Leadership in Agile Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Effective leadership is deemed essential for successful projects and teams. However, leadership in agile software development projects and teams is a challenge in practice, and the research literature provides no general agreement on what constitutes effective leadership in this environment. To address this issue and give the agile community a comprehensive overview of the research on agile leadership we report the results of a systematic literature review (SLR). The SLR identified 33 studies in the Scopus database published from 2000-2019 that contribute to agile leadership knowledge. The results indicate that whilst some studies apply leadership theories to explore and explain the role of agile leadership other studies propose alternative approaches to leadership within agile software teams and projects. The results suggest that agile leadership research needs further attention and that more empirical studies are needed to better understand agile leadership in general and in the various agile information systems development environments

Exploring the emergence of collaborative practices in globally distributed agile software development

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonAgile software development approaches have emerged as a response to perceived frustrations of more heavyweight plan-driven methods, and have now become well established within the information systems field. More recently, there has been a tremendous growth in applying agile methods in globally distributed settings. In light of this, there is a pressing need to understand how agile practices are adapted which were originally conceived for collocated settings, and now actually being used in globally distributed settings, taking into account the challenges posed by such contexts. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to this research gap, with a quest to better understand and unpack the “black-box” of how collaborative practices evolve within global agile settings. The value of this research lies in improving and advancing our understanding of the challenges the team members go through in adapting agile practices in global contexts. The research also explores how collaborative practices can support agility in globally distributed settings. In order to contribute to knowledge and increase conceptual clarity, there is a need to carry out in-depth and in-situ research within an organisational context. By taking a socio-technical perspective this study intends to extend our existing knowledge on how collaborative practices are evolving in real-time practice within globally distributed agile settings. The empirical evidence is drawn from a globally distributed team, operating in a global financial bank with offices based in London and Delhi. Interpretive research methods including semi-structured interviews and observations are used to understand team members’ experiences of developing collaborative practices in a globally distributed context. Although existing literature on agile software development acknowledges the intrinsic significance of collaboration for effective functioning of agile methods, current studies fail to demonstrate a situated practice perspective on how collaborative practices are adapted in globally distributed settings. This study enlists the analytical concepts of boundary objects and Pickering’s “mangle of practice” to better understand the process of how collaborative practices evolve in globally distributed agile teams. The resulting analysis provides us with a much more nuanced understanding of how interactions take place in developing collaborative practices in globally distributed contexts. The findings reveal that collaborative practices within such settings tend not to follow from pre-set expectations of how agile practices should work, but are temporally emergent. Team members have to revise collaborative practices through an ongoing process of mutual “tuning” within their situated contexts, in order to achieve a gradual state of interactive stability or a steadiness of practices. The results demonstrate how actors address the challenges in developing shared understandings to drive forward the joint software development process across global locations and move towards supporting agility within the projects. The thesis presents a pluralistic conceptual framework called the Collaborative Tuning Approach, which aids in gaining critical insights of issues related to adapting agile practices and also demonstrates how collaborative practices can act as enabler to achieving agility in such settings. The framework explains the challenges the team members face and how these are overcome when attempting to modify practices and indeed how these evolve through an ongoing state of flux and uncertainty leading to hybrid agile practices

Raising Awareness In Distributed Agile Development - A Case Study Perspective

Raising and maintaining awareness in distributed agile cross-cultural teams is a challenging process, especially as the tenets of agile methods rely heavily on physical proximity, face-to-face communication, coordination and close collaboration. This paper reports on preliminary findings on how a distributed agile team within the financial sector, engages in raising awareness to carry out collaborative activities to accomplish project tasks. We have adapted the use of 3C Collaboration model as an evaluative mechanism to examine how the different dimensions (communication, coordination and cooperation) of the model stimulate awareness within a distributed agile team. The insights gained from the case study, suggest there is a constant interplay between the offshore and onshore teams to try and raise and maintain awareness in order to achieve project goal

Exploring Cultural Differences in HCI Education

The discipline of human-computer interaction has become a subject taught across universities around the world, outside of the cultures where it originated. However, the intercultural implication of its assimilation into the\ud syllabus of courses offered by universities around the world remains underresearched. The purpose of this ongoing research project is to provide insights for these implications in terms of the student and teacher experience of HCI. How this subject is socially represented across the different universities studied is a key question. In order to develop intercultural awareness of these questions\ud universities from UK, Namibia, Mexico and China are collaborating in a multiple case study involving students and lecturers engaged in evaluation and design tasks. Findings will then be used to propose an international HCI curriculum more supportive of local perspectives. This paper describes the initial steps of this study and some preliminary findings from Namibia, India and Mexico about cognitive styles and cultural attitudes

Moving Up The Value Chain: Exploring The Issues For Chinese Software & Services Outsourcers

