How Much Method-in-Use Matters? A Case Study of Agile and Waterfall Software Projects and their Design Routine Variation

Development methods are rarely followed to the letter, and, consequently, their effects are often in doubt. At the same time, information systems scholars know little about the extent to which a given method truly influences software design and its outcomes. In this paper, we approach this gap by adopting a routine lens and using a novel methodological approach. Theoretically, we treat methods as (organizational) ostensive routine specifications and deploy routine construct as a feasible unit of analysis to analyze the effects of a method on actual, “performed” design routines. We formulated a research framework that identifies method, situation fitness, agency, and random noise as main sources of software design routine variation. Empirically, we applied the framework to examine the extent to which waterfall and agile methods induce variation in software design routines. We trace-enacted design activities in three software projects in a large IT organization that followed an object-oriented waterfall method and three software projects that followed an agile method and then analyzed these traces using a mixed-methods approach involving gene sequencing methods, Markov models, and qualitative content analysis. Our analysis shows that, in both cases, method-induced variation using agile and waterfall methods accounts for about 40% of all activities, while the remaining 60% can be explained by a designer’s personal habits, the project’s fitness conditions, and environmental noise. Generally, the effect of method on software design activities is smaller than assumed and the impact of designer and project conditions on software processes and outcomes should thus not be understated

Data Management in Microservices: State of the Practice, Challenges, and Research Directions

We are recently witnessing an increased adoption of microservice architectures by the industry for achieving scalability by functional decomposition, fault-tolerance by deployment of small and independent services, and polyglot persistence by the adoption of different database technologies specific to the needs of each service. Despite the accelerating industrial adoption and the extensive research on microservices, there is a lack of thorough investigation on the state of the practice and the major challenges faced by practitioners with regard to data management. To bridge this gap, this paper presents a detailed investigation of data management in microservices. Our exploratory study is based on the following methodology: we conducted a systematic literature review of articles reporting the adoption of microservices in industry, where more than 300 articles were filtered down to 11 representative studies; we analyzed a set of 9 popular open-source microservice-based applications, selected out of more than 20 open-source projects; furthermore, to strengthen our evidence, we conducted an online survey that we then used to cross-validate the findings of the previous steps with the perceptions and experiences of over 120 practitioners and researchers. Through this process, we were able to categorize the state of practice and reveal several principled challenges that cannot be solved by software engineering practices, but rather need system-level support to alleviate the burden of practitioners. Based on the observations we also identified a series of research directions to achieve this goal. Fundamentally, novel database systems and data management tools that support isolation for microservices, which include fault isolation, performance isolation, data ownership, and independent schema evolution across microservices must be built to address the needs of this growing architectural style

DevOps for Digital Leaders

DevOps; continuous delivery; software lifecycle; concurrent parallel testing; service management; ITIL; GRC; PaaS; containerization; API management; lean principles; technical debt; end-to-end automation; automatio

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2022, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in June 2022. 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. This year’s conference was held with the theme “Agile in the Era of Hybrid Work”. The 13 full papers and 1 short paper presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile practices; agile processes; and agile in the large

DevOps for Digital Leaders

DevOps; continuous delivery; software lifecycle; concurrent parallel testing; service management; ITIL; GRC; PaaS; containerization; API management; lean principles; technical debt; end-to-end automation; automatio

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2020, which was planned to be held during June 8-12, 2020, at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was postponed until an undetermined date. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a hybrid forum where agile researchers, academics, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. Following this history, for both researchers and seasoned practitioners XP 2020 provided an informal environment to network, share, and discover trends in Agile for the next 20 years. The 14 full and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile adoption; agile practices; large-scale agile; the business of agile; and agile and testing