Coaching Global Software Development Projects

This paper presents a multiple-case study on how three globally distributed software development projects from a large Scandinavia-based IT organization introduced agile practices with the help of a company internal coaching team. The data was gathered by ten semi-structured interviews: we interviewed four coaches and six persons from the coached projects. We describe how the coaches cooperated with the case projects, helping them to adopt agile practices. We present the challenges the projects faced, as well as the benefits they gained. Our results show that when coaching globally distributed projects it is especially important to gain executive support from all the sites, to involve all sites in the change process, to build a common vision in a collaborative workshop, to invite coaches as early as possible, to aim for a long-term coaching relationship, and to remember that the project team owns the change, coaches are there just to support the team.