Challenges in Applying Scrum Methodology on Culturally Distributed Teams

This dissertation does NOT contain confidential material and thus can be made available to staff and students via the library. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Master of Science in Enterprise Application Development. Abstract Unlike traditional upfront-documented, plan-driven software development methods, Scrum methodology requires tight and close collaboration of all team members within the team. With the wide popularity of Scrum, it has being well adapted by offshore software industry such that team members from different cultures intimately collaborate to deliver a shared goal. Close team collaboration in a cross cultural team requires understanding and accommodation of different cultural behaviors within a single team. Purpose of this research is to identify possible cultural impacts on Scrum methodology when practiced in a cross cultural team. This research has studied and analyzed relevant sections of more than 75 secondary sources such as research papers, journal articles and books. In addition there are considerable number of other material studied but excluded after the initial study as inappropriate for the research context. Cultural aspects and Scrum best practices extracted from these secondary sources are then modeled and critically evaluated against one another to derive possible impacting areas. This research in its outcome, produces a set of hypothesis that identify cultural behaviors that can have a probable impact on the Scrum practices when practiced within a culturally distributed team. The research work demonstrates that, unless properly managed cross cultural behavior differences may have a significant impact on effectiveness of Scrum practices.