Identifying Suitable Projects For Rapid Development: Some Proposed Selection Criteria

The use of rapid development techniques allows building high quality systems in short timeframes while reducing project costs and adding flexibility to the development process so it can be easily adapted to meet customer needs in a volatile market. In order to obtain the benefits of implementing rapid development methods, the development organization and the processes utilized need to be congruent with rapid development methodologies and techniques. A problem encountered by product development organizations is how to identify which projects are suitable for the rapid development approach. An extensive academic research about the implementation of rapid development techniques in Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes resulted in the identification of selection criteria for the determination of project suitability for rapid development methods. The selection criteria identified by this research are essential elements that must be present in every rapid development environment in order to obtain the benefits of implementing rapid development techniques

Measuring Coordination in Agile Software Development

Coordination has long been recognized as contributing to successful IT projects. Agile software development provides many practices for achieving project coordination in small co-located projects. Given the importance of coordination to successful software development projects and the increasing popularity of agile software development, investigating coordination in this context is timely and potentially useful. This paper takes an existing theory of coordination in co-located agile software development projects developed from case study research and proposes a field test of that theory. The question addressed is what is the effect of an agile coordination strategy on coordination effectiveness in co-located software development projects? This paper describes the initial theory of coordination and a research design for field-testing that theory

See No Evil: Information Chains and Reciprocity in Teams

Transparency in teams can facilitate cooperation. We study contribution decisions by agents when previous decisions can be observed. We find that an information chain, in which each agent directly observes only the decision of her immediate predecessor, is at least as effective as a fully-transparent protocol in inducing cooperation under increasing returns to scale. In a comparable social dilemma, the information chain leads to high cooperation both in early movers when compared to a non-transparent protocol and in late movers when compared to a fully-transparent protocol. we conclude that information chains facilitate cooperation by balancing positive and negative reciprocity.team production, public goods, incentives, externality, information, transparency, conditional cooperation

Collaboration In Software Engineering Projects: A Theory Of Coordination

Coordination of engineering decisions is a central concern of software engineering. We present a theory in which coordination of engineering decisions is modeled as a distributed constraint satisfaction problem (DCSP). We derive six hypotheses, predicting how the distribution of decisions over developers and the density of constraints among decisions will affect development time, probability that a file contains a field defect, and developer productivity. We test these hypotheses using data from a commercial project. We find support for all hypotheses predicting detrimental effects from poor distribution of decisions over developers. The effects of constraint density were mixed, showing that dense constraints slowed development but did not significantly affect productivity. Dense data dependencies increased the chances that a file contained a field defect, but, very surprisingly, dense call dependencies significantly lowered the chances that a file contained a field defect. We discuss the implications of these findings

Collective Hermeneutics in a Systems Development Process

The inherent complexity of information systems development presents significant impediments to the achievement of shared meaning among the members of a development team. In addition to the technical requirements of systems development, its intensely social nature challenges project teams to unite around a collective understanding of the processes and objectives that they pursue. How then do software development teams resolve questions of shared meaning in the development process? In this study, we build upon observations of a large platform development team to identify the ways in which team members converge around shared meanings through a repertoire of interpretive techniques. Specifically, we develop a model of interpretive team interaction that is based on the concept of a collective hermeneutic process. The collective hermeneutic model extends the hermeneutic tradition in IS research by addressing the ways in which an interpretation takes shape not simply within the mind of an individual but also through collaboration with others. Finally, we discuss implications of this theoretical perspective for the design of systems development environments and the prospect for additional research on the interpretive processes of development teams

Software Development Process Ambidexterity and Project Performance: A Coordination Cost-Effectiveness View

Software development process ambidexterity (SDPA) is the ability to demonstrate both process alignment and process adaptability simultaneously. Realizing process ambidexterity has recently been suggested as an effective approach to improving the performance of software development (SD) projects. To understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of ambidexterity, we focus in this study on the mediating effects of coordination, one of the most important activity in SD projects. Specifically, we hypothesize a mediating effect of coordination costs and coordination effectiveness on the relationship between SDPA and project performance. We conducted a quantitative study involving 104 SD projects across 10 firms to test the model. The results strongly suggest that the positive relationship between SDPA and project performance is negatively mediated by coordination costs and positively mediated by coordination effectiveness. We validate our research model with a case study in an organization employing several hundred IT professionals and derive several practical implications on this basis

Design, implementation, and evaluation of an ICT-supported collaboration methodology for distributed requirements determination

As information systems development becomes more distributed, information and communication technology (ICT) has become crucial to overcome distance and to enable collaboration between system users and analysts. This study presents the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a new technology-supported collaborative methodology for requirements determination. The new ICT-supported methodology enables the elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation of requirements in a distributed environment. Its design follows the theoretical principles of Te’eni’s (2001) cognitiveaffective model of organizational communication for IT design and combines established methods as well as techniques for requirements identification, formulation, dependency determination, prioritization, and selection in a coherent and innovative way. The resulting prototype is professionally implemented and evaluated in an experiment. The experiment is the first to compare the performance of traditional ways of communication via interviews and document exchange with that of communication via an Internet-based collaboration platform for requirements determination. The results show that, both, the efficiency of the overall requirements determination process as well as the overall quality of the resulting requirements, are higher when using the new collaborative methodology. In terms of quality, efficiency, the user and analyst perspectives need to be distinguished. While the effort for requirements elicitation increases for the analysts, this up-front investment pays off in terms of significantly lower effort for the later specification and validation of requirements. In contrast, the users benefit in particular from lower effort during requirements elicitation and analysis

Rapid Software Development Life Cycle in Small Projects

Small software projects are becoming more usual nowadays. Whether a small project is conducted privately or professionally, the management of the project and its phases is much easier with proper tools and frameworks. The research target of this thesis is to find out a proper life cycle model for small software projects. This thesis is conducted for Softwarehouse, a professional division of IT services in the University of Turku. The official guide for Scrum framework is adhered in software development but when it comes to formally managing various phases of a software project (planning, design, implementation, testing, reviewing etc.) there is room for improvement. Managing software projects with a proper set of tools and procedures would be beneficial as Softwarehouse works on many projects concurrently. The intended life cycle model has to be formal and heavy enough so that the benefits of agile project management can be received. However too rigid a model can be too arduous and exhausting to use, which could result in the decrease of Softwarehouse’s production volume. Therefore the model has to be light enough to maintain rapid software development and creative atmosphere within the Softwarehouse. This thesis begins by giving outline of existing software development life cycle models and followed by relevant literary exploration. After this the research case is explained in greater detail. These give the foundation and rationale to propose a suitable model. The model is experimented empirically and reviewed by partaking personnel. The results are reviewed and discussed. Finally topics for future research are suggested