Virtual by Design: How a Work Environment Can Support Agile Distributed Software Development

Even though agile methods have been flourishing in the last decades,
their implementation in (globally) distributed arrangements still
presents hard challenges. Due to this tension, practices are either
modified or added to compensate with the additional control required
by the setup. In this paper, we present a case study that, by
embracing the characteristics of distributed development, managed
to incrementally design a process that does not compromise the
foundations of the agile philosophy. We show how a virtual work
environment has been crafted by continuously improving practices
and carefully selecting technologies to allow each team member of
the development team to fully participate regardless of the actual
physical location. Aware of the single nature limitation of the reported
case, we present extensive information to frame the context
allowing meaningful comparisons by researchers and providing
concrete examples for practitioners.