Examining perceptions of agility in software development practice

This is the post-print version of the final published article that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 ACM.Organizations undertaking software development are often reminded that successful practice depends on a number of non-technical issues that are managerial, cultural and organizational in nature. These issues cover aspects from appropriate corporate structure, through software process development and standardization to effective collaborative practice. Since the articulation of the 'software crisis' in the late-1960s, significant effort has been put into addressing problems related to the cost, time and quality of software development via the application of systematic processes and management practices for software engineering. Early efforts resulted in prescriptive structured methods, which have evolved and expanded over time to embrace consortia/ company-led initiatives such as the Unified Modeling Language and the Unified Process alongside formal process improvement frameworks such as the International Standards Organization's 9000 series, the Capability Maturity Model and SPICE. More recently, the philosophy behind traditional plan-based initiatives has been questioned by the agile movement, which seeks to emphasize the human and craft aspects of software development over and above the engineering aspects. Agile practice is strongly collaborative in its outlook, favoring individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan (see Sidebar 1). Early experience reports on the use of agile practice suggest some success in dealing with the problems of the software crisis, and suggest that plan-based and agile practice are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, flexibility may arise from this unlikely marriage in an aim to strike a balance between the rigor of traditional plan-based approaches and the need for adaptation of those to suit particular development situations. With this in mind, this article surveys the current practice in software engineering alongside perceptions of senior development managers in relation to agile practice in order to understand the principles of agility that may be practiced implicitly and their effects on plan-based approach

Influences on agile practice tailoring in enterprise software development.

Agile development projects have become a reality in large enterprises using offshore development models. A case study involving seven international companies with offices in Bangalore, India, and London, UK was conducted, including interviews with 19 practitioners. The contribution of this paper is to illustrate the reasons for tailoring Agile practices within the context of large enterprises. The findings show that scrum roles and practices did not conflict with enterprise policies or processes and were thought to improve product quality and productivity. However, agile practices from the XP tradition were not so widely adopted. Test driven development did not integrate well within enterprises where independent quality assurance teams were constituted as separate departments. Continuous integration was found to be challenging where enterprise software products required time consuming regression testing and elaborate code release processes. While adoption of coding standards and collective code ownership are necessary to facilitate interaction between disparate stakeholder groups

Virtual teams and employability in global software engineering education

Universities face many challenges when creating opportunities for student experiences of global software engineering. We provide a model for introducing global software engineering into the computing curriculum. Our model is based on a three year collaboration between Robert Gordon University, UK and the International Institute for IT Bangalore, India. We provide evidence based on student feedback from three cohorts of virtual team who never met face to face. We found potential employers were supportive of global software engineering in university curricula. We identify four key principles for global software engineering student projects: reconcile contrasting assessment demands between institutions, create a detailed joint timetable to reconcile teaching calendars, provide a project management framework to support phased delivery and carefully manage project scope

Agile Method Tailoring in a CMMI Level 5 Organization

We investigate the use and tailoring of agile methods in a highly disciplined CMMI Level 5 organization. We explore gaps between traditional agile practices and those required for enhanced levels of governance required by CMMI appraisal. We conducted a case study with recorded interviews from practitioners at NIIT Technology Ltd. The interviews were iteratively analysed and coded. Our findings show that agile methods must be supplemented with pre-sprint planning, evidence recording, project metrics, team self-organization, process standardization, and process base-lining to support the CMMI appraisal. There are challenges around Agile compliance with CMMI Level 4 processes and misconceptions about agile methods precluding documentation of the rationale for design decisions. This research contributes data to the tailoring of agile methods in a high-maturity CMMI context and will be useful for agile teams conducting level 5 appraisal

IT-enabled Process Innovation: A Literature Review

The importance of Information Technology (IT) is growing, and in a hypercompetitive market IT must be used as a strategic asset for companies to succeed. In order to gain strategic benefits from IT, companies need to be innovative when deploying IT. This can be achieved by reengineering business processes to take advantage of the possibilities IT provides. In 1993 Thomas H. Davenport presented a framework describing the role of IT in process innovation . Based on this framework, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review to answer the following research question: What kind of opportunities does IT provide for process innovation? . Davenport\u27s framework is used as an analytical lens to review articles from the top 20 IS and management journals. The paper provides an overview and an in-depth analysis of the literature on IT-enabled process innovation and suggests avenues for future research as well as recommendations for practitioners. Our analyses reveal five distinct themes related to opportunities for IT-enabled process innovation, all of which offer guidance to practitioners and highlight gaps in our current knowledge about how to leverage IT for innovation purposes

Identifying benefits and challenges in the application of agile methodologies in software development

A dissertation submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Master of ScienceSoftware has generally been developed using the ‘Waterfall’ methodology which is now believed to be cumbersome and slow to react to change. This belief has spawned new ‘Agile’ methodologies that aim to deliver small pieces of working software on a frequent basis. Many claims have been made about Agile, but little academic research has been carried out to justify them. This study identifies the significance of benefits and challenges practitioners have found when adapting to Agile methodologies. Further, the benefits and challenges are linked to the Agile features in use and assesses what contributes to the level of user satisfaction. A survey instrument was employed to collect data from as many practitioners as possible followed by post survey interviews. Claims made for Agile by service providers are compared to the experiences of those canvassed in the survey. Results reveal that the most significant benefit is closer collaboration with other members of the development team. Significant challenges were the estimation of the time and effort Agile projects take to complete and that Agile only works with competent, motivated people. The insights gained in this study will be circulated for the benefit of future research on software development methodologies and Agile practice

Tiimin menestystekijät ketterässä toimintamallissa : Tarkastelussa OP Ryhmän Ketterän toimintamallin pilotointi tiimitoiminnan näkökulmasta

