Roles and responsibilities in agile ICT for development

This paper examines the different roles in designing interactive software in a ICT for development context. Using experiences from a participatory action research project, in which we used agile methods to design and deploy an system to support ‘agricultural information flow’ for a co-operative of small farmers in rural India, we identify points of difference between the roles in standard descriptions of agile software methods and the roles as they emerged in our project. A key finding is the critical role played by a ‘Development Project Manager’ in facilitating dialogue, orchestrating the activities of other actors and in building the capabilities and confidence of all the participants in joint action

Gender Equality With Agile In Software Engineering

Women are under-represented in information technology careers in general and in the profession of software development in particular and their numbers are declining. Previous studies on this topic have investigated whether the reason for this is due to a difference in capability arising out of their gender, or whether the reason arises from social factors. A software development methodology called “Agile†has arisen in recent years which focus on collaboration, working software, and a sustainable workweek. Studies have shown that adopting Agile techniques in the classroom helps to retain women in computer information academic curricula and that adopting them in workplace teams improves communication across gender and ethnic diversity. This study invited women to speak for themselves as to whether they find Agile engineering techniques helpful in the workplace through the use of an online survey and follow-up interviews. The results revealed that women feel positively about these practices but have encountered some resistance to adopting them. Future studies discerning whether there are differences in the attitudes of men and women to these practices or whether there is a correlation between adoption of these practices and the number of women practicing as software developers in varying environments are logical future research topics to extend understanding in this are

Analyzing the Applicability of an Agile Methodology to Distributed Collaborative Software Development

Today, information technology (IT) has penetrated most domains of business and private life. The knitting of IT-systems and their dependencies are getting more complex every day. For businesses, this development can mean great opportunities. IT has become a main driver for competitive advantage and business success. On the other hand, misled software development (SD) projects can mean an existential threat to the operational and financial situation of a company. The efficient development of effective software is an essential part of optimally facing present and future challenges. Managing SD with traditional methodologies often leads to high planning and management overhead and still, severe schedule deviations and budget overruns cannot be eliminated. The sequential and plan-driven traditional approaches are often not able to support an adequate reaction to either internally or externally caused changes in requirements. Complex and unclear system landscapes with diverse interfaces, ambiguous customer requirements, changing business strategies or fluctuating legal requirements are just a few examples for possible sources of changing system requirements. Today, Extreme Programming (XP) is the most popular agile development methodology supported by the Agile Alliance. Its name was chosen because it claims to bring common sense to an extreme level. It focuses on communication, simplicity, feedback and courage, to improve the speed and quality of SD. Formal processes and documentation are neglected in favor of tacit knowledge to improve flexibility. Close communication between developers and the continuous integration of customer representatives are key components of XP. XP was initially developed for small to medium sized collocated development teams. This paper analyzes to what extent XP can be transferred to larger distributed developing endeavors. The focus is on XP, because it is the methodology with the highest congruence to the original Agile Manifesto. It does not claim to be all new, but to be an aligned composition of well established ideas and practices from other methodologies

Conceptualizing the Co-Existence of Formal and Informal Institutions Within Planning

Conceptualizing the Co-Existence of Formal and Informal Institutions Within Planning Hazem Abu-Orf Faculty of Applied Engineering and Urban Planning, University of Palestine, Gaza, PalestineThe background to this study is addressing how formal and informal institutions might intersect in planning. This article has at its aim addressing not only the effects that formal and/or informal institutions have but also how both shape each other. In fulfilling this aim, analysis in this study adopts qualitative research methods, including qualitative interviewing, direct observation and archival records, which are applied to the Nicosia Master Plan that is considered in this study as a particular case study because it arguably helps this study to fulfill its aims. The perspective of formal/informal ‘dialectics’, marked by a ‘mutual-shaping’ exercise, is applied to this case study. Its application reveals several arguments as follow. First, formal institutions are found in this study to be blocked from mobilizing any development, however, remain the key determinant. The second argument concerns informal institutions that have been found to adopt strategies capable of mobilizing development, nevertheless, these strategies could not obviate the central role of formal institutions. Thirdly, formal institutions formalize informal institutions by ‘absorbing’ the latter into their hierarchy while equally denying any degree of autonomy, nor a role assigned, to informal institutions. Altogether, the findings revealed in this study stress the importance of the political and economic contexts of power that are key to how the formal/informal ‘dialectics’ occur.University of Palestine, www.up.edu.p

