Adopting Scrum as an Agile approach in distributed software development: A review of literature

The concept of Agile software development has attracted substantial interests of organisations in achieving rapid and functional software development goals. This could be due to its features of concentrating more on delivering a working software rather than being presented with a bulk-load of documentation; rapid response to changes in requirements rather than following a prescribed plan; collaboration with customers rather than negotiation of contracts and giving more preference to individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Over the years, Agile approach (AA) has been perceived to be incompatible with distributed software development. However, recent studies have shown that Scrum, one of the popular Agile approaches, has been adopted and customized by organisations in alignment with distributed software development projects. This study presents the possibilities of adopting Scrum practices as an Agile approach in distributed software development projects based on different studies and reports that have been carried out in DSD projects using Scrum. Findings were presented from different studies showing Scrum being adopted successfully in DSD. The paper also investigated different ways in which these Scrum practices have been successfully adopted, thereby examining innovative approaches to Scrum practices, such as daily Scrum meetings, sprints, Scrum-of-Scrum and backlogs.