Market Offer For IKOR GMBH: Development of a business analysis to assess the usefulness of the Scaled Agile Framework for insurance companies

Internship Report presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementIt has been known for years that agile methods have a major role to play in project management. Increasingly, frameworks for agile scaling are becoming more popular and widespread. The Scaled Agile Framework is one of them. It enjoys great popularity in many industries. Therefore, IKOR has considered that a market offer is needed that exactly fulfils this need for its customers. These are mainly insurance customers, who are still a few years behind the digital transformation compared to other industries. In order to create a solution for this, IKOR decided that a market offer was needed that assessed whether SAFe was a useful framework for the insurance company to adopt and provided an assessment of how far along the insurance company was in adopting SAFe. This internship report was prepared to fulfil and document this task. During the development of the market offer, SAFe, business analysis, and the implementation of workshops were dealt with from a theoretical as well as a practical point of view. The result was a business analysis in form of a questionnaire, a workshop concept for conducting the workshop with the client and a recommendation made to the client on the current status of his insurance. After the exemplary implementation, the procedure and the results were evaluated and classified by experts. They gave additional advice on how to use and expand the market offer

Enabling Agile Environments - Software Tools Revisited with an Agile Mindset

Technology plays an increasing role in organisations and agile environments. The growing adoption of digital technology and the resulting unprecedented transformation of workplaces are potentially putting agile values and principles under attack. Agile mindset is a central aspect of agile concepts and embodies agile values and principles among other characteristics. In order to reconcile technology adoption and agile values, a framework is proposed which integrates agile mindset properties into software tool appropriation. The framework is based on information systems (IS) models of structuration and provides a means to translate implicit mindset properties into explicit actions performable by users. The research follows the design science research paradigm and utilises qualitative methods of data collection and analysis to create an artefact that was evaluated in practice

A Quality Framework for Software Development (QFSD)

INTRODUCTION. This research delivers a new complete and prescriptive software development framework, known as the Quality Framework for Software Development (QFSD) for immediate use by software development practitioners. Whilst there are a number of existing methodologies available, and many software development standards they fail to address the complete development lifecycle. A review of current literature supports this assertion. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES. The overall aim of the research is to create a new software development framework, applying it to a substantial number of real-world software projects in two different industrial software development environments and thereby demonstrating its effectiveness. METHODS. Based on a review of the available research approaches and strategies, the researcher selected 'pragmatism' as the most suitable for this research. This selection was driven by two contributory factors. The first was that in order to conduct the research the researcher would have active participation in the majority of the research activities. The second was that the deliverables from the research should be immediately useable for the benefit of software practitioners and hence not be regarded as a theoretical framework. The approach was further refined by adopting Action Research and Case Study strategies. The research was divided in to stages each of which was executed within separate companies. The companies were very different in terms of their business areas, culture and views on quality and specifically quality of software deliverables. RESULTS. The research findings provided a strong indication that a holistic software development framework does provide an improvement in software project deliverables quality and repeatability in terms of schedules and quality. In the case of Fisher–Rosemount it enabled them to attain ISO 9000/Ticket accreditation. In addition, by providing all processes and tools in a single web based environment the adoption by software developers, project managers and senior management was very high

Agile or non-agile, that is the question: designing a decision support system for an agile approach in software development projects

