Complementing Measurements and Real Options Concepts to Support Inter-iteration Decision-Making in Agile Projects

Agile software projects are characterized by iterative and incremental development, accommodation of changes and active customer participation. The process is driven by creating business value for the client, assuming that the client (i) is aware of it, and (ii) is capable to estimate the business value, associated with the separate features of the system to be implemented. This paper is focused on the complementary use of measurement techniques and concepts of real-option-analysis to assist clients in assessing and comparing alternative sets of requirements. Our overall objective is to provide systematic support to clients for the decision-making process on what to implement in each iteration. The design of our approach is justified by using empirical data, published earlier by other authors

Towards understanding the value-creation in agile projects

In recent years, iterative and incremental approaches for software development appeared as an alternative to the traditional, waterfall-style development. The reason for this is the large number of software projects in the past that failed to deliver useful products within budget, and struggled with changing requirements and scope creep. Meanwhile it is a common sense understanding that not all projects are predictable from the beginning. Market uncertainty and a fast changing business environment drives changes during the development of a software product.\ud One of the key characteristics of any agile approach is its explicit focus on Business Value. Although any software development method aims at creating a product and thus creating value, in agile software projects the value creation for the clients represents the essence and defines the focus of the process. Thus, the agile development process is a value creation process.\ud The agile methods allow for frequent decisions about the requirements that will be considered for implementation during the short development cycles called iterations. In practice this decision-making is implemented by the process of requirements prioritization and re-prioritization, performed at the beginning of each iteration.\ud This work is dedicated to exploring and understanding the process of value-creation for clients in agile projects, with a particular focus on the requirements prioritization and reprioritization during a project, as an agile-specific value creation practice.\ud We performed a number of research steps to explore some of the current agile practices that seem to contribute to the value creation, and thus to distil knowledge that the agile practitioners apply and that might help to improve the agile practice.\ud Further, we studied in detail the agile prioritization process and identified the criteria, used in the decision-making process, and relations between the project context and the instantiation of the process.\ud In particular, we researched the following topics:\ud • How is business value perceived and measured in agile projects?\ud • What practices contribute to value creation in agile projects in different contexts?\ud • What concepts play a role in making re-prioritization decisions about\ud requirements?\ud These questions represent the focus of our research activities. They lead and framed the formulation of our Research Questions and the research design.\ud The main contribution of our work to the research and practitioners’ communities\ud consists in the rich contextual description of the process of requirements prioritization in agile projects as well as a conceptual model of this process

The measurement process in micro and small software maintenance companies: empirical study

With the dissemination of quality models and the need for measurement-based management for software organizations, a variety of approaches and models are emerging to support organizations on this journey. According to a Systematic Review of Literature that selected 30 of 692 papers returned from search sources, it was noticed the need for guidelines and guides regarding the measurement process in a specific sector: micro and small companies that work with software maintenance. In this work, an empirical study was carried out to understand how the measurement process aligned with quality models can be implemented in these organizations. The field study followed the implementation of an improvement program based on CMMI® level 2 in 7 Brazilian companies from Maringá, Paraná. Finally, it was found that the process for the definition of a measurement guide can be common to a specific group of companies, taking steps and guidelines for its execution, always aligned with the organization’s strategy, giving top management an objective view work and process, supporting decision making

Agile software development in large-scale new product development organization: team level perspective

Many modern intelligent products and systems (e.g., automotive, consumer electronics, telecommunications) contain more and more embedded software. Often the new product development (NPD) companies developing such products operate under turbulent circumstances stemming from the business environment, technology development and other, even disruptive sources. The embedded software development functions of such NPD organizations then face the uncertainties directly or indirectly, often coupled with time-to-market, quality and productivity pressures. Agile software development has been advocated as a new way of coping with such circumstances in particular with small independent teams developing customer-driven software products. This thesis investigates in contrast how it can be utilized with embedded software development teams in large-scale market-driven industrial NPD context. The exploratory, problem-driven research process is based on interpretive design science and action research principles. The author worked as a full-time software quality and process development specialist employee inside the case organization, thus acting as a reflective practitioner. The longitudinal study research cycles were conducted over several years in that particular NPD organization context. The cycle viewpoints evolved from first recognizing typical software project problems and uncertainties, and developing certain solutions to software team knowledge management and software process model selection. This development led to consider, what problems current agile software methods address. The realization of agile software development was then further examined with respect to the cost factors, and finally towards integrating agile software product development teams into larger-scale NPD organization. The main result of this research is that agile software development models address many typical key issues in large-scale industrial NPD context, and the cost/benefit factors are in principle justifiable. However, if agile software methods are applied just bottom-up trying to integrate isolated agile software teams into larger organizational context, this inside-out approach leads often to problems with organizational barriers and impediments. Thus, in order to be able to leverage the potential benefits, agile software development should be approached more from the strategic business perspective (outside-in), viewing the software development functions as elements of the total value-creation system in the NPD organization. Different software development (project) teams may have different roles and needs for agility in this complex over time. The contributions imply that rational software team-level improvements require in many cases wider, even enterprise-level perspectives in creating and improving the agile capabilities of the NPD organization. It is thus fundamental to conceptualize agility in the NPD context by combining software development with the overall NPD processes. In particular in large organizations, the improvements may require more actions at the organizational level than in software teams

