An agile enterprise architecture driven model for geographically distributed agile development

Agile development is a highly collaborative environment, which requires active communication (i.e. effective and efficient communication) among stakeholders. The active communication in geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) environment is difficult to achieve due to many challenges. Literature has reported that active communication play critical role in enhancing GDAD performance through reducing the cost and time of a project. However, little empirical evidence is known about how to study and establish active communication construct in GDAD in terms of its dimensions, determinants and effects on GDAD performance. To address this knowledge gap, this paper describes an enterprise architecture (EA) driven research model to identify and empirically examine the GDAD active communication construct. This model can be used by researchers and practitioners to examine the relationships among two dimensions of GDAD active communication (effectiveness and efficiency), one antecedent that can be controlled (agile EA), and four dimensions of GDAD performance (on-Time completion, on-budget completion, software functionality and software quality)

A measurement model to analyze the effect of agile enterprise architecture on geographically distributed agile development.

Abstract Efficient and effective communication (active communication) among stakeholders is thought to be central to agile development. However, in geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) environments, it can be difficult to achieve active communication among distributed teams due to challenges such as differences in proximity and time. To date, there is little empirical evidence about how active communication can be established to enhance GDAD performance. To address this knowledge gap, we develop and evaluate a measurement model to quantitatively analyze the impact of agile enterprise architecture (AEA) on GDAD communication and GDAD performance. The measurement model was developed and evaluated through developing the AEA driven GDAD model and associated measurement model based on the extensive literature review, model pre-testing, pilot testing, item screening, and empirical evaluation through a web-based quantitative questionnaire that contained 26 different weighted questions related to the model constructs (AEA, GDAD active communication, and GDAD performance). The measurement model evaluation resulted in validated research model and 26 measures: 7 formative items for AEA, 5 reflective items for communication efficiency, 4 reflective items for communication effectiveness, 2 reflective items for each on-time and on-budget completion, and 3 reflective items for each software functionality and quality. The results indicate the appropriateness and applicability of the proposed measurement model to quantitatively analyze the impact of AEA on GDAD communication and performance

How product owner teams scale agile methods to large distributed enterprises

Software development teams in large scale offshore enterprise development programmes are often under intense pressure to deliver high quality software within challenging time contraints. Project failures can attract adverse publicity and damage corporate reputations. Agile methods have been advocated to reduce project risks, improving both productivity and product quality. This article uses practitioner descriptions of agile method tailoring to explore large scale offshore enterprise development programmes with a focus on product owner role tailoring, where the product owner identifies and prioritises customer requirements. In globalised projects, the product owner must reconcile competing business interests, whilst generating and then prioritising large numbers of requirements for numerous development teams. The study comprises eight international companies, based in London, Bangalore and Delhi. Interviews with 46 practitioners were conducted between February 2010 and May 2012. Grounded theory was used to identify that product owners form into teams. The main contribution of this research is to describe the nine product owner team functions identified: groom, prioritiser, release master, technical architect, governor, communicator, traveller, intermediary and risk assessor. These product owner functions arbitrate between conflicting customer requirements, approve release schedules, disseminate architectural design decisions, provide technical governance and propogate information across teams. The functions identified in this research are mapped to a scrum of scrums process,and a taxonomy of the functions shows how focusing on either decision-making or information dissemination in each helps to tailor agile methods to large scale offshore enterprise development programmes

An investigation into the cloud manufacturing based approach towards global high value manufacturing for smes

Considering the high labour costs and intensive competitions in the global market, improving the effective deployment of innovative design and manufacturing and utilisation of all existing technical information, for the full life cycle of the product, is essential and much needed for manufacturing Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in particular. Cloud Manufacturing , as a powerful tool supported with ‘big data’, will likely enable SMEs to move towards using dynamic scalability and ‘free’ available data resources in a virtual manner and to provide solution-based, value-added, digital-driven manufacturing service over the Internet. The research presented in this paper aims to develop a cloud manufacturing based approach towards value-added, knowledge/solution driven manufacturing for SMEs, where there are many constraints in engaging responsive high value manufacturing. The paper will present the framework, architecture and key moderator technologies for implementing cloud manufacturing and the associated application perspectives. The paper concludes with further discussion on the potential and application of the approach

An agile-devops reference architecture for teaching enterprise agile

©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. DevOps emerged as an important extension to support the Agile development for frequent and continuous software delivery. The adoption of Agile-DevOps for large scale enterprise agility depends on the most important human capability such as people competency and experience. Hence, academic education and professional training is key to the successful adoption of Agile-DevOps approach. Thus, education and training providers need to teach Agile-DevOps. However, the challenge is: how to establish and simulate an effective Agile-DevOps technology environment for teaching Enterprise Agile? This paper introduces the integrated Adaptive Enterprise Project Management (AEPM) and DevOps Reference Architecture (DRA) approach for adopting and teaching the Agile-DevOps with the help of a teaching case study from the University of Technology - Sydney (UTS), Australia. These learnings can be utilised by educators to develop and teach practice-oriented Agile-DevOps for software engineering courses. Furthermore, the experience and observations can be employed by researchers and practitioners aiming to integrate Agile-DevOps at the large enterprise scale

Artefacts and agile method tailoring in large-scale offshore software development programmes

