Software process improvement with weak management support: an analysis of the dynamics of intra-organizational alliances in IS change initiatives

Software Process Improvement (SPI) projects are large-scale, complex organization-wide change initiatives. They require considerable investments in personnel, time and money and impact just about every aspect of software firms. The group charged with conducting an SPI project has, however, little formal authority to influence or force software professionals to engage in SPI work or to define and implement changes. The SPI literature suggests that successful SPI initiatives depend on strong commitment from top management. But what should the SPI group do if management support is weak? In this paper, we present an analysis of how an SPI group can use alliances to obtain influence and succeed when management support is weak. Our study is based on a 3-year longitudinal field study of SPI change initiatives at Denmark Electronics. Our findings show that a lack of top management support is not necessarily incompatible with success. This research opens an important new area of research on intra-organizational alliances and information system (IS) implementation. It has the potential to offer new theories and practical advice on how IS implementation projects can be more effectively managed.     

Packaged software: implications of the differences from custom approaches to software development

This paper contributes to the literature on software development in two ways. First, by discussing the packaged software domain relative to the more commonly studied custom information systems (IS) domain. Second, this paper presents our speculations on the implications of these differences between packaged and custom IS development. Regarding the first issue, while the two domains share many commonalities, the differences are also important to understand. To make this clear we discuss the differences at four levels: industry forces, approaches to software development, work culture and development team efforts. At each level, data from three case studies are used to illustrate the differences between the two domains. To develop our speculations, we contend that the differences between packaged software and the traditional, custom, approach to information systems development will be profound for five stakeholder groups: software development organizations, software development teams, software developers, software consumers and for researchers interested in software development.     

Interpretative case studies on agile team productivity and management

ContextThe management of software development productivity is a key issue in software organizations, where the major drivers are lower cost and shorter time-to-market. Agile methods, including Extreme Programming and Scrum, have evolved as “light” approaches that simplify the software development process, potentially leading to increased team productivity. However, little empirical research has examined which factors do have an impact on productivity and in what way, when using agile methods.ObjectiveOur objective is to provide a better understanding of the factors and mediators that impact agile team productivity.MethodWe have conducted a multiple-case study for 6 months in three large Brazilian companies that have been using agile methods for over 2 years. We have focused on the main productivity factors perceived by team members through interviews, documentation from retrospectives, and non-participant observation.ResultsWe developed a novel conceptual framework, using thematic analysis to understand the possible mechanisms behind such productivity factors. Agile team management was found to be the most influential factor in achieving agile team productivity. At the intra-team level, the main productivity factors were team design (structure and work allocation) and member turnover. At the inter-team level, the main productivity factors were how well teams could be effectively coordinated by proper interfaces and other dependencies and avoiding delays in providing promised software to dependent teams.ConclusionTeams should be aware of the influence and magnitude of turnover, which has been shown negative for agile team productivity. Team design choices remain an important factor impacting team productivity, even more pronounced on agile teams that rely on teamwork and people factors. The intra-team coordination processes must be adjusted to enable productive work by considering priorities and pace between teams. Finally, the revised conceptual framework for agile team productivity supports further tests through confirmatory studies.     

Exploring the relationship between total quality management and information systems development

This study examines a series of relationships between total quality management (TQM) and information systems (IS) development. Specifically, we consider whether organizations which have more fully adopted TQM will be different in their approaches to IS development. Our findings suggest that where TQM is adopted more fully, there will be a significant impact on four areas of IS development: system goals; system design philosophy/concepts; assumptions made by IS professionals about system users and user involvement in system development. We also report evidence that both TQM and IT may require similar organizational cultures.     

Social ties,knowledge sharing and successful collaboration in globally distributed system development projects

Traditionally, the main focus of the information system (IS) literature has been on technical aspects related to system development projects. Furthermore, research in the IS field has mainly focused on co-located project teams. In this respect, social aspects involved in IS projects were neglected or scarcely reported. To fill this gap, this paper studies the contribution of social ties and knowledge sharing to successful collaboration in distributed IS development teams. Data were drawn from two successful globally distributed system development projects at SAP and LeCroy. Data collected were codified using Atlas.ti software. The results suggest that human-related issues, such as rapport and transactive memory, were important for collaborative work in the teams studied. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for theory and suggesting a practical guide to enhance collaborative work in globally distributed teams.     

