15,108 research outputs found
Measuring Coordination in Agile Software Development
Coordination has long been recognized as contributing to successful IT projects. Agile software development provides many practices for achieving project coordination in small co-located projects. Given the importance of coordination to successful software development projects and the increasing popularity of agile software development, investigating coordination in this context is timely and potentially useful. This paper takes an existing theory of coordination in co-located agile software development projects developed from case study research and proposes a field test of that theory. The question addressed is what is the effect of an agile coordination strategy on coordination effectiveness in co-located software development projects? This paper describes the initial theory of coordination and a research design for field-testing that theory
A Theory of Coordination: From Propositions to Hypotheses in Agile Software Development
Coordination is crucial in agile software development projects and a Theory of Coordination in co-located agile software development projects explains coordination in this context. This theory has propositions based on case study research. To improve the generalisability of theory built from case studies, researchers often transition to a theory testing phase involving a large-scale field study using the survey method. Prior to a large-scale field study, the propositions generated during theory building must be converted to testable hypotheses. There is little guidance explaining the complexity of this transition process and the challenges involved. Therefore, this paper explains the operationalisation process of transitioning from research propositions to research hypotheses and illustrates the process using the Theory of Coordination. The paper offers six practical guidelines, identifies seven challenges encountered, and potential solutions for each challenge. This paper contributes to agile software development and theory testing research offering seven recommendations for research practice
Scaling Agile Beyond Organizational Boundaries: Coordination Challenges in Software Ecosystems
The shift from sequential to agile software development originates from relatively small and co-located teams but soon gained prominence in larger organizations. How to apply and scale agile practices to fit the needs of larger projects has been studied to quite an extent in previous research. However, scaling agile beyond organizational boundaries, for instance in a software ecosystem context, raises additional challenges that existing studies and approaches do not yet investigate or address in great detail. For that reason, we conducted a case study in two software ecosystems that comprise several agile actors from different organizations and, thereby, scale development across organizational boundaries, in order to elaborate and understand their coordination challenges. Our results indicate that most of the identified challenges are caused by long communication paths and a lack of established processes to facilitate these paths. As a result, the participants in our study, among others, experience insufficient responsivity, insufficient communication of prioritizations and deliverables, and alterations or loss of information. As a consequence, agile practices need to be extended to fit the identified needs
Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program
Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the
arrival of agile development methods. While intended for small, self-managing
teams, these methods are increasingly used also for large development programs.
A major challenge in programs is to coordinate the work of many teams, due to
high uncertainty in tasks, a high degree of interdependence between tasks and
because of the large number of people involved. This revelatory case study
focuses on how knowledge work is coordinated in large-scale agile development
programs by providing a rich description of the coordination practices used and
how these practices change over time in a four year development program with 12
development teams. The main findings highlight the role of coordination modes
based on feedback, the use of a number of mechanisms far beyond what is
described in practitioner advice, and finally how coordination practices change
over time. The findings are important to improve the outcome of large
knowledge-based development programs by tailoring coordination practices to
needs and ensuring adjustment over time.Comment: To appear in Project Management Journa
Influential factors of aligning Spotify squads in mission-critical and offshore projects – a longitudinal embedded case study
Changing the development process of an organization is one of the toughest and riskiest decisions. This is particularly true if the known experiences and practices of the new considered ways of working are relative and subject to contextual assumptions. Spotify engineering culture is deemed as a new agile software development method which increasingly attracts large-scale organizations. The method relies on several small cross-functional self-organized teams (i.e., squads). The squad autonomy is a key driver in Spotify method, where a squad decides what to do and how to do it. To enable effective squad autonomy, each squad shall be aligned with a mission, strategy, short-term goals and other squads. Since a little known about Spotify method, there is a need to answer the question of: How can organizations work out and maintain the alignment to enable loosely coupled and tightly aligned squads?
In this paper, we identify factors to support the alignment that is actually performed in practice but have never been discussed before in terms of Spotify method. We also present Spotify Tailoring by highlighting the modified and newly introduced processes to the method. Our work is based on a longitudinal embedded case study which was conducted in a real-world large-scale offshore software intensive organization that maintains mission-critical systems. According to the confidentiality agreement by the organization in question, we are not allowed to reveal a detailed description of the features of the explored project
Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices
Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that
individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile
projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of
software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical
individual skills are especially important in agile software development.
Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual
skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set
of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from
agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and
Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in
relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is
surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict
(i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software
development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical
individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to
understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software
development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the
non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all
individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile
practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Flexible Global Software Development (GSD): Antecedents of Success in Requirements Analysis
Globalization of software development has resulted in a rapid shift away from the traditional collocated, on-site development model, to the offshoring model. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in offshoring even in early phases like requirements analysis. Additionally, the flexibility offered by the agile development approach makes it attractive for adaptation in globally distributed software work. A question of significance then is what impacts the success of offshoring earlier phases, like requirements analysis, in a flexible and globally distributed environment? This article incorporates the stance of control theory to posit a research model that examines antecedent factors such as requirements change, facilitation by vendor and client site-coordinators, control, and computer-mediated communication. The impact of these factors on success of requirements analysis projects in a “flexible” global setting is tested using two quasi-experiments involving students from Management Development Institute, India and Marquette University, USA. Results indicate that formal modes of control significantly influence project success during requirements analysis. Further, facilitation by both client and vendor site coordinators positively impacts requirements analysis success
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