Työelämän tuoreena trendinä on nähtävissä toimintatapojen ketteröittäminen, jonka avulla pyritään vastaamaan muutoksiin tehokkaasti. Nykyajan työelämä muuttuu yhä kiihtyvällä tahdilla ja uusia tapoja organisoida ja johtaa työtä tarvitaan. Aiempien tutkimuksien mukaan ketterä toimintamalli parantaa organisaatioiden kykyä vastata nopeasti muuttuvan maailman tarpeisiin aiempaa paremmin, mutta toimintamalli nähdään myös laajemmin organisaatiokulttuurillisena toimintana. Ketterällä toimintamallilla tavoitellaan tiimin läpinäkyvyyden paranemista sekä toiminnan joustavuuden, sopeutumiskyvyn ja proaktiivisuuden lisääntymistä. Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tarkoituksena oli tarkastella ketterien toimintatapojen vaikutuksia tiimin toimintaan. Tutkimuksen kohteeksi valikoitui OP Ryhmän kahden eri liiketoimintasegmentin tiimit, joissa tutkimusprosessin alussa alkoi ketterän toimintamallin pilottihankkeet. Piloteissa testattiin ketterän toimintamallin eri menetelmiä ja rakennettiin liiketoimintasegmenteille sopivat tavat toimia ketterässä toimintamallissa. Tutkimuksen viitekehys rakentui tiimin menestystekijöistä ja ketterän toimintamallin erityispiirteistä, joita tarkasteltiin aiempien tutkimuksien ja kirjallisuuden valossa. Tutkimuksen menetelmänä käytettiin laadullista puolistrukturoitua haastattelua. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin haastatteluiden avulla sekä havainnoimalla tutkittavia tiimejä. Aineiston analysoinnissa hyödynnettiin sisällönanalyysiä teoriaohjaavasti, jonka pohjalta tutkimustulokset esitetään kahta eri liiketoimintasegmenttiä vertaillen nostamalla esiin olennaisia ilmiöitä. Tutkimus osoittaa, että ketterä toimintamalli vaikuttaa tiimin toimintaan pääsääntöisesti positiivisesti. Ketterällä toimintamallilla näytti tutkimuksen perusteella olevan vaikutusta tiimin itseohjautuvuuteen, oppimiseen, motivaatioon ja tiimihenkeen. Itseohjautuvuuden lisääntymisen seurauksena tiimien vastuunkanto lisääntyi ja kasvanut motivaatio näkyi myös vastuunottamisessa ja työssä viihtymisessä. Ketterä toimintamalli haastoi tiimin jäsenten sosiaalista osaamista muun muassa päivittäisjohtamisen ja hierarkialtaan tasaisen tiimin muodossa. Ketterä toimintamalli vaikutti tiimin toimintaan myös osin negatiivisesti aikaa viemällä ja työn kaoottisuutta lisäämällä

Investigating the relationship between software process improvement, situational change, and business success in software SMEs

While we have learned a great deal from Software Process Improvement (SPI) research to date, no earlier study has been designed from the outset to examine the relationship between SPI and business success in software development small- to- medium- sized companies (software SMEs). Since business processes are generally acknowledged as having an important role to play in supporting business success, it follows that the software development process (a large and complex component of the overall business process) has an important contribution to make in supporting business success in software development companies. However, to date we have very little evidence regarding the role of SPI in supporting business success, especially for software SMEs. The need for SPI is dependent on the extent of situational change in a software development setting, and therefore any examination of the relationship between SPI and business success would be deficient if it did not also examine the extent of situational change. Therefore, this thesis describes a novel approach to examining SPI, situational change and business success in software development companies. Furthermore, having discharged this new approach to 15 software SMEs, this thesis makes the important new discovery that the amount of SPI implemented in a software SME is positively associated with the extent of business success – especially when the degree of situational change is taken into account. This thesis describes the first published study to examine the relationship between SPI, situational change and business success in software SMEs. The findings suggest that there are business benefits to implementing SPI in software SMEs, with the degree of situational change being an important factor informing SPI initiatives. Furthermore, this research has yielded valuable new insights into the nature of SPI, situational change and business success in software SMEs

Agile adoption best practices in Canadian banking

This thesis examines agile software development adoption challenges in large Canadian banks. Canadian banks have adopted agile methods with varying success. The aim of the thesis is to develop an agile adoption framework, using a mixed methods research approach. Research on agile adoptions in financial firms and other regulated industries was reviewed. The result was a list of best practice and challenges that firms experience in their agile transformations. These factors, along with data gathered from interviews, surveys and observations were triangulated to produce a list of best practices. The research used mixed methods, treating the Canadian banking industry as a single case. Qualitative data were elicited through interviews and observation. Additional data was collected through an internet based survey. Chain referral sampling was used to increase the sample size. The population sampled consisted of executives responsible for agile adoptions, agile coaches and project managers involved in banking agile projects. Seven participants were interviewed and twenty seven completed surveys were received. A pilot study was conducted to test the methodology and research instruments prior to the main study. The data was analyzed using the framework method to synthesize the best practices from the literature with the primary data. The result of the research is a set of best practices and a framework for agile adoption in banking. A validation study of the framework was conducted and indicated it was suitable for banking. The analysis concluded that agile practices and adoption strategies used in non-bank industries, with some exceptions, were equally applicable to large banks. The analysis also demonstrated that a phased adoption framework was well suited to the banking culture for facilitating an agile transformation rather than a holistic companywide adoption. The theoretical contribution of this research is the identification of agile best practices and challenges experienced by practitioners within the Canadian banking industry. It is one of the first academic studies to be conducted on agile adoption in Canadian banks and contributes knowledge to the literature on agile adoptions. The practical application of the research is the proposed framework which provides a disciplined foundational roadmap for leaders initiating agile transformations in their own banks