Positive and Negative quality effects in Distributed Scrum Projects: An industrial case study

Abstract

As more and more software development projects utilize agile methods in a distributed environment, new process models have emerged. Distributed Scrum has increasingly gained popularity and best-practices state that the Integrated Scrums model in combination with eXtreme programming practices should be applied to maximize the software quality. However, it remains unclear if it is suitable for all types of distributed projects. Previous case studies within the field have focused on how to implement Scrum in a distributed environment and code velocity compared to other process models. However, rather few studies have taken the quality effect as a viewpoint. This paper presents a combination of a literature study and an industrial case study with the purpose of finding aspects and practices that effects the software quality in a distributed project where Scrum is utilized. This was done through a root cause analysis with an Ishikawa diagram as a tool, where the quality effects were mapped to different activities. Aspects that have had positive or negative quality effect in the project examined were analyzed and compared with literature. In addition, challenging aspects in a distributed environment are discussed and recommendations are presented. Finally, this paper concludes that when there exist a substantial amount of non-standardized legacy code, it is preferred to utilize the Scrum of Scrums model due to the decreased dependency between the Scrum-teams. This, to fully benefit from the positive quality effects that Scrum provides.