To know how to choose an approach to manage a software development project is essential to maximize the chances to achieve success. One of the great dilemmas we face nowadays concerns the option for an Agile or a traditional development methodology. There are several characteristics of software projects and the business environments in which they are performed that we must consider while choosing a suitable option. Although Agile development methodologies have been increasingly expanding and consolidating worldwide as effective ways of building software since the early 2000s, they are not a one-size-fits-all approach. When to use Agile and which methodology is most suitable are the great questions we aim to answer in this research. Through a comprehensive revision of the literature and an exploratory study with Agile practitioners, we explored and identified the main factors that favour the use of an Agile approach. We also unveiled the characteristics of software development projects and organisational environments that lead development teams to opt for one of the common Agile frameworks: Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, or Lean Software Development (LSD). Based on the results obtained, we conceived a conceptual model to support decision making and developed a prototype of an information system that implements this conceptual model. Our major goal in this study is to clarify what is important to consider in the choice of an Agile methodology and help the decision-maker selecting an appropriate development approach. The results of this research contribute to the literature related to processes of selection of software development methodologies, as well as to the diffusion of Agile within development teams and organisations with none or low degree of maturity in Agile, but interested in knowing more or adopting this development approach.Escolher uma abordagem adequada para gerenciar um projeto de desenvolvimento de software é essencial para maximizar as chances de se obter sucesso. Um dos grandes dilemas da atualidade diz respeito à opção por uma metodologia de desenvolvimento Agile ou tradicional. Existem diversas características dos projetos de software e dos ambientes organizacionais onde eles são executados que devemos considerar ao escolher uma opção apropriada. Embora as metodologias de desenvolvimento Agile venham se expandindo e consolidando mundialmente desde o início dos anos 2000 como soluções eficazes para se construir software, elas não se aplicam a todos os cenários de desenvolvimento. Quando usar Agile e qual das suas metodologias é a mais adequada são as grandes questões que pretendemos responder nesta investigação. Através de uma abrangente revisão de literatura e de um estudo exploratório com profissionais com experiência nas metodologias Agile, exploramos e identificamos os principais fatores que favorecem o uso de uma abordagem Agile. Também estudamos as características de projetos de desenvolvimento de software e de ambientes organizacionais que levam as equipas de desenvolvimento a optar por uma das suas metodologias mais comuns: Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban ou Lean Software Development (LSD). Com base nos resultados obtidos, concebemos um modelo conceitual para apoiar a tomada de decisão e desenvolvemos um protótipo de um sistema que implementa tal modelo conceitual. Nosso principal objetivo é esclarecer o que é importante considerar na escolha de uma metodologia Agile e ajudar o tomador de decisão a selecionar uma opção adequada. Os resultados desta investigação enriquecem a literatura voltada para os métodos de seleção de processos de desenvolvimento de software, e contribuem para a difusão do Agile entre as equipas de desenvolvimento e as organizações com nenhum ou baixo grau de maturidade em Agile, mas que estejam interessadas em conhecer mais ou adotar esta abordagem de desenvolvimento

Software process improvement as emergent change: a structurational analysis

This thesis differs from the technological perspective of SPI by identifying and analysing the organisational features of process improvement. A theoretical understanding is developed of how and why software process improvements occur and what are the consequences of the change process within a specific case. A packaged information systems organisation forms the basis for a substantive case study. Adding to the growing body of qualitative research, the study takes a critical hermeneutic perspective. In doing so it overcomes some of the criticisms of the interpretive studies especially the need for the research to be reflexive in nature. By looking at SPI as an emergent rather than deterministic activity, the design and action of the change process are shown to be intertwined and shaped by their context. This understanding is based upon a structurational perspective that highlights how the process improvements are enabled and constrained by their context. The work builds on the recent recognition that the improvements can be understood from an organisational learning perspective. Fresh insights to the improvement process are developed by recognising the role of the individual to facilitate or resist the improvement. The understanding gained here can be applied by organisations to enable them to improve the effectiveness of their SPI programmes, and so improve the quality of their software. Lessons are derived that show how software organisations can support the ongoing improvement through recognition of the learning and political aspects of the change by adopting an agile approach to SPI

Modelling Security Requirements Through Extending Scrum Agile Development Framework

Security is today considered as a basic foundation in software development and therefore, the modelling and implementation of security requirements is an essential part of the production of secure software systems. Information technology organisations are moving towards agile development methods in order to satisfy customers' changing requirements in light of accelerated evolution and time restrictions with their competitors in software production. Security engineering is considered difficult in these incremental and iterative methods due to the frequency of change, integration and refactoring. The objective of this work is to identify and implement practices to extend and improve agile methods to better address challenges presented by security requirements consideration and management. A major practices is security requirements capture mechanisms such as UMLsec for agile development processes. This thesis proposes an extension to the popular Scrum framework by adopting UMLsec security requirements modelling techniques with the introduction of a Security Owner role in the Scrum framework to facilitate such modelling and security requirements considerations generally. The methodology involved experimentation of the inclusion of UMLsec and the Security Owner role to determine their impact on security considerations in the software development process. The results showed that overall security requirements consideration improved and that there was a need for an additional role that has the skills and knowledge to facilitate and realise the benefits of the addition of UMLsec

