An investigation of agility issues in scrum teams using agility indicators

Agile software development methods have emerged and become increasingly popular in recent years, yet the issues encountered by software development teams that strive to achieve agility using agile methods are yet to be explored systematically. Built upon a previous study that has established a set of indicators of agility, this study investigates what issues are manifested in software development teams using agile methods. It is focused on Scrum teams particularly. In other words, the goal of the paper is to evaluate Scrum teams using agility indicators and therefore to further validate previously presented agility indicators within the additional cases. A multiple case study research method is employed. The findings of the study reveals that the teams using Scrum do not necessarily achieve agility in terms of team autonomy, sharing, stability and embraced uncertainty. The possible reasons include previous organizational plan-driven culture, resistance towards the Scrum roles and changing resources

An approach for using CMMI in agile software development assessments: experiences from three case studies

Software development organizations are increasingly interested in the possibility of adopting agile development methods. Organizations that have been employing the Capability Maturity Model (CMM/CMMI) for making improvements are now changing their software development processes towards agility. By deploying agile methods, these organizations are making an investment the success of which needs to be proven. However, CMMI does not always support interpretations in an agile context. Consequently, assessments should be implemented in a manner that takes the agile context into account, while still producing useful results. This paper proposes an approach for agile software development assessment using CMMI and describes how this approach was used for software process improvement purposes in organizations that had either been planning to use or were using agile software development methods. 1

Agile practices in use from an innovation assimilation perspective

Agile practices in use from an innovation assimilation perspectiv

Assimilation of agile practices in use

Agile method use in information systems development (ISD) has grown dramatically in recent years. The emergence of these alternative approaches was very much industry-led at the outset, and while agile method research is growing, the vast majority of these studies are descriptive and often lack a strong theoretical and conceptual base. Insights from innovation adoption research can provide a new perspective on analyzing agile method use. This paper is based on an exploratory study of the application of the innovation assimilation stages to understand the use of agile practices, focusing in particular on the later stages of assimilation, namely acceptance, routinisation and infusion. Four case studies were conducted and based on the case study findings, the concepts of acceptance, routinisation and infusion were adapted and applied to agile software development. These adapted concepts were used to glean interesting insights into agile practice use. For example, it was shown that the period of use of agile practices does not have a proportional effect on their assimilation depths. We also reflected on the sequential assumption underlying the assimilation stages, showing that adopting teams do not always move through the assimilation stages in a linear manner

An industrial case of exploiting product line architectures in agile software development

There has been an increased interest in exploring the ways of integrating agile software development and software product line approaches. Both approaches share several common goals, which provide the motivation for integrating them. However, there has been little empirical research for understanding how these approaches can be integrated in industrial settings. This paper presents the findings from a case study of a software development company that has successfully integrated software product line architecture and agile software development practices. The company’s processes are described based on product line and agile practices. The results are expected to provide useful insights into the mechanics of exploiting product line practices in agile software development despite apparent philosophical clashes between the two approaches

AHAA - agile, hybrid assessment method for automotive, safety critical SMEs

The need for software is increasingly growing in the automotive industry. Software development projects are, however, often troubled by time and budget overruns, resulting in systems that do not fulfill customer requirements. Both research and industry lack strategies to combine reducing the long software development lifecycles (as required by time-to-market demands) with increasing the quality of the software developed. Software process improvement (SPI) provides the first step in the move towards software quality, and assessments are a vital part of this process. Unfortunately, software process assessments are often expensive and time consuming. Additionally, they often provide companies with a long list of issues without providing realistic suggestions. The goal of this paper is to describe a new low-overhead assessment method that has been designed specifically for small-to-medium-sized (SMEs) organisations wishing to be automotive software suppliers. This assessment method integrates the structured-ness of the plan-driven SPI models of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Automotive SPICE with the flexibleness of agile practices

People over process: key people challenges in agile development

There is a common perception that, while there may be some ‘teething’ problems experienced during the initial transition to agile, people are much happier, engaged and ultimately more productive in these environments. This study shows that this belief may not always hold true, identifying many serious ‘people’ challenges experienced by 17 large multinational organisations, all using agile for more than three years. The cases provide an interesting insight in that they involve cases where agile was implemented in a top-down manner across the organisations or at least across business units. This is in contrast to most accounts of agile which involve voluntary, bottom up adoption on small co-located teams developing systems deemed to be suitable for agile development. The people issues uncovered include a broad range of problems from recruitment of agile staff, to training, motivation and performance evaluation among others. The paper will conclude with a set of actionable recommendations as to how organisations can overcome these challenges, based on the better practices uncovered in the cases studied

Where agile research goes: starting from a 7-year retrospective (report on agile research workshop at XP2009

This report summarizes the key findings from a workshop at the 10th International Conference on Agile Processes and eXtreme Programming in Software Engineering (XP2009) called “Agile Research – A 7-Year Retrospective”, held in Sardinia in May 2009. The workshop was based on an open discussion around past papers presented at the conference, identifying current gaps and areas for future research. A research topic map has been drawn and several future research directions have been highlighted as the results of running the workshop

Integrating agile practices with a medical device software development lifecycle

The rate at which agile software development practices are being adopted is growing rapidly. Agile software development practices and methodologies appear to offer the silver bullet which can solve the problems associated with following plan driven software development lifecycles. Agile software development practices offer the possibility of achieving lower development costs, increased efficiency and improved software quality. However, there is currently a low rate of publicly available information that suggests there is widespread adoption of agile practices within the medical device software domain. This is largely due to the fact that software developed for medical devices includes challenges not faced when developing non safety critical software. As a result of these challenges, medical device software is typically developed using plan driven software development lifecycles. However, such lifecycles are quite rigid and cannot accommodate changes easily. Previous research has revealed that medical device software development projects can benefit from adopting agile practices whilst still maintaining the discipline associated with following plan driven development lifecycles. This paper outlines the challenges faced by developers when developing medical device software and how shortcomings in both agile and plan driven approaches can be resolved by following a mixed method approach to medical device software development