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

Enterprise Experience into the Integration of Human-Centered Design and Kanban

he integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Agile Software Development (ASD) promises the development of competitive products comprising a good User Experience (UX). This study has investigated the integration of HCD and Kanban with the aim to gain industrial experiences in a real world context. A case study showed that requirements flow into the development process in a structured manner by adding a design board. To this end, the transparency concerning recurring requirements increased. We contribute to the body of knowledge of software development by providing practical insights into Human-Centered Agile Development (HCAD). On one hand, it is shown that the integration of HCD and Kanban leads to a product with a good UX and makes the development process more human-centered. On the other hand, we conclude that a cross-functional collaboration speeds up product development.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

The Role of Social Agile Practices for Direct and Indirect Communication in Information Systems Development Teams

Methods for Agile information systems development (ISD) are widely accepted in industry. One key difference in comparison to traditional, plan-driven ISD approaches is that Agile ISD teams rely heavily on direct, informal face-to-face communication instead of indirect and formal documents, models, and plans. While the importance of communication in Agile ISD is generally acknowledged, empirical studies investigating this phenomenon are scarce. We empirically open up the “black box” of the Agile ISD process to enhance the knowledge about the communication mechanisms of Agile ISD teams. We conducted a case study at two medium-sized ISD companies. As our primary data collection technique, we carried out semi-structured interviews, which we complemented with observations and, in one case, a survey. Our study’s main contribution is a set of so-called social Agile practices that positively impact the direct communication of team members. Our data suggests including the Agile practices co-located office space, daily stand-up meeting, iteration planning meeting, pair programming, sprint retrospective, and sprint review in this set. Furthermore, we investigate the role of more formal, indirect communication in Agile ISD projects. We highlight areas in which formal documents remain important so that a trade-off between indirect and direct communication is necessary

Is Communication the Key to Success? Investigating the Impact of Agile Practices on Information Systems Development Projects

In recent years, agile methodologies for information systems development (ISD) have increasingly attracted the attention of the research community. Agile ISD methodologies are considered an effective way for managing ISD projects in environments characterized by rapidly changing requirements. Although the body of knowledge on agile ISD is constantly growing, we still lack a detailed understanding of the fundamental processes underpinning agile ISD methodologies. In this paper, we investigate how agile practices affect the team communication processes in order to extend our knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of agile ISD projects. This is achieved by developing a preliminary research model that is based on a solid theoretical foundation. As a theoretical framework, we employ the unified model of ISD success and extend it with context-specific insights from the cognitive-affective model of organizational communication and media naturalness theory. In consequence, we suggest several propositions for future testing