Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program

Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the arrival of agile development methods. While intended for small, self-managing teams, these methods are increasingly used also for large development programs. A major challenge in programs is to coordinate the work of many teams, due to high uncertainty in tasks, a high degree of interdependence between tasks and because of the large number of people involved. This revelatory case study focuses on how knowledge work is coordinated in large-scale agile development programs by providing a rich description of the coordination practices used and how these practices change over time in a four year development program with 12 development teams. The main findings highlight the role of coordination modes based on feedback, the use of a number of mechanisms far beyond what is described in practitioner advice, and finally how coordination practices change over time. The findings are important to improve the outcome of large knowledge-based development programs by tailoring coordination practices to needs and ensuring adjustment over time.Comment: To appear in Project Management Journa

Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects. Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. Method: The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. Results: The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. Conclusion: It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Complementing Measurements and Real Options Concepts to Support Inter-iteration Decision-Making in Agile Projects

Agile software projects are characterized by iterative and incremental development, accommodation of changes and active customer participation. The process is driven by creating business value for the client, assuming that the client (i) is aware of it, and (ii) is capable to estimate the business value, associated with the separate features of the system to be implemented. This paper is focused on the complementary use of measurement techniques and concepts of real-option-analysis to assist clients in assessing and comparing alternative sets of requirements. Our overall objective is to provide systematic support to clients for the decision-making process on what to implement in each iteration. The design of our approach is justified by using empirical data, published earlier by other authors

Managing the trade-off implications of global supply

The cost versus response trade-off is a growing logistics issue due to many markets being increasingly characterized by demand uncertainty and shorter product life cycles. This is exacerbated further with supply increasingly moving to low cost global sources. However, the poor response implications of global supply are often not addressed or even acknowledged when undertaking such decisions. Consequently, various practical approaches to minimising, postponing or otherwise managing the impact of the demand uncertainty are often only adopted retrospectively. Even though such generic solutions are documented through case examples we lack effective tools and concepts to support the proactive identification and resolution of such trade-offs. This paper reports on case-based theory building research, involving three cases from the UK and USA used in developing a conceptual model with associated tools, in support of such a process

How Do Real Options Concepts Fit in Agile Requirements Engineering?

Agile requirements engineering is driven by creating business value for the client and heavily involves the client in decision-making under uncertainty. Real option thinking seems to be suitable in supporting the client’s decision making process at inter-iteration time. This paper investigates the fit between real option thinking and agile requirements engineering. We first look into previously published experiences in the agile software engineering literature to identify (i) ‘experience clusters’ suggesting the ways in which real option concepts fit into the agile requirements process and (ii) ‘experience gaps’ and under-researched agile requirements decision-making topics which require further empirical studies. Furthermore, we conducted a cross-case study in eight agile development organizations and interviewed 11 practitioners about their decision-making process. The results suggest that options are almost always identified, reasoned about and acted upon. They are not expressed in quantitative terms, however, they are instead explicitly or implicitly taken\ud into account during the decision-making process at interiteration time

Influential factors of aligning Spotify squads in mission-critical and offshore projects – a longitudinal embedded case study

Changing the development process of an organization is one of the toughest and riskiest decisions. This is particularly true if the known experiences and practices of the new considered ways of working are relative and subject to contextual assumptions. Spotify engineering culture is deemed as a new agile software development method which increasingly attracts large-scale organizations. The method relies on several small cross-functional self-organized teams (i.e., squads). The squad autonomy is a key driver in Spotify method, where a squad decides what to do and how to do it. To enable effective squad autonomy, each squad shall be aligned with a mission, strategy, short-term goals and other squads. Since a little known about Spotify method, there is a need to answer the question of: How can organizations work out and maintain the alignment to enable loosely coupled and tightly aligned squads? In this paper, we identify factors to support the alignment that is actually performed in practice but have never been discussed before in terms of Spotify method. We also present Spotify Tailoring by highlighting the modified and newly introduced processes to the method. Our work is based on a longitudinal embedded case study which was conducted in a real-world large-scale offshore software intensive organization that maintains mission-critical systems. According to the confidentiality agreement by the organization in question, we are not allowed to reveal a detailed description of the features of the explored project

The Logistic Principles for Fast Flexible Strategy Design of the Company in Crisis Time

The article deals with design of the logistic principles enabling an enterprise to create a strategy flexible in terms of business and marketing and stable and steady in terms of manufacturing. In order to create a strategy model the following principles can be applied: shortening the period of capacity planning combined with flexible planning, SYNCRO – MRP (Material Required Planning) principle, the application of forecasting in capacity planning, creation with partners of one of the cooperation forms such as supply chain, demand chain, lean supply chain, agile supply chain, leagile supply chain, and using the DBR (Drum Buffer Rope), APS (Advanced Planning System) and SCP (Supply Chain Planning) systems. The article describes application of this principle for model design of the flexible strategy for Chemosvit fólie a. s. company, and the results of this application in the crisis time 2009–2011.SYANCRO-MRP, capacity planning, forecasting, supply chain, demand chain