Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2020, which was planned to be held during June 8-12, 2020, at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was postponed until an undetermined date. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a hybrid forum where agile researchers, academics, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. Following this history, for both researchers and seasoned practitioners XP 2020 provided an informal environment to network, share, and discover trends in Agile for the next 20 years. The 14 full and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile adoption; agile practices; large-scale agile; the business of agile; and agile and testing

Coaching culture model as a driver for a successful team management

Current fast-paced environment challenges companies to shift the focus of business away from control, power and micromanagement towards personal and professional progression by learning and upskilling practices, as well as nurturing leadership competencies, in order to stay competitive. Coaching has been considered a practice that enables businesses to facilitate growth, assist learning, thus getting to a safe environment pushing self-confidence, mutual support, creativity, multicultural communication. Yet, there is a lack of clarity on what coaching represents as a phenomenon, as well as how exactly companies can benefit from it and, if they can, which formats are the most efficient in which cases. Moreover, it is not enough to develop and implement a set of separate coaching practices - in order to see the qualitative outcomes, coaching culture model should be developed and applied. Therefore, this study takes a step forward in the understanding of coaching culture framework, develop a coaching culture model and see how it can be useful within the corporate environment. Theoretical base for this research consists of coaching theories by Whitmore, Bachkirova, Cox, Clutterbuck, Jakonen, Vesso, Alas as well as other authors, such as Wolf, Rosha, Lace etc. who studied factors impacting coaching process and its outcomes. Change management models by Lewin and others are used for coaching culture model implementation planning. The empirical analysis was made with qualitative research. The case company participating in the research went through the company-wide questionnaire, while a few team members completed the semi-structured interviews. The activities were made before and after the coaching culture model was implemented in the company. The conclusion of the study is that coaching culture model has a positive effect on the team management process. The final version of the model ensures that by addressing the following aspects: having structured processes towards agile and team metrics’ establishments (Objectives and Key Results, Key Performance Indicators etc.), waterfalling practices from the leadership team as the starting point and towards the rest of the teams, making sure applied practices are customized for each particular team to ensure its full efficiency, encouraging commitment and engagement, thus boosting employees’ potential. These results are discussed by formulating the theoretical and practical implications of the research, limitations and suggestions for further research on the topic

Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering

Get the most out of this foundational reference and improve the productivity of your software teams. This open access book collects the wisdom of the 2017 "Dagstuhl" seminar on productivity in software engineering, a meeting of community leaders, who came together with the goal of rethinking traditional definitions and measures of productivity. The results of their work, Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering, includes chapters covering definitions and core concepts related to productivity, guidelines for measuring productivity in specific contexts, best practices and pitfalls, and theories and open questions on productivity. You'll benefit from the many short chapters, each offering a focused discussion on one aspect of productivity in software engineering. Readers in many fields and industries will benefit from their collected work. Developers wanting to improve their personal productivity, will learn effective strategies for overcoming common issues that interfere with progress. Organizations thinking about building internal programs for measuring productivity of programmers and teams will learn best practices from industry and researchers in measuring productivity. And researchers can leverage the conceptual frameworks and rich body of literature in the book to effectively pursue new research directions. What You'll Learn Review the definitions and dimensions of software productivity See how time management is having the opposite of the intended effect Develop valuable dashboards Understand the impact of sensors on productivity Avoid software development waste Work with human-centered methods to measure productivity Look at the intersection of neuroscience and productivity Manage interruptions and context-switching Who Book Is For Industry developers and those responsible for seminar-style courses that include a segment on software developer productivity. Chapters are written for a generalist audience, without excessive use of technical terminology. ; Collects the wisdom of software engineering thought leaders in a form digestible for any developer Shares hard-won best practices and pitfalls to avoid An up to date look at current practices in software engineering productivit

MODIFICATIONS AND INNOVATIONS TO TECHNOLOGY ARTIFACTS

What happens to a technology artifact after it is adopted? It has to evolve within its particular context to be effective; if it doesn’t, it will become part of the detritus of change, like the many genes without a discernible function in a living organism. In this paper, we report on a study of post-adoption technology behavior that examined how users modified and innovated with technology artifacts. We uncovered three types of changes conducted to technology artifacts: personalization, customization, and inventions. Personalization attempts are modifications involving changes to technology parameters to meet the specificities of the user; customizing attempts occur to adapt the technology parameters to meet the specificities of the user’s environment; and inventions are exaptations conducted to the technology artifact. The paper presents a grounded theoretic analysis of the post-adoption evolution based in-depth interviews with 20 software engineers in one multi-national organization. We identify a life-cycle model that connects the various types of modifications conducted to technology artifacts. The life-cycle model elaborates on how individual and organizational dynamics are linked to diffusion of innovations. While the research is still in progress and the post-adoption evolution model has to be refined, the research has significant value in understanding the full life-cycle of adoption of technological artifacts and how is maximum value derived from them

An Exploration of the Use of Gamification in Agile Software Development

Although Project Management has existed for many millennia, software project management is relatively new. As a discipline, software project management is considered difficult. The reasons for this include that software development is non-deterministic; opaque and delivered under ever-increasing time pressure in a volatile environment. Evolving from Incremental and Iterative Development (IID), Agile methodologies have attempted to address these issues by focusing on frequent delivery; working closely with the customer; being responsive to change and preferring working software to extensive documentation. This focus on delivery rather than documentation has sometimes been misrepresented as no documentation, which has led to a shortfall in project metrics. Gamification has its roots in motivation. The aim of gamification is to persuade users to behave in a manner set out by the designer of the gamification. This is achieved by adding game mechanics or elements from games into non-game applications. This dissertation examines the use of gamification in Agile projects and includes an empirical experiment that examines the use of gamification on Agile project tracking. Project tracking is an element of software engineering that acts as a de-motivator for software engineers. Software Engineers are highly motivated by independence and growth, while project tracking is seen as boring work. The dissertation experiment identifies a methodology for applying gamification experiments and then implements an experiment. The result was an overall improvement in project tracking. The experiment needs to be expanded to be run over a longer period of time and a more varied group of development teams

Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering

Get the most out of this foundational reference and improve the productivity of your software teams. This open access book collects the wisdom of the 2017 "Dagstuhl" seminar on productivity in software engineering, a meeting of community leaders, who came together with the goal of rethinking traditional definitions and measures of productivity. The results of their work, Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering, includes chapters covering definitions and core concepts related to productivity, guidelines for measuring productivity in specific contexts, best practices and pitfalls, and theories and open questions on productivity. You'll benefit from the many short chapters, each offering a focused discussion on one aspect of productivity in software engineering. Readers in many fields and industries will benefit from their collected work. Developers wanting to improve their personal productivity, will learn effective strategies for overcoming common issues that interfere with progress. Organizations thinking about building internal programs for measuring productivity of programmers and teams will learn best practices from industry and researchers in measuring productivity. And researchers can leverage the conceptual frameworks and rich body of literature in the book to effectively pursue new research directions. What You'll Learn Review the definitions and dimensions of software productivity See how time management is having the opposite of the intended effect Develop valuable dashboards Understand the impact of sensors on productivity Avoid software development waste Work with human-centered methods to measure productivity Look at the intersection of neuroscience and productivity Manage interruptions and context-switching Who Book Is For Industry developers and those responsible for seminar-style courses that include a segment on software developer productivity. Chapters are written for a generalist audience, without excessive use of technical terminology. ; Collects the wisdom of software engineering thought leaders in a form digestible for any developer Shares hard-won best practices and pitfalls to avoid An up to date look at current practices in software engineering productivit