Adapting funding processes for agile IT projects: an empirical investigation

Agile software development that provides software development organizations, the ability to respond to changes in turbulent business environments, has been gaining wide adoption. Agile software development projects are characterized by ‘just enough’ planning and lack of upfront commitment to scope, cost, and schedule. These characteristics pose conflicting demands on managers responsible for making funding decisions, because traditional approaches to funding IT projects are often based on well-defined scope, cost, and schedule. These conflicts demand the adaptation of traditional funding processes to suit to agile projects. We draw from Adaptive Structuration Theory to understand the nature of conflicts between traditional IT project funding processes and the dynamic nature of agile projects, and how these conflicts are addressed by practices that are appropriated in the process of social interaction between funding decision makers and development teams. On the basis of a multisite case study, we present a framework that explains how organizations adapt traditional IT funding approaches to accommodate the unique characteristics of agile IT projects.     

Blending Scrum practices and CMMI project management process areas

Software development organizations that have been employing capability maturity models, such as SW-CMM or CMMI for improving their processes are now increasingly interested in the possibility of adopting agile development methods. In the context of project management, what can we say about Scrum’s alignment with CMMI? The aim of our paper is to present the mapping between CMMI and the agile method Scrum, showing major gaps between them and identifying how organizations are adopting complementary practices in their projects to make these two approaches more compliant. This is useful for organizations that have a plan-driven process based on the CMMI model and are planning to improve the agility of processes or to help organizations to define a new project management framework based on both CMMI and Scrum practices.     

When agile meets the enterprise

ContextWhile renowned agile methods like XP and Scrum were initially intended for projects with small teams, traditional enterprise environments, i.e. environments where plan-driven development is prevalent, have also become attracted by the promises of a faster time to market through agility. Agile software development methods emphasize lightweight software development. Projects within enterprise environments, however, are typically confronted with a large and complex IT landscape, where mission-critical information is at play whose criticality requires prudence regarding design and development. In many an organization, both approaches are used simultaneously.ObjectiveFind out which challenges the co-existence of agile methods and plan-driven development brings, and how organizations deal with those challenges.MethodWe present a grounded theory of the challenges of using agile methods in traditional enterprise environments, based on a Grounded Theory research involving 21 agile practitioners from two large enterprise organizations in the Netherlands.ResultsWe organized the challenges under two factors: Increased landscape complexity and Lack of business involvement. For both factors, we identify successful mitigation strategies. These mitigation strategies concern the communication between the agile and traditional part of the organization, and the timing of that communication.ConclusionAgile practices can coexist with plan-driven development. One should, however, keep in mind the context and take actions to mitigate the challenges incurred.     

A dependency taxonomy for agile software development projects

Agile software development is designed to achieve collaborative software development. A supporting pillar of collaboration is effective coordination, which is necessary to manage dependencies in projects. Understanding the dependencies arising in agile software development projects can help practitioners choose appropriate coordinative practices from the large number of practices provided by the various agile methods. To achieve this understanding, this article analyses dependencies in three typical cases of co-located agile software development and presents the dependencies as a taxonomy with decision rules for allocating dependencies into categories. Findings show that knowledge, process, and resource dependencies are present, with knowledge dependencies predominant. In addition, there are agile practices with a coordinative function that address multiple dependencies in these agile software development projects. These practices would be a good choice for coordinating a project and supporting collaboration in agile software projects.     

A framework to support the evaluation, adoption and improvement of agile methods in practice

Agile methods are often seen as providing ways to avoid overheads typically perceived as being imposed by traditional software development environments. However, few organizations are psychologically or technically able to take on an agile approach rapidly and effectively. Here, we describe a number of approaches to assist in such a transition. The Agile Software Solution Framework (ASSF) provides an overall context for the exploration of agile methods, knowledge and governance and contains an Agile Toolkit for quantifying part of the agile process. These link to the business aspects of software development so that the business value and agile process are well aligned. Finally, we describe how these theories are applied in practice with two industry case studies using the Agile Adoption and Improvement Model (AAIM).     

