A state of the art review on software project performance management

Several domain experts in the field of software development and project management have commented on the high failure rate of software engineering and project management. A lot of money has been wasted on failed software projects. Additionally, software quality is not improving. Thusthe successful management of software projects is critical. It is vital to understand what is important to complete software project on time within budget, and meet user requirements. Many literatures present project failure causes. However, project failure still persists. In this paper we outline softwaredevelopment failure. Then we present two key variables in software project performance management i.e. trust and knowledge sharing

Acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge in software development teams: An empirical study

Context: Sharing expert knowledge is a key process in developing software products. Since expert knowledge is mostly tacit, the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge along with the development of a transactive memory system (TMS) are significant factors in effective software teams. Objective: We seek to enhance our understanding human factors in the software development process and provide support for the agile approach, particularly in its advocacy of social interaction, by answering two questions: How do software development teams acquire and share tacit knowledge? What roles do tacit knowledge and transactive memory play in successful team performance? Method: A theoretical model describing the process for acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge and development of a TMS through social interaction is presented and a second predictive model addresses the two research questions above. The elements of the predictive model and other demographic variables were incorporated into a larger online survey for software development teams, completed by 46 software SMEs, consisting of 181 individual team members. Results: Our results show that team tacit knowledge is acquired and shared directly through good quality social interactions and through the development of a TMS with quality of social interaction playing a greater role than transactive memory. Both TMS and team tacit knowledge predict effectiveness but not efficiency in software teams. Conclusion: It is concluded that TMS and team tacit knowledge can differentiate between low- and high-performing teams in terms of effectiveness, where more effective teams have a competitive advantage in developing new products and bringing them to market. As face-to-face social interaction is key, collocated, functionally rich, domain expert teams are advocated rather than distributed teams, though arguably the team manager may be in a separate geographic location provided that there is frequent communication and effective use of issue tracking tools as in agile teams

IT-enabled change into the structures of health information systems in Africa: A case study in Kenya

Agile software development methods have emerged in recent years and have become increasingly popular since the start of the century. While much research claims to study agile methods, the meaning of agility itself in software development is yet to be fully understood. Agility is viewed by some as the antithesis of plan, structure discipline and bureaucracy. This study aims to develop a better understanding of agility, using the key concepts of Complex Adaptive Systems as a theoretical lens. The study explores agility from several different angles, including autonomous team, stability and uncertainty, and team learning. A multiple case study research method was employed. The findings of the study emphasize that agility is manifested as stability and discipline, which are just as desirable as flexibility, and context sharing is of the same value and importance as knowledge sharing. In addition, the collective nature of learning is underlined

Beyond the border: A comparative literature review on communication practices for agile global outsourced software development projects

Software development is increasingly heading in the direction of combining agile software development practices and outsourcingsoftware development to external vendors worldwide. The resultingagile global outsourced software development (AGOSD) projects are characterized by applying agile methods to distributed environments, whichresults in several problems for collaboration and coordination. Specifically, communication between the project participantshas been found to be a major challenge in distributed environment. Therefore, our study investigates the problem of improving communication in distributed settings by identifying suitable communication practicesfor usage within AGOSD projects.Based on an extensive literature review,our study (1) provides an overview of adequate practices for usage in AGOSD and (2) points out differences to traditional communication practices ofagile software development(ASD)projects used in collocated, non-distributed environments

The Role of Social Agile Practices for Direct and Indirect Communication in Information Systems Development Teams

Methods for Agile information systems development (ISD) are widely accepted in industry. One key difference in comparison to traditional, plan-driven ISD approaches is that Agile ISD teams rely heavily on direct, informal face-to-face communication instead of indirect and formal documents, models, and plans. While the importance of communication in Agile ISD is generally acknowledged, empirical studies investigating this phenomenon are scarce. We empirically open up the “black box” of the Agile ISD process to enhance the knowledge about the communication mechanisms of Agile ISD teams. We conducted a case study at two medium-sized ISD companies. As our primary data collection technique, we carried out semi-structured interviews, which we complemented with observations and, in one case, a survey. Our study’s main contribution is a set of so-called social Agile practices that positively impact the direct communication of team members. Our data suggests including the Agile practices co-located office space, daily stand-up meeting, iteration planning meeting, pair programming, sprint retrospective, and sprint review in this set. Furthermore, we investigate the role of more formal, indirect communication in Agile ISD projects. We highlight areas in which formal documents remain important so that a trade-off between indirect and direct communication is necessary