Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams - Softcover

Jutta Eckstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932633714 ISBN 13: 9780932633712

Publisher: Dorset House, 2010

Synopsis

All software projects face the challenges of diverse distances -- temporal, geographical, cultural, lingual, political, historical, and more. Many forms of distance even affect developers in the same room. The goal of this book is to reconcile two mainstays of modern agility: the close collaboration agility relies on, and project teams distributed across different cities, countries, and continents.

In Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Jutta Eckstein asserts that, in fact, agile methods and the constant communication they require are uniquely capable of solving the challenges of distributed projects. Agility is responsiveness to change -- in other words, agile practitioners maintain flexibility to accommodate changing circumstances and results. Iterative development serves the learning curve that global project teams must scale.

This book is not about how to outsource and forget your problems. Rather, Eckstein details how to carefully select development partners and integrate efforts and processes to form a better product than any single contributor could deliver on his or her own. The author de-emphasizes templates and charts and favors topical discussion and exploration. Practitioners share experiences in their own words in short stories throughout the book. Eckstein trains readers to be change agents, to creatively apply the concepts in this book to form a customized distributed project plan for success.

About this title

About the Author:

Jutta Eckstein is a consultant, coach, and trainer at IT Communication, based in Braunschweig, Germany. Her know-how in agile processes comes from more than ten years of experience developing object-oriented applications. She has helped teams and organizations all over the world make the transition to an agile approach, and has extensive experience in applying agile processes within medium-sized to large, distributed, mission-critical projects. Eckstein is a member of the Agile Alliance and serves on the program committees of several European and American conferences in the areas of agile development, object-orientation, and patterns.

Review:

Two software development forces have evolved over the past few years -- creating software with teams distributed over the world and crafting software in an agile process. Jutta Eckstein expertly covers the challenges involved where these two forces meet. She explains in detail how to address the issues, such as communication between distributed locations and building trust through connections other than face-to-face get-togethers. She outlines the differences in practices between a co-located team and a distributed one and how to transition into a distributed team. She explores many variations of team organization, such as when team and customer are separated and when the team itself is split. . . . she has covered the gamut of the common and uncommon challenges that teams encounter. This should be required reading for anyone involved in distributed agile development. --Ken Pugh, author of Prefactoring

Jutta Eckstein's new book is packed with practical advice on managing large and distributed agile projects successfully. A must-read for everyone interested in the subject! --Roman Pichler, Author and Scrum Expert

Jutta shares from her enormous fountain of experiences with agile projects and outsourcing, and presents a long string of practical advice on how agile can bring success into your global project. In doing so, Jutta illuminates the core of the agile value system and the challenges in global projects. This book provides good guidance to agile, and is an invaluable asset, if you are applying agile in a global context. --Carsten R. Jakobsen, Systematic

About this edition

• Publisher: Dorset House
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0932633714
• ISBN 13: 9780932633712
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 264