A disciplined approach to adopting agile practices: the agile adoption framework

Many organizations aspire to adopt agile processes to take advantage of the numerous benefits that they offer to an organization. Those benefits include, but are not limited to, quicker return on investment, better software quality, and higher customer satisfaction. To date, however, there is no structured process (at least that is published in the public domain) that guides organizations in adopting agile practices. To address this situation, we present the agile adoption framework and the innovative approach we have used to implement it. The framework consists of two components: an agile measurement index, and a four-stage process, that together guide and assist the agile adoption efforts of organizations. More specifically, the Sidky Agile Measurement Index (SAMI) encompasses five agile levels that are used to identify the agile potential of projects and organizations. The four-stage process, on the other hand, helps determine (a) whether or not organizations are ready for agile adoption, and (b) guided by their potential, what set of agile practices can and should be introduced. To help substantiate the “goodness” of the Agile Adoption Framework, we presented it to various members of the agile community, and elicited responses through questionnaires. The results of that substantiation effort are encouraging, and are also presented in this paper.     

Application of a software agility assessment model – AgilityMod in the field

Adoption of agile values and principles and transformation of organizations towards agility are not easy and straightforward. Misinterpretation of agile principles and values, and adoption of partial solutions with few agile practices instead of holistic approaches prevent organizations to obtain full benefits of agile methods. We developed the Software Agility Assessment Reference Model (AgilityMod) for the appraisal of software projects from agility perspective and to provide guidance on specifying gaps on the road towards agility (agile maturity). The meta-model of AgilityMod was defined in relation with the ISO/IEC 15504-Process Assessment Model. AgilityMod was developed in an iterative and incremental manner by running successive case studies and getting opinions of experts for the evaluation and improvement of the Model. The multiple case study that we present here in detail included the implementation of the Model in eight software development companies. The results of this case study were evaluated by the case study participants. According to the significant majority of the case study participants, AgilityMod achieves its purpose.     

Agile Requirements Engineering Practices: An Empirical Study

An analysis of data from 16 software development organizations reveals seven agile RE practices, along with their benefits and challenges. The rapidly changing business environment in which most organizations operate is challenging traditional requirements-engineering (RE) approaches. Software development organizations often must deal with requirements that tend to evolve quickly and become obsolete even before project completion. Rapid changes in competitive threats, stakeholder preferences, development technology, and time-to-market pressures make prespecified requirements inappropriate.     

Understanding agile software development practices using shared mental models theory

ContextAgile software development is an alternative software development methodology that originated from practice to encourage collaboration between developers and users, to leverage rapid development cycles, and to respond to changes in a dynamic environment. Although agile practices are widely used in organizations, academics call for more theoretical research to understand the value of agile software development methodologies.ObjectiveThis study uses shared mental models theory as a lens to examine practices from agile software methodologies to understand how agile practices enable software development teams to work together to complete tasks and work together effectively as a team.MethodA conceptual analysis of specific agile practices was conducted using the lens of shared mental models theory. Three agile practices from Xtreme Programming and Scrum are examined in detail, system metaphor, stand-up meeting, and on-site customer, using shared mental models theory.ResultsExamining agile practices using shared mental models theory elucidates how agile practices improve collaboration during the software development process. The results explain how agile practices contribute toward a shared understanding and enhanced collaboration within the software development team.ConclusionsThis conceptual analysis demonstrates the value of agile practices in developing shared mental models (i.e. shared understanding) among developers and customers in software development teams. Some agile practices are useful in developing a shared understanding about the tasks to be completed, while other agile practices create shared mental models about team processes and team interactions. To elicit the desired outcomes of agile software development methods, software development teams should consider whether or not agile practices are used in a manner that enhances the team’s shared understanding. Using three specific agile practices as examples, this research demonstrates how theory, such as shared mental models theory, can enhance our understanding regarding how agile practices are useful in enhancing collaboration in the workplace.     

