Towards better understanding of agile values in global software development

Globally distributed software development (GSD) and agile methods are two current and important trends in software and systems engineering. While agile methods seem to cope well with increasingly changing business environments, it is far from obvious how these light-weight processes can best contribute to GSD. In this paper, method rationale is proposed as an analytical tool to understand the values that underpin agile methods and how these map to the GSD domain. Specifically, the paper presents an initial analysis of the values and goals embraced by the ‘agile manifesto’ and compares briefly with partial results from an ongoing study on the use of agile methods in GSD.