Scaling software development methods from co-located to distributed

Abstract

Software projects nowadays are typically sourced from more than one location. This dispersed situation requires a higher degree of regulation mechanisms than provided in agile development methods. Workarounds for scaling agile practices to the distributed development scenario exist, which are mostly not of any value for decision makers, since they still merely provide an ad-hoc way of setting up distributed software development projects. Especially smaller distributed software projects are in demand for methodical support for this task. We propose a systematic approach - called "Collaborative Pattern Approach" - for deriving a distributed development process from an existing co-located process. Our approach focuses on a) defining cross-location collaboration and b) assessing the quality of the derived distributed development process. We demonstrate our approach in an example case. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.