An automated framework to support agile adoption coaching

This dissertation aims to assist Agile champions in their organisations with their Agile adoption journey. Such a journey typically starts with identifying the Agile challenges and then determining how to address these challenges in their unique context (Hajjdiab & Taleb, 2011a:9). This study provides a manual together with an automated framework to showcase a list of prioritised Agile challenges and their corresponding possible solutions. Before reaching this automated framework, the research presented a comprehensive list of Agile adoption challenges, possible solutions and a mapping between them. The automated framework, also named Agile Adoption Coach (AAC), is in the form of an online tool: www.agilesense.coza/aac. The critical quantitative contribution to this study was the evaluation of the AAC by Scrum Masters and Agile coaches to determine the acceptability of the tool. The research has shown that there is, on average, an 86% acceptability rating for this tool in South Africa.School of ComputingM. Sc. (Computing

Maturity Models for Managing People in Software Development Teams: A Systematic Literature Review

Human factors are fundamental to software development, hence the need to understand people-oriented maturity models in development teams. This article aims to identify the maturity models for people management in software development teams cited in the literature, in order to identify evidence about their use, benefits and limitations, and the human aspects involved. A systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out, where automatic searches were done in four search engines, congresses in the area of ​​human factors within software engineering, in addition to a manual search. Evidence indicates that there are numerous models aimed at developing people in development teams, but few are applied. Models based on observation and informal discussion were found, as well as non-validated models, indicating the scarcity of models applicable to people in software engineering. However, complete but complex models were also found, indicating that a more transparent, dynamic and simple process is needed for people's development. In the observed human factors, emphasis is placed on communication, collaboration, knowledge, learning, self-management, motivation and skills in general. Keywords: Maturity models; Human Factors; Software Development Teams; Teams; People DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/12-14-02 Publication date:July 31st 202

Management Strategies for Adopting Agile Methods of Software Development in Distributed Teams

Between 2003 and 2015, more than 61% of U.S. software development teams failed to satisfy project requirements, budgets, or timelines. Failed projects cost the software industry an estimated 60 billion dollars. Lost opportunities and misused resources are often the result of software development leaders failing to implement appropriate methods for managing software projects. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies software development managers use in adopting Agile methodology in the context of distributed teams. The tenets of Agile approach are individual interaction over tools, working software over documentation, and collaboration over a contract. The conceptual framework for the study was adapting Agile development methodologies. The targeted population was software development managers of U.S.-based companies located in Northern California who had successfully adopted Agile methods for distributed teams. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with 5 managers and a review of project-tracking documentation and tools. Data analysis included inductive coding of transcribed interviews and evaluation of secondary data to identify themes through methodological triangulation. Findings indicated that coaching and training of teams, incremental implementation of Agile processes, and proactive management of communication effectiveness are effective strategies for adopting Agile methodology in the context of distributed teams. Improving the efficacy of Agile adoption may translate to increased financial stability for software engineers across the world as well as accelerate the successful development of information systems, thereby enriching human lives

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2022, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in June 2022. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a unique forum where agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends.  XP conferences provide an informal environment to learn and trigger discussions and welcome both people new to agile and seasoned agile practitioners. This year’s conference was held with the theme “Agile in the Era of Hybrid Work”. The 13 full papers and 1 short paper presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile practices; agile processes; and agile in the large

Agile practices adoption with Lean in growing entrepreneur companies

Abstract. There are three popular terms in the software development industry recently, they are Agile, Lean and Entrepreneurs. Agile is an approach in which requirements and solutions for the products evolve through short cycles. Entrepreneur can be defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business based on potential opportunities and often is a small business. In recent years, entrepreneurs firms follow Lean concepts in Information Technology industry are trying to adopt Agile methodologies because they believe it helps them to avoid failures and grow faster. However, when growing they often face problems to maintain the agility which they have when they were smaller. The aim of this study is to find out approaches and lessons which can be used to adopt Agile practices in young expanding firms. In addition, those methods were compared to those from large-scale Agile frameworks to give conclusions on adoption approaches. Three interviews were conducted with the high-level managers of target case companies and two of them based in Oulu, Finland and one located in Hanoi, Vietnam. All of the companies which joined the research are working software development area but each of them has a different pathway and side services. They also share are similar numbers of employees above 9 and smaller than 30, which is the reason that they were chosen. Another reason for this selection is that all of them called themselves a Lean start-up or following core concepts of it. On another hand, large-scale Agile frameworks were introduced as an approach for big organizations to adopt Agile practices. In this research, lessons from those frameworks were proposed as suggestions and a new point of view for maintaining agility. The results of the research can be concluded that focusing on customer requirements, forming small Agile teams and giving more freedom to members are three practices that companies in the interview are using. Furthermore, from designed frameworks, it showed that having dynamic teams, enhancing the value of each iteration and improving the training process are ways to improve the adoption process in large firms

