2.

Theoretical Foundation:

Jeff Sutherland the inventor of scrum has touched the development of distributed scrum from
multiple angles in his paper "Agile Can Scale: Inventing and Reinventing SCRUM in Five
Companies" , (Sutherland, 2001) describes the origin of scrum process and its evolvement in
five companies with few key learnings along the way. the paper gives a comprehensive
background where scrum comes from.
in (Sutherland & Schwaber, 2007) the authors describe the scrum as one set of core processes.
The inspect and the adapt rules of scrums can be possibly tuned to fit any organization. They
also add that there are 3 different type of scrum which are implemented in practice. Isolated
Scrums, Distributed Scrums and Totally integrated scrums. The research case will focus on the
third Type : Totally integrated scrums. In this case scrum teams are cross functional with
members distributed across different geographic locations. The book "The scrum papers: Nuts ,
Bolts and origins of Agile process" by (Sutherland & Schwaber, 2007) contains a compilation of
papers which provides good insight on different Agile processes and their evolvement.
A very good and deep understanding can be obtained from the book " A practical guide of
distributed Scrum" by (Woodward, Surdek, & Ganis, 2010). The book first discusses the
evolution of Scrum and the challenges faced by distributed teams. In the later sections the
authors explain in detail all the steps of starting the scrum project , planning the sprints and the
meetings and how to effectively communicate in the distributed scrum model.
(Berczuk, 2007) discusses four important lessons that were learned from cases operating in a
distributed Agile environment. first lesson that operating in distributed teams amplifies the
existing issues in the process itself and not as much as bringing new issues. Second , that
management shall give the team the support it needs in order to improve and develop the
process to be well suited for the team. Third, good engineering practices are essential for agile
project to succeed and fourth he adds that agile is about people but in the case of Distributed
agile , good and effective tools are need to help people to communicate effectively over
distances
(Sutherland, Schoonheim, Rustenburg, & Rijk, 2008) give a deeper insight on the challenges
faced by fully distributed scrum teams. The paper also draws the light on the offshoring

strategies for overcoming the geographic, language, and cultural barriers that impede
distributed development. The research was carried on 2 case studies of companies who have
implemented Distributed Agile methodology through Scrum/XP practices.
In (Hildenbrand, Geisser, Kude, Bruch, & Acker, 2008) the authors have put the light on XP
within the context of Distributed Software Development . The paper has discussed how the XP
methodology is the suitability and effectiveness of available tools and techniques is discussed. It
has also discussed the collaboration tools that were used during that time for collaboration. The
categories of tools that were used for collaboration 7 years ago are still the same categories as
today, However, the functionality has been enhanced ( for example to support mobile devices ) ,
Besides that many of these tools are available as open source software and don't need to pay
for . Open source software is what startups are relying heavily on.
other papers that have been identified to be very useful source of knowledge for the case of
distributed agile are (Paasivaara, Durasiewicz, & Lassenius, 2009) , (Shrivastava & Date,
2010) , (Hossain, Babar, & Paik, 2009) , (Lee & Yong, 2010) , (Pries-Heje & Pries-Heje, 2011)
and (Bode & Mertens, 2006)

3. Research Question:

as mentioned by (Paasivaara et al., 2009) , Despite the fact that the scientific research on
distributed agile development (DAD), is scarce. There are only a few reported experiences in
applying DAD to industrial projects, and even fewer case studies. Therefore, a knowledge gap
exists on the use of Scrum in GSD in industrial examples. That will be attempted to be
addressed within this case study research
The research will focus on answering the Following questions. How are startup companies
implementing Distributed Agile practices? How is Scrum and other methodologies satisfy their
projects and market needs?
what are the challenges faced by startup companies in this Distributed Agile methodologies?
and what are the best practices that could be identified from their implementation and the
challenges faced by them ?