Performance on agile teams: Relating iteration objectives and critical decisions to project management success factors

ContextWhile project management success factors have long been established via the golden triangle, little is known about how project iteration objectives and critical decisions relate to these success factors. It seems logical that teams’ iteration objectives would reflect project management success factors, but this may not always be the case. If not, how are teams’ objectives for iterations differing from the golden triangle of project management success factors?ObjectiveThis study identifies iteration objectives and the critical decisions that relate to the golden triangle of project management success factors in agile software development teams working in two-week iterations.MethodThe author conducted semi-structured interviews with members across three different agile software development teams using a hybrid of XP and Scrum agile methodologies. Iteration Planning and Retrospective meetings were also observed. Interview data was transcribed, coded and reviewed by the researcher and two independently trained research assistants. Data analysis involved organizing the data to identify iteration objectives and critical decisions to identify whether they relate to project management success factors.ResultsAgile teams discussed four categories of iteration objectives: Functionality, Schedule, Quality and Team Satisfaction. Two of these objectives map directly to two aspects of the golden triangle: schedule and quality. The agile teams’ critical decisions were also examined to understand the types of decisions the teams would have made differently to ensure success, which resulted in four categories of such decisions: Quality, Dividing Work, Iteration Amendments and Team Satisfaction.ConclusionThis research has contributed to the software development and project management literature by examining iteration objectives on agile teams and how they relate to the golden triangle of project management success factors to see whether these teams incorporate the golden triangle factors in their objectives and whether they include additional objectives in their iterations. What’s more, this research identified four critical decisions related to the golden triangle. These findings provide important insight to the continuing effort to better assess project management success, particularly for agile teams.     

What affects information systems development team performance? An exploratory study from the perspective of combined socio-technical theory and coordination theory

Quality is an important factor in information systems development (ISD), and ISD team performance closely relates to quality. To better understand ISD teams, we empirically tested a model on ISD team performance by combining socio-technical theory and coordination theory. Using existing empirical studies and data collected from three well-known ISD companies in China, our research results identified influential characteristics of ISD team performance, and revealed similarities and differences between China’s ISD team performance and those in other countries. By the results, we find that knowledge sharing and major do not affect team performance. The compensation satisfaction to job performance is not significant in China, either. Our research provides suggestions for building and supporting ISD teams that could lead to performance improvements.     

When users are IT experts too: the effects of joint IT competence and partnership on satisfaction with enterprise-level systems implementation

Enterprise-level information systems (IS) are fundamental to businesses. Unfortunately, implementing these large-scale systems is a complex and risky endeavor. As a result, these initiatives must tap the expertise and active involvement of both the IS department and the enterprise's functional areas. Past studies focusing on IS implementation teams consistently identify the IS department as the source of technical expertise and leadership, while functional department team members are typically relegated to the role of business experts. However, unlike the past, many business professionals are knowledgeable about information technology (IT) and are increasingly capable of contributing to IS implementations from a technical perspective as well as a business perspective. This study examines how IT competence held by both the IS department and the user department stakeholders contributes to user satisfaction with the enterprise-level system implementation. Specifically, this research introduces a theoretically grounded construct, joint IT competence, which emerges when the IS department and user department stakeholders integrate their individually held IT competences. The study's results empirically demonstrate that joint IT competence is a key driver of user satisfaction in enterprise-level IS implementations. Although not as significant as joint IT competence, results show that partner-based leadership between the IS department and user stakeholders also influences user satisfaction with IS implementations.     

