Communication in Distributed Agile Development

Distributed  software  development  is  an  increasingly important  development  approach  for software companies. With so many benefits it also have few challenges associated with it. DSD is already burdened with many challenges and adding Agile Method to it make things more complex. Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross functional teams.
Recommendations by Layman to create communication rich environment:-
a) Define a person to play the role of the customer up front.This individual must be able to make conclusive decisions on project  functionality  and  scope,  must  be  readily  accessible,and must have a vested interest in the project.
b) When the project management and development teams are separated, create a role within the XP team whose purpose is to  work  closely  with  both  development  and  project management teams on a daily basis, preferably someone who speaks all the languages involved.
c)When  face-to-face,  synchronous  communication  is not feasible,  use  an  email  listserv  to  increase  the  chance  of  a response  and  encourage  prompt,  useful,  and  conclusive responses to emails.
d) Use globally-available project management tools to record and monitor the project status on a daily basis.

Few case studies were conducted to verify the theory given by Layman. Based on the empirical data it seems that having a well-defined  customer  (recommendation  1)  is  the  key  to successful  distributed  agile  development.  Without  proper customer  collaboration,  the  other  two  investigated recommendations  become  redundant.  Thus  the  customer relationship  should  be  given  extra  effort  in  planning,managing  and  executing  distributed  agile  projects.  This relationship  should  also  be  maintained  throughout  the project. This case study was mainly conducted from developer's point of view. To get a generalised result customer's view point should also be considered.