Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams: Senior Management Support

Abstract

Agile teams advocates face-to-face conversation, frequent communication and close collaboration between team members in order to work together as one team. In distributed software development, however, separation through space, time and culture affects the ability of the members of a distributed team to work together as one team. Through a Grounded Theory study that involved 55 participants from 38 different software companies in the USA, India and Australia, we investigate key concerns of distributed teams in Agile software development. We found that distributed teams need significant support from senior management in terms of organisational culture, human resource management, financial sponsorship, infrastructure and technology, and customer liaison. In this paper, we discuss the importance of senior management support for Agile software development with distributed teams.