Blueprint Model - An Agile-Oriented Methodology for Tackling Global Software Development Challenges

Sep 12, 2026

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Recent decades have made managing development teams across different time zones increasingly common, elevating the need for Global Software Development (GSD) techniques to address recurring coordination issues. In the Sidia R&D context, global cooperation is required between overseas and local teams with no overlapping working hours and different design, quality assurance, and software engineering skills. The work proposes the Blueprint model, combining Kanban and Scrum to support task allocation, team organization, and efficient communication, then discusses deployment lessons from a real project.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time4 min

AccessFree to download

Article history

Received / Accepted / Online

Introduction

Blueprint model overview in GSD

Challenges of Scrum in distributed settings

Proposed Blueprint model

Deadlines, scope, and group layers

Case context: Sidia

International mobile device software development

Conclusion

Deployment outcomes and lessons learned

Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal Vol. 5, No. 6, 353-362 (2020) [www.astesj.com](www.astesj.com) Special Issue on Multidisciplinary Innovation in Engineering Science & Technology Blueprint Model: An Agile-Oriented Methodology for Tackling Global Software Development Challenges Andre Figliuolo da Cruz, Cristiano Pereira Godoy, Lanier Menezes dos Santos, Lucas Frota Marinho, Marco Santarelle Jardim, Elisangela Paiva da Silva, C´ıcero Augusto Pahins, Paulo Fonseca*, Felipe Taliar Giuntini SOL department, Sidia: R & D Institute, Manaus, 69050-020, Brazil A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T | Article history: | In recent decades, the challenge of managing the development teams spread across di 􀀋erent | | --- | --- | | Received: 31 August, 2020 | time zones has become increasingly common, raising the importance of the development of | | Accepted: 23 October, 2020 | Global Software Development (GSD) techniques, in order to tackle its particular problems. | | Online: 20 November, 2020 | This work discuss these issues in the context of Sidia, an R &D institute which implements | | | technological solutions for global companies. The main partner of Sidia is a mobile | | Keywords: | multinational company located in overseas. The development team must cooperate with the | | Methodology | overseas team, even though there are no overlapping working hours between both teams. | | Agile | Besides, the teams have a di􀀋erent set of skills regarding design, quality assurance, and | | Scrum | software engineering. In order to address theses problems, we propose the Blueprint model, | | Kanban | a Kanban and Scrum based model that supports the development of GSD systems, the | | Global Software Development | allocation of tasks and teams, and the e􀀎cient communication. Finally, we discuss the aspects and lessons learned of development of project and deploy of a new model for systems development on a real-word project. | 1 Introduction Many companies adopt software development methodologies with ﬁxed timebox periods for developing incremental deliveries, which is a strategy aligned with agile-based approaches. In these scenarios, Scrum proved to be the de facto standard for the most software-oriented industries, showing improved results over waterfall methodologies. Despite this, some groups can face di􀀎culties when dealing with the Scrum's ceremonies in the context of Global Software Development (GSD), e.g., estimating e􀀋ort during the planning sessions or even conducting daily meetings. In this current work, we extend the deﬁnition of the Blueprint model [1], generalizing it to other scenarios and groups by furthering exploring its technical aspects and presenting add-ons to the original proposal. As described in [1] by the authors, Blueprint Model is a lightweight project management that can encourage and facilitate communication between groups in di􀀋erent sites when matched with the suggested group organization. In this particular work, the authors focus on reporting the main challenges when developing a project in collaboration with an external group that does not use agile methodologies, which resulted in a set of barriers to successful integration. To resolve these issues, the Blueprint Model deﬁnes its deadlines oriented by the scope of work, which leads to timeboxes of di􀀋erent sizes that consider the e􀀋ort needed for each activity. Such an approach is di􀀋erent from Scrum, where sprint cycles have ﬁxed size throughout the project lifecycle. In this Model, the scope of work, hereafter called blueprint, comprises the individual tasks required to reach the target, the necessary information needed to perform these tasks, and what is needed to integrate the work done by every group member. A blueprint deﬁnes di􀀋erent group layers, concerning the nature of the work performed (e.g., design group, quality assurance), and assigns the individual tasks to them. Each group layer can be further

FAQs

What problem does the Blueprint Model address in global software development?

It targets coordination difficulties in GSD, especially when teams work across time zones with no overlapping hours and different skill sets.

How does the Blueprint model differ from standard Scrum practice?

It defines deadlines based on scope of work, producing timeboxes of varying sizes, while Scrum uses fixed-size sprint cycles throughout the project.

What capabilities does the Blueprint model provide to support distributed teams?

It organizes tasks and team layers, supports Kanban- and Scrum-based work allocation, and enables efficient communication for integrating cross-team development.

Sep 12, 2026

Upload by Franzy