Towards the development of a simple tool to assist in agile methodology adoption decisions: agile adoption matrix

This paper describes the development of a decision support tool, an adoption assessment matrix based on critical adoption factors, that addresses a need in industry; namely, to improve the overall understanding of the constituent parts of agile systems development methodologies. It highlights the importance of critical adoption factors to the adoption of an agile method and illustrates the usefulness of a decision support process to determine the viability of an agile method for a specific software project. The paper describes the results of a series of workshops (two carried out in commercial software developement companies, and one with personnel from the British Minsitry of Defence) where the adoption assessment matrix was used to assess the suitability of agile methods in software development projects. A major benefit of the tool is that it guides discussion, concentrating the debate on the critical factors, applied to the individual project. These discussions proved to be as valuable as the output of the tool itself. The results of these workshops show that an argument can be made for the use of and benefit of such a decision support process in industry, in supporting the decision to adopt an agile methodology

Agility in Information Systems – A Literature Review on Terms and Definitions

Agility is a term used in many works in the context of information systems. When studying the concept closer, it became obvious that there is a terminological heterogeneity preventing a common definition whilst at the same time not preventing the frequent use of the term. In order to approach the term in a structured way, the following two paths were chosen. Firstly, the term was traced back to its roots which showed its first appearance in organisational theory. Secondly, the major IS conferences (ECIS and ICIS) and the requirements engineering conference as a major computer science conference were analysed from 2001 when the agile manifesto was published which led to a wave of works on agility. The descriptive results are presented in the paper

Utilising mindfulness to analyse Agile Global Software Development

As Information Systems Development (ISD) organisations face increasing market demands, ISD strategies such as Agile development and Global Systems Development (GSD) have been employed to help address these demands. With anecdotal evidence pointing to substantially successful implementations, organisations are beginning to embrace the combination of these seemingly orthogonal strategies with beneficial results. However, with the two areas of research still maturing, the bulk of research is made up of anecdotal studies. Utilising mindfulness, a theoretical concept for understanding how organisations can achieve flexibility and reliability, this paper explores how to effectively integrate Agile and GSD methodologies. Incorporating a longitudinal case study, an operationalised mindfulness instrument is applied and triangulated with qualitative data. The findings depict an in-depth analysis of a GSD organisation and provide key contributions for practitioners. Furthermore, theoretical contributions of the paper include: (i) a comprehensive definition of mindfulness that incorporates shared understanding as a key component, and (ii) the development of relationships between the individual mindfulness components

UTILISING MINDFULNESS TO ANALYSE AGILE GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

As Information Systems Development (ISD) organisations face increasing market demands, ISD strategies such as Agile development and Global Systems Development (GSD) have been employed to help address these demands. With anecdotal evidence pointing to substantially successful implementations, organisations are beginning to embrace the combination of these seemingly orthogonal strategies with beneficial results. However, with the two areas of research still maturing, the bulk of research is made up of anecdotal studies. Utilising mindfulness, a theoretical concept for understanding how organisations can achieve flexibility and reliability, this paper explores how to effectively integrate Agile and GSD methodologies. Incorporating a longitudinal case study, an operationalised mindfulness instrument is applied and triangulated with qualitative data. The findings depict an in-depth analysis of a GSD organisation and provide key contributions for practitioners. Furthermore, theoretical contributions of the paper include: (i) a comprehensive definition of mindfulness that incorporates shared understanding as a key component, and (ii) the development of relationships between the individual mindfulness components

Software developers reasoning behind adoption and use of software development methods – a systematic literature review

When adopting and using a Software Development Method (SDM), it is important to stay true to the philosophy of the method; otherwise, software developers might execute activities that do not lead to the intended outcomes. Currently, no overview of SDM research addresses software developers’ reasoning behind adopting and using SDMs. Accordingly, this paper aims to survey existing SDM research to scrutinize the current knowledge base on software developers’ type of reasoning behind SDM adoption and use. We executed a systematic literature review and analyzed existing research using two steps. First, we classified papers based on what type of reasoning was addressed regarding SDM adoption and use: rational, irrational, and non-rational. Second, we made a thematic synthesis across these three types of reasoning to provide a more detailed characterization of the existing research. We elicited 28 studies addressing software developers’ reasoning and identified five research themes. Building on these themes, we framed four future research directions with four broad research questions, which can be used as a basis for future research

Evaluation of Leanness, Agility and Leagility Extent in Industrial Supply Chain

The focus of Lean Manufacturing (LM) is the cost reduction by eliminating non value added activities (waste i.e. muda) and enabling continuous improvement; whereas, Agile Manufacturing (AM) is an approach which is mainly focused on satisfying the needs of customers while maintaining high standards of quality and controlling the overall costs involved in the production of a particular product. This approach has geared towards companies working in a highly turbulent as well as competitive business environment, where small variations in performance and product delivery can make a huge difference in the long term to a company’s survival and reputation amongst the customers. Leagility is basically the aggregation of lean and agile principles within a total supply chain strategy by effectively positioning the decoupling point, consequently to best suit the need for quick responding to a volatile demand downstream yet providing a level scheduling upstream from the marketplace. A leagile system adapts the characteristics of both lean and agile systems, acting together in order to exploit market opportunities in a cost-efficient way. The present research aims to highlight how these lean, agile as well as leagile paradigms may be adapted according to particular marketplace requirements. Obviously, these strategies are distinctly different, since in the first case, the market winner is cost; whereas, in the second case, the market winner is the availability. Agile supply chains are required to be market sensitive and hence nimble. This means that the definition of waste is different from that appropriate to lean supply. The proper location of decoupling point for material flow and information flow enables a hybrid supply chain to be better engineered. This encourages lean (efficient) supply upstream and agile (effective) supply downstream, thus bringing together the best of both paradigms. While implementing leanness/agility/leagility philosophy in industrial supply chain in appropriate situations, estimation of a unique quantitative performance metric (evaluation index) is felt indeed necessary. Such an index can help the industries to examine existing performance level of leanness/agility/leagility driven supply chain; to compare ongoing performance extent to thedesired/expected one and to benchmark best practices of lean/agile/leagile manufacturing/supply chain, wherever applicable. The present research attempts to assess the extent of leanness, agility as well as leagility, respectively, for an organizational supply chain using fuzzy/grey based Multi- Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approaches. During this research, different