116 research outputs found

    Building lean thinking in a telecom software development organization: strengths and challenges.

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    The potential shown by Lean in different domains has aroused interest in the software industry. However, it remains unclear how Lean can be effectively applied in a domain such as software development that is fundamentally different from manufacturing. This study explores how Lean principles are implemented in software development companies and the challenges that arise when applying Lean Software Development. For that, a case study was conducted at Ericsson R&D Finland, which successfully adopted Scrum in 2009 and subsequently started a comprehensible transition to Lean in 2010. Focus groups were conducted with company representatives to help devise a questionnaire supporting the creation of a Lean mindset in the company (Team Amplifier). Afterwards, the questionnaire was used in 16 teams based in Finland, Hungary and China to evaluate the status of the transformation. By using Lean thinking, Ericsson R&D Finland has made important improvements to the quality of its products, customer satisfaction and transparency within the organization. Moreover, build times have been reduced over ten times and the number of commits per day has increased roughly five times.The study makes two main contributions to research. First, the main factors that have enabled Ericsson R&D?s achievements are analysed. Elements such as ?network of product owners?, ?continuous integration?, ?work in progress limits? and ?communities of practice? have been identified as being of fundamental importance. Second, three categories of challenges in using Lean Software Development were identified: ?achieving flow?, ?transparency? and ?creating a learning culture

    Effective Communication in Globally Distributed Scrum: A Model and Practical Guidance

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    A trend in information systems development is for globally distributed teams to use agile methods and frameworks such as Scrum. In globally distributed (GD) software development, a known challenge is effective team communication. Researchers, however, cannot evaluate effective communication in GD teams using Scrum unless they know what effective communication means in that context. This qualitative study contributes a theoretical model of effective communication in GD Scrum teams and practical guidance for practitioners. Ten industry professionals working in GD Scrum teams were interviewed to capture their understanding of effective communication. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the interviews and form a basis for the model and the practical guidance. This novel model consists of communication transparency, communication quality, and communication discipline, which together lead to the alignment of team understanding (i.e., a team-level shared mental model). This theoretical model lays the ground for future research into the effect of Scrum practices on communication in GD contexts, and the effect of communication on team and project success. For practitioners, this study contributes 11 practical actions that professionals recommend for improving and sustaining effective communication

    Applying Agile Lean to Global Software Development

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    Although challenges of Global Software Development (GSD) are well known in the industry, practitioners and the organizations look for ways to improve results and overcome challenges. Companies have tried to implement many workable solutions possible to solve issues like poor communication, lack of trust, low morale and many other such issues prevalent in the distributed setting. With the success of agile, the methodology gained interest in leveraging its benefits to alleviate some of these challenges. Similarly, lean was also implemented in distributed software development to resolve issues. While each methodology provided some improvement in the results achieved in global software development, many issues persisted and the desired growth/results were not received. Recent years have seen an increased interest of applying a combination of agile and lean software development paradigms to resolve current industry issues in the area and meet the needs of rapid changing environment. This study aims to study the current practices of the combination of agile lean existing in the industry and how it can be utilized in the global software development. The study focuses on challenges faced to implement agile lean and successful sustainable implementation of agile lean in an environment of global software development

    Improving the Software Development Process in a Software Development Team - a Case Study

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    Changes in the context in which software engineering practices are carried out also initiate the need to change in the practices to effectively work as a development team while delivering the software product with the highest possible values. While the thesis was initiated to improve the continuous integration and delivery practices in the case company, the context and the need for the changes in the practices highlighted the need for enhancing the Scrum practices within the software development team. With the design science research methodology approach, the problems in the software development team were drawn during the current state analysis phase followed by a workshop to discuss the findings and select the challenges to tackle as part of the thesis work - both from the case company and development team members’ perspective. The results from the current state analysis highlight five core problem areas from which problem area ’Process and Tools’ was selected for solving in this project after the discussion with the development team. Despite already utilizing some practices of Scrum, the development team decided to evolve the Scrum adoption with the utmost goal of solving concrete problems in the problem area captured during the current state analysis phase. Semi-structured interviews and surveys were utilized to collect the data, and the findings reveal the potential of the process while suggesting further improvements. Scrum is easier to understand but challenging to master. The process exposes the potential, offers the possibility to respond to the challenges in an agile way while emphasizing the importance of context in shaping the practices and tools which is utilized for software construction

    Effective Communication in Globally Distributed Scrum: A Model and Practical Guidance

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    A trend in information systems development is for globally distributed teams to use agile methods and frameworks such as Scrum. In globally distributed (GD) software development, a known challenge is effective team communication. Researchers, however, cannot evaluate effective communication in GD teams using Scrum unless they know what effective communication means in that context. This qualitative study contributes a theoretical model of effective communication in GD Scrum teams and practical guidance for practitioners. Ten industry professionals working in GD Scrum teams were interviewed to capture their understanding of effective communication. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the interviews and form a basis for the model and the practical guidance. This novel model consists of communication transparency, communication quality, and communication discipline, which together lead to the alignment of team understanding (i.e., a team-level shared mental model). This theoretical model lays the ground for future research into the effect of Scrum practices on communication in GD contexts, and the effect of communication on team and project success. For practitioners, this study contributes 11 practical actions that professionals recommend for improving and sustaining effective communication

