Simulating awareness in global software engineering: A comparative analysis of Scrum and Agile Service Networks

Global software engineering (GSE) is a business strategy to realize a business idea (i.e. the development project) faster, through round-the-clock productivity. However, GSE creates a volatile and unstable process in which many actors interact together against unpredictable premises (e.g. cultural or time differences), often producing unexpected outcomes (e.g. compacting effects of distance and time). So far, Scrum has been used extensively for embarking in global software engineering, but many of the problems in Scrum-based GSE could still benefit from the usage of ad-hoc supporting tools (e.g. information continuity between timezones, cultural differences, developers awareness, etc.). Agile Service Networks (ASNs) are networks of service oriented applications (nodes) that collaborate adaptively towards a common goal. ASNs offer a way to represent GSE professionals through service-oriented “social” nodes in a “small-world” network (much like a Facebook for a specific GSE project). This paper presents a comparison between the two approaches, namely Scrum and ASNs, to determine ASN's potentials as mechanisms to maintain awareness in GSE.