“Leagile” software development: An experience report analysis of the application of lean approaches in agile software development

In recent years there has been a noticeable shift in attention from those who use agile software development toward lean software development, often labelled as a shift “from agile to lean”. However, the reality may not be as simple or linear as this label implies. To provide a better understanding of lean software development approaches and how they are applied in agile software development, we have examined 30 experience reports published in past agile software conferences in which experiences of applying lean approaches in agile software development were reported. The analysis identified six types of lean application. The results of our study show that lean can be applied in agile processes in different manners for different purposes. Lean concepts, principles and practices are most often used for continuous agile process improvement, with the most recent introduction being the kanban approach, introducing a continuous, flow-based substitute to time-boxed agile processes.     

Coordination in co-located agile software development projects

Agile software development provides a way to organise the complex task of multi-participant software development while accommodating constant project change. Agile software development is well accepted in the practitioner community but there is little understanding of how such projects achieve effective coordination, which is known to be critical in successful software projects. A theoretical model of coordination in the agile software development context is presented based on empirical data from three cases of co-located agile software development. Many practices in these projects act as coordination mechanisms, which together form a coordination strategy. Coordination strategy in this context has three components: synchronisation, structure, and boundary spanning. Coordination effectiveness has two components: implicit and explicit. The theoretical model of coordination in agile software development projects proposes that an agile coordination strategy increases coordination effectiveness. This model has application for practitioners who want to select appropriate practices from agile methods to ensure they achieve coordination coverage in their project. For the field of information systems development, this theory contributes to knowledge of coordination and coordination effectiveness in the context of agile software development.     

Agile Methodologies: Organizational Adoption Motives,Tailoring, and Performance

Today, organizations tailor the practices from several agile methodologies to serve their particular environment. But are there situations that drive how an organization should tailor methodologies in a particular manner? This article places 12 commonly used agile development practices into a typology based upon whether they are primarily project management focused or software development approach focused and examines how organizations’ motivations for adopting agile impact the practices they adopt. Finally, it explores how a fit between an organization’s motives for agile method adoption and the tailored agile practices it adopts may lead (or not lead) to differences in project performance.     

Agile knowledge management: a survey of Indian perceptions

This paper is a pivot step to find out the level of KM adoption of Indian software organizations which are using agile practices for software development. After reviewing the literature it was found although many practitioners believe that KM practices are embodied in agile methodologies but it is not documented efficiently. Survey was used to take perception of agile organizations. KM practices are grouped into seven factors and respondents are taken from Indian software industry. Organizations are divided into different demographics: size, core area, type. Different statistical tests are used to conclude outputs of the questionnaire. It is found that Indian software industry working with agile practices lacks in providing any formal head for KM positioning. Learning and sharing through discussion forms is the most used practices among all respondents of organizations, whereas least accepted practice is dependent upon documents for transfer of knowledge. Indian organizations also lack in appointing a formal head who can provide guidelines for agile practice.     

Integrating agile software development into stage-gate managed product development

Agile methods have evolved as a bottom-up approach to software development. However, as the software in embedded products is only one part of development projects, agile methods must coexist with project management models typically of the stage-gate type. This paper presents a qualitative case study of two large independent software system projects that have used eXtreme Programming (XP) for software development within contexts of stage-gate project management models. The study is comprised of open ended interviews with managers as well as practitioners, followed by a structured, fully traceable, qualitative analysis. We conclude that it is possible to integrate XP in a gate model context. Key issues for success are the interfaces towards the agile subproject and management attitudes towards the agile approach. Editor: Marvin Zelkowitz     

Software architecture-centric methods and agile development

The agile software development paradigm and plan-driven approaches each have their strengths and shortcomings. The former emphasizes rapid, flexible development, while the latter emphasizes project and process infrastructure. Many practitioners, particularly of agile methods, tend-to view software architecture in light of the plan-driven side of the spectrum. They think that architecture-centric methods are too much work, equating them with high-ceremony processes emphasizing document production. But many elements make up a successful development approach, including process, product, technology, people, and tools. Software architecture is part of product quality and isn't tied to a particular process, technology, culture, or tool. This article explores the relationship and synergies between architecture-centric design and analysis methods and the extreme programming framework. We chose to focus on XP because it's one of the most mature and best-known agile practices.     

