Scrum in Global Software Development : An Ethnographic Case Study of Scrum's Mitigation Effects on Global Software Development Challenges

Abstract: The increasing technological advancement and globalization has seen a rise in offshoring of IT-development, also known as Global Software Development (GSD). One of the most common countries for offshoring has been India with its increasingly competent population.The use of GSD to leverage highly skilled and low-cost labor also creates challenges in three main categories; Coordination, Control and Communication. These challenges arise due to socio-cul-tural, geographical and temporal distances.The use of the Scrum development framework is claimed by scholars to mitigate these issues. This study is grounded on Hossain, Bannerman & Jeffery’s (2011) research framework, which summa-rizes the current body of literature on Scrum’s mitigating effect on commonly occurring challenges in a GSD environment. Due to the scarcity of empirical data on the research framework, the authors of this thesis conducted an ethnographical study on location in India at Indpro, a company founded in Sweden and studied two projects. The purpose of this study is to both evaluate and provide suggestions for expansion of the Hossain et al. (2011) framework with ethnographically collected empirical support, which prior to this was primarily based on experience reports. This study also aims to identify GSD challenges and mitigation strategies that occur in the setting of an experi-enced organization conversant with Scrum methodology in a GSD context.The purpose of this study is to contribute to an increased empirical understanding of how Scrum is being used in a GSD environment, what challenges are prevalent in a distributed GSD environ-ment and how those challenges might be addressed or mitigated. In this study, parts of Hossain et al. (2011) framework are evaluated and suggestions for expanding it through mitigation strategies such as Planning, high quality ICT-Mediate Synchronous and asynchronous communication are specified. Implications for practitioners include the proposal to follow Scrum Practices more me-ticulously to receive all of Scrums inherent mitigating effects.