    Communication Challenges in Distributed Student Projects

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    Distributed software development has become more common in recent years when the possibilities for working over distances have improved and many developers have been forced to work from home due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Teams and team members in distributed environments face challenges due to distance factors that separate collaborators from each other. Communication has been considered the most common challenge in such environments. Instead of face-to-face communication, collaborators must rely on communication tools to communicate with each other over distances, which can naturally cause difficulties. Various solutions have been suggested for different challenges. For instance, the use of agile practices has been proven to improve communication. Communication challenges can negatively affect project success if left unsolved, which makes it important for practitioners to understand communication challenges and strategies to mitigate and solve them. However, new research is needed for identifying all the possible challenges and their solutions. This study investigated communication in software development projects that involved university students who had to collaborate in a distributed environment with limited face-to-face communication possibilities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of this study was to identify communication-related challenges that hindered communication between the participants. Secondly, this study identified how the teams managed to overcome the challenges, and whether the agile practices utilized by the teams helped solve the challenges. For this purpose, a case study was conducted. Teams of students that participated in a software project work course at Tampere University, during the 2020 fall semester, provided the data for the study in the form of documentation, questionnaires, and interviews. The data were analyzed, which resulted in a list of communication challenges and their solutions. Many communication challenges and solutions were identified. Communication was not the most significant challenge for the student teams that participated in the study. For this reason, most of the teams had no major difficulties with communication. However, the practices that were used would have most likely caused more significant problems in real-world projects. Further research could be able to identify different types of challenges and their solutions from similar projects

    Managing risks in virtual-agile it projects: The paradigm of responsiveness

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    Managing risks in IT projects has always been a critical area of study for many researchers and practitioners. Due to the rapid advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), there is an increasing number of challenges and issues for the IT organisations. Virtual-Agile IT projects being virtually operated and based on Agile methodology principles are facilitating IT industry having their main application in the software development industry, where entities from diverse backgrounds have varied working practices, languages and culture, and works together for achieving common aims. There have been several benefits integrated with the application of Virtual-Agile IT projects but the intersection of these two unique working concepts (Virtual-Agile) gives rise to several risks and uncertainties which have now become a point of concern for these organisations. The need for minimising the possibility of such evolving risks and uncertainties became the foundation of conducting this study from a theoretical viewpoint, where the researcher aimed to propose a conceptual framework helping organisations meet their business objectives constructively. The study is exploratory in nature which discovers all those appropriate practices, strategies and guidelines which support reducing risk and uncertainties between the distributed stakeholders during the product development phase. The research methodology used is primarily dependent on qualitative methods combined with the grounded theory methodology to gather rich and rigorous information from experienced and professional personnel from different geographical regions. Depending upon the procedures of grounded theory methodology, the data were collected and analysed simultaneously under the principles of constant comparison and theoretical sampling. The procedures helped to determine thought-provoking results and highlighted various dimensions of the phenomenon under investigation. Responsiveness which emerged as the central phenomenon to overcome risks and uncertainties in Virtual-Agile IT project environments proposes for a proactive system which could be able to deal with project uncertainties, thus reducing the likelihood of potential risks, and enhancing opportunities for the organisations. Responsiveness, which is an ability of the system to perceive, reflect and adapt changes in the project environments is dependent upon efficiently management of three major components, i.e. technology, timeliness and communication. Technology which is the most critical element when operating in virtual environments requires standardization and should be extensively used to develop strong networks and integration between various locations around the world. Timeliness is elementary and a pre-requisite for completion of on-going multiple projects in IT organisations Communication which is the utmost component, is required at various levels for evolving synchronisation in the overall system, such as when developing correlation and satisfaction among distributed stakeholders, estimating the level of required competency and ensuring an efficient knowledge transfer process. Responsiveness, which is required throughout the development cycle, also further influences formal risk management practices undertaken at various levels of the project. Risk management planning and implementation of the response strategies are dependent upon Responsiveness i.e. how well, timely and using technical resources the entities communicate for determining a solution to a problem. The paradigm developed, thus reflects industrial practices undertaken in the software development industry to meet project objectives and would support organisations and their prominent stakeholders to overcome risks and uncertainties in the future Virtual-Agile IT projects

    Causal analysis procedure focused on small software development organizations

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    Very Small Entities (VSE) dedicated to software development lack of enough resources to adopt causal analysis practices, defined in models as CMMI, due to their complexity and costs. It is important to detect the generated defects in the development process, and to make a systematic analysis aimed at determining its causes. However, identifying those root causes is an arduous task, and failing to do so leads to wrong decisions that either fail to solve the problem or even make it worse. On this basis, this paper proposes a causal analysis procedure focused on small organizations PAC-DS (according to its initials in Spanish), which includes activities aimed at identifying the defects causes. After its evaluation in a preliminary case study, the utility of the procedure was evidenced
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