The Black Book of Agile Project Delivery with Distributed Teams

It is our pleasure to present the The Black Book of Agile Project Delivery with Distributed Teams. It is a collective content of learning and best practices of over 100 projects and engagements using our agile delivery model called Unified Scrum. Global delivery model is nothing new to many of us. Neither is Agile delivery. What is new and unique is taking an Agile delivery approach to globally distributed teams. Unified Scrum provides that framework which adapts the best practices from Scrum, PMI and Unified Process to provide a method to deliver projects quicker and better with distributed team.

This book describes the eMids approach to the Agile methodology of software development, and details some of our experiences during the Agile Journey working over a dozen successful and some not so successful projects. These experiences and hard-won insights into Agile will light the way for others thinking of adopting it or working with Agile teams in a distributed delivery models. Several aspects of Scrum and other agile methodologies need to change to effectively gain the benefits of agile. The author describes a blended approach utilizing the best practices of Scrum, Unified Process and the PMI’s PMBOK™ methods aptly titled Unified Scrum in exploiting the agile methodologies to the greatest business benefits. Several different distributed models are described and explored including heavy customer site presence to fully distributed teams, each having its own constraints and benefits. The reader must realize that agile or not, there is little substitute for strong management and motivated teams which eventually define the success of projects.

Srikant Chellappa is an experienced executive in the business and technolgy consulting services, Srikant has spent more than ten years consulting clients in Healthcare, Finance and Insurance sectors. Srikant pioneered the delivery of software development projects using a blended technique called Unified Scrum adapted to the distributed delivery model used by eMids. Unified scrum combines the best practices of Scrum, Unifed Process and PMI to provide a foundation of agile project delivery with a strong rigor and a distributed delivery model. He provides high-level delivery framework and global delivery roadmap for all engagements in the Application Development and Management space primarily in the healthcare domain. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President for eMids Technologies, based on Nashville, Tennessee