Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
may introduce different expectations regarding leadership practices, frames of refer-
ence, different perceptions of authority/hierarchy, and norms etc [9, 11, 20]. Our case
study reveals that some agile practices can help to minimize GSD risks that impact on
the use of the coordinating mechanism “direct supervision”. These were:
•
The agile practice “
Daily stand up meetings”
with
participation by distributed
team members through Skype helped to minimize the possibility of coordination
breakdown caused by temporal and geographical distance. In these meetings the
project team members were informed what had been done thus far, and what
needed to be done; any existing problems were also covered in these meetings.
The meetings also helped to minimize some socio-cultural issues such as differ-
ent perceptions of authority/hierarchy, different frames of references etc., and
also conveyed vision and strategy to the project stakeholders as well as the de-
velopment teams.
•
“Sprint review meeting”
attended by the project stakeholders increased project
visibility and transparency and helped the project manager with more efficient
project supervision.
Mutual Adjustment:
Reduced opportunities for synchronous communication due to
temporal distance may also impact on the use of the coordinating mechanism “mutual
adjustment” in GSD projects. Temporal distance may introduce response delay [15],
and as a result, distributed team members may misunderstand and become confused
[2-3, 16, 19-20]. Geographical distance may also limit face-to-face meetings; thus
distributed project stakeholder communication is dependent on tools, and team mem-
bers feel a lack of group awareness or “teamness” [3, 17, 19]. In addition, socio-
cultural distances may create difficulties in information exchange [21] which creates
barriers to building mutual understanding among distributed team members [23]. As a
result, project stakeholders suffer misunderstandings, miscommunication and confu-
sion [15] which ultimately reduces trust and commitment, and increases fear in dis-
tributed team members [23]. Our case study reveals that some agile practices helped
to reduce the challenges of using the coordinating mechanism “mutual adjustment” in
GSD projects. These were:
•
The
“Daily stand up meetings”
with participation by both sites provided the op-
portunity to establish mutual adjustment and build trust and increase “teamness” be-
tween the Sydney and Malaysian team members.
•
The
“Sprint planning meeting”
with
participation by all team members
reduced
misunderstandings and confusion among project stakeholders through collaboration
and helped to build mutual adjustment.
•
The
“Sprint review meeting”
attended by project stakeholders also helped to in-
crease project communication and build relationships.
•
“Retrospective meeting”
scheduled to assess the teamwork in completed sprints
also helped to build mutual understanding among project stakeholders including the
business user.
•
“
Code Refactoring
”
restructured the system by removing duplication, and facili-
tated improved communication and better understanding among distributed team
members by providing communication through the coding environment.
