Conflict management in agile distributed development: evidence from product development and services engagements

Abstract

Agile approaches being practised by multiple teams operating remotely are widely adopted for large software development efforts these days. An agile setting is typically characterized by flexibility, to accommodate changing customer demands for continuous delivery of business value. A distributed setting brings about multiple demands for stability, in terms of a push for clear specification of requirements and design, and a big picture product definition. Therefore, implementing agile distributed development (ADD) projects results in an inherent conflict that must be reconciled. This article attempts to provide nuanced clarity on the notion of conflict between flexibility and stability and its management across variants of an ADD setup. Through multiple case studies, our findings suggest that the specific mode of agile project engagement and distributed team configuration drives the response to flexibility and stability respectively. Leveraging ambidexterity as a theoretical lens, this study contributes to the literature by providing insights beyond the earlier conceptualization of flexibility-stability conflict for the ADD setting. It considers contextual elements to understand the dynamics of conflicting forces. An empirical contribution of this research is the managerial framework that should assist practice in future implementations.