A case study of SME web application development effectiveness via agile methods

Abstract: The development of Web applications is an important focus of the modern information enabled organization – whether the Web application development is in-house, outsourced, or purchased as ‘commercial-off-the-shelf’ (COTS) software. Traditionally Web application development has been delivered via the dominant waterfall system. The waterfall system relies upon well-defined governance structures, linear phases, gating, and extensive reporting and sign-off documentation. An increasing number of development stakeholders criticise the waterfall system for web application development. The criticisms include a disproportionate focus on governance and process at the direct expense of flexibility and, most importantly, reduced productivity. One consequence of these criticisms is the increasing adoption of Web application development via agile-system methods. This agile-system approach centres upon smaller design teams, fewer development phases, and shorter development time tables

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

A discovery and analysis of influencing factors of pair programming

The exploration into the underlying psychosocial links of pair programming. a new and unorthodox programming paradigm in which two programmers share one keyboard and monitor during real-time programming sessions, is undertaken. These complex psychosocial relationships, along with cognitive process exchanges, ultimately mold the programming output as well as determine the level of communication, satisfaction. confidence and compatibility. Laying the framework for this research, a through review of traditional and contemporary paradigms with a special focus on their limitations and a list of current software development problems are presented. Next, a detailed summary of pair programming and related agile software paradigms, such as extreme programming, which lists pair programming as one of its twelve principles, is given. From earlier pair programming studies, a number of programming benefits have been unveiled and these are listed and discussed. However, a lack of formal studies pertaining to the psychosocial aspects of pair programming exists. Given this void, a field survey is administered to a group of professional programmers and a resulting list of influencing factors on pair programming emerges. From the list, the most popular factor, personality, and two other factors, communication and gender, have been selected in order to study their impact on pair programming product outcome and the level of communication, satisfaction, confidence and compatibility. An experiment focusing on these factors is designed and implemented. From the experimental findings, the personality of the two partners in pair programming is found to have a significant impact on the pair programming output. Also, it is discovered that same gender pairs exhibited an unusually high level of communication, satisfaction and compatibility between each other, especially among female-female pairs. A detailed statistical experiment result based on research hypotheses is reported

AM-OER: An Agile Method for the Development of Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources have emerged as important elements of education in the contemporary society, promoting life-long and personalized learning that transcends social, eco- nomic and geographical barriers. To achieve the potential of OERs and bring impact on education, it is necessary to increase their development and supply. However, one of the current challenges is how to produce quality and relevant OERs to be reused and adapted to different contexts and learning situations. In this paper we proposed an agile method for the development of OERs – AM-OER, grounded on agile practices from Software Engineering. Learning Design practices from the OULDI project (UK Open University) are also embedded into the AM-OER aiming at improving quality and facilitating reuse and adaptation of OERs. In order to validate AM-OER, an experiment was conducted by applying it in the development of an OER on software testing. The results showed preliminary evidences on the applicability, effectiveness and ef ciency of the method in the development of OERs

Knowledge clusters: Dealing with a multilevel phenomenon

Although there are a number of purported benefits of agile systems development methods over traditional forms, many in the Information Systems Development (ISD) community highlight the difficulties that the dynamic, turbulent nature of agile development environments may present. One prominent difference compared to traditional ISD projects is the emphasised presence of the customer in decision-making. Specifically, project management and decision-making can be significantly more challenging than in projects involving traditional development approaches. This paper describes a research-in-progress, that focuses on decision-making in agile projects, and aims to develop a better understanding of how agile teams present dynamic data to decision makers who may act “on the fly”, and in so doing lead to effective, high quality decision-making in agile environments. The goal of the paper with its three case studies is to develop a set of best practices for representing decision-making data in agile ISD projects

Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model

There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience

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

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

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 18th International Conference, XP 2017, Cologne, Germany, May 22-26, 2017, Proceedings

agile software development; lean development; scrum; project management; software developmen