Agile Practices for Global Software Development - Roman Pichler

Agile Project Management
Advisory Service
Executive Update
Vol. 5, No. 4
Agile
Practices
for Global
Software
Development
by Daniel J. Paulish
and Roman Pichler
In the current economic climate,
in which cycle times are decreasing
and costs are continuously
reduced, companies are seeking
new approaches to get softwareintensive
products to market more
quickly while also reducing their
overall development investment.
To meet this challenge, there is an
increasing trend toward global
software development, which takes
advantage of low-wage workforces
in Eastern Europe, Asia, and South
America. This Executive Update
describes how agile methods help
create globally developed software.
BENEFITS OF GLOBAL
DEVELOPMENT
There are three primary reasons for
developing software systems simultaneously
and at multiple sites that
are distributed globally:
1. Reduction of development
expenses. Global software
development takes advantage
of lower wages by shifting development
to low-cost countries,
where wages are often less than
half their US equivalent.
2. Speed development. Software
development uses multiple
teams in parallel, potentially
around the clock through
24/7 implementation.
3. Skills and staff shortages.
Global development assembles
expertise from around the world
to develop products for sale in
the global market. This allows
for use of local resources rather
than requiring relocation of staff
or hiring new staff.
Even though these are compelling
reasons for considering a global
development strategy, we strongly
encourage ensuring that global
development does indeed provide
your organization with competitive
advantage before you begin distributing
work around the globe.
Perform a sound business analysis
and create a business case that
accounts for risks and additional
expenses. The technique of
global analysis [5, 7, 12] helps
accomplish this.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
TRAPS
As you consider distributing
software development around
the globe, beware of the following
pitfalls that have ensnared others.
Hidden Costs
A significant up-front investment
is often required to enable successful
global software development.
This includes investments in development
process improvement,

2
AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT ADVISORY SERVICE
requirements engineering, software
architecture design/refactoring,
and development tools, such as for
requirements engineering, configuration
management, and test tools
that support global development
work. Development expenses are
often increased due to additional
project management efforts, particularly
in the areas of communications
and procurement management.
Beware of potential quality
issues with supplied components
and additional expenses caused
by potential rework. As GE Real
Estate CIO Hank Zupnick warns,
“Someone working for $10,000 a
year in Hyderabad can end up costing
an American company four to
eight times that amount” [11].
Hidden Delays
Distributed teams tend to be slower
than colocated ones, particularly
when the overall project team is
not optimally organized. This is due
to communications overhead, the
limited communication window
when work is carried out in different
time zones, and potential language
and cultural barriers. In fact,
colocating development work is a
powerful technique to speed up
development [15]. Toyota, for
example, has successfully used
colocation to slash its time to market
to 19 months (compared with an
industry average of three years) [4].
You must balance the risks of
global software development
efforts with the benefits gained
by developing software globally
to ensure that global software
development does indeed help
your organization increase its
profitability.
AGILE METHODS AND
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
Once you are convinced that global
software development is beneficial
for your organization, you must
choose a development approach.
The following highlights areas
crucial to the success of global
software development. In particular,
we discuss how agile methods
can help you succeed. For the sake
of simplicity, we limit our discussion
to those new software development
efforts in which your organization
still owns the software
requirements and architecture
and significantly contributes to
the code base.
Development Process
Shifting from a local to a globally
distributed software development
approach has a severe impact on
your development process. Your
global software development
process should exhibit the following
crucial characteristics:
Divide your development
efforts into two major parts
[2, 9]. In the first stage, a small,
colocated team develops a
common understanding of customer
needs and the key product
features, and it develops an
executable software baseline
that enables an effective and
efficient development of the
entire software system. At this
point, you may also want to
employ on-site customers [2]. In
the second stage, development
work is distributed to the various
sites that develop the fully featured
software system. We recommend
that key staff from the
supplier development sites participate
in the first stage so that
they can function as liaisons to
those working in home locations
during the later stage of distributed
development. Toyota, for
instance, successfully involves
suppliers early in the development
of new cars [4].
Employ iterations and
increments (small releases)
[2, 6, 9, 12]. Carry out development
work in the form of timeboxed
mini-projects that deliver
an executable, stable, and
testable software version. This
helps you to grow the software
system systematically and
incrementally. It also provides
a powerful tool to integrate
components delivered by external
suppliers on an ongoing
basis, thereby improving supplier
management and control.
