Key Factors for Selecting an Agile Method: A Systematic Literature Review

Agile methods have become popular in recent years because the success rate of project development using Agile methods is better than structured design methods. Nevertheless, less than 50 percent of projects implemented using Agile methods are considered successful, and selecting the wrong Agile method is one of the reasons for project failure. Selecting the most appropriate Agile method is a challenging task because there are so many to choose from. In addition, potential adopters believe that migrating to an Agile method involves taking a drastic risk. Therefore, to assist project managers and other decision makers, this study aims to identify the key factors that should be considered when selecting an appropriate Agile method. A systematic literature review was performed to elicit these factors in an unbiased manner and then content analysis was used to analyze the resultant data. It was found that the nature of project, development team skills, project constraints, customer involvement and organizational culture are the key factors that should guide decision makers in the selection of an appropriate Agile method based on the value these factors have for different organizations and/or different projects

A Review: Effort Estimation Model for Scrum Projects using Supervised Learning

Effort estimation practice in Agile is a critical component of the methodology to help cross-functional teams to plan and prioritize their work. Agile approaches have emerged in recent years as a more adaptable means of creating software projects because they consistently produce a workable end product that is developed progressively, preventing projects from failing entirely. Agile software development enables teams to collaborate directly with clients and swiftly adjust to changing requirements. This produces a result that is distinct, gradual, and targeted. It has been noted that the present Scrum estimate approach heavily relies on historical data from previous projects and expert opinion, while existing agile estimation methods like analogy and planning poker become unpredictable in the absence of historical data and experts. User Stories are used to estimate effort in the Agile approach, which has been adopted by 60–70% of the software businesses. This study's goal is to review a variety of strategies and techniques that will be used to gauge and forecast effort. Additionally, the supervised machine learning method most suited for predictive analysis is reviewed in this paper

Human Factors in Agile Software Development

Through our four years experiments on students' Scrum based agile software development (ASD) process, we have gained deep understanding into the human factors of agile methodology. We designed an agile project management tool - the HASE collaboration development platform to support more than 400 students self-organized into 80 teams to practice ASD. In this thesis, Based on our experiments, simulations and analysis, we contributed a series of solutions and insights in this researches, including 1) a Goal Net based method to enhance goal and requirement management for ASD process, 2) a novel Simple Multi-Agent Real-Time (SMART) approach to enhance intelligent task allocation for ASD process, 3) a Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) based method to enhance emotion and morale management for ASD process, 4) the first large scale in-depth empirical insights on human factors in ASD process which have not yet been well studied by existing research, and 5) the first to identify ASD process as a human-computation system that exploit human efforts to perform tasks that computers are not good at solving. On the other hand, computers can assist human decision making in the ASD process.Comment: Book Draf

Using Gamification for Adopting Scrum

Despite the wide adoption of agile methodologies, software development teams still struggle to meet time, budget and scope, partially due to practitioners’ lack of motivation to apply agile techniques in practice. In this paper, we present a software tool based on gamification to make Scrum techniques more fun and engaging for practitioners. This paper presents results of the first iteration of a larger research effort that follows the Design Science Research methodology, where a prototype was developed as a Jira Software app and evaluated with a Scrum team in practice. Results suggest that the team’s Scrum practices slightly improved after using the app. Quantitative analysis and a set of interviews with the team members allowed to understand that the proposal should be more challenging and the score system more customized. Hereafter the app will be improved based on received feedback

Advances in Production Management Systems: Issues, Trends, and Vision Towards 2030

Since its inception in 1978, the IFIP Working Group (WG) 5.7 on Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS) has played an active role in the fields of production and production management. The Working Group has focused on the conception, development, strategies, frameworks, architectures, processes, methods, and tools needed for the advancement of both fields. The associated standards created by the IFIP WG5.7 have always been impacted by the latest developments of scientific rigour, academic research, and industrial practices. The most recent of those developments involves the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is having remarkable (r)evolutionary and disruptive changes in both the fields and the standards. These changes are triggered by the fusion of advanced operational and informational technologies, innovative operating and business models, as well as social and environmental pressures for more sustainable production systems. This chapter reviews past, current, and future issues and trends to establish a coherent vision and research agenda for the IFIP WG5.7 and its international community. The chapter covers a wide range of production aspects and resources required to design, engineer, and manage the next generation of sustainable and smart production systems.acceptedVersio

Managing the Magic behind the Movies. ACAMP: The Applicability of Agile Project Management to the Visual Effects Industry

Visual effects (VFX) are a cornerstone of modern filmmaking, yet research into their management approaches is still significantly limited. Agile project management (APM) is widely seen as being the most effective project management approach in technology-reliant, and innovative environments, all of which are characteristics commonly found in the VFX industry. We conducted a series of interviews to understand the extent to which APM techniques have been applied in the VFX industry, considering the theoretical transferability of APM to such non-software focused, creative teams. The interviews were conducted with a range of VFX professionals who differed in country of origin, seniority, background, gender, and the size of the companies they worked for. We identified an overall alignment of current management practice to core APM axioms, yet there is only a partial adoption of an existing formalised agile methodologies. We also identified a consistent set of adaptive and responsive PM practices across a diverse range of companies. We hypothesise that there exists a previously unidentified incarnation of Agile we have named Adapted Creative Agile Management of Projects (ACAMP)