Grounding and making sense of agile software development.

The paper explores areas of strategic frameworks for sense-making, knowledge management and Grounded Theory methodologies to offer a rationalization of some aspects of agile software development. In a variety of projects where knowledge management form part of the solution we have begun to see activities and principles that closely correspond to many aspects of the wide family of agile development methods. We offer reflection on why as a community we are attracted to agile methods and consider why they work

Role clarity deficiencies can wreck agile teams

Background One of the twelve agile principles is to build projects around motivated individuals and trust them to get the job done. Such agile teams must self-organize, but this involves conflict, making self-organization difficult. One area of difficulty is agreeing on everybody’s role. Background What dynamics arise in a self-organizing team from the negotiation of everybody’s role? Method We conceptualize observations from five agile teams (work observations, interviews) by Charmazian Grounded Theory Methodology. Results We define role as something transient and implicit, not fixed and named. The roles are characterized by the responsibilities and expectations of each team member. Every team member must understand and accept their own roles (Local role clarity) and everbody else’s roles (Team-wide role clarity). Role clarity allows a team to work smoothly and effectively and to develop its members’ skills fast. Lack of role clarity creates friction that not only hampers the day-to-day work, but also appears to lead to high employee turnover. Agile coaches are critical to create and maintain role clarity. Conclusions Agile teams should pay close attention to the levels of Local role clarity of each member and Team-wide role clarity overall, because role clarity deficits are highly detrimental

Facework in a pair-programming session

Improved communication is part of the agile solution to the problems we have in developing software. It has been shown that some development practices restricted feedback within teams because empirical studies suggest that a significant portion of the software maintainer's time is required to understand the functionality of the software to be maintained. Muller and Padberg demonstrated that when developers work together as tightly knit pairs this changes as their productivity and feelgood increase. In this paper we report on observations of developers programming as a pair. We see that the management of face is an important factor in attempts to reciver the meaning of code

Mindfulness and agile software development

The field of information systems development (ISD) is still not well understood and suffers from a lack of sustainable theories which are firmly based on research of ISD practice. This is also true for agile software development (ASD). In this paper, we develop a framework based on the theory of mindfulness and map the main characteristics of mindfulness to the most prominent features of ASD. By applying the framework to a case study of ASD practice we demonstrate the relationship between the theory of mindfulness and ASD, and show the usefulness of our framework as a contribution to theorizing about ASD and to a better understanding of ASD in practice

Qualitative software engineering research -- reflections and guidelines

Researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance of human aspects in software development and since qualitative methods are used to, in-depth, explore human behavior, we believe that studies using such techniques will become more common. Existing qualitative software engineering guidelines do not cover the full breadth of qualitative methods and knowledge on using them found in the social sciences. The aim of this study was thus to extend the software engineering research community's current body of knowledge regarding available qualitative methods and provide recommendations and guidelines for their use. With the support of an epistemological argument and a literature review, we suggest that future research would benefit from (1) utilizing a broader set of research methods, (2) more strongly emphasizing reflexivity, and (3) employing qualitative guidelines and quality criteria. We present an overview of three qualitative methods commonly used in social sciences but rarely seen in software engineering research, namely interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis, and discourse analysis. Furthermore, we discuss the meaning of reflexivity in relation to the software engineering context and suggest means of fostering it. Our paper will help software engineering researchers better select and then guide the application of a broader set of qualitative research methods.Comment: 30 page

A Case Study of Healthcare Information Technology Implementation: Agile-Innovative Capability Development Process

With the advances in Information Technology (IT), the potential of IT in enabling enterprise agility has received increasing attention from practitioners and the academia in recent years. However, despite the recent advance of knowledge on agility and IT innovation, the relationship between the adoption of IT and enterprise agility is often treated as a “black box” and empirical validation of the relationship between IT and enterprise agility is still scare. Moreover, the importance of agility in healthcare sector has largely been ignored. Our study proposes a three-stage process model that describes and analyzes the ways how agility and innovative capabilities are implemented and managed during the innovation of healthcare IT in a hospital. Theoretical and practical contributions were shared and documented in this paper

On Evidence-based Risk Management in Requirements Engineering

Background: The sensitivity of Requirements Engineering (RE) to the context makes it difficult to efficiently control problems therein, thus, hampering an effective risk management devoted to allow for early corrective or even preventive measures. Problem: There is still little empirical knowledge about context-specific RE phenomena which would be necessary for an effective context- sensitive risk management in RE. Goal: We propose and validate an evidence-based approach to assess risks in RE using cross-company data about problems, causes and effects. Research Method: We use survey data from 228 companies and build a probabilistic network that supports the forecast of context-specific RE phenomena. We implement this approach using spreadsheets to support a light-weight risk assessment. Results: Our results from an initial validation in 6 companies strengthen our confidence that the approach increases the awareness for individual risk factors in RE, and the feedback further allows for disseminating our approach into practice.Comment: 20 pages, submitted to 10th Software Quality Days conference, 201

Evaluating the Productivity of Software Engineers in Enterprise Development

Managing and evaluating the work of software engineers creating complex products at large corporations is particularly challenging with no standardized system to recognize productivity. Cerner Corporation, a leading supplier of healthcare information technology solutions, gives managers substantial latitude in tracking productivity, yielding high variance. The research reported here involves an examination of relevant background literature and interviews of Cerner associates with multiple roles in the organization as well as the author's own background. By identifying the essential components of good software engineering and potential measurement systems, the research yields a design that the author will use to track the productivity of his direct report engineers in the next annual performance period. In it, the primary metric is the completion of story points, an Agile software development representation of the relative size and complexity of work to be done. Tracking the introduction of defects is an indicator of an engineer's code quality, although sufficient context must be captured. Finally, a peer feedback system helps ensure the manager recognizes performance from other perspectives