Positioning emergent professional learning as catalyst for meaning making in agile work praxis

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 added new urgency to the evolution of a knowledge landscape rethink. Knowledge creators, consumers and facilitators had to function in an unfamiliar, complex and challenging context. The realisation that contemporary knowledge formation, actuality and continuation were fast becoming obsolete required learning institutions to reinvent the rubrics of knowledge creation, which requires a radical change in the knowledge economy characterised by enablement, organic co-construction, fluidity and new meaning making in a future of Agile operation and education facilitation. This thesis explores one of the myriad challenges faced by contemporary knowledge organisations. Novel views of meaning making lead to a proposed model that could serve as a catalyst for Emergent Professional Learning (EPL). EPL is positioned in the discipline of learning facilitation with the intent to propagate a new thinking methodology regarding the establishment of sustainable, progressive knowledge commodities. It establishes a full-fledged, integrated co-constructive approach that presents itself living within a broadly established knowledge base framework that aim to identify new creative and encouraging initiatives within the transforming knowledge creation structures of postmodern knowledge organisations. This study is founded on an transdisciplinary epistemological research method that will explore theorems that may enable EPL. This research challenge evokes fresh and challenging grand narratives as the researcher attempts to use and deploy a variety of epistemologically grounded research methodologies. According to Leibold, Probst and Gibbert (2015), it has become progressively clear to the researcher that South Africa's economic crisis and political climate is not conducive to curriculum development and design sustainability. Additionally, the present pandemic has an impact on and demands the creation of enhanced Agile learning. As such, the researcher purposefully builds on and refers to Leipold et al.’s seminal work on meaning making and knowledge transfer in order to establish a formal epistemological foundation for addressing the complexities of South African emergent professional learning challenges in the pursuit of Agile practice. It is argued that new forms of human capital are now needed to manifest the intellectual capacity through mobilising the facilitation of knowledge generating catalysts, envisioning the possibility of creating antifragile EPL attributes. It is proposed that knowledge-driven institutions are urged to identify new leadership characteristics to yield and reconstruct these innovative meaning making solutions into knowledge activities, thereby positioning environments that allow socialising, transfer and construction of the future landscape of learning facilitation. The research results indicate that the ideal solution for future knowledge-driven institutions would be one where leadership understands the paramount importance of knowledge and then nurtures its source: the knowledge worker. The new role for leadership is that of coachers and facilitators who invite knowledge workers to co-define the knowledge intent of the organisation and who encourage co-operation through multi-lateral communication and codetermination. The collaborative relationship between the knowledge worker and leadership is therefore crucial to establish formal communities of practice. It is pivotal for organisations to position and foster these formal knowledge communities as a the process of continuous reinvention and enable the meaning making shifts that are essential to drive new EPL. Formal knowledge-sharing establishments should facilitate progressive mindsets aligned to encourage psychological responsibility, ownership and custodianship of new meaning making, where all role players are inextricably interlinked on an integral scale, rapidly changing the future workspace within an ecological thinking framework. These insights prompted the formulation of a EPL framework that transcends the traditional knowledge establishment criterion through the application of intellective influencers, complemented by the inclusion and merging of human ontogeny (M1-3). The actualisation and application of the newly composed EPL framework positions itself as a malleable, principle-based approach that could render knowledge creation designs uniquely crafted to stimulate the exploration of future meaning making. New ways must be found to meet future educational challenges and modes of facilitating learning that could support the content designer to deal with new, unprecedented conditions – “Liquid Modernity” – and to position EPL so as to establish Liquid Modernity as a pan disciplinary insight for the next generation of academic curriculum development and design (Caldwell and Henry, 2020; Bouman, 2013). This thesis endeavours to offer an alternative vision of sensemaking regarding the future, where knowledge transfer organisations can apply EPL as an alternative tool for co-designing the learning curriculum. This will require transformational leaders who are willing to search for new ways to anticipate the future of knowledge design.Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2021.Humanities EducationPhDUnrestricte

Understanding Scaled Agile Framework Coordination Methods for Reducing Failure Rates

