XP customer practices: A grounded theory

The Customer is a critical role in XP, but almost all XP practices are presented for developers by developers. While XP calls for Real Customer Involvement, it does not explain what XP Customers should do, nor how they should do it. Using Grounded Theory, we discovered eight customer practices used by successful XP teams: Customer Boot Camp, Customer’s Apprentice, Customer Pairing, and Programmer’s Holiday support the well-being and effectiveness of customers; Programmer On-site and Road shows support team and organization interactions; and Big Picture Up Front and Re-calibration support Customers steering the whole project. By adopting these processes, XP Customers and teams can work faster and more sustainably

Technical Debt Prioritization: State of the Art. A Systematic Literature Review

Background. Software companies need to manage and refactor Technical Debt issues. Therefore, it is necessary to understand if and when refactoring Technical Debt should be prioritized with respect to developing features or fixing bugs. Objective. The goal of this study is to investigate the existing body of knowledge in software engineering to understand what Technical Debt prioritization approaches have been proposed in research and industry. Method. We conducted a Systematic Literature Review among 384 unique papers published until 2018, following a consolidated methodology applied in Software Engineering. We included 38 primary studies. Results. Different approaches have been proposed for Technical Debt prioritization, all having different goals and optimizing on different criteria. The proposed measures capture only a small part of the plethora of factors used to prioritize Technical Debt qualitatively in practice. We report an impact map of such factors. However, there is a lack of empirical and validated set of tools. Conclusion. We observed that technical Debt prioritization research is preliminary and there is no consensus on what are the important factors and how to measure them. Consequently, we cannot consider current research conclusive and in this paper, we outline different directions for necessary future investigations

Analyzing the concept of technical debt in the context of agile software development: A systematic literature review

Technical debt (TD) is a metaphor that is used to communicate the consequences of poor software development practices to non-technical stakeholders. In recent years, it has gained significant attention in agile software development (ASD). The purpose of this study is to analyze and synthesize the state of the art of TD, and its causes, consequences, and management strategies in the context of ASD. Using a systematic literature review (SLR), 38 primary studies, out of 346 studies, were identified and analyzed. We found five research areas of interest related to the literature of TD in ASD. Among those areas, managing TD in ASD received the highest attention, followed by architecture in ASD and its relationship with TD. In addition, eight categories regarding the causes and five categories regarding the consequences of incurring TD in ASD were identified. Focus on quick delivery and architectural and design issues were the most popular causes of incurring TD in ASD. Reduced productivity, system degradation and increased maintenance cost were identified as significant consequences of incurring TD in ASD. Additionally, we found 12 strategies for managing TD in the context of ASD, out of which refactoring and enhancing the visibility of TD were the most significant. The results of this study provide a structured synthesis of TD and its management in the context of ASD as well as potential research areas for further investigation

Exploring Organizations\u27 Software Quality Assurance Strategies

Poor software quality leads to lost profits and even loss of life. U.S. organizations lose billions of dollars annually because of poor software quality. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies that quality assurance (QA) leaders in small software development organizations used for successful software quality assurance (SQA) processes. A case study provided the best research design to allow for the exploration of organizational and managerial processes. The target population group was the QA leaders of 3 small software development organizations who successfully implemented SQA processes, located in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was total quality management (TQM) established by Deming in 1980. Face-to-face semistructured interviews with 2 QA leaders from each organization and documentation including process and training materials provided all the data for analysis. NVivo software aided a qualitative analysis of all collected data using a process of disassembling the data into common codes, reassembling the data into themes, interpreting the meaning, and concluding the data. The resulting major themes were Agile practices, documentation, testing, and lost profits. The results were in contrast to the main themes discovered in the literature review, although there was some overlap. The implications for positive social change include the potential to provide QA leaders with the strategies to improve SQA processes, thereby allowing for improved profits, contributing to the organizations\u27 longevity in business, and strengthening the local economy

Hitting the Bullseye: The Influence of Technical Debt on the Accuracy of Effort Estimation in Agile Projects

As firms rapidly develop solutions in order to increase revenue and market share, software development decisions considered to be temporary shortcuts and/or compromises may be implemented. These shortcuts represent “technical debt,” a metaphor which succinctly describes a software solution that should be “paid in full” or remediated in the future. Software architects and developers intend to resolve the “debt” in future product releases, but practitioners recognize that the challenge of always innovating may indefinitely postpone this remediation effort. Further, the accumulation of technical debt may have long term impact on the product’s maintainability by the software development teams and, consequently, impact the effort estimate delivered to management for forecasting product delivery timelines and product revenue expectations. While there are multiple publications that have studied effort estimation in traditional and agile software development strategies, there is limited research which considers technical debt during the estimation effort. As a result, the purpose of this dissertation is to design and propose a research model intended to determine whether or not the consideration of technical debt during the effort estimation process will improve the accuracy of the effort estimate in an agile project

Scrum in Practice: an Overview of Scrum Adaptations

Agile software development practices have gained widespread acceptance and application across all industries. Scrum, as one of the most widely used agile methods, has been adopted in countless organizations. However, while there is an understanding that practitioners rarely apply Scrum by the book , only little research addresses the actual adaptations and modifications that are made to fit Scrum to real world requirements: whether it is to solve methodological drawbacks, to fit the method to specific contextual constraint, or to add additional value to the method by augmentation or combination with other tools and methods. To get an overview of the proposed adaptations and their implications, this study presents a systematic review of literature reporting on challenges and motivations that lead to modifications of the Scrum method. Based on 31 relevant studies we extract seven distinct motivations for modifying Scrum, as well as six generic solution strategies to adapt the method

How to get away with technical debt: An explorative multiple-case study on autonomous teams and technical debt management

Technical debt (TD) is constantly accumulating throughout software development processes. In many autonomous teams this technical debt will damage and injure the process, prohibiting them from adding new functionalities to their products. Tech companies must therefore understand how they can manage TD to avoid getting stuck fixing bad code. In the research on technical debt management (TDM), there seems to be a lack of empirical studies that examine how TD is managed in autonomous teams. Some frameworks are developed with the purpose of investigating TDM but lack the empirical validation and reliability. This study investigates how autonomous teams actively manage technical debt, by conducting a multiple-case study in a Norwegian fintech company. The teams are studied by utilizing the TDM framework, measuring autonomous teams’ degree of maturity within different TDM activities in order to understand their current state of practice and how to further improve these. The study found that all autonomous teams practiced TDM, but to various extents. Some teams had structured processes, while others had no clear strategies. Most of the teams were ranked with what the framework call “received level of maturity”, and conducted TDM activities occasionally based on their current needs. The study also found challenges related to the TDM frameworks maturity levels relation to TDM success, and identified that TDM activities ranked as highly mature did not necessarily translate into higher TDM success. The study identified a need for the TDM framework to be further empirically tested and iterated on for it to work as a an accurate tool for understanding and improving autonomous teams’ TDM processes. Keywords: agile software development, autonomous teams, technical debt, technical debt management, case stud