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

Dependency Management in Large-Scale Agile: A Case Study of DevOps Teams

Managing dependencies between teams and within teams is critical when running large-scale agile projects. In large-scale software development, work is carried out simultaneously by many developers and development teams. Results are delivered frequently and iteratively, which requires management of dependencies on both the project and team level. This study explores coordination mechanisms in agile DevOps teams in a large-scale project and how the mechanisms address different types of dependencies. We conducted a case study where we observed 38 scheduled meetings and interviewed members of five DevOps teams and two teams supporting the DevOps teams. By using a dependency taxonomy, we identified 20 coordination mechanisms (eleven synchronization activities and nine synchronization artifacts). Eight of these mechanisms seem essential for coordination in large-scale projects because they addressed more than four types of dependencies. The main implication is that project management needs to combine many practices handling all the dependencies in large-scale projects

Coexisting Plan-driven and Agile Methods: How Tensions Emerge and Are Resolved

Fast changing products, processes, and services caused by digital technologies require organizations to adopt agile methods after having used plan-driven approaches for decades. Adopting agile methods only to software development, can lead to a challenging coexistence of methods. To date, little empirical understanding exists with regard to the difficulties that emerge when organizations introduce agile teams in plan-driven environments. Consequently, we investigate the coexistence of agile and plan-driven methods and study its impacts. We conducted an exploratory multiple case study of four organizations and draw from adaptive structuration theory to study how agile methods are adopted on team level to an environment of deeply entrenched plan-driven methods. We find that this coexistence causes several tensions between agile and plan-driven teams (i.e., budgeting, knowledge, planning, process, responsibility, and cultural tension). Further, we reveal how organizations and teams overcome these tensions with balanced and blended resolutions

Self-Organizing Teams in Online Work Settings

As the volume and complexity of distributed online work increases, the collaboration among people who have never worked together in the past is becoming increasingly necessary. Recent research has proposed algorithms to maximize the performance of such teams by grouping workers according to a set of predefined decision criteria. This approach micro-manages workers, who have no say in the team formation process. Depriving users of control over who they will work with stifles creativity, causes psychological discomfort and results in less-than-optimal collaboration results. In this work, we propose an alternative model, called Self-Organizing Teams (SOTs), which relies on the crowd of online workers itself to organize into effective teams. Supported but not guided by an algorithm, SOTs are a new human-centered computational structure, which enables participants to control, correct and guide the output of their collaboration as a collective. Experimental results, comparing SOTs to two benchmarks that do not offer user agency over the collaboration, reveal that participants in the SOTs condition produce results of higher quality and report higher teamwork satisfaction. We also find that, similarly to machine learning-based self-organization, human SOTs exhibit emergent collective properties, including the presence of an objective function and the tendency to form more distinct clusters of compatible teammates

Detailed design of product oriented manufacturing systems

This paper describes a procedure for the detailed and repetitive design of manufacturing systems within an approach of constantly fitting production system configuration to the varying production needs of products and, therefore, designing Product Oriented Manufacturing Systems – POMS. The detailed design procedure depart from a set of conceptual manufacturing cell configurations and develops from there, through conceptual cell and workstation instantiation, with basis on available methods, the required manufacturing system and control mechanisms for a product or a family of similar products.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Management Methods for Complex Projects

This freely available project management eBook is the start of your journey in the field of complex project management methodologies, introducing you to some of the core methods, processes and tools as recognised by the project management discipline. This eBook lays out methodologies such as XP, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Six Sigma, PRINCE2, Waterfall, PRiSM, Soft Systems Methodology as well as introducing Project Design as a method so you can leverage the right project management approach. This eBook will be of value to students, practitioners, and businesses in Australia and overseas seeking professional development in the field of project management methodologies

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2021, which was held virtually during June 14-18, 2021. 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 Turns Twenty While the World Goes Online”. The 11 full and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile practices; process assessment; large-scale agile; and short contributions

An auction-based serious game for bug tracking

Today, one of the challenges in software engineering is utilizing application lifecycle management (ALM) tools effectively in software development. In particular, it is hard for software developers to engage with the work items that are appointed to themselves in these ALM tools. In this study, we have focused on bug tracking in ALM where one of the most important metrics is mean time to resolution that is the average time to fix a reported bug. To improve this metric, we developed a serious game application based on an auction-based reward mechanism. The ultimate aim of this approach is to create an incentive structure for software practitioners to find and resolved bugs that are auctioned where participants are encouraged to solve and test more bugs in less time and improve quality of software development in a competitive environment. We conduct hypothesis tests by performing a Monte Carlo simulation. The preliminary results of this research support the idea that using a gamification approach for an issue tracking system enhances the productivity and decreases mean time to resolution

Team management strategies for DevOps

In an increasingly digital market, and where the time to market is shorter and the quality and reliability more relevant, it is imperative that software development teams can organize themselves in order to provide a faster reaction to the market with more reliability. DevOps intends to eliminate the existence of silos (Development and Operations) and streamline the software production, declining waste and difficulties in its construction, increasing productivity and developing better products with a focus on client satisfaction. Nevertheless, the joining of teams around the same goal causes key managing challenges, namely the management of conflicts and information sharing between teams. The way that these challenges are managed can interfere with the successful implementation of DevOps philosophy. Though a Case Study, the research goal is to study the best team management strategies that help to reduce the appearance of conflicts and enhance information sharing in the context of DevOps implementation, increasing effectiveness in those teams. As a result, this research brings some strategies to facilitate the DevOps team management and reinforces the importance of managing conflicts, processes, tasks and information well.Num mercado cada vez mais digital e onde o tempo de mercado é cada vez mais curto, a qualidade e fiabilidade mais relevantes, é imperativo que as equipas de desenvolvimento de software consigam organizar-se de modo a proporcionar uma resposta rápida no mercado e cada vez mais fiável. A filosofia DevOps pretende terminar com a existência de silos (Desenvolvimento e Operações) e agilizar a produção de software, diminuindo desperdício e dificuldades na sua construção, aumentando a produtividade e desenvolver produtos melhores com foco na satisfação do cliente. Contudo, a junção de equipas em torno de um mesmo objetivo acarreta desafios cruciais para a gestão, nomeadamente a gestão de conflitos e da informação entre as equipas. A forma como estes desafios são geridos poderá interferir no sucesso da implementação de uma filosofia DevOps. Através de um Caso de Estudo, o objetivo desta pesquisa é o levantamento das melhores estratégias de gestão de equipas que ajudem a reduzir o surgimento de conflitos e potenciar a partilha de informação em contexto de implementação da filosofia DevOps, aumentando a eficácia destas equipas. Como resultado, esta pesquisa traz algumas estratégias que podem facilitar a gestão de equipas DevOps e reforça a importância de fazer uma boa gestão dos conflitos, tarefas, processos e da informação

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