An Agile Enterprise Architecture-Driven Model for Geographically Distributed Agile Development

Agile development is a highly collaborative environment, which requires active communication (i.e., effective and efficient communication) among stakeholders. Active communication in the geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) environment is difficult to achieve due to many challenges. Literature has reported that active communication plays a critical role in enhancing GDAD performance through reducing the cost and time of a project. However, little empirical evidence is known about how to study and establish active communication construct in GDAD in terms of its dimensions, determinants and effects on GDAD performance. To address this knowledge gap, this paper describes an enterprise architecture (EA) driven research model to identify and empirically examine the GDAD active communication construct. This model can be used by researchers and practitioners to examine the relationships among two dimensions of GDAD active communication (effectiveness and efficiency), one antecedent that can be controlled (agile EA), and four dimensions of GDAD performance (on-time completion, on-budget completion, software functionality and software quality).