Since FTS aims to reduce inter-site communication, the face-to-face aspect is not a large hindrance to the overall application of agile development methodologies. elicit cooperation and collaboration. As FTS requires more collaboration and cooperation, this emphasis is especially useful. Challenges Kroll et al. (2013) have researched papers published between 1990 and 2012 and found 36 best practices and 17 challenges for FTS. The challenges were grouped in three categories: coordination, communication and culture. These challenges should be overcome to implement FTS successfully. Coordination Time zone differences reduce opportunities for real-time collaboration. Team members have to be flexible to achieve overlap with remote colleagues. The limited overlap and the delay in responses have a negative impact on the coordination. Daily handoff cycles or handing off work-in-progress are a requirement of FTS because without it the time to market cannot be decreased. Geographical dispersion Cost estimation Loss of teamness Number of sites Coordination breakdown Managerial difficulties Technical platforms Communication Loss of communication richness / face-to-face communication Social cultural diversity difficulties Synchronous communication Language difference Technical difficulties Manage religious or national holidays. Culture Cultural differences Different technical backgrounds Best practices It is of great importance to select and adapt a methodology for the daily handoffs e.g. using agile software development or the waterfall model. Identified best practices are the use of agile methods and using technologies to develop FTS activities. Agile supports daily handoffs which is a critical challenge in FTS. Management tools can be used to estimate and plan schedules, manage sprints and track progress. Additionally, technologies like conference video, emails and telephone calls are easy to implement and allow companies to perform synchronous and asynchronous communication between teams and works well in an agile environment. Unfortunately, there is no solid best practice that works best since FTS can be applied in numerous ways. Follow the Moon A related concept is follow-the-moon, which is scheduling work to be performed specifically during local night-time hours for reasons such as saving on datacenter costs by using cheaper night-time electricity or spare processing power. Other terms 24-hour development round-the-clock-development See also Time to market Change-of-shift report Notes and references External links Example of use in industry - IT Support Industrial engineering