Implementing Agile Project Management with Scrum in a Distributed Environment

Abstract

Today’s Information Technology (IT) manager is under ever-increasing pressure to deliver results – in the form of applications that drive improvements to the bottom line – even while IT budgets are being significantly slashed. Agile methodologies such as eXtreme Programming (XP), SCRUM and Feature-Driven Development strive to reduce the cost of change throughout the software development process Agile development is hard and requires a great deal of discipline. Distributed development is harder still and requires yet more resolve to stay on track. Even teams working in the same room take a long time to form. When distributed this formation takes even longer. Plan to keep teams together or change them slowly over time to maximize your investment in them. Provide distributed teams with the right tools to work as effectively as possible and remove as many of the barriers created by distribution as possible. Expect to experiment with how you use these tools, be it video conference, conference phones, collaboration software, or work item tracking tools. The primary advantage to organizing a project around collaborating collocated teams is that it simplifies the day-to-day work of most team members. This paper talks about how to get the best results from the distributed team by using right tools.