To move up the value chain, Chinese software and services outsourcing (SSO) providers will need to provide more value-added services by improving their organisational capabilities and innovative capacity. This paper reports on early findings on processes in which Chinese SSOs engage in order to move up the value chain, towards a transformative collaborative relationship with clients which is referred to as “collaborative innovation”. We provide a literature review on the concept of collaborative innovation and examine different aspects of organisational learning that occur in the interaction between vendors and clients. Data obtained from semi-structured interviews with 12 Chinese SSO providers supplies the basis for the findings which suggest that there are spaces of interaction between clients and providers which offer opportunities for better collaborative practices to emerge and consequently more innovative capacity

A cross-national study of HCI education experience and representation

The discipline of human-computer interaction has become a subjecttaught across universities around the world, outside of the cultures where itoriginated. However, the intercultural implication of its assimilation into thesyllabus of courses offered by universities around the world remains under-researched. The purpose of this ongoing research project is to provide insightsfor these implications in terms of the student and teacher experience of HCI.How this subject is socially represented and valued across the differentuniversities studied is also a key question for us. A multiple case studyinvolving students and lecturers engaged in evaluation and design tasks in theUK, Denmark, Namibia, Mexico and China is described

Clinically-evident tophi are associated with reduced muscle force in the foot and ankle in people with gout: a cross-sectional study

Background: The foot and ankle represent a common site for tophi in people with gout, yet it is unclear whether the presence of tophi is related to impaired muscle function. This study aimed to determine the association between foot and ankle tophi and muscle force in people with gout. Methods: Participants with gout were stratified into two groups based on the presence of clinically-evident tophi affecting the foot or ankle on physical examination. Isometric muscle force for plantarflexion, dorsiflexion, inversion and eversion was measured using static dynamometry. Mixed-models regression was used to determine the difference in muscle force between the two groups while adjusting for age, disease duration and foot pain. This model was also used to determine the difference in muscle force between presence and absence of tophi at specific locations within the foot and ankle. In addition, Pearson’s correlations were used to determine the association between total foot tophus count and muscle force. Results: Fifty-seven participants were included (22 with foot or ankle tophi and 35 without foot or ankle tophi). Foot and ankle tophi were most often seen at the Achilles tendon. After adjusting for age, disease duration and foot pain, participants with tophi had significantly reduced muscle force during plantarflexion (P < 0.001), dorsiflexion (P = 0.003), inversion (P = 0.003) and eversion (P = 0.001) when compared to participants without tophi. Those with Achilles tophi had significantly reduced force during plantarflexion (P < 0.001), inversion (P = 0.008) and eversion (P = 0.001). No significant differences in muscle force were observed between the presence and absence of tophi at other foot or ankle locations. There were also no significant correlations between total foot tophus count and muscle force (all P > 0.05). Conclusion: In people with gout, clinically-evident foot or ankle tophi are associated with muscle force deficits during foot plantarflexion, dorsiflexion, inversion and eversion, which persist despite adjusting for age, disease duration and foot pain. Tophi at the Achilles tendon, which associate with force deficits, may contribute to reduced muscular activation and consequent disuse muscle atrophy

Categorisation of foot complaints in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) from a New Zealand cohort

Background: Foot complaints have been shown to be common in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and heterogeneous in nature. We aimed to categorize self-reported foot complaints in people with SLE and foot symptoms. Methods A self-administered validated questionnaire was posted to 406 people with SLE attending adult rheumatology clinics across three health boards in Auckland, New Zealand. In addition to foot pain, vascular complaints, dermatological lesions and neurological symptoms were included in the analysis. Pairwise correlations among the variables were undertaken followed by factor analysis to identify and categorise associations between reported foot complaints. Results From the questionnaires returned, 93 full datasets were analysed. Participants’ were predominantly female (n =87, 93.7%), with mean (SD) age of 50.4 (14.3) years and a mean (SD) disease duration of 13.1 (11) years. Three categories of foot complaint were determined: ‘foot pain’, ‘skin disorders’ and ‘vascular insufficiency’. These three groups provided the best fit (0.91) to describe the wide range of foot complaints reported by those with SLE. Factor analysis for foot pain demonstrated a high positive loading for the inter-correlation of foot pain in past month (0.83), foot pain today (0.71), intermittent claudication (0.71), numbness (0.62), loss of balance (0.81), swelling (0.59), foot joint pain (0.77), arch pain (0.68) and tendon pain (0.77). Skin disorders demonstrated a very high positive loading for 3 factors skin rash (0.82), blistering skin rash (0.95) and foot ulceration (0.88). In vascular insufficiency a high positive loading for cold feet (0.83), chilblains (0.76) and Raynaud’s phenomenon (0.70) Conclusions This work suggests people with SLE report three independent categories of foot complaints; foot pain, skin disorders or vascular insufficiency