Agile quality requirements management best practices portfolio : a situational method engineering approach

Management of Quality Requirements (QRs) is determinant for the success of software projects. However, this management is currently under-considered in software projects and in particular, in agile methods. Although agile processes are focused on the functional aspects of the software, some agile practices can be beneficial for the management of QRs. For example, the collaboration and interaction of people can help in the QR elicitation by reducing vagueness of requirements through communication. In this paper, we present the initial findings of our research investigating what industrial practices, from the agile methods, can be used for better management of QRs in agile software development. We use Situational Method Engineering to identify, complement and classify a portfolio of best practices for QR management in agile environments. In this regard, we present the methodological approach that we are applying for the definition of these guidelines and the requirements that will lead us to compile a portfolio of agile QR management best practices. The proposed requirements correspond to the whole software life cycle starting in the elicitation and finalizing in the deployment phases.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The hidden pitfalls of Kanban in software development

ABSTRACT: Objectives of the Study: The objective of this thesis is to explore the hidden pitfalls of Kanban in software development. The aim is to discover the reasons behind the pitfalls and actions that nourish Kanban's failure. Academic background and methodology: Software development industry has been shifting towards more iterative, responsive and people-oriented development methods, which present the values of lean and agile thinking. Being characterized as the antidote for bureaucracy, the shift towards agile development methodologies has been one of the most significant factors affecting the software industry. Kanban as an agile change management framework has been perceived as the fairy godmother of software development making the reasons behind struggling Kanban projects particularly interesting. Thesis interviews five agile experts in the software development and studies their experiences of unsuccessful Kanban implementations. Emphasis is given to similar experiences and perceptions on how Kanban fails to redeem its value proposition. Findings: The primary finding of the study is that an organization that is unable to change its mindset to support Kanban is a pitfall affecting the whole project, inevitably causing Kanban to fail. This is a challenge that all agile methods have in common. Agile can flourish only when agile values are being appreciated. The secondary finding is that many software teams claiming to be using Kanban have implemented only a shallow imitation of the real method thus creating a superficial implementation, which prevents achieving Kanban induced benefits. Thus, creating a superficial implementation, which prevents achieving Kanban induced benefits. Furthermore, the erroneous human interpretation of what Kanban really is and how to apply it correctly is a key factor contributing to the emerge of the pitfalls. Keywords: Kanban, software development, pitfall, agile, change management, framewor

BEYOND BUDGETING AND AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OF AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS

Around the same time as the emergence of agile methods as a formalized concept, the management accounting literature introduced the concept of Beyond Budgeting as a performance management model for changing business environments. Both concepts share many similarities with both having a distinctly agile or adaptive perspective. The Beyond Budgeting model promises to enable companies to keep pace with changing business environments, quickly create and adapt strategy and empower people throughout the organization to make effective changes. This research in progress paper attempts to develop the Beyond Budgeting model within the context of agile software development teams. The twelve Beyond Budgeting principles are discussed and a research framework is presented. This framework is being used in two case studies to investigate the organizational issues and challenges that affect the performance of agile software development teams

A compliance analysis of agile methodologies with the ISO/IEC 29110 project management process

Software process standards (e.g. ISO/IEC 12207, ISO/IEC 15504) and models (e.g. CMMI) provide a set of best practices and guidelines for improving the quality of the software process and products resulting from that process. However, they do not prescribe a particular software development methodology (i.e. RUP, MSF), and thus software development teams face a compliance problem between the selected development methodology and a pursued particular standard or model. In this research, the particular issue of compliance of Agile Software Development Methodologies (SCRUM, XP, and UPEDU) and the new ISO/IEC 29110 standard is studied. Because the new standard is focused on the software process in very small software development companies or small software project teams in the range from 1 to 25 people, and the Agile Software Development Methodologies (ASDMs) are primarily for same targets, this study is important. The ISO/IEC 29110 standard contains two processes: Project Management and Software Implementation. This study is focused on the first process. The main findings indicate that the UPEDU and SCRUM methodologies present and high compliance level with the ISO/IEC 29110 Project Management process, while XP has a moderate level. Thus, software developer teams interested in achieving compliance with the ISO/IEC 29110 Project Management process can count with two ASDMs. However, a full compliance study (with both Project Management and Software Implementation) is still missing

