Does maturity level influence the use of agile UX methods by digital startups? Evaluating design thinking, lean startup, and lean user experience

Context: Agile UX methods such as Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Lean User Experience have been employed to deliver customer value and improve organizational performance. However, there is a lack of studies that assess how these tools are used at different stages of maturity of digital startups. Objective: The present study aims to compare the knowledge of graduated, incubated, and pre-incubated digital startups at university incubators concerning the use of Agile UX methods so that weaknesses and opportunities can be identified to provide co founders and scholars with new strategic insights. Method: Six reduced focus groups were conducted with 14 members of the six selected startups via multiple case studies. Answers were registered by researchers and then analyzed using an inductive process and codification. Results: The results indicated that digital startups had contact with consumers through market research, viability analysis, and product discontinuity. However, except for one startup, deficiencies in co-founders’ participation throughout developing products and services projects were identified. As far as the multiple case studies are concerned, Design Thinking and Lean Startup were employed by four of the startups, while two of them used the Lean User Experience method due to its higher maturity level. Conclusion: Although all Agile UX methods were employed, all six digital startups reported having made adaptations to the methods or to have used them only partially. Finally, it was concluded that the maturity level influences the Agile UX methods of each digital startup according to its nature and its stage of development in the market.Campus Lima Centr

Identifying Agile Requirements Engineering Patterns in Industry

Agile Software Development (ASD) is gaining in popularity in today´s business world. Industry is adopting agile methodologies both to accelerate value delivery and to enhance the ability to deal with changing requirements. However, ASD has a great impact on how Requirements Engineering (RE) is carried out in agile environments. The integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) plays an important role due to the focus on user and stakeholder involvement. To this end, we aim to introduce agile RE patterns as main objective of this paper. On the one hand, we will describe our pattern mining process based on empirical research in literature and industry. On the other hand, we will discuss our results and provide two examples of agile RE patterns. In sum, the pattern mining process identifies 41 agile RE patterns. The accumulated knowledge will be shared by means of a web application.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice: The Agile Research Network

We report an action research-oriented approach to investigating agile project management methods which aims to bridge the gap between academic research and agile practice. We have set up a research network of academics from two universities, through which we run focussed project-based research into agile methods. Organisations are invited to suggest an ‘agile challenge’ and we work closely with them to investigate how challenge affects them. Our approach is both academic and practical. We use appropriate research methods such as interviews, observation and discussion to clarify and explore the nature of the challenge. We then undertake a detailed literature review to identify practical approaches that may be appropriate for adoption, and report our findings. If the organisation introduces new practices or approaches as a result of our work, we conduct an academic evaluation. Alternatively, if we uncover an under-researched area, we propose undertaking some basic research. As befits the topic, we work iteratively and incrementally and produce regular outputs. In this paper we introduce our approach, overview research methods used in the agile research literature, describe our research model, outline a case study, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our approach. We discuss the importance of producing outputs that are accessible to practitioners as well as researchers. Findings suggest that by investigating the challenges that organisations propose, we uncover problems that are of real relevance to the agile community and obtain rich insights into the facilitators and barriers that organisations face when using agile methods. Additionally, we find that practitioners are interested in research results as long as publications are relevant to their needs and are written accessibly. We are satisfied with the basic structure of our approach, but we anticipate that the method will evolve as we continue to work with collaborators

Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review

Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out. We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

The Contemporary Understanding of User Experience in Practice

User Experience (UX) has been a buzzword in agile literature in recent years. However, often UX remains as a vague concept and it may be hard to understand the very nature of it in the context of agile software development. This paper explores the multifaceted UX literature, emphasizes the multi-dimensional nature of the concept and organizes the current state-of-the-art knowledge. As a starting point to better understand the contemporary meaning of UX assigned by practitioners, we selected four UX blogs and performed an analysis using a framework derived from the literature review. The preliminary results show that the practitioners more often focus on interaction between product and user and view UX from design perspective predominantly. While the economical perspective receives little attention in literature, it is evident in practitioners writings. Our study opens up a promising line of request of the contemporary meaning of UX in practice.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, 3 table

Agile values and their implementation in practice

Today agile approaches are often used for the development of digital products. Since their development in the 90s, Agile Methodologies, such as Scrum and Extreme Programming, have evolved. Team collaboration is strongly influenced by the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. The values and principles described in the Agile Manifesto support the optimization of the development process. In this article, the current operation is analyzed in Agile Product Development Processes. Both, the cooperation in the project team and the understanding of the roles and tasks will be analyzed. The results are set in relation to the best practices of Agile Methodologies. A quantitative questionnaire related to best practices in Agile Product Development was developed. The study was carried out with 175 interdisciplinary participants from the IT industry. For the evaluation of the results, 93 participants were included who have expertise in the subject area Agile Methodologies. On one hand, it is shown that the collaborative development of product-related ideas brings benefits. On the other hand, it is investigated which effect a good understanding of the product has on decisions made during the implementation. Furthermore, the skillset of product managers, the use of pair programming, and the advantages of cross-functional teams are analyzed.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Enterprise Experience into the Integration of Human-Centered Design and Kanban

he integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Agile Software Development (ASD) promises the development of competitive products comprising a good User Experience (UX). This study has investigated the integration of HCD and Kanban with the aim to gain industrial experiences in a real world context. A case study showed that requirements flow into the development process in a structured manner by adding a design board. To this end, the transparency concerning recurring requirements increased. We contribute to the body of knowledge of software development by providing practical insights into Human-Centered Agile Development (HCAD). On one hand, it is shown that the integration of HCD and Kanban leads to a product with a good UX and makes the development process more human-centered. On the other hand, we conclude that a cross-functional collaboration speeds up product development.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

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