Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects. Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. Method: The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. Results: The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. Conclusion: It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Are Delayed Issues Harder to Resolve? Revisiting Cost-to-Fix of Defects throughout the Lifecycle

Many practitioners and academics believe in a delayed issue effect (DIE); i.e. the longer an issue lingers in the system, the more effort it requires to resolve. This belief is often used to justify major investments in new development processes that promise to retire more issues sooner. This paper tests for the delayed issue effect in 171 software projects conducted around the world in the period from 2006--2014. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study yet published on this effect. We found no evidence for the delayed issue effect; i.e. the effort to resolve issues in a later phase was not consistently or substantially greater than when issues were resolved soon after their introduction. This paper documents the above study and explores reasons for this mismatch between this common rule of thumb and empirical data. In summary, DIE is not some constant across all projects. Rather, DIE might be an historical relic that occurs intermittently only in certain kinds of projects. This is a significant result since it predicts that new development processes that promise to faster retire more issues will not have a guaranteed return on investment (depending on the context where applied), and that a long-held truth in software engineering should not be considered a global truism.Comment: 31 pages. Accepted with minor revisions to Journal of Empirical Software Engineering. Keywords: software economics, phase delay, cost to fi

CHARTING PROGRESS IN THE SOFTWARE ACQUISITION PATHWAY

The Department of the Navy (DON) recently implemented the Department of Defense (DOD) Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP), a software acquisition strategy for custom application and embedded software. The purpose of the SWP is to enable rapid and iterative delivery of high-priority software capability to the intended user. But while the SWP uses an agile software development approach, neither the DOD nor the DON have yet provided comprehensive governance tools and methods for SWP programs to iteratively plan, track, and assess acquisition outcomes in agile environments. To close this gap, the author systematically researched commercial software engineering management and digital product development practices as well as prior DOD software acquisition reform studies. Based on the results, the author showed that Earned Value Management is incompatible with the SWP and recommended alternative techniques to measure cost and schedule performance. Additionally, the author recommended a phased approach to manage DON SWP custom application programs, whereby a minimal, unitless work breakdown structure is used to track progress until demonstrating the minimum viable product to the user in a testing environment; product-based metrics are then tracked until initial release of the custom application software; and then outcome-based goals are iteratively set, tracked, and assessed using the Objectives and Key Results framework for as long as the custom application software is in use.Captain, United States Air ForceApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

The Impact of Customer Collaboration on Agile Product Development Success in Technology Startups Within the Pacific Northwest

While agile software development is being adopted in more organizations recently, many products using the methodology are still failing in the market due to inadequate customer collaboration despite the purported benefits. Within start-ups, where speed and early market penetration can be the death or success of a company, understanding if using agile software development including adequate customer collaboration makes a significant difference is important. A study which investigates the impact of including customer collaboration in the agile product development process could uncover whether or not a product is successful within technology focused start-up’s in the Pacific Northwest. This research could allow technology focused start-ups to learn how to emulate success and avoid pitfalls using agile software development to create better, more transformative products for the world. The research question is: how does the inclusion of customer collaboration in the agile product development process by product owners impact the overall success of the product within Pacific Northwest technology start-up companies? This concept paper includes information on the nature of the study, the significance, relationship to cognate, a literature review beginning, and a significant amount of research related to the hypothesis

Agile challenges in practice: a thematic analysis

As agile is maturing and becoming more widely adopted, it is important that researchers are aware of the real-world challenges faced by practitioners and organisations. We undertook a thematic analysis of 193 agile challenges collected at a series of agile conferences and events during 2013 and 2014. Participants were mainly practitioners and business representatives along with some academics. The challenges were thematically analysed by separate authors, synthesised, and a list of seven themes and twenty-seven sub-themes was agreed. Themes were Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, Value and Misconceptions and shortcomings. We compare our findings against previous attempts to identify and categorise agile challenges. While most themes have persisted we found a shift of focus towards issues related to sustainability, business engagement and transformation, as well as misconceptions and shortcomings. We identify areas for further research and a need for more innovative methods of conveying academic research to industry and industrial problems to academi