From Aristotle to Ringelmann: a large-scale analysis of team productivity and coordination in Open Source Software projects

Complex software development projects rely on the contribution of teams of developers, who are required to collaborate and coordinate their efforts. The productivity of such development teams, i.e., how their size is related to the produced output, is an important consideration for project and schedule management as well as for cost estimation. The majority of studies in empirical software engineering suggest that - due to coordination overhead - teams of collaborating developers become less productive as they grow in size. This phenomenon is commonly paraphrased as Brooks’ law of software project management, which states that “adding manpower to a software project makes it later”. Outside software engineering, the non-additive scaling of productivity in teams is often referred to as the Ringelmann effect, which is studied extensively in social psychology and organizational theory. Conversely, a recent study suggested that in Open Source Software (OSS) projects, the productivity of developers increases as the team grows in size. Attributing it to collective synergetic effects, this surprising finding was linked to the Aristotelian quote that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Using a data set of 58 OSS projects with more than 580,000 commits contributed by more than 30,000 developers, in this article we provide a large-scale analysis of the relation between size and productivity of software development teams. Our findings confirm the negative relation between team size and productivity previously suggested by empirical software engineering research, thus providing quantitative evidence for the presence of a strong Ringelmann effect. Using fine-grained data on the association between developers and source code files, we investigate possible explanations for the observed relations between team size and productivity. In particular, we take a network perspective on developer-code associations in software development teams and show that the magnitude of the decrease in productivity is likely to be related to the growth dynamics of co-editing networks which can be interpreted as a first-order approximation of coordination requirements.     

Improving situation awareness in crisis response teams: An experimental analysis of enriched information and centralized coordination

In responding to an emergency, the actions of emergency response teams critically depend upon the situation awareness the team members have acquired. Situation awareness, and the design of systems to support it, has been a focus in recent emergency management research. In this paper, we introduce two interventions to the core processes of information processing and information sharing in emergency response teams to analyze their effect on the teams’ situation awareness: (1) we enrich raw incoming information by adding a summary of the information received, and (2) we channel all incoming information to a central coordinator who then decides upon further distribution within the team. The effect of both interventions is investigated through a controlled experiment with experienced professional responders. Our results show distinctly different effects for information enrichment and centralization, both for the teams and for the coordinators within the team. While the interaction effects of both conditions cannot be discerned, it is apparent that processing non-enriched information and non-centralized information sharing leads to a worse overall team situation awareness. Our work suggests several implications for the design of emergency response management information systems.     

Individual profiles and team classes of the climate for creativity: A multilevel latent profile analysis

Understanding the team climate to enhance creativity is important in academia and industry given the need for organizations to respond to the changing environment. Research on team creativity is a relatively recent trend, but most studies have been conducted from a variable‐centered perspective. Despite the contributions of this type of research, there are limitations in understanding subgroups based on individuals' perceptions. To address the limitations, the purposes of this person‐centered study are firstly to identify individual‐level latent profiles and team‐level latent classes based on the climate for creativity, and secondly to examine the differences in individual‐ and team‐level outcomes between the identified profiles and classes. This study used multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) with 238 individuals in 26 project teams. We identified two individual profiles, high impediments and high stimulants, and two team classes, low impediments teams and mixed impediments teams. Low impediments teams included mostly high stimulants, and mixed impediments teams included half high stimulants and half low impediments. We further determined that high stimulants and low impediments teams showed higher individual‐ and team‐level outcomes than the other profile and class. This study theoretically and practically contributes to team creativity management from a person‐centered perspective.     

Action-embedded transformational leadership in self-managing global information systems development teams

While software development teams are becoming more and more distributed around the globe, most software development methodologies used by global teams prescribe self-managing teams. Transformational leadership is the key to successful information systems development and use for competitive advantage. Yet, little is known about transformational leadership in self-managing global information systems development team settings. This study answers the research question of how leaders emerge and strategically influence systems development in self-managing global information systems development teams. This question is answered with a grounded theory study of Apache Open Source Software development teams. A theoretical model of action-embedded transformational leadership is developed to demonstrate how leaders emerge and strategically influence systems development efforts through their leadership, which is embedded in their work-related actions.     

