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Distributed agile: project management in a global environment

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Abstract

Agile methods have been gaining acceptance in the mainstream software development community. At the same time, globally distributed software development is another trend delivering high-quality software to global users at lower costs. Little is published about the adoption and adaption of Agile methods in a distributed team and software globalization/localization project environment. The overall performance and satisfaction with the international deployment of the latest version of My Yahoo! increased by more than 30% after the global product team, distributed over three continents, adopted Agile methods. Our objective is to highlight successful practices and challenges that have been overcome by the globalization project, and suggest a framework for software globalization project management using a distributed Agile approach.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our appreciation to The Global My Yahoo! group—the global product team based in Sunnyvale and Bangalore; international teams in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Europe (Spain, UK, France, Italy and German), Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Miami), Singapore, India, Australia and Japan, in providing all the inspiration for this paper and it has been a great pleasure to be part of the international deployment projects for My Yahoo! over the past 4 years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering #331, College of Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seodaemun-Ku, Daehyun-Dong, Seoul, 120-750, Republic of Korea

    Seiyoung Lee & Hwan-Seung Yong

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  1. Seiyoung Lee
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  2. Hwan-Seung Yong
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Correspondence to Seiyoung Lee.

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Editor: Tore Dyba

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Lee, S., Yong, HS. Distributed agile: project management in a global environment. Empir Software Eng 15, 204–217 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-009-9119-7

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