SAFe metodologian vaikutus kommunikaatioon ja yhteistyöhön

Nowadays, with the influence of global economy large corporations use global software development to utilise advantages of geographically decentralised organisations and global outsourced software development. Through distributed organisations the work can be done around the clock. Global software development is impacted by three distance dimensions: time distance, geographical distance, and socio-cultural distance, which all bring some challenges. At the same time agile way of working has become more and more popular method in software development. As agile practises are created for co-located teams there is a demand for having working online solutions for communication and collaboration in distributed teams. Corporations use scaled agile way of working to support software develop-ment of large initiatives and projects. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most popular among the scaled agile methods. This thesis was conducted as a case study in a multinational corporation. Objective of the case study was to research effectiveness of scaled agile methodology SAFe on communication and collaboration in teams and agile release trains. The case study included two parts: a web-survey and interviews. The results of the analyses of the case study support findings from the literature in the field. The results indicate the importance of communication and collaboration in agile practices and the significance of the online tools that support it

GLOBAL-MANAGER: A Serious Game for Providing Training in Project Manager Skills

The emergence of Global Software Development (GSD) has led to certain difficulties in the life cycle of global projects, in addition to the traditional challenges of collocated development, particularly as regards Project Management (PM). These difficulties are caused by the geographical, linguistic and cultural distance among the members of the team, signifying that the project manager requires special skills with which to mitigate these issues. Bearing this in mind, this paper describes a serious game (SG), denominated as GLOBAL-MANAGER, whose objective is to provide training in the management of GSD projects. The game attempts to develop several skills in its players whilst simultaneously providing them with an immersive, pleasant and attractive experience. The skills developed are related to coordination, communication and control, which are three of the principal challenges in GSD

Change-centric improvement of team collaboration

In software development, teamwork is essential to the successful delivery of a final product. The software industry has historically built software utilizing development teams that share the workplace. Process models, tools, and methodologies have been enhanced to support the development of software in a collocated setting. However, since the dawn of the 21st century, this scenario has begun to change: an increasing number of software companies are adopting global software development to cut costs and speed up the development process. Global software development introduces several challenges for the creation of quality software, from the adaptation of current methods, tools, techniques, etc., to new challenges imposed by the distributed setting, including physical and cultural distance between teams, communication problems, and coordination breakdowns. A particular challenge for distributed teams is the maintenance of a level of collaboration naturally present in collocated teams. Collaboration in this situation naturally d r ops due to low awareness of the activity of the team. Awareness is intrinsic to a collocated team, being obtained through human interaction such as informal conversation or meetings. For a distributed team, however, geographical distance and a subsequent lack of human interaction negatively impact this awareness. This dissertation focuses on the improvement of collaboration, especially within geographically dispersed teams. Our thesis is that by modeling the evolution of a software system in terms of fine-grained changes, we can produce a detailed history that may be leveraged to help developers collaborate. To validate this claim, we first c r eate a model to accurately represent the evolution of a system as sequences of fine- grained changes. We proceed to build a tool infrastructure able to capture and store fine-grained changes for both immediate and later use. Upon this foundation, we devise and evaluate a number of applications for our work with two distinct goals: 1. To assist developers with real-time information about the activity of the team. These applications aim to improve developers’ awareness of team member activity that can impact their work. We propose visualizations to notify developers of ongoing change activity, as well as a new technique for detecting and informing developers about potential emerging conflicts. 2. To help developers satisfy their needs for information related to the evolution of the software system. These applications aim to exploit the detailed change history generated by our approach in order to help developers find answers to questions arising during their work. To this end, we present two new measurements of code expertise, and a novel approach to replaying past changes according to user-defined criteria. We evaluate the approach and applications by adopting appropriate empirical methods for each case. A total of two case studies – one controlled experiment, and one qualitative user study – are reported. The results provide evidence that applications leveraging a fine-grained change history of a software system can effectively help developers collaborate in a distributed setting

Co-innovation: the future of telemedicine in developing countries

Telemedicine which has been widely adopted in developed countries to reach all its citizens irrespective of their location is only being used for education purposes or disaster relief in developing countries. Since developing countries already suffer inadequate healthcare provision especially in remote areas, it would be essential to implement telemedicine practices for daily clinical uses rather than education use. This research argues that to understand the future of telemedicine in developing countries, both well-established technology innovations adoption factors as well as co-innovation factors should be addressed. In the context of healthcare provision, we propose a conceptual framework that integrates the healthcare resources and the organisational affiliations in co-innovation

Effective Virtual Teams through Communities of Practice

This paper examines the nature of virtual teams and their place in the networked economy. It presents a framework for categorising virtual teams and argues that fundamental changes have taken place in the business environment which force people and organisations to operate in 'two spaces' simultaneously: the physical space and the electronic space. It highlights some of the issues of trust and identity that exist in virtual teams and argues that, due to certain barriers, only a small proportion of these teams reach a satisfactory level of performance. Using the evidence from two recent sets of studies, it highlights some of the barriers to effective virtual team working and demonstrates the critical importance of trust and social bonding to the functioning of such teams. It reports on the use of a 'Community of Practice' in a virtual team and argues that this may provide one mechanism for overcoming some of the barriers. Finally, it argues that many of the problems stem from a lack of understanding of the new geography of the information economy and that, rather than accepting the notion that 'geography no longer matters', continued efforts must be made to understand the relationship between the physical world in which we live and the electronic world of virtual team working.Virtual Teams, Communities of Practice, Globalisation, Teleworking, Electronic Space, Physical Space

Virtual Leadership: Required Competencies for Effective Leaders

There are countless books, articles, and resources available which attempt to identify the competencies and qualities of effective leaders. Traditionally, leaders have been at the center of a community, be it work, church, or social groups. In these communities, face-to-face meetings and close personal interaction have dominated the way leaders interact with their members. However, with the advent of the internet and the host of communication tools that followed, teams today are becoming increasingly dispersed and diverse. Studies are now being done to understand how leadership has or should evolve in order to meet the changing needs and demands of these new and different communities. Some argue that leadership in the virtual environment is simpler as fewer tools are available to virtual leaders. Others may argue that access to fewer tools makes virtual leadership more complex and challenging than traditional leadership. This paper will explore leadership in virtual settings and how it’s changing as more teams move away from traditional team environments. I’ll review the responsibilities and roles of virtual leaders in an effort to better highlight the core competencies needed in today’s virtual settings. I’ll also look at competencies required of global virtual leaders and I’ll address how these competencies can be cultivated to ensure leaders are more effective in leading teams in these new environments

An interactive learning environment in geographical information systems

The Unigis Learning Station is a computer‐based learning management tool for the Postgraduate Diploma in Geographical Information Systems by distance learning (correspondence). Unigis is an international network of universities co‐operating in the delivery of such courses. The students on Unigis courses are mature mid‐career professionals who study in addition to undertaking full time jobs. The Learning Station offers these students information about the course, resources for independent study, a structured set of exercises, assessments and feedback opportunities, and an integrated and easy way to interact with other course software. Following a brief introduction to the Unigis curriculum, this paper discusses the design of the Learning Station. The roles the Learning Station adopts are outlined, and the range of multimedia and communications tools used discussed. Evaluation of the Learning Station is presented and the issued raised by this provide useful lessons for other computer‐based learning management tools, and the adaptation of the Learning Station to other teaching and learning situations