Challenges to Practice Agile Methods in Global Software Development – A Review of Literature

Global Software Development (GSD) is the process of developing software by globally distributed teams and it has become increasingly popular due to the many benefits it offers. Reduced costs, access to a wide range of skilled people and reduction in application development time are the major attractions to GSD. Agile methods are popular software development methodologies that help companies deliver high quality products rapidly. Though Agile methods were originally developed for co-located teams, it is now being used in GSD to achieve the benefits of Agile in GSD combination. Agile methods heavily rely on frequent informal communication between all stakeholders of the project. GSD introduces time, cultural and geographical barriers to this requirement. This paper categorises the various challenges in to 9 broad categories and develops a hypothetical model on impact of the challenges on project success.