As organizationsâ software needs continue to increase, software development failure rates parallel and directly threaten organizationsâ wellbeing and viability. The purpose of this qualitative exploratory single case study was to understand the methods and relationships impacted by coordination during a transformation to the scaled agile framework. The research question was designed to explore how large organizations transforming to scaled agile frameworks use coordination methods to support software and systems engineers to potentially improve the success of implementation. This was an exploratory single case study of a global aerospace organization. Data collected included historical organization documents, casual field observations, and semi-structured interviews with a cross-section of 12 engineers and managers regarding coordination experiences to understand the methods and relationships impacted by coordination. The conceptual framework included von Bertalanffy\u27s general system theory and Malone\u27s coordination theory. Five key themes emerged through thematic analysis of textual data and transcript analysis: effective-efficient performance, knowledge transfer, transformational leadership, cross-boundary, and cognitive diversity. This research identified problem factors, including efficient and effective coordination methods, knowledge transfer, changing mindset, and cultural shift. This study contributes to positive social change for organizations transforming to the scaled agile framework through an enhanced understanding of factors involved with successful implementation, providing psychosocial reinforcement to employees and management while increasing performance that supports an organizationâs financial objectives

User experience design and agile development : integration as an on-going achievement in practice

This research investigates how Agile development is combined with User Experience (UX) design. Agile development and UX design have roots in different disciplines and practitioners have to reconcile their perspectives on developing software if they are to work together. To date, there has been no sustained academic study on how Agile developers and UX designers work together in practical settings on a day-to-day basis. The ethnographically-informed research in this dissertation consists of three studies of teams in organisational settings, combined with an analysis of accounts of Agile development and UX design practice found in the literature. Together, they provide evidence for the complex, multifaceted nature of the work that integrates Agile development with UX design. The studies of day-to-day practice conducted for this research, found the work of the Agile developers and UX designers to be localised, contingent and purposeful. Agile devolopment and UX design integration, as it was achieved in the teams studied, was negotiated and achieved on a day-to-day basis between the developers and designers. The findings from the analysis of accounts of practice from the literature show that integration is achieved with the right tools, techniques and processes that coordinate between the tasks of the developers and designers and establish a focus on usability and on releasing working software. However, the accounts contain little and conflicting evidence for what constitutes the day-to-day work of Agile developers and UX designers in practical settings and as a result the utility of tools, techniques and processes for practice is not clear. Informed by the findings from the accounts in the literature and the studies of practice, five facets emerged as integral to an understanding of how the integration of Agile development and UX design is an on-going achievement in practice. These facets are (1) focus and coordination, (2) mutual awareness, (3) expectations about acceptable behaviour, (4) negotiating progress and (5) engaging with each other. The extent to which these facets enable integration, depend on contextual values concerning the combination of Agile development and UX design endorsed in the organisation. These findings serve to establish conditions which can constrain and enable Agile developers and UX designers in their integration work, while being sympathetic to the values embedded in the settings in which they work