Context: Large-scale offshore software development programmes are complex, with challenging deadlines and a high risk of failure. Agile methods are being adopted, despite the challenges of coordinating multiple development teams. Agile processes are tailored to support team coordination. Artefacts are tangible products of the software development process, intended to ensure consistency in the approach of teams on the same development programme. Objective: This study aims to increase understanding of how development processes are tailored to meet the needs of large-scale offshore software development programmes, by focusing on artefact inventories used in the development process. Method: A grounded theory approach using 46 practitioner interviews, supplemented with documentary sources and observations, in nine international companies was adopted. The grounded theory concepts of open coding, memoing, constant comparison and saturation were used in data analysis. Results: The study has identified 25 artefacts, organised into five categories: feature, sprint, release, product and corporate governance. It was discovered that conventional agile artefacts are enriched with artefacts associated with plan-based methods in order to provide governance. The empirical evidence collected in the study has been used to identify a primary owner of each artefact and map each artefact to specific activities within each of the agile roles. Conclusion: The development programmes in this study create agile and plan-based artefacts to improve compliance with enterprise quality standards and technology strategies, whilst also mitigating risk of failure. Management of these additional artefacts is currently improvised because agile development processes lack corresponding ceremonies

Adaptive enterprise architecture drivenagiledevelopment

Agile development practices focus on developing and delivering working software systems in small iterations with minimal documentation. However, locally project focused agile practices overlook the need for holistic enterprise architecture. Lack of enterprise architecture in agile, especially in the large agile environments, may lead to a number of problems such as technical debt, unnecessary re-work, inconsistent communication, locally focused isolated architecture, design and implementation. There is a missing link between the enterprise architecture and agile development. Enterprise architecture is a strategic capability that should enable and enhance agility of agile development. However, organisations are not sure how best to approach strategic enterprise architecture capability for supporting agile development. This paper proposes and demonstrate the applicability of an integrated adaptive enterprise architecture driven agile development approach for large agile environments

An agile enterprise architecture driven approach to enhance communication in geographically distributed agile development

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Agile development is a highly collaborative environment, which requires active communication among stakeholders. This active communication helps in producing high quality working software systems in short releases and iterations. Due to the ever-increasing competition, there is an increasing interest among practitioners and researchers in contemporary geographically distributed agile development (GDAD). GDAD claims to offer several benefits over co-located agile development such as lower production cost, around the clock development, faster time to market, and the liberty of involving the most talented developers across the globe. However, in the GDAD environment, active communication is difficult to achieve due to many challenges such as differences in geographical locations and time. Literature has reported that agile enterprise architecture (EA) could help enhancing GDAD communication and performance. However, little empirical evidence is known to support this claim. Furthermore, it is not clear how to effectively achieve and study active communication construct in GDAD in terms of its dimensions, determinants and effects on performance? As a result, there is a lack of understanding about how GDAD organisations can establish and maintain active communication among distributed teams. This dissertation contributes to this research gap, first, by developing a research model based on an extensive systematic literature review on the GDAD communication challenges, techniques and strategies to mitigate these challenges, and the impact of communication on GDAD software performance. This study provides important insights about GDAD communication by identifying and empirically examining the relationships among the two dimensions of active communication (communication efficiency and communication effectiveness), one antecedent that can be controlled (agile enterprise architecture (EA)), and four aspects of GDAD performance (on-time completion, on-budget completion, software functionality, and software quality). The study then validates the research model using an integrated research approach that combines quantitative and qualitative data analyses. The quantitative data are collected using a survey technique from 160 responses and analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS) analyses. The qualitative data are collected using interview techniques through 10 post hoc case studies and analysed using content analysis technique. This study reports that agile EA has positive impacts on communication efficiency and communication effectiveness, and on GDAD performance. It has also been found that communication efficiency and communication effectiveness have significant differential impacts on GDAD performance aspects. While communication efficiency is, generally, related to on-time and on-budget completions, communication effectiveness is, generally, related to functionality and quality aspects. While the prior GDAD literature offers little guidance for GDAD communication issue, this research contributes to both theory and practice, and offers a number of useful insights and agile EA driven GDAD model. From theory perspective, insights and model are theoretically based on and empirically tested about the value and positive impact of agile EA on active communication dimensions and GDAD performance, and the impact of communication efficiency and communication effectiveness on GDAD performance in the GDAD environment. Moreover, from practice perspective, this study indicates that agile EA, communication efficiency, and communication effectiveness together increase the GDAD performance and thus, facilitate a better GDAD performance than in GDAD that does not employ agile EA. Despite the above-mentioned contributions, like any other studies, this study has also some limitations such as sample size, time and potential analysis bias of applied qualitative and quantitative research methods. A number of steps were taken to mitigate or minimise the effects of these limitations. Thus, findings of this work should be considered with its limitations when interpreting it in the relevant theoretical and practical context

Model of Critical Factors for Outsourcing Agile Development

Companies are beginning to combine outsourcing with Agile software engineering techniques with the goal of receiving the benefits of both – faster time to market, greater quality, and smaller costs. Since Agile was originally developed to work principally with small collocated teams, scalability of Agile to the enterprise, and simultaneous use of Agile and outsourcing are questions concerning applicability of Agile techniques to global business environments. This paper first summarizes current experience studies and research in Agile, enterprise Agile and Agile outsourcing, to identify factors likely to affect success on Agile projects. It then extends a model originally developed by Chow and Cao (2007) to account for these factors. Finally it outlines an experiment whose goal is to determine which of these factors drives successful projects that use both Agile and outsourcing