TDD)” also helped to maintain a shared standard
development view, facilitating a better understanding of what functionality was
required from the client perspective.
“Refactoring” which restructures the system by removing duplication, improv-
ing communication, simplifying and adding flexibility, provided both teams with
a better understanding of project outputs.
Direct Supervision: The use of the coordinating mechanism “direct supervision” is
also affected by project temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distance. Temporal
distance reduces opportunities for synchronous communication and increases coordi-
nation overhead (for example: a project manager cannot provide urgent instructions)
[3, 11, 15-16]. Geographical distance may also limit frequency of visits to distributed
team sites by the project manager. Thus it may be difficult to convey project vision
and strategy to distributed sites [15]. Geographical distance also creates coordination
overhead and project managers are heavily reliant on different tools for project coor-
dination [3, 11, 15, 18]. Socio-cultural distances may also add some extra challenges
to the direct supervision coordinating mechanism. The differences in work culture
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