Ensure that iterations are
planned across all development
subteams. Full participation provides
a powerful mechanism,
so synchronize the development
efforts on a regular basis.
Adopt a proactive risk management
approach [9]. First
develop those aspects of the
software system that expose
high risks from a business and
engineering perspective.
Continuously integrate
software [2]. Ensure that the
software delivered by the various
distributed subteams is
frequently integrated and that a
stable system build is created.
Write tests first and employ
regression testing extensively
[2]. Ensure that you have an
adequate test harness available
by developing your unit tests
before implementing functionality.
Automate all tests to allow
effective regression testing.
Hold brief daily meetings [3].
This allows you to synchronize
the various teams using telephone
or videoconferences.
Keep meetings short and
focused.
Beware that a software development
process that can be
applied uniformly by multiple
development teams around the
globe is more formal and rigid
than a process employed by a
small colocated team in order to
facilitate a common understanding
and a uniform approach.
Requirements Engineering
Use a small, central team responsible
for developing and controlling
the requirements model described
in UML [14]. This requirements
engineering team comprises subject
matter experts who know the
Vol. 5, No. 4
©2004 Cutter Consortium

EXECUTIVE UPDATE 3
existing products. The model
is defined broadly in the beginning,
with lower levels of detail as
the functionality is incrementally
added. Since the model is
machine-readable, software tools
are used to support the analysis
of the model to identify errors and
inconsistencies, provide requirements
extraction for process
artifacts, deliver constraints on
maximum component size, and
generate the automated test cases
that will be used to validate the
implemented products. Other recommended
agile practices for
requirements engineering include
use-case generation, user stories,
and a high degree of customer
involvement in defining the requirements
model.
Software Architecture
The business decision to embark
on global development must be
made early in the design of software
architecture. An approach to
such a business decision is to apply
a software architecture design
analysis technique called global
analysis [5, 7, 12], which looks systematically
at influencing factors
and the resulting design strategies.
Unfortunately, global analysis and
global development use the word
“global” in different ways. Global
analysis is a high-level design technique
employed during the early
stages of software architecture
design to establish design and project
strategies. In contrast, global
development refers to multisite
development projects in which the
product development sites are distributed
around the world.
Global analysis considers organizational,
technological, and product
factors that influence the design of
the product line. Analysis of these
factors results in a set of design
strategies that are used to guide the
product line architecture design.
Figure 1 illustrates an example of
how global analysis fits within
the early phases of product-line
development [12].
A small, central architecture design
team defines the architecture
framework that includes all the
components to meet the product
line’s functionality [1]. An architecture
framework is a standard way
of integrating a collection of loosely
coupled components, including
both the standards for building the
components and the runtime facilities
for loading and running a configuration
of such components [10].
A component can be “compiled
and linked” separately from others
and developed independently. The
architecture is organized so that
independently developed subsystems
are built as separate collections
of components, interacting
with other subsystems only through
specified connections. The requirements
model is decomposed to
allocate features to the designed
application components. The architecture
team applies guidelines to
limit the number of components in
the design to somewhere between
85 and 150 [12]. Furthermore, the
architecture is designed such that
no individual component will be
larger than about 100,000 lines
of code (LOC) of functionality
and can be developed within 12
months by a 10-person component
Market
Requirements
Requirements
Analysis
Product
Factors
Organizational
Factors
Software Architecture Design
Global
Analysis
Issues and &
Strategies
Design
Evaluation
Architecture
Description
Technological
Factors
Project Strategy
Conclusions
Risk
Analysis
Risks and
Mitigations
Project
Planning
How, Who,
When
Software SW Dev. Dev.
Plan Plan
Schedule
Sequence
Release
Planning
Project
Goals
Project
Strategies
Risks and
Mitigations
Figure 1 — Global analysis.
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AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT ADVISORY SERVICE
development team. Using these
guidelines, we believe that we
can successfully develop software
product lines with a maximum
size of about 15 million LOCs. In
addition to global analysis and
the architecture framework design,
other recommended agile best
practices include simple design,
clear modular structure, use
of design and coding standards,
system metaphor, and pair
programming.
Organization
While global software development
may involve hundreds of developers,
we recommend dividing the
development project into small,
dedicated subteams with wellqualified,
full-time team members.
Resist the temptation to overstaff
your subteams if you’re motivated
to keep labor costs low. Small,
talented teams tend to achieve
higher productivity than do larger
ones [8, 13]. In addition, all
members of each development
subteam should be colocated.
