Distributed Scrum: Agile Project Management with Outsourced Development Teams

TLDR

Scrum, derived from best practices of companies such as Fuji‑Xerox, Honda, Canon, and Toyota, has proven to boost productivity and quality, raising the question of whether it can achieve similar results for globally distributed teams. The study analyzes and recommends best practices for globally distributed agile teams. The study found that distributed Scrum teams can achieve record productivity, with a 56‑developer team producing 671,688 lines of Java code at 15.3 function points per developer per month—the most productive Java project documented—and that SirsiDynix’s best practices, similar to those used by distributed teams at IDX Systems, differ markedly from PMBOK and Scrum Alliance recommendations.

Abstract

Agile project management with Scrum derives from best business practices in companies like Fuji-Xerox, Honda, Canon, and Toyota. Toyota routinely achieves four times the productivity and 12 times the quality of competitors. Can Scrum do the same for globally distributed teams? Two agile companies, SirsiDynix and StarSoft development laboratories achieved comparable performance developing a Java application with over 1,000,000 lines of code. During 2005, a distributed team of 56 Scrum developers working from Provo, Utah; Waterloo, Canada; and St. Petersburg, Russia, delivered 671,688 lines of production Java code. At 15.3 function points per developer/month, this is the most productive Java project ever documented. SirsiDynix best practices are similar to those observed on distributed Scrum teams at IDX Systems, radically different than those promoted by PMBOK, and counterintuitive to practices advocated by the Scrum Alliance. This paper analyzes and recommends best practices for globally distributed agile teams