Resilience and Adaptive Capacity in Hospital Teams

Introduction Resilient Healthcare, a field derived from Resilience Engineering, provides a set of theoretical principles for understanding quality and safety in complex systems. So far, these principles have been used to capture individual, departmental, and organisational proactive responses to variable conditions and how this flexibility, involving anticipating, monitoring, responding, learning, and coordinating, contributes to safety. Empirical exploration of Resilient Healthcare has primarily taken place in specific healthcare settings such as emergency departments and surgery, with specific activities such as flow procedures, anaesthesia, blood transfusion, nurse handover, electronic charting, and patient discharge. Understanding healthcare work beyond these limited settings and activities is important, as most patient encounters in the hospital occur in ward settings beyond surgery and emergency care. The role of the team in flexible adaptation also needs to be explored, as effective teamwork is widely recognised as a contributor to healthcare safety.Healthcare teams are diverse and their need for adaptive capacity, the challenges they face, and their ability to coordinate are also likely to be different. Current research on healthcare teams involves teams that are easily defined, such as resuscitation teams, surgical teams, or teams in a simulation lab. Thus, the full range of healthcare teams and their capacity to adapt has not yet been captured. To better understand how to improve teamwork and safety, we must first understand how teams are already adapting to variable conditions in complex organisations. This includes aspects such as the clinical and organisational challenges they face, the dynamics of the team, how flexible teamworking can be supported, as well as more broadly understanding and categorising the different types of teams that exist in healthcare. Aims and objectives The aim of this PhD was to investigate how adaptive capacity is hindered or supported by organisational and contextual factors in different types of hospital teams.The study objectives were to: 1. Review the concept of adaptive teamwork, synthesising available cross-disciplinary research, clarifying key definitions, and identifying factors that might impact team adaptive capacity 2. Develop an empirically derived typology for classifying types of hospital teams based on their structure, membership, and function3. Identify the misalignments, adaptions, pressures, and trade-off decisions of hospital teams in practice 4. Understand differences between types of hospital teams, both in the misalignments and pressures they experience and in the adaptations and trade-off decisions they make, using mixed qualitative methods in two hospitals in England Methods The study was conducted in three phases: - Phase 1: A scoping review of adaptive teamwork Phase one involved a scoping literature review to systematically map existing research on adaptive teamwork and to identify gaps in knowledge. The primary research question was: What do we know about the structure and function of adaptive teams in practice? - Phase 2: Theory development Phase two involved analysis of data previously collected by the larger research team to better understand work-as-done and team structure in hospital teams. The data included 88.5 hours of hospital ethnography on five different hospital wards. An inductive-deductive approach to data analysis was undertaken. - Phase 3: A case study of adaptive teamwork in England Phase three consisted of data collection in two hospitals situated within one Trust (one large and one community hospital), with five teams per hospital (two total teams of each type). In total, 144 hours and 54 minutes of ethnography were completed across the two hospitals and 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The overarching aim of the case study was to investigate how adaptive capacity is hindered or supported by organisational and contextual factors in different types of teams. This phase was conducted in a directed rather than exploratory way, building on the data from phase two and increasing the depth of understanding of all five team types. In this phase, both interview and observational data were analysed using the typology and two frameworks produced in phase two. The England case study will eventually contribute to a comparative, cross-country analysis to synthesise and compare findings between countries and healthcare systems (Anderson, Aase, et al., 2020). Ethics and dissemination The overall Resilience in Healthcare research programme that this study is part of has been granted ethical approval by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (Ref.No. 8643334). Ethical approval to conduct the study in England was granted through King’s College London Research Ethics Office (LRS/DP-21/22-26055). HRA REC approval was 10also granted (22/HRA/1621; IRAS 312079). A research passport was obtained, and letter of access received from local Trust R&D.Results The phase one scoping review included 204 documents and mapped their geographies, fields, settings, and designs. Terminology used to describe elements of the adaptive process were compared. A new conceptualisation of the team adaptive cycle was proposed, along with a new definition for team adaptive capacity. Future opportunities for research were proposed, including the opportunity to study adaptive teams in situ and to consider differences in team adaptive capacity based on unique team features. The second phase of the study resulted in the conceptualisation of: a typology of healthcare teams (paper under review), the Concepts for Applying Resilience Engineering Model 2.0 (published paper), and the Pressures Diagram (published paper). Building on this, the third phase suggested that teams’ adaptive strategies varied based on team type, although demand-capacity misalignments occurred across all team types, suggesting that team type impacts adaptive capacity. While adaptations supported teams’ abilities to overcome misalignments, they also required resources and were more or less possible depending on team type. Likewise, while pressures occurred across all team types, trade-off decisions varied depending on the team type. These findings have implications for team training, workforce planning, and resourcing, and can inform future work that aims to strengthen adaptive capacity and teamworking.Conclusions Overall, this thesis makes unique and important contributions to the literature on both resilient healthcare and adaptive teamwork. It has developed multiple new practical and theoretical models and typologies that have subsequently been used internationally in research. A novel approach combining teamwork and resilient healthcare theory was used successfully to understand and compare healthcare misalignments, adaptations, pressures, and trade-offs in five different team types. The finding that adaptive strategies and trade-off decisions differ based on team type challenges existing teamwork improvement practices, which take a one-size-fits-all approach to conceptualising and training teams. The results provide foundational knowledge to guide future intervention design, which may potentially bring about wider changes in training and sustaining successful teams and supporting their adaptive capacity