A subteam should always be
responsible for a distinct part of the
software system, avoiding overlapping
responsibilities, redundant
work, and integration problems.
We thus recommend that the
development project organization
tracks the software architecture
structure (Conway’s Law). This
approach is neither new nor unique
to software development. Boeing
successfully developed its 777
airplane by aligning several thousand
developers with the product
architecture [15]. In addition,
ensure that centralized common
functions such as project management,
configuration management,
system test, product management,
requirements engineering, and an
overall architecture team exist.
Environment
Adequate tool support is required
to enable global software development
(i.e., developing software at
various global sites in parallel). This
may imply upgrading your software
development environment, particularly
in these areas:
A requirements engineering tool
to allow parallel access from
various sites and facilitate the
traceability of requirements
Test tools to enable test automation
for regression tests
Configuration management to
support frequent integration,
versioning, and branching
Ensure uniform use of tools; for
instance, use one unit test tool
at all sites to avoid integration and
compatibility issues and enable
maintainability of the software system.
If you already employ adequate
tools, beware of potential
issues when, for example, multiple
sites now use the configuration
management tool.
CONCLUSION
Although global software development
is inherently difficult given the
complications introduced by time
and distance, we believe that projects
that are planned and designed
for distribution can be successful.
Agile best practices can be best
applied to global projects by centrally
controlling the requirements
and architecture design, then
organizing the distributed development
as component developments,
using small subteams.
REFERENCES
1. Bady, J. “Take a 3-D Approach to
Architecture Design.” Sun Journal,
Vol. 5, No. 1, 2003 (www.sun.com/
executives/sunjournal/v5n1/
feature2.html).
2. Beck, K. Extreme Programming
Explained: Embrace Change.
Addison-Wesley, 2000.
3. Beedle, M., M. Devos, Y. Sharon,
K. Schwaber, and J. Sutherland.
“SCRUM: An Extension Pattern
Language for Hyperproductive
Software Development.” In
N. Harrison, B. Foote, and
H. Rohnert (eds.). Pattern
Languages of Program Design 4.
Addison-Wesley, 1999.
4. Bremner, B., and C. Dawson.
“Can Anything Stop Toyota?”
BusinessWeek, 17 November 2003.
5. Clements P. et al. Documenting
Software Architectures: Views and
Beyond Addison-Wesley, 2003.
6. Cockburn, A. Agile Software
Development. Addison-Wesley
2002.
7. Hofmeister, C., R. Nord,
and D. Soni. Applied Software
Architecture. Addison-Wesley, 1999.
8. Jones, C. Applied
Software Measurement:
Assuring Productivity and Quality.
2nd ed. McGraw-Hill, 1996.
9. Kruchten, P. The Rational
Unified Process: An Introduction.
2nd ed. Addison-Wesley, 2000.
10. Lenz, G., and T. Moeller.
.NET — A Complete Development
Cycle. Addison-Wesley, 2003.
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©2004 Cutter Consortium

EXECUTIVE UPDATE 5
11. Overby, S. “The Hidden Costs
of Offshore Outsourcing.” CIO,
1 September 2003 (www.cio.com/
archive/090103/money.html).
12. Paulish, D.J. Architecture-Centric
Software Project Management: A
Practical Guide. Addison-Wesley,
2001.
13. Pichler, R., and P. Smith.
“Developing Your Products in
Half the Time.” Critical Eye,
December 2003–February 2004.
14. Robertson S., and J. Robertson.
Mastering the Requirements
Process. Addison-Wesley, 1999.
15. Smith, P., and D. Reinertsen.
Developing Products in Half the
Time. John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Daniel J. Paulish is a software
project manager at Siemens
Corporate Research in Princeton,
New Jersey, USA, where he is
responsible for Siemens’ software
architecture R&D program. He has
more than 20 years’ experience in
software engineering management,
and has been an international
lecturer on software process
improvement methods, project
management, and measurement.
He is the author of Software
Metrics: A Practitioner’s Guide to
Improved Product Development
and Architecture-Centric Software
Project Management: A Practical
Guide. Mr. Paulish can be reached
at daniel.paulish@siemens.com.
Roman Pichler works as a development
process consultant at
Siemens Corporate Technology
in Munich, Germany. He supports
various Siemens business groups
in optimizing their development
processes and specializes in
agile/iterative development
processes. He has published several
articles on product development
issues, most recently on accelerating
product development and
lean software development.
Mr. Pichler can be reached at
roman.pichler@siemens.com.
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