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Remote Work Policy and Agile Development — Conflicts and Solutions

publish date: 2026/06/04 22:55:40.030252 UTC

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A company decides to close several offices and support staff to work from home to reduce costs and environmental impact. However, the company's software development teams use agile methods that rely on close team working and pair programming. Which of the following correctly identifies the difficulties this policy creates for agile development AND suggests a valid approach to address them?

The main difficulty is that agile methods require physical whiteboards — this can be solved by shipping whiteboards to all home offices

No difficulty arises — agile methods are fully compatible with remote working because all communication can be handled through email

The main difficulty is that remote workers cannot access the organisation's servers — this can be resolved by purchasing more powerful laptops for all staff

The main difficulty is that pair programming and daily stand-up meetings require physical co-location for effective informal communication — these can be partially addressed using video conferencing for stand-ups, screen-sharing tools for remote pair programming, and collaboration platforms such as instant messaging, wikis, and shared code repositories to maintain team cohesion

Correct Answer

Explanation

Agile methods were designed for small co-located teams who can communicate informally. A remote working policy creates difficulties because: pair programming requires developers to sit together at the same workstation; daily stand-up meetings depend on face-to-face interaction to keep them short and focused; and agile relies heavily on informal communication rather than formal documents. These can be partially addressed through video conferencing for stand-ups, screen-sharing tools for remote pair programming, and collaboration platforms (instant messaging, wikis, social networking) — as noted in the context of distributed Scrum development.

Reference

Software Engineering, Ian Sommerville, 9th edition

Quizzes you can take where this question appears

Exercises: Applied Agile Development