Factors influencing software developers’ use of pair programming in an agile software development methodology environment.

Masters Degree, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.IT has been growing rapidly through the years and the IT solutions which are required are no simpler. Industries want IT solutions to be flexible enough to accommodate spikes in demand and to produce outcomes as soon as possible. Therefore, the adoption of agile methodologies has been increasing. extreme programming (XP) has been the most common agile methodology adopted since 2004. Industries have struggled to make the transition from a traditional approach to agile; as there are many opposing principles: traditional methodologies drive individual programming, whereas agile drives team collaboration when developing software. However, the benefits realised from XP grew as companies noticed that teams built strong relationships, software was delivered faster and errors in code were minimal. Pair programming (an XP practice) is the least used XP programming practice. This is in spite of studies conducted in North California in the years 2010 - 2017, which noted that pair programming, when used, provides numerous benefits to both staff and company. Some of the benefits included improving productivity, reducing time spent on delivery; increasing the sharing of knowledge and strengthening teams’ morale. This challenges the gap between the adoption of pair programming (which is low) and agile (which is popular). Therefore this study was undertaken to understand the phenomena that influence the adoption of pair programming in agile software development companies. The results of this case study show that software developers have a positive attitude towards using pair programming. Their senior staff and peers encourage the use of pair programming as the company provides enough hardware and tools to accommodate the needs of pair programming. However, it was indicated by both senior and junior staff that there is reluctance by juniors to voice their opinions. The personality mix sometimes impacts the use of pair programming; for instance, introverts may not want to communicate and an extrovert may be too overpowering in a pair programming environment. However, pair programming is confirmed as a mentoring tool; to help skills development and the sharing of knowledge. In addition, pair programming is noted as more beneficial for complex tasks. Due to the constant engagement required during pair programming, the developers noted it is sometimes draining and therefore suggest regular breaks and switching of roles to maintain the synergy. Overall, pair programming is recommended for future and current use as it produces higher quality code, improves productivity, assists in sharing of knowledge and boosts the confidence and skills of those less experienced.Only available in English

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

Contrasting the Necessary Skills of Leaders in Classical and Agile Software Development

As a consequence of the necessities of the digital age, agility is becoming more and more important in software development. Consequently, agile change management is increasingly coming into focus and many projects are undergoing a transformation process from classic software development to agile software development. Through this, managers are confronted with new tasks and requirements. To explore the associated effects and needs, this publication examines how managers who have worked in traditional software development apply their skills learned there to agile software development. For this purpose, six interviews with industry experts were conducted and the corresponding results are presented and discussed

The usefulness of Usability and User Experience evaluation methods on an e-Learning platform development from a developer's perspective: A case study

The development of a web platform is a complex and interdisciplinary task, where people with different roles such as project manager, designer or developer participate. Different usability and User Experience evaluation methods can be used in each stage of the development life cycle, but not all of them have the same influence in the software development and in the final product or system. This article presents the study of the impact of these methods applied in the context of an e-Learning platform development. The results show that the impact has been strong from a developer's perspective. Developer team members considered that usability and User Experience evaluation allowed them mainly to identify design mistakes, improve the platform's usability and understand the end users and their needs in a better way. Interviews with potential users, clickmaps and scrollmaps were rated as the most useful methods. Finally, these methods were considered unanimously very useful in the context of the entire software development, only comparable to SCRUM meetings and overcoming the rest of involved factors