Novel Framework to Improve Communication and Coordination among Distributed Agile Teams

Abstract

This paper discusses the roles of communication and coordination (C&C) in the agile teams. C&C are important activities that a project manager has to deal with tactically during the development of software projects to avoid the consequences. Their importance further increases especially in case of distributed software development (DSD). C&C are considered as project drivers to accomplish a project successfully within budget and schedule. There are several issues associated to poor C&C those can lead to fail software projects such as budget deficit, delay in delivery, conflicts among team members, unclear goals of project and architectural, technical and integration dependencies. C&C issues are critical and vital for collocated teams but their presences in distributed teams are disastrous. Scrum is one of the most widely practiced agile models and it is gaining further popularity in the agile community. Therefore, a novel framework is proposed to address the issues that are associated to C&C using Scrum methodology. The proposed framework is validated through a questionnaire. The results are found supportive to reflect that it will help to resolve the C&C issues effectively and efficiently.