Impacts of collaborative IS on software development project success in Indian software firms: a service perspective

The collaborative work of team members has become a common occurrence in software development projects. Collaborative information systems (CIS), designed to facilitate and support teamwork, appear critical for software project success. However, the quality and convenience of the services and functions delivered by CIS have not received robust attention in academia. Hence, the current study investigates the role of the CIS service characteristics of service quality and service convenience in teamwork and software development project success using DeLone and McLean’s (D&M) Information System (IS) Success Model as the theoretical framework. This study incorporates the success indicators of teamwork quality, teamwork performance, and project success as measured by software quality and project performance. Data from 153 Indian software companies confirm that collaborative IS services, as well as teamwork quality/performance, are central to software development project success. We believe that the findings of this study will be helpful to project managers of software development firms.     

Pre-project partnering impact on an information system project,project team and project manager

Information system (IS) managers have long recognised the need to use project management approaches in the design and delivery of their system development projects. The result has been the widespread use of project teams headed by a project leader or manager. However, given the fact that there has been a low success rate for IS projects, there is a growing need to seek out new methods and controls for projects. One approach involves the practice of altering the project environment prior to the commencement of project tasks. To determine whether such pre-project activities may be effective, a model is proposed and tested relating the activities to the performance of the project manager and characteristics of an effective project team. Data from a sample of 186 project team members indicate that the pre-project activities lead to more effective teams and managers and eventually to project success. Thus, it is important that organisations begin work on projects at an earlier stage.     

Effects of intra-group conflict on packaged software development team performance

Abstract. Data from 40 packaged software development teams are used to test a path model that relates three antecedents, the presence of intragroup conflict and the level of conflict management to software development team performance. Findings indicate that a combination of the team's characteristics, team member characteristics and existing levels of intragroup conflict accounts for nearly one-half of the variance between the best and worst-performing teams. Furthermore, the level of conflict management moderates the relationship between existing levels of intragroup conflict and performance. These results highlight both the complexity of the social processes of packaged software development and the value of this perspective for gaining insight on software development performance.     

Performance Alignment Work: How software developers experience the continuous adaptation of team performance in Lean and Agile environments

ContextCompanies increasingly strive to adapt to market and ecosystem changes in real time. Gauging and understanding team performance in such changing environments present a major challenge.ObjectiveThis paper aims to understand how software developers experience the continuous adaptation of performance in a modern, highly volatile environment using Lean and Agile software development methodology. This understanding can be used as a basis for guiding formation and maintenance of high-performing teams, to inform performance improvement initiatives, and to improve working conditions for software developers.MethodA qualitative multiple-case study using thematic interviews was conducted with 16 experienced practitioners in five organisations.ResultsWe generated a grounded theory, Performance Alignment Work, showing how software developers experience performance. We found 33 major categories of performance factors and relationships between the factors. A cross-case comparison revealed similarities and differences between different kinds and different sizes of organisations.ConclusionsBased on our study, software teams are engaged in a constant cycle of interpreting their own performance and negotiating its alignment with other stakeholders. While differences across organisational sizes exist, a common set of performance experiences is present despite differences in context variables. Enhancing performance experiences requires integration of soft factors, such as communication, team spirit, team identity, and values, into the overall development process. Our findings suggest a view of software development and software team performance that centres around behavioural and social sciences.     

Knowledge sharing mechanisms and techniques in project teams: Literature review,classification, and current trends

Knowledge management is the process of capturing, sharing, developing, and using the knowledge efficiently. Knowledge sharing as one of the important parts of the knowledge management system means that an individual, team, and the organization share the knowledge with other members in the form of activities through the various ways. On the other hand, a project team is a team whose members usually belongs to different departments and are assigned to join the same project. In a project team, knowledge sharing is very important because it provides a link between the member and the project team by sharing knowledge to reduce cost and increase the performance. However, despite the importance of the knowledge sharing mechanisms and techniques in the project teams, to the best of our knowledge, the comprehensive and systematic research and study about the antecedents and backgrounds of knowledge sharing mechanisms between project teams is rare. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to provide the comprehensive and detailed review of the state-of-the-art knowledge sharing mechanisms in the project team as well as directions for future research. Also, this paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) on the knowledge sharing mechanisms in project teams up to the end of 2015. We identified 71 papers, which are reduced to 28 primary studies through our paper selection process. By providing the state-of-the-art information and the challenges issues, this survey will directly support academics, researchers and practicing professionals in their understanding of developments in knowledge sharing mechanisms and techniques in project teams.     