Human factors that influence the success of Agile Projects

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Marketing IntelligenceProject management, when based on agile methodologies, has brought improvements in the success rate in software development projects in recent years, contributing to the improvement of service quality and boosting motivation and productivity in their teams. Thus, it is important to understand what people face when managing projects, using agile methodologies. This study suggests a revised model for assessing the impact of human variables that affect the success of agile methodology in a project management context based on the DeLone & McLean IS Success Model. Our model combines three human factors including collaboration quality as independent variable and agile mindset and agile coach as moderators between the relationship of user satisfaction and individual performance. The motivation of this research is to gain a better understanding of the factors that can influence the achievement of successful agile project management, taking into consideration the factors related with individual performance. The results of a SEM-PLS analysis of 201 professional respondents indicate that "user satisfaction" and "individual performance" are the two most important elements in the success of agile software development projects. Managers and teams will be able to set priorities and improve project outcomes by recognizing which aspects are crucial for success. We discuss this topic, the limitations of the research, and possible paths for future studies

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

A framework to assist in the assessment and tailoring of agile software development methods

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The innovative well-known agile methods offer many powerful agile software development practices and have received considerable attention from both practitioners as well as the research community. While many organizations are interested in adopting agile methods suitable to their local circumstances, there is little guidance available on how to do so. Organizations, especially on the large-scale, currently lack systematic support for adopting agile methods in their complex software development settings. To address this important issue, this research proposes an agile software solution framework (ASSF) to both assistance in the assessment of the capability of the organization or team and tailoring of agile method in order to support the systematic adoption and improvement of agility in both agile and, incidentally, non-agile software development environments - especially formal and large environments. The ASSF has been incrementally developed by the iterative application of build, review and adjust research activities, which is called here a “qualitative empirical” research method. The ASSF is intended for use by agile coaches and consultants as a comprehensive information guide. The ASSF has two main components: framework characteristics and lifecycle management. The framework characteristics component incorporates 10 main elements or attributes to describe the agile-hybrid software development methodologies: (1) people (2) process, (3) product, (4) tools, (5) agility, (6) abstraction, (7) business value, (8) policy (9) rules and (10) legal. The framework lifecycle management component specifies the stages, practices and resources in order to support the systematic adoption and improvement of agility. The framework stages refer to an agility adoption and improvement lifecycle, its practices refer to an agility adoption and improvement process, and its resources refer to models, templates and toolkit that can be used during the agility adoption and improvement process such as the contextual analysis model, a key agility indicators index, an agility adoption and improvement model, an agility adoption and improvement scorecard, and an agile toolkit. The components of this framework have been empirically analysed and reviewed by experts from industry as well as the research community, and updated based on the feedback received. The results of this research indicated that the proposed ASSF framework may be considered reasonable for a gradual successful transition or adoption of agile practices in formal and large software development environments

How agile coaches create an agile mindset in development teams: Insights from an interview study

Since the publication of the agile manifesto in 2001, many companies implement an agile—or at least more agile—software development process. However, only including agile methods or practices in the overall process does not guarantee being agile. The mindset of the people involved in the process, including the development team, the customers, and the management, is of particular importance. As such an agile mindset cannot be enforced, the process of creating a suitable mindset needs to be handled with care. In an interview study with nine agile coaches, we analyzed which aspects they perceive being of particular importance during an agile transformation. One of these aspects is the agile mindset. We figure out how they support the creation of such a mindset. We identify 12 categories related to the process of creating an agile mindset. These categories include the collaboration between the coach and the management as well as the necessity to internalize the agile values. The main factor for succeeding with the creation of an agile mindset, however, can be hardly influenced: The success strongly depends on the personal prerequisites and attitudes of the individuals involved in the process, mainly the development team. We synthesize the results of our study into a timeline describing the process of how an agile coach can support the development team creating an agile mindset as part of the transformation towards an agile development process

Agile Software Development

One of the most noticeable changes to software process thinking in the last ten years has been the appearance of the word ‘agile’ (Fowler, 2005). In the Information Technology (IT) industry Agile Software Development, or simply Agile is used to refer to a family of lightweight development approaches that share a common set of values and principles1 focused around adapting to change and putting people first (Fowler, 2005). Such Agile methods2 provide an alternative to the well-established Waterfall model for software development (Royce, 1970). Traditionalists, those in favour of plan-driven approaches such as Waterfall see Agile as a threat to the Software Engineering profession, sparking on-going debate (Ambler, 2001)(Davis, 2004). Agile has benefited from the controversy it has ignited, as well as the considerable marketing hype of the last few years. This report seeks to go beyond the build-up to explore Agile in more depth and identify the current state of this emergent practice. Agile ideas are traced through Industrial and Software Engineering history to illustrate their early influences as well as the gradual growth of these concepts into what we now recognize as Agile. The reader is introduced to Agile philosophy and four of its leading methods. As Agile’s effects are now reaching beyond software development and into the Project Management space, Agile Project Management is compared and contrasted with the traditional project management framework. Lastly, key advantages and disadvantages of Agile Software Development are provided