Why and How do Large-scale Organizations Operationalize DevOps

An essential part of organizational efforts is to provide products to customers. To sustain competitive positions on existing markets, and to expand into new markets, firms utilize and continuously optimize approaches to efficiently provide effective products. Meanwhile, applying agile practices is a commoditized way for organizations to better adapt to changes during the development of their products. For bringing products to customers, more than their development is required. Typically, multiple organizational functions, all with individual goals and practices, are included in the development and delivery of products. This is often associated with friction points between those functions, and hinders the optimization of effectiveness and efficiency in providing products to customers. In retrospective, not all firms were able to recalibrate themselves and find back to former success after they had once missed to (again) innovate by timely addressing changes on their existing markets, discovering unmet or changed customer needs, and providing new products that bring together emerging technology with evolving customer demands. This potential threat now appears to be omnipresent with the ongoing proliferation of digitalization through the practical world of all of us. The emerging phenomenon of DevOps, a portmanteau word of “development” and “operations”, describes approaches to streamline development and delivery of products across organizational functions, to efficiently provide effective products, and to enable organizational digitalization efforts. This dissertation sheds light on reasoning, configurational factors, and dynamics behind DevOps implementations in large-scale. The composition of four independent yet interrelated scientific papers, the cornerstones of this dissertation, answers why and how large-scale organizations operationalize DevOps. In sum, this dissertation adds systematic and foundational knowledge, presents new applications and nuanced concretizations of scientific empiric approaches, connects allied but distinct research communities, and provides guidance for practitioners acting in this timely, relevant and interesting domain

DevOps for Digital Leaders

DevOps; continuous delivery; software lifecycle; concurrent parallel testing; service management; ITIL; GRC; PaaS; containerization; API management; lean principles; technical debt; end-to-end automation; automatio

Business intelligence in performance management of agile programs

Abstract. This thesis was conducted for a case company with the primary objective of designing a business intelligence dashboard to be used in the management of agile programs. The aim is to increase the knowledge within the topic and to solve problems that the case company has with the lack of coherent and modern data-driven performance management practices. One of the paramount objectives of this thesis is to reduce the time consumed for manual performance reporting activities and therefore improve the productivity and efficiency within the program management processes and practices. Design science is used as the primary research method in this study. However, the existing literature is also reviewed to explore what has already been studied within the topic and to identify the best practices to be exploited in designing the dashboard. The current state analysis of the case company is conducted and requirements for the dashboard are identified via a survey and interviews. Based on empirical research, two business intelligence dashboards are designed to cover the identified use cases for the performance management of agile programs. This thesis contributes to program management and business intelligence research. Especially, agile program management is discussed at a rather practical level and a set of performance metrics to be used in it is proposed. The use of business intelligence is demonstrated through performance management methods. The results of this study can also be used for further research purposes. Therefore, this study makes clear scientific contributions in addition to the evident practical implications.Tiivistelmä. Tämän opinnäytetyön tavoitteena on suunnitella kohdeyritykselle business intelligence-raportointinäkymät hyödynnettäväksi ketterien ohjelmien johtamisessa. Työssä pyritään tarjoamaan ratkaisu kohdeyrityksen ongelmiin ja parantamaan johdonmukaisuutta nykypäiväisten datalähtöisten suorituskyvyn johtamiskäytäntöjen kautta. Yksi tämän opinnäytetyön keskeisimmistä tavoitteista on saada vähennettyä manuaalisiin raportointitoimenpiteisiin kuluvaa aikaa ja siten parantaa ohjelmajohtamisprosessien ja -käytäntöjen tehokkuutta ja tuottavuutta. Pääasiallisena tutkimusmenetelmänä työssä käytetään Design Science -menetelmää. Aikaisempia tutkimuksia käydään läpi osana kirjallisuuskatsausta, jotta saadaan kartoitettua, mitä aiheen ympärillä on jo aikaisemmin tutkittu. Aikaisempia tutkimustuloksia hyödynnetään myös hyvien käytäntöjen selvittämisessä raportointinäkymän suunnitteluprosessille. Kohdeyrityksen nykytilaa ja sen osoittamia vaatimuksia analysoidaan kyselyn ja haastattelujen kautta. Perustuen empiiriseen tutkimukseen kaksi raportointinäkymää päätettiin suunnitella kattamaan tunnistetut käyttökohteet suorituskyvyn johtamiselle ketterissä ohjelmissa. Tämä opinnäytetyö edistää aikaisempaa tutkimusta ohjelmajohtamisen ja business intelligencen alalla. Erityisesti tässä työssä käsitellään ketterää ohjelmajohtamista käytännön tasolla ja ehdotetaan suorituskyvyn mittareita siinä hyödynnettäväksi. Business intelligenceä havainnollistetaan erityisesti suorituskyvyn johtamismenetelmien kautta. Työn tuloksia voidaan myös hyödyntää jatkotutkimuksessa, joten työllä on myös selkeää tieteellistä kontribuutiota ilmeisten käytännön johtopäätösten lisäksi