Factors Influencing the Efficacy of Agile Usage

Agile techniques that utilize iterative development are broadly used in various industry projects as a lightweight development technique which can satisfy the continuous changes of requirements. Short repetitions are used that are required for efficient product delivery. Traditional and old software development methods are not much efficient and effective to control the rapid change in requirements. Despite the benefits of Agile, criticism on agile methodology states that it couldn’t succeed to pay attention to architectural and design issues and therefore is bound to produce small design-decisions. The past decade has observed numerous changes in systems development with many organizations accepting agile techniques as a viable methodology for developing systems. An increase in the number of research studies reveals the growing demand and acceptance of agile methodologies. While most research has focused on acceptance rate and adaptation of agile practices, there is very limited knowledge of their post-adoption usage and incorporation within organizations. Several factors explain the effective usage of agile methodologies. A combination of previous research in Agile Methodologies, Diffusion of Innovations, Information Systems implementation, and Systems Development has been carried out to develop a research model that identifies the main factors relevant to the propagation and effective usage of agile methodologies in organizations

Understanding Agile Software Development Assimilation Beyond Acceptance

Agile software development methods represent a departure from the heavily regimented and document-driven procedures of traditional, waterfall approaches. Despite the highly touted benefits of employing agile ISD methods and the growth of agile adoption rates over the past two decades, it is not clear why some organizations fail to routinize agile methods, while others do so and realize their promised benefits. Motivated by the need to understand the factors that influence agile routinization, this study empirically examines the deep contextual factors that impact the extent to which agile methods are proliferated throughout an organization. Findings indicate that project success from initial agile use does not translate to routine agile use. Instead, findings from the study suggest that organizational factors of organizational culture and structure play a pivotal role in the routinization of agile methods

The Impact of Organizational Culture and Structure on the Routinization of Agile Software Development Methodologies

Agile software development methodologies represent a departure from the heavy document-driven procedures of plan-driven approaches. As organizations continue to adopt agile methodologies, understanding the factors that influence the routinization of agile is a growing concern. In recent years, researchers have focused their attention to the issues of post-adoptive agile use in order to extend our knowledge on agile assimilation. However, little research has been conducted to expose the assimilation gaps that occur as organizations seek to increase the extent and intensity of their agile use. Following prior literature, our objective is to articulate a model that explains the impact of organizational culture and structure on the routinization of agile methods. Our theoretical model provides helpful insights that extend our of knowledge of agile assimilation in organizations

The Perceived Advantage of Agile Development Methodologies By Software Professionals: Testing an Innovation-Theoretic Model

Proponents of agile processes claim that agile practices result in higher quality software while allowing the flexibility to respond to evolving user requirements. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical study has really confirmed that benefits accrue to those who use agile processes. Grounded in the agility and diffusion of innovations literature, this research introduces a measure of process agility within the software development domain and relates it to constructs previously employed in the innovation literature. For agile methods, our study has provided empirical support for the proposal that agile development methods lead to developers’ beliefs that they are less complex, more compatible and provide increased benefits. Since developers believe that agility leads to increased benefits, they will be more likely to accept agile methods. For practitioners, this study provides valuable insights into the underlying factors that influence a developer’s beliefs about agile methods

HOW SUSTAINABLE ARE AGILE METHODOLOGIES? ACCEPTANCE FACTORS AND DEVELOPER PERCEPTIONS IN SCRUM PROJECTS

The introduction of agile methodologies such as Scrum considerably changes the working habits of developers. To ensure their successful dissemination, it is therefore particularly important that developers assimilate and remain committed to agile principles. In this paper, we examine the long-term acceptance of Scrum and present the results of a study conducted at a world-wide leading insurance company that began transitioning to Scrum in 2007. Taking the Diffusion of Innovations theory as a lens for analysis, we identify several acceptance factors of Scrum and hypothesize how they are perceived in comparison to traditional methodologies. We evaluate our hypotheses using a multi-method research approach that combines analyses of quantitative and qualitative field data. The results suggest that several factors of Scrum are perceived as relative advantages or as more compatible to the way developers prefer to work. Factors that characterize the complexity of Scrum are identified as potential barriers to acceptance, however

Maintenance of Automated Test Suites in Industry: An Empirical study on Visual GUI Testing

Context: Verification and validation (V&V) activities make up 20 to 50 percent of the total development costs of a software system in practice. Test automation is proposed to lower these V&V costs but available research only provides limited empirical data from industrial practice about the maintenance costs of automated tests and what factors affect these costs. In particular, these costs and factors are unknown for automated GUI-based testing. Objective: This paper addresses this lack of knowledge through analysis of the costs and factors associated with the maintenance of automated GUI-based tests in industrial practice. Method: An empirical study at two companies, Siemens and Saab, is reported where interviews about, and empirical work with, Visual GUI Testing is performed to acquire data about the technique's maintenance costs and feasibility. Results: 13 factors are observed that affect maintenance, e.g. tester knowledge/experience and test case complexity. Further, statistical analysis shows that developing new test scripts is costlier than maintenance but also that frequent maintenance is less costly than infrequent, big bang maintenance. In addition a cost model, based on previous work, is presented that estimates the time to positive return on investment (ROI) of test automation compared to manual testing. Conclusions: It is concluded that test automation can lower overall software development costs of a project whilst also having positive effects on software quality. However, maintenance costs can still be considerable and the less time a company currently spends on manual testing, the more time is required before positive, economic, ROI is reached after automation

Revealing the Vicious Circle of Disengaged User Acceptance: A SaaS Provider's Perspective

User acceptance tests (UAT) are an integral part of many different software engineering methodologies. In this paper, we examine the influence of UATs on the relationship between users and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, which are continuously delivered rather than rolled out during a one-off signoff process. Based on an exploratory qualitative field study at a multinational SaaS provider in Denmark, we show that UATs often address the wrong problem in that positive user acceptance may actually indicate a negative user experience. Hence, SaaS providers should be careful not to rest on what we term disengaged user acceptance. Instead, we outline an approach that purposefully queries users for ambivalent emotions that evoke constructive criticism, in order to facilitate a discourse that favors the continuous innovation of a SaaS system. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our approach for the study of user engagement in testing SaaS applications