Requirements Engineering that Balances Agility of Teams and System-level Information Needs at Scale

Context: Motivated by their success in software development, large-scale systems development companies are increasingly adopting agile methods and their practices. Such companies need to accommodate different development cycles of hardware and software and are usually subject to regulation and safety concerns. Also, for such companies, requirements engineering is an essential activity that involves upfront and detailed analysis which can be at odds with agile development methods. Objective: The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the challenges and solution candidates of performing effective requirements engineering in an agile environment, based on empirical evidence. Illustrated with studies on safety and system-level information needs, we explore RE challenges and solutions in large-scale agile development, both in general and from the teams’ perspectives. Method: To meet our aim, we performed a secondary study and a series of empirical studies based on case studies. We collected qualitative data using interviews, focus groups and workshops to derive challenges and potential solutions from industry. Findings: Our findings show that there are numerous challenges of conducting requirements engineering in agile development especially where systems development is concerned. The challenges discovered sprout from an integration problem of working with agile methods while relying on established plan-driven processes for the overall system. We highlight the communication challenge of crossing the boundary of agile methods and system-level (or plan-driven) development, which also proves the coexistence of both methods. Conclusions: Our results highlight the painful areas of requirements engineering in agile development and propose solutions that can be explored further. This thesis contributes to future research, by establishing a holistic map of challenges and candidate solutions that can be further developed to make RE more efficient within agile environments

Factors that contribute significantly to scrum adoption as perceived by scrum practitioners working within South Africa organisations

Text in EnglishScrum is the most adopted and under-researched Agile methodology. The research conducted on Scrum adoption is mainly qualitative. Therefore, there was a need for a quantitative study to investigate Scrum adoption challenges. The general objective of this study was to investigate the factors that have a significant relationship with Scrum adoption as perceived by Scrum practitioners working within South African organisations. To achieve this objective a narrative review to synthesise the existing challenges was conducted, followed by the use of these challenges in the development of a conceptual framework. After that, a survey questionnaire was used to test and evaluate the developed framework. The research findings indicate that relative advantage, complexity, and sprint management are factors that have a significant linear relationship with Scrum adoption. The findings are generalisable to the population, and the author recommends that organisations review the findings during their adoption phase of Scrum.Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)University of South Africa (UNISA)School of ComputingM.Sc. (Computing

Adopting Agile Development in Business Process Management: a Case Study in an Industrial Company