Supporting collaboration with non-literate forest communities in the congo-basin

Providing indigenous communities with ICT tools and methods for collecting and sharing their Traditional Ecological Knowledge is increasingly recognised as an avenue for improvements in environmental governance and socialenvironmental justice. In this paper we show how we carried out a usability engineering effort in the “wild” context of the Congolese rainforest – designing, evaluating and iteratively improving novel collaborative data collection interfaces for non-literate forest communities that can subsequently be used to facilitate communication and information sharing with logging companies. Working in this context necessitates adopting a thoroughly flexible approach to the design, development, introduction and evaluation of technology and the modes of interaction it offers. We show that we have improved participant accuracy from about 75% towards 95% and provide a set of guidelines for designing and evaluating ICT solutions in “extreme circumstances” – which hold lessons for CSCW, HCI and ICT4D practitioners dealing with similar challenges

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops

This open access book constitutes papers from the 5 research workshops, the poster presentations, as well as two panel discussions which were presented at XP 2021, the 22nd International Conference on Agile Software Development, which was held online during June 14-18, 2021. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a unique forum where agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. XP conferences provide an informal environment to learn and trigger discussions and welcome both people new to agile and seasoned agile practitioners. The 18 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from overall 37 submissions. They stem from the following workshops: 3rd International Workshop on Agile Transformation 9th International Workshop on Large-Scale Agile Development 1st International Workshop on Agile Sustainability 4th International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business 2nd International Workshop on Agility with Microservices Programmin

Modelling the critical success factors of agile software development projects in South Africa

There are several critical success factors suggested for why agile software development projects succeed, including organisational and process factors. Although there are an increasing number of identified critical success factors, IT professionals lack the modelling techniques and the theoretical framework to help them meaningfully understand their influences. To solve this problem, this study developed a model by employing the following theories: Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to create a fit model for agile software development projects. The research sought to answer the question: What are the critical success factors that influence the success of agile software development projects? The literature review considers the continued failure of agile and traditional software development projects which have led to the consideration of, and dispute over, critical success factors — the aspects most vital to a methodology’s success. Though TRA, TPB and UTAUT have previously been applied to agile methodologies, empirical models have not been completely integrated to develop a fit model. This research sought to fill this gap. Data was collected in South Africa through a web-based survey using structured questionnaires and an interview guide. Face-to-face interviews were done to identify the critical success factors in agile projects. The data was captured and analysed for descriptive statistics, convergent and discriminant validity, composite and internal reliability, and correlation in order to inform the structural equation modelling (SEM). SEM was used to test the research model and hypotheses to answer the research questions. The results informed development of a comprehensive model that could provide guidelines to the agile community. The study contributes towards understanding the critical success factors for agile projects. It examined direct, indirect and moderating effects, and the findings contribute towards developing a framework to be used by agile professionals. These key result shows that organisational factors have a great influence on performance expectancy characteristics. To ensure success of agile projects, managers are advised to focus on the effect of the organisation’s environment, culture and policies on performance and effort expectancy.School of ComputingPh. D. (Computer Science

Business design: strategy practice in innovation consulting

Escalating complexity of the business world establishes an organisation’s ability to innovate as its greatest competitive advantage. And as linear, rational approaches have proven insufficient for the goal, executives seek novel, creative ways to develop and realise breakthrough strategies. The concept of design thinking, centring around empathy, invention and learning, becomes instrumental in tackling business challenges and supporting innovation initiatives. By bringing about a hands-on toolkit, design professionals become well-equipped in developing offerings, improving operations and crafting strategies. Over the past decade, the discipline blending strategy with de'sign began to emerge in specialised consultancy. The large design firm, such as IDEO, Fjord and Doblin, launch strategic offering to drive business growth and align organisations. In parallel, design-led approaches thrive in innovation practices at the consulting majors, including BCG, McKinsey and Deloitte. The insider research aims to establish the relevance of business design by linking its practice to a holistic theoretical framework. Defining and describing the core approach of the discipline provides insights for both professionals and scholars at the intersection of design and strategic management