Scrum project framework: exploring Agile project management in a non-ITC organisation

This study used the Agile modality Scrum to investigate practitioners’ perceptions of the Scrum project framework and evaluated the frequency, mode and tools of communication in successful projects using the Scrum framework, whilst identifying any problems arising from the introduction of Scrum. A review of the literature highlighted the effectiveness of Scrum in studies that applied Agile project management in an IT environment. The literature identified that small cross-functional teams, frequent communication, quality communication, clear project goals and project transparency are effective for project management success. This research investigated five projects, as a case study, using Scrum as the project management framework, within small cross-functional teams in the non-ITC environment. This case study analysed the post-Scrum project team retrospective meetings to identify common themes in the participants feedback relating to the effectiveness of Scrum as a project management framework. Common themes identified were communication tools, project clarity, participant accountability and project momentum. These identified themes were used to create a survey artefact to investigate the legitimacy of the identified themes. The legitimacy of the retrospective common themes was confirmed by the survey responses through qualitative and supporting quantitative analysis, indicating Scrum as an effective project management framework outside the software development arena. Participant responses indicated the efficacy of daily communication frequency through the stand-up meetings, and project clarity and individual accountability through the use of Scrum board. Findings of the survey indicated the daily stand-up meeting was most effective communication mode and tool to facilitate interaction and exchange of information during the projects. The study identified a problem of perceived harassment, relating to the level of accountability/transparency of the Scrum process

Agile Project Management for IT Projects in SMEs: A Framework of Success Factors

Project management methods have been developed from industry practices and international standards to ensure a higher rate of success for information technology projects. These have been widely used in large organisationseffectively. However, when projects are implemented in a small or medium-sized enterprise environment, there is often a lack of an established method of project management or skilled project implementers who can use methods used in large organisations. As project workers find themselves pressured to become more responsive to business demands, it is becoming commonplace for smaller organisations to forgo formal project management practices. This is often due to the fact that small projects are viewed as simple to deploy, suffer from a lack of resources, or are given low prioritisation by the organisation. Additionally, the current project management standards are frequently perceived by SMEs as complicated and overly bureaucratic, something undesirable in regards to timeconstrained or low-budget projects. Agile development is one solution to the problem of overly complex methods that has recently been adopted in the field of software production, and has gained considerable popularity with smaller organisations. Through action research conducted in two closely-related SMEs in Austria, a final agileproject management framework was produced in the end of the study. The developed framework consists of fourphases of initiating phase (addressing objectives), planning phase (focusing on project backlog), executing and controlling phase (looking at iterative project cycles), and closing phase (working on project deliverables). Meanwhile some suggestions associated with the success of the developed agile project management framework are presented as well

Implementing Agile Software Development for Small - Medium Business

Software projects have a long history of delivering projects over budget, behind schedule, and not meeting expectations. Software development teams have typically tried to follow the “waterfall” or building paradigm of “define, design, and develop” in a proscribed fashion. The problem with this approach is it provides no mechanism for innovation or evolution of the software. In reality users often don’t really know what they want in software until they see it in action and gain new insights on how they would like it to work. The contrasting approach is “iterative development” where software is delivered as a series of working features. The family of development processes surrounding iterative development is referred to as “Agile Methodologies” and is characterized as being adaptable to change (Highsmith 2004). This approach embraces the uncertainty surrounding the requirements by measuring the project on vision, cost and schedule rather than scope, cost and schedule. The overall idea with this approach is to turn development into a collaborative process with the customer and illicit feedback early and often. This approach, in turn, allows development to adapt and evolve with change. The challenge is applying these methodologies to small business environment. In the small business environment, budgets vary from very small to medium in scope, typically on the order of one week to three months. Projects also vary from completely new domain to those that just modify existing features. It is not realistic to follow the same process for these widely varied scenarios. It is also import that costs associated with documenting and managing project must scale with the nature of the project. The author, through research and experience as a small business developer with Blue Ocean Consulting, lays out an approach that breaks the Agile methodology into phases. These phases provide a framework for skipping aspects of the process that are not needed in certain scenarios. Projects that fall within a completely new domain would go into a discovery process to define vision, high level features, ballpark of investment, and data sheet. Projects that fall into an existing known domain but have completely new features would skip discovery and start with the analysis phase. Projects that are updates or expansions in the scope of existing features in an existing domain would jump right to the innovation phase

Designing a consulting services architecture model

textDuring my years of experience in the technology industry, it has become obvious that standard processes and methodologies within the engineering discipline are at a mature state. The realization though is that software engineering specifically lags behind. Most software engineering methodologies that I have studied focus on the mission of software development. It is this realization and the need for structure that led me to review existing methodologies used within my company's software services organization. The definition of what a successful software services methodology entails is rather limited. This report will provide a history of existing software engineering methodologies that I have studied, describe an initial services method that was being developed within my organization, develop a new model that addresses previous shortcomings and identify additional components required to further define a strong software services-oriented delivery methodology.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Open Source Tools to Support Teaching Agile Software Development

Learning agile software development methodologies are important due to the popularity of agility in software industry. Agile software development has several practices and each practice needs specific tools to work with. Fortunately, there are plenty of open source tools to support working with the agile practices. However, each tool is a separate tool and there is no information about the interrelation of those open source tools. In this paper we propose a set of open source tools to support agile software development course. We start from identifying the principles and practices of agile software development and continue with examining open source tools that fit with agile practices. The relationship between the open source tools is also determined, based on their functionalities

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Agile Methods are a set of software practices that can help to produce products faster and at the same time deliver what customers want. Despite the benefits that Agile methods can deliver, however, we found few studies from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Malaysia. As a result, less empirical evidence can be obtained in the country making its implementation harder. To use a new method, experience from other practitioners is critical, which describes what is important, what is possible and what is not possible concerning Agile. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the issues faced by early adopters in Malaysia where Agile methods are still relatively new. The initial study involves 13 participants including project managers, CEOs, founders and software developers from seven organisations. Our study has shown that social and human aspects are important when using Agile methods. While technical aspects have always been considered to exist in software development, we found these factors to be less important when using Agile methods. The results obtained can serve as guidelines to practitioners in the country and the neighbouring regions