Agile Cognition: Discovering the Cognitive Artifacts Used for Project Management in Agile Software Development

Using naturalistic decision making, cognitive artifacts help us understand the cognitive processes that take place on teams. For agile software development (ASD) teams, we focus on cognitive processes that take place during an iteration. We conducted four case studies of four different agile teams. Using media richness and media synchronicity theories, results suggest that ASD teams use multiple cognitive artifacts to plan and manage their iteration. The interactions with these artifacts include examples of lean and rich media, with ASD team members preferring richer media where more information is communicated accurately. Distributed cognition helps the ASD team both make sense of tasks in order to complete them on time for the client and cope with the complexity, uncertainty, and fast-paced nature of ASD. Our contribution includes a comprehensive list of cognitive artifacts and ASD team interactions categorized by media type, level of richness, information purpose, synchronicity, and usage purpose

Highlighting Communication Activities and Inefficiencies Between Agile vs. Waterfall Methods: An Agent Based Model of Knowledge Sharing

We employed agent-based simulation techniques to create a dynamic multi-level team environment to study communication activities as knowledge sharing occurred. We examined knowledge seekers and knowledge providers who act and react to one another’s communication behavior on Waterfall versus Agile teams using rich versus lean media to answer research questions regarding inefficient use of team members. The simulation model was checked for validity against assumptions that project management method drives project schedule and communication media motivates the number of meetings. Results further indicate that (a) slightly more knowledge seekers exceed their knowledge need on Agile teams using lean versus rich media; (b) knowledge overage was reduced by utilizing a Waterfall rather than Agile method, and through the use of lean media; and (c) the maximum time wasted by team members who completed gathering knowledge to meet their initial needs was on Agile teams using lean media