The mystery of the writing that isn’t on the wall: differences in public representations in traditional and agile software development

This paper considers the use of public displays, such as whiteboards and papers pinned to walls, by different software development teams, based on evidence from a number of empirical studies. This paper outlines differences in use observed between traditional and agile teams and begins to identify the implications that they may have for software development

Enterprise Agility: Why Is Transformation so Hard?

Enterprise agility requires capabilities to transform, sense and seize new business opportunities more quickly than competitors. However, acquiring those capabilities, such as continuous delivery and scaling agility to product programmes, portfolios and business models, is challenging in many organisations. This paper introduces definitions of enterprise agility involving business management and cultural lenses for analysing large-scale agile transformation. The case organisation, in the higher education domain, leverages collaborative discovery sprints and an experimental programme to enable a bottom-up approach to transformation. Meanwhile the prevalence of bureaucracy and organisational silos are often contradictory to agile principles and values. The case study results identify transformation challenges based on observations from a five-month research period. Initial findings indicate that increased focus on organisational culture and leveraging of both bottom-up innovation and supportive top-down leadership activities, could enhance the likelihood of a successful transformation

Learner-Centred Design and Evaluation of Web-Based E-Learning Environments

Designing E-learning is a combination of pedagogical design, usability and information architecture. E-learning environments should have intuitive interfaces and clear information design, allowing learners to focus on learning. However, there is often a mismatch between what an on-line educator thinks the learner would learn, and what a learner thinks he will, and then has learned from the course. In addition, there is sometimes a mismatch between how an educator wants to teach and what is represented on the interface by the instructional designers. Such mismatches affect the learner's experience and his motivation for E-learning. In this paper, we will first discuss the source and nature of these mismatches. Next, we will discuss whether usability techniques in the HCI literature are appropriate for evaluating E-learning environments for the learner experience. We will then propose a combination of requirements elicitation and usability techniques for learner-centred design and evaluation of Web-based E-learning environments. The proposed methodology is based on our experience of conducting empirical studies for evaluating user-system interactions in E-Commerce contexts

Languages at key stage 4 2009-2011 : evaluation of the impact of Languages Review recommendations : baseline findings from the first year of the evaluation

• Heads of language departments consider good teaching and support to be central to encouraging language uptake at KS4, and constraints of the options system to be the main barrier. Many schools are reported to have received excellent support for languages in 2008/09 in terms of staffing, training and resources. • Some schools report a positive impact of the Languages Review recommendations but there is a low level of awareness of the Review in the majority of schools. • 19 per cent of schools set a benchmark for languages uptake in 2009/10 (at an average level of 64 per cent) but 62 per cent of schools had actual levels of uptake lower than 50 per cent. In schools where languages are optional (69 per cent of schools), 80 per cent had levels of uptake below 50 per cent

The conundrum of categorising requirements: managing requirements for learning on the move

This paper reports on the experience of eliciting and managing requirements on a large European-based multinational project, whose purpose is to create a system to support learning using mobile technology. The project used the socio-cognitive engineering methodology for human-centered design and the Volere shell and template to document requirements. We provide details about the project below, describe the Volere tools, and explain how and why we used a flexible categorization scheme to manage the requirements. Finally, we discuss three lessons learned: (1) provide a flexible mechanism for organizing requirements, (2) plan ahead for the RE process, and (3) do not forget 'the waiting room

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

Collaboration in Pair Programming: driving and switching

This paper reports on an empirical study about the mechanisms of the collaboration of drivers and navigators in Pair Programming (PP) sessions. Based on video recordings of professional software developers, we analysed the mechanisms of role switches and how developers split the task of driving. We found that developers do not evenly contribute to the task of driving and that they spend on average a third of the session without any computer interaction focusing mainly on communication. In addition, our results show that most pairs switch roles frequently and that the frequency and fuidity of switches indicate a high level of engagement on the part of both developers

Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model

There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience

Establishing user requirements for a mobile learning environment

This paper presents the rationale, challenges, successes and results of activities to establish the requirements for a mobile learning environment. The effort is part of a European-funded research and development project investigating context-sensitive approaches to informal, problem-based and workplace learning by using key advances in mobile technologies. The techniques used include user observation, participatory design workshops and questionnaires. Analytic techniques include UML and the Volere shell and template

A frame signature matrix for analysing and comparing interaction design behaviour

Protocol studies are an established method to investigate design behaviour. In the context of a project to investigate novice interaction design (ID) behaviour across protocols and cultures, we found that existing design behaviour analysis frameworks did not provide reliable results. This paper describes the development of a new approach to analyse and compare ID behaviour using verbal protocols. We augment Schön’s basic design and reflection cycle with construction of a frame signature matrix and analogical categorisation coding. We demonstrate this approach by comparing two protocols of novice interaction designers in Botswana. The initial findings indicate that this approach increases consistency and accuracy of coding, and that there are different degrees of reframing for the design problem and solutions