Contextualising collective efficacy in virtual team research: The essential role of collaborative technologies in the virtual team efficacy conceptual framework

One factor receiving contemporary interest from virtual team researchers is collective-level efficacy, that is, a team's shared belief in its collective abilities to work effectively. However, our understanding of this literature leads to two concerns. First, depending on traditional team-focused collective-level efficacy concepts conveys an indifferent view of technology that ignores decades of research explaining how virtual teams' reliance on collaborative technologies differentiates them from traditional teams. Second, the information systems literature has largely ignored the concept of collective-level efficacy in virtual team research. That collective-level efficacy is underexamined in IS research is disappointing, given the growing recognition (outside the IS literature) that it is crucial to virtual team success. This absence becomes even more concerning given that IS researchers developed the concept of virtual team efficacy (VTE) specifically for virtual team settings. Unlike collective-level efficacy measures designed for traditional team settings, VTE incorporates technology into its conceptual definition and the operationalization of its measurement indicators. Thus, it is a stronger predictor of virtual team outcomes. To demonstrate its importance to IS research, we used a deductive theory-driven approach to propose and empirically evaluate whether VTE indirectly acts on virtual team effectiveness through the critical concepts of trust and participants' perceptions of problems associated with the collaboration inhibitors of time difference, geographical separation, and cultural differences. This research contributes significantly to the literature by confirming VTE's relationship to important virtual team success factors and informing IS researchers about the appropriate choice of constructs when studying collective-level efficacy in virtual team settings.     

Are team personality and climate related to satisfaction and software quality? Aggregating results from a twice replicated experiment

ContextResearch into software engineering teams focuses on human and social team factors. Social psychology deals with the study of team formation and has found that personality factors and group processes such as team climate are related to team effectiveness. However, there are only a handful of empirical studies dealing with personality and team climate and their relationship to software development team effectiveness.ObjectiveWe present aggregate results of a twice replicated quasi-experiment that evaluates the relationships between personality, team climate, product quality and satisfaction in software development teams.MethodOur experimental study measures the personalities of team members based on the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and team climate factors (participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation) preferences and perceptions. We aggregate the results of the three studies through a meta-analysis of correlations. The study was conducted with students.ResultsThe aggregation of results from the baseline experiment and two replications corroborates the following findings. There is a positive relationship between all four climate factors and satisfaction in software development teams. Teams whose members score highest for the agreeableness personality factor have the highest satisfaction levels. The results unveil a significant positive correlation between the extraversion personality factor and software product quality. High participative safety and task orientation climate perceptions are significantly related to quality.ConclusionsFirst, more efficient software development teams can be formed heeding personality factors like agreeableness and extraversion. Second, the team climate generated in software development teams should be monitored for team member satisfaction. Finally, aspects like people feeling safe giving their opinions or encouraging team members to work hard at their job can have an impact on software quality. Software project managers can take advantage of these factors to promote developer satisfaction and improve the resulting product.     

The role of communication values in swift starting action teams: IT insights from flight crew experience

We define a new subset of action teams termed swift starting action teams. These high technology groups of professional, well trained strangers perform from the moment they start working and face high stakes from the beginning. For these teams, we present evidence that the expression of communication values precedes effective task communication and team performance. IT professionals increasingly team with other professionals in high technology environments, such as swift starting action teams. Communication and communication values are important to the success of action team interactions common to IT professionals, such as requirements analysis, knowledge discovery interviews, and end user service engagements.