4. Proposed Research Direction:

In order to explore the challenges in the distributed agile environment . I am planning to follow
the research framework of (Hossain, Bannerman, & Jeffery, 2011) in identifying the current
challenges of scrum practices in global scrum development. The framework identifies the
challenges categories as 3 main categories in which the research is to follow ; Communication ,
Coordination and Control challenges.
For collecting the required data , the proposed direction is to conduct a case study on 2 startup
companies who are based in Copenhagen. The 2 companies are currently adopting Distributed
Agile practices ( Mainly scrum ) with the management located in Copenhagen and development
teams located in Eastern Europe and Asia. The case study will follow the " Guidelines for
conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering " by (Runeson & Hst,
2009). The case study will be an exploratory case study in order to find out the challenges faced
by the 2 startups in Copenhagen, triggers of change of the agile methodologies and how they
have adapted the scrum process in order to fit the needs of their development projects. Semispruced interviews will be conducted at the companies' offices in Copenhagen. In the interview I
am planning to interview developers and project managers in order to gain a conclusive in sight
on the scrum process in the 2 companies. Adding to that it can be possible to examine the
collaboration workspace (Asana) in one of the companies (Wiredelta).
The first company is Wiredelta. Wiredelta specializes in developing web solutions (ecommerce
and app) to startup companies and small businesses. The development process happens
through using scrum methodology . The project management teams are located in Copenhagen
and the development teams are located in Mysore in India. The company has recently adopted
the scrum approach for its development. Due to the nature of the projects , highly evolving
backlogs and other factors the scrum approach is tweaked and adapted in a way that fits the
development projects. Adopting and adapting the distributed scrum framework came with a lot
of benefits as well as some challenges specially from the project management side.
The second company is Cylindo. Cylindo is a Copenhagen-based startup that develops
software for the furniture industry that includes furniture visualization tools for consumers. The
software enable furniture retailers and manufacturers to visualize their products in ways never
before possible. The software is specifically designed to meet the challenges of the furniture
industry, from displaying furniture effectively on product pages, customizing complex modular
systems to viewing entire designs in real-time 3D. Cylindo has its development team in Eastern

Europe. They had another development team located in Philippines in which it was shutdown
last year due to Management problems. Cylindo is adopting the scrum methodology with some
adaptation in order to fit its project flow.

References
Berczuk, S. (2007). Back to basics: The role of agile principles in success with an distributed
scrum team. Proceedings - AGILE 2007, 382387. http://doi.org/10.1109/AGILE.2007.17
Bode, A., & Mertens, P. (2006). Globalization and offshoring of software. Informatik-Spektrum,
29(3), 171173. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00287-006-0082-z
Hildenbrand, T., Geisser, M., Kude, T., Bruch, D., & Acker, T. (2008). Agile methodologies for
distributed collaborative development of enterprise applications. Proceedings - CISIS
2008: 2nd International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive
Systems, 540545. http://doi.org/10.1109/CISIS.2008.105
Hossain, E., Babar, M. a., & Paik, H. P. H. (2009). Using Scrum in Global Software
Development: A Systematic Literature Review. 2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference
on Global Software Engineering, 175184. http://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2009.25
Hossain, E., Bannerman, P., & Jeffery, D. (2011). Scrum practices in global software
development: a research framework. Product-Focused Software Process , 88102.
Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-21843-9_9
Lee, S., & Yong, H.-S. (2010). Distributed agile: project management in a global environment.
Empirical Software Engineering, 15(2), 204217. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-009-9119-7
Paasivaara, M., Durasiewicz, S., & Lassenius, C. (2009). Using Scrum in Distributed Agile
Development: A Multiple Case Study. 2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference on
Global Software Engineering. http://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2009.27
Pries-Heje, L., & Pries-Heje, J. (2011). Agile & Distributed Project Management: a Case Study
Revealing Why Scrum Is Useful. European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS
2011), Paper 217. Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2011/217
Runeson, P., & Hst, M. (2009). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in
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Shrivastava, S. V., & Date, H. (2010). Distributed Agile Software Development: Journal of
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hl=en&lr=&id=9IminAWAfdEC&oi=fnd&pg=PT3&dq=A+practical+
guide+to+distributed+Scrum&ots=WNTn5ifhIw&sig=gknnbskvsp7ZZHhECSMMI
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