Agile Distributed Teams: the combination of Agile and Distributed approaches

Purpose of the paper: Globalisation has encouraged companies to develop a distributed approach with teams dispersed across several sites. The covid-19 outbreak has accelerated this trend, forcing team members to interact virtually, challenging agile methodology performance. This study analyses the main aspects of the agile and distributed approaches that are different but complementary and can coexist within the same team. Methodology: To achieve our objective, we develop a multiple case study collecting data mainly through in-depth, face-to-face interviews with distributed units of small and large companies. We also referred to other data sources such as internal reports and online documents to ensure data triangulation. Main Findings: Our findings highlight the main issues related to distributed and agile approaches integration, similarities and differences between companies by underlining their primary triggers and critical aspects. Practical implications: By implementing several tools and measures to mitigate these two approaches’ contrasting effects, agile teams can benefit from an agile approach in distributed environments. Originality/value: Our study investigates an overlooked topic by highlighting empirically the complementary approach, triggers and differences between agile management and distributed team in order to understand how agile teams work in distributed environments.