Overcoming Team Boundaries in Agile Software Development

Abstract

The usage of agile software development methods is increasing and so is the need for enhancing the collaboration between the different stakeholders. Thus, we chose to investigate the communication tools and challenges across the different boundaries and consequently deduce implications for practitioners. This research addresses inter-team communication by exploring the practitioners' perception on the different communication tools and the challenges faced at the three different boundaries, inter-team, team and customers, and geographically separated teams. We aim to enhance the productivity of software development through enhancing the communication between the different stakeholders. In this research, we use grounded theory approach to gather data from semi-structured open-ended interviews with practitioners in a geographically separated software development company. The findings observed three main inter-team communication means (Slack, Trello, face-to-face) used by practitioners, and how the preference differs among practitioners. This study also focuses on the different challenges faced, such as absence of communication during user story dependency, unclear customer requirements, and cultural differences, when implementing agile across different geographical locations. Our study discovers how team boundaries are overcome when team members adapt to other teams’ preferred communication tool and enhance the boundary spanners’ role. Furthermore, the study highlights how novice and mature teams require a transition time to adjust to the agile methods.