An empirical study on the impact of Scrumban on geographically distributed software development

Coordination in software projects is a challenge, particularly when it comes to distributed software development (DSD). Agile software development is a well-known paradigm for improving software development; however, there is little understanding of its impact on DSD projects. This paper describes an empirical study conducted within two Software Factory settings in Finland and Italy to investigate how Scrumban can impact coordination in geographically distributed software development. It provides the results from a project case that applied Scrumban to develop a web-based application for Time-banking. This study shows that aspects of Scrumban, such as iterative development, enhanced visibility, and limited work-in-progress, would alleviate the challenges of leveraging resources, synchronization between distributed sites, communication, and culture. It also explains that technical and security issues in the coordination of distributed projects may demand for solutions other than Scrumban.