Challenges to Architecture Decision-Making in Agile Development Environments

Käesoleva magistritöö eesmärk on uurida väljakutseid, mis võivad esineda tarkvaraarhitektuuri kombineerimisel väleda tarkvaraarendusega ning selgitada välja põhjused, mis neid esile toovad. Kuigi antud teema on olnud juba päevakorras mõnda aega, siis jätkuvalt esineb vastuolusid väleda tarkvaraarenduse ja tarkvaraarhitektuuri sobitamisel nii teadlaste kui praktikute seas. Väleda tarkvaraarenduse ning arhitektuuri toetajaid võib leida sama palju kui mittetoetajaid, kes väidavad, et neid kahte kokku sobitada pole võimalik. Käesolevas magistritöös püstitatud uurimisküsimuste vastamisel on kasutatud kahte uurimismetoodikat: kirjanduse ülevaade ning juhtumiuuring. Kirjanduse ülevaade käsitleb varem avaldatud uurimistöid ning raskuseid, mida on antud valdkonnas senimaani täheldatud. Lisaks sellele on arutlusse võetud kirjanduses välja toodud soovitused, mida järgida arhitektuuri arendamisel väledas arenduskeskkonnas. Magistritöö teine osa käsitleb Eestis tegutsevas tarkvara idufirmas Stagnation Lab ja Siseministeeriumi IT osakonnas (SMIT) läbi viidud juhtumiuuringut. Stagnation Labis analüüsiti kahte projekti ning intervjueeriti mõlema projekti rollis olnud tarkvaraarhitekte, et uurida, milliseid raskusi kohati süsteemi ning eelkõige tarkvara arhitektuuri arenduse käigus. Samal eesmärgil intervjueeriti ka SMITi projekti eestvedanud tarkvaraarhitekti.The goal of this master thesis is to explore challenges of architecture decision-making in agile environments and trying to find out what causes issues regarding agile architecture - the latter being a set of values and practices supporting the effective evolution of the design and system architecture, concurrent with the implementation of new business functionality. Although the topic has been existent for some time, there are still tensions between software architecture and agility that are not well understood by agile practitioners and researchers alike. While there are many active promoters of agile architecture design, there can be found equally many non-believers who state that agility and architecture cannot work together. To find answers to the research questions stated in this thesis, two research methodologies have been used: a literature survey and a case study. The literature survey covers related work on agility in software architecture and the challenges that come with it. The survey includes difficulties that have been observed regarding the use of agile development methods when building the architecture. In addition, recommended practices are discussed for applying agile processes associated with sound architectural principles. The second part of the thesis is a case study within a software startup company, Stagnation Lab, and the SMIT (Ministry of the Interior IT and Development Centre). In Stagnation Lab, two projects were analyzed. The main architects behind the design of each project were interviewed to look deeper into potential challenges when applying agile practices in architecture development. Similarly, at SMIT, the main architect responsible for the design of a monitoring information system for the Rescue and Fire Department was interviewed

Large-Scale Agile Frameworks: A Comparative Review

This study aims to identify and systematically compare the main large-scale agile frameworks that companies can adopt to manage the work of large-scale and distributed teams. Through this, companies can more consciously perform a better-informed decision on the choice of the framework that best fits the practices and challenges of their organizations. This work employs a qualitative approach supported by an exploratory analysis that identifies and explores the processes of migration to a large-scale agile. In the first phase, fifteen assessment criteria for scaling agile are discussed. In a second phase, these criteria are used to perform a comparative analysis of six large-scale agile frameworks (i.e., DAD, LeSS, Nexus, SAFe, Scrum at Scale, and Spotify). The findings reveal there isn't a dominant large-scale agile framework in all dimensions. However, it is possible to identify frameworks like Nexus and Spotify that target smaller teams and offer low technical complexity. These frameworks easily accommodate changes, while there are other frameworks like SAFe and DAD that offer high levels of scalability but require more demanding and deep efforts in changing work processes in an organization

Management Challenges in Bimodal IT Organizations

Most information technology (IT) organizations are experimenting on adoption of the dual mode of operation, involving traditional and agile methods of work. These two incompatible development worlds need to be in sync for IT to operate effectively. However, both types of operation map onto generic project management principles allowing the manageability of IT projects. Management issues and challenges are presented as points for paying particular attention when managing bimodal (both waterfall and agile practices) IT organizations in two stages: the transition from the traditional to the bimodal and after the adoption of bimodal. These issues and challenges belong to the management and organizational, people, process and technology categories. The management challenges presented in this study are important for the decisions to be made regarding the management and governance of projects into bimodal IT organizations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DevOps Adoption: Challenges & Barriers

As a modern software engineering paradigm, DevOps has recently gained increasing acceptance in the industry as a set of practices and cultural values to address daily dynamic software demands. While the rising trend of DevOps and its characteristics and challenges have often been characterized by practitioner communities and academic research circles, there is still a lack of a thorough understanding of how to tackle DevOps adoptions. This paper aims to help fill this gap by identifying, discussing, and summarizing current academic and practitioner DevOps adoption & implementation research. Our findings provide a basis for theoretical, empirical, or design-oriented research for IS scholars, that has the potential to be of practical importance. Our goal is to improve understanding of DevOps adoption by uncovering ambiguities in terms, conceptual conflations, and ideas underlying different uses of the concept as well as providing methods to deal with common challenges in the adoption process

Leading Devops practice and principle adoption

This research, undertaken in highly structured software-intensive organizations, outlines challenges associated to agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles, which organizations choose to include in their DevOps adoption journeys were identified. The most frequently adopted structured service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice adoption success, indicate that those with software development and operation roles in DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from existence of highly structured service management approaches such as ITIL®

Exploring the link between leadership and Devops practice and principle adoption

Our research focuses in software-intensive organizations and highlights the challenges that surface as a result of the transitioning process of highly-structured to DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles were identified, which organizations select as part of DevOps-oriented adoption. The most frequently adopted ITIL® service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice and principle adoption success, indicate that DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from the existence of change management, release and deployment management, service level management, incident management and service catalog management. We also uncover that the DevOps adoption leadership role is required in a DevOps team setting and that it should, initially, be an individual role

DevOps adoption : challenges & barriers

As a modern software engineering paradigm, DevOps has recently gained increasing acceptance in the industry as a set of practices and cultural values to address daily dynamic software demands. While the rising trend of DevOps and its characteristics and challenges have often been characterized by practitioner communities and academic research circles, there is still a lack of a thorough understanding of how to tackle DevOps adoptions. This paper aims to help fill this gap by identifying, discussing, and summarizing current academic and practitioner DevOps adoption & implementation research. Our findings provide a basis for theoretical, empirical, or design-oriented research for IS scholars, that has the potential to be of practical importance. Our goal is to improve understanding of DevOps adoption by uncovering ambiguities in terms, conceptual conflations, and ideas underlying different uses of the concept as well as providing methods to deal with common challenges in the adoption process