Agility and agile development have been studied prominently in academic literature in various fields. Applying agile development in business process management and seeing agile projects from business point of view and in traditional industries have remained with relatively low attention. This thesis researches how traditional industrial business should adapt to agile development. The objective of this thesis is to analyse current state of agile development in the Case Company and propose improvements via analysing current agile projects. The research was conducted as a qualitative multiple case study. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews by interviewing 7 managers or directors from 3 selected project cases taking place within the Case Company. Agile development projects are new to the Case Company and company's recent corporate digital strategy is emphasizing on the increase of agile development initiatives and capabilities within the company. Based on the research, the biggest challenges for businesses to adapt agile development lies on project planning, business involvement development, and roll-out operations. Adopting agile methodology requires increasing tolerance of uncertainty and continuous effort from stakeholders. Project planning and resourcing need to be adjusted according to agile projects, where planning is continuous, and success is primarily measured via achieved system capabilities. Shift to new roles requires new capabilities from employees combining knowledge of business and technology. In addition to staying in traditional planning, too light project core groups and combined roles of product owner and project manager were found to have negative effects on project success. Ensuring adequate business commitment throughout agile projects was found to be a major issue. Business commitment can be improved by allocating more resources to change and expectations management work early enough. Integrating projects better to business process management activities by considering to-be processes and organizations on early stages of the system development ensures better support and input from the business representatives for the project. This also helps in planning and execution of system deployment in roll-out phase. Roll-out of an agile system development project is likely to fail due to too much complexity or lack of proper planning. It is suggested that agile projects utilize traditional plan-driven practices for meeting crucial milestones. Hybrid strategy combining both agile and plan-driven project management methodologies and deeper analysis of roll-out activities in agile projects are suggested to be studied further. Agile development proved to be highly applicable in system development projects by enabling innovative and customer-centric solutions. It offers great variety of tools and techniques that are recommended to be shared and utilized wider outside agile projects. Workflow management, customer centricity in development work, and systematic communication pattern are examples of practical learnings from agile projects that are likely to improve quality of any daily work.Ketteryyttä ja ketterää kehittämistä on tutkittu näkyvästi akateemisessa kirjallisuudessa useilla aloilla. Ketterän kehittämisen soveltaminen liiketoimintaprosessien hallinnassa ja ketterien projektien näkeminen liiketoiminnan näkökulmasta erityisesti perinteisillä toimialoilla ovat jääneet suhteellisen pienelle huomiolle. Tämä diplomityö tutkii, kuinka ketterä kehittäminen tulisi ottaa käyttöön teollisessa liiketoiminnassa. Työn tavoitteena on analysoida ketterän kehittämisen nykytilaa case-yrityksessä ja tuoda esiin kehityskohteita yrityksen nykyisistä projekteista. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisena monitapaustutkimuksena. Aineisto kerättiin puolistrukturoiduilla teemahaastatteluilla, joissa haastateltiin seitsemää johtajaa kolmesta projektista. Ketterät projektit ovat uusia case-yritykselle ja sen viimeaikainen digitalisaatiostrategia korostaa ketterien kehityshankkeiden ja niitä edistävien kyvykkyyksien lisäämistä yrityksessä. Tutkimuksen perusteella suurimmat haasteet liiketoiminnalle ketterän kehittämisen omaksumisessa ovat projektisuunnittelussa, liiketoimintaedustajien sitouttamisessa ja uusien järjestelmien käyttöönotoissa. Ketterän kehittämisen omaksuminen edellyttää projektin sidosryhmiltä aiempaa suurempaa sitoutumista ja kykyä sietää epävarmuutta. Uusiin rooleihin siirtyminen vaatii työntekijöiltä uusia kyvykkyyksiä, joissa yhdistyvät teknologiaosaaminen ja liiketoiminnan ymmärtäminen. Projektin suoriutuminen heikkenee, mikäli suunnittelussa ei oteta huomioon ketterän kehittämisen tarpeita, projektin ydinryhmä muodostuu liian kevyeksi, tai mikäli tuoteomistajan ja projektipäällikön rooleja ei ole eriytetty riittävästi. Liiketoimintaosapuolten sitouttamista voi kehittää kohdistamalla riittävästi resursseja muutosjohtamiseen ja odotustenhallintaan aikaisessa vaiheessa. Järjestelmäkehitysprojekteissa prosessi- ja organisaatiomuutosten varhainen huomioiminen varmistaa liiketoimintaosapuolten paremman tuen kehitysprojekteille. Ketterän järjestelmäkehitysprojektin käyttöönottovaihe todennäköisesti epäonnistuu suunnittelun puuttellisuuden ja projektin kasvavan kompleksisuuden johdosta. On suositeltavaa, että ketterissä projekteissa hyödynnetään perinteisiä suunnitelmavetoisia käytäntöjä , jotta kriittiset virstanpylväät voidaan saavuttaa. Ketterien- ja suunnitelmavetoisten projektinhallintamenetelmien yhdistäminen sekä syvemmän analyysin toteuttaminen ketterien projektien tuotosten jalkauttamisesta ovat suositeltuja jatkotutkimuskohteita. Ketterä kehittäminen osoittautui hyvin soveltuvaksi järjestelmäkehitysprojekteissa mahdollistaen innovatiiviset ja asiakaslähtöiset ratkaisut. Se tarjoaa suuren valikoiman työkaluja ja tekniikoita, joita on suositeltavaa jakaa ja ottaa käyttöön laajemmin liiketoiminnassa. Työjonojen hallinta, asiakaslähtöisyys kehitystyössä ja systemaattinen kommunikointimalli ovat esimerkkejä käytännöllisistä opeista ketteristä projekteista, jotka todennäköisesti parantavat minkä tahansa päivittäisen työn laatua