Tool support for disseminating and improving development practices

Knowledge management in software engineering and software process improvement activities pose challenges as initiatives are deployed. Most existing approaches are either too expensive to deploy or do not take an organization’s specific needs into consideration. There is thus a need for scalable improvement approaches that leverage knowledge already residing in the organizations. This paper presents tool support for an Experience Factory approach for disseminating and improving practices used in an organization. Experiences from using practices in development projects are captured in postmortems and provide iteratively improved decision support for identifying what practices work well and what needs improvement. An initial evaluation of using the tool for organizational improvement has been performed utilizing both academia and industry. The results from the evaluation indicate that organizational characteristics influence how practices and experiences can be used. Experiences collected in postmortems are estimated to have little effect on improvements to practices used throughout the organization. However, in organizations where different practices are used in different parts of the organization, making practices available together with experiences from use, as well as having context information, can influence decisions on what practices to use in projects.     

Mockup-Driven Development: Providing agile support for Model-Driven Web Engineering

ContextAgile software development approaches are currently becoming the industry standard for Web Application development. On the other hand, Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies are known to improve productivity when building this kind of applications. However, current MDWE methodologies tend to ignore important aspects of Web Applications development supported by agile processes, such as constant customer feedback or early design of user interfaces.ObjectiveIn this paper we analyze the difficulties of supporting agile features in MDWE methodologies. Then, we propose an approach that eases the incorporation of well-known agile practices to MDWE.MethodWe propose using User Interface prototypes (usually known as mockups) as a way to start the modeling process in the context of a mixed agile-MDWE process. To assist this process, we defined a lightweight metamodel that allows modeling features over mockups, interacting with end-users and generating MDWE models. Then, we conducted a statistical evaluation of both approaches (traditional vs. mockup-based modeling).ResultsFirst we comment on how agile features can be added to MDWE processes using mockups. Then, we show by means of a quantitative study that the proposed approach is faster, less error-prone and still as complete as traditional MDWE processes.ConclusionThe use of mockups to guide the MDWE process helps in the reduction of the development cycle as well as in the incorporation of agile practices in the model-driven workflow. Complete MDWE models can be built and generated by using lightweight modeling over User Interface mockups, and this process suggests being more efficient, in terms of errors and effort, than traditional modeling in MDWE.     

Managing artificial intelligence projects: Key insights from an AI consulting firm

While organisations are increasingly interested in artificial intelligence (AI), many AI projects encounter significant issues or even fail. To gain a deeper understanding of the issues that arise during these projects and the practices that contribute to addressing them, we study the case of Consult, a North American AI consulting firm that helps organisations leverage the power of AI by providing custom solutions. The management of AI projects at Consult is a multi-method approach that draws on elements from traditional project management, agile practices, and AI workflow practices. While the combination of these elements enables Consult to be effective in delivering AI projects to their customers, our analysis reveals that managing AI projects in this way draw upon three core logics, that is, commonly shared norms, values, and prescribed behaviours which influence actors' understanding of how work should be done. We identify that the simultaneous presence of these three logics—a traditional project management logic, an agile logic, and an AI workflow logic—gives rise to conflicts and issues in managing AI projects at Consult, and successfully managing these AI projects involves resolving conflicts that arise between them. From our case findings, we derive four strategies to help organisations better manage their AI projects.     

A work product pool approach to methodology specification and enactment

Software development methodologies advocated and used today, whether traditional and plan-based or contemporary and agile, usually focus on process steps i.e. they start with requirements and iteratively describe what steps are necessary to move to the next stage or phase, until the software application is delivered to the end user. Such a process-oriented view of methodologies, based on the metaphor that human organizations are “machines” that “execute” processes, often results in methodologies that are too rigid and hard to follow, and most often than not end up being ignored or bypassed. Our proposal here is that, since the ultimate aim of software development is to provide a software product, software development methodologies should be described in terms of the intermediate products that are necessary to reach such a final product, plus the needed micro-processes that, as necessary evils, will be required to produce the appropriate work products from other, previously created ones. Using this product-oriented approach, software development methodologies can be specified that are, at least, as flexible as lightweight, agile approaches and, at the same time, as powerful and scalable as plan-oriented ones.