Agile distributed software development: enacting control through media and context

While face‐to‐face interaction is fundamental in agile software development, distributed environments must rely extensively on mediated interactions. Practicing agile principles in distributed environments therefore poses particular control challenges related to balancing fixed vs. evolving quality requirements and people vs. process‐based collaboration. To investigate these challenges, we conducted an in‐depth case study of a successful agile distributed software project with participants from a Russian firm and a Danish firm. Applying Kirsch's elements of control framework, we offer an analysis of how control was enacted through the project context and in the participants' mediated communication. The analysis reveals that formal measurement and evaluation control were persistently enacted through mediated communication. These formal control practices were, however, predominantly carried out in conjunction with informal roles and relationships such as clan‐like control inherent in agile development. Overall, the study demonstrates that, if appropriately applied, communication technologies can significantly support distributed, agile practices by allowing concurrent enactment of both formal and informal controls. The paper discusses these findings as they relate to previous research and concludes with their implications for future research.     

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.     

Becoming agile together: Customer influence on agile adoption within commissioned software teams

Despite the ongoing expansion of agile practices beyond software firms, agile adoption remains risky, challenging, and poorly understood. Although agile practices emphasize self-organization and customer collaboration, we know little about how customers influence agile adoption within self-organizing teams. Here, we analyze how a commissioned software team engaged in customer collaboration during agile adoption at a Danish IT service provider. Our case study shows that the software team's transition to self-organized teamwork practices, agile planning routines, and active customer engagement was mutually dependent on the customer's trust in the software team and flexible collaborative routines. As a result, we advance a theoretical perspective of customer influence on agile adoption within commissioned software teams, implying that both software teams and customers need to navigate a contradictory tension between self-organization and collaboration to become agile together.     

Test-Driven Development in Large Projects

Test-driven development (TDD) is a key practice for agile developers because it involves writing test cases ahead of the code, which can improve design. The TDD process works well for projects in which a collocated team develops a small to medium system, but it can be challenging for large systems, especially those involving geographically distributed teams. The main obstacle is the degree of integration: when the team must integrate many individual classes developed at distributed sites, the coordination and communication grows exponentially with the number of individual developers and sites. This does not mean that TDD is ineffective for large-scale geographically distributed projects, but developers must take care to account for its focus on unit testing and its failure to rigorously address communications issues during system and integration testing. In this article, suggestions to scale up TDD are presented with two large-scale global software development projects at a major corporation and a recent meeting to exchange global software development best practices with a Fortune 500 company     

Influences on regression testing strategies in agile software development environments

Regression testing is a well-established practice in software development, but in recent years it has seen a change of status and emphasis with the increasing popularity of agile methods, which stress the central role of regression testing in maintaining software quality. The objectives of this article are to investigate regression testing strategies in agile development teams and identify the factors that can influence the adoption and implementation of this practice. We have used a mixed methods approach to our research, beginning with an analysis of the literature to identify research themes related to the adoption of regression testing techniques under agile methodologies, from which we developed an analytical framework for the study. This was followed by three exploratory case studies that we used to exercise the main elements of the framework, develop some key themes of interest, and devise a questionnaire for the final stage of the study, an on-line survey to explore the main issues identified in the case studies across different contexts. Within our specific sample, our results suggest that organizational maturity is a key factor in effective regression testing practices and that the adoption of such practices is helped by a coherent testing philosophy and change management processes. We also found that the return on investment in automated regression testing was positive for our respondents and that adopting these practices in the context of agile methods had been a relatively painless process for the organizations in our survey. We conclude that investing in regression testing tools and processes is likely to be beneficial for organizations. However, further work is needed in assessing how organizational culture impacts on the quality process and the financial outcomes for commercial software development organizations.     

Successful extreme programming: Fidelity to the methodology or good teamworking?

ContextDeveloping a theory of agile technology, in combination with empirical work, must include assessing its performance effects, and whether all or some of its key ingredients account for any performance advantage over traditional methods. Given the focus on teamwork, is the agile technology what really matters, or do general team factors, such as cohesion, primarily account for a team’s success? Perhaps the more specific software engineering team factors, for example the agile development method’s collective ownership and code management, are decisive.ObjectiveTo assess the contribution of agile methodology, agile-specific team methods, and general team factors in the performance of software teams.MethodWe studied 40 small-scale software development teams which used Extreme Programming (XP). We measured (1) the teams’ adherence to XP methods, (2) their use of XP-specific team practices, and (3) standard team attributes, as well as the quality of the project’s outcomes. We used Williams et al.’s (2004a) [33] Shodan measures of XP methods, and regression analysis.ResultsAll three types of variables are associated with the project’s performance. Teamworking is important but it is the XP-specific team factor (continuous integration, coding standards, and collective code ownership) that is significant. Only customer planning (release planning/planning game, customer access, short releases, and stand-up meeting) is positively related to performance. A negative relationship between foundations (automated unit tests, customer acceptance tests, test-first design, pair programming, and refactoring) is found and is moderated by craftsmanship (sustainable pace, simple design, and metaphor/system of names). Of the general team factors only cooperation is related to performance. Cooperation mediates the relationship between the XP-specific team factor and performance.ConclusionClient and team foci of the XP method are its critical active ingredients.     

Role of collective ownership and coding standards in coordinating expertise in software project teams

Software development is a complex undertaking that continues to present software project teams with numerous challenges. Software project teams are adopting extreme programming (XP) practices in order to overcome the challenges of software development in an increasingly dynamic environment. The ability to coordinate software developers' efforts is critical in such conditions. Expertise coordination has been identified as an important emergent process through which software project teams manage non-routine challenges in software development. However, the extent to which XP enables software project teams to coordinate expertise is unknown. Drawing on the agile development and expertise coordination literatures, we examine the role of collective ownership and coding standards as processes and practices that govern coordination in software project teams. We examine the relationship between collective ownership, coding standards, expertise coordination, and software project technical quality in a field study of 56 software project teams comprising 509 software developers. We found that collective ownership and coding standards play a role in improving software project technical quality. We also found that collective ownership and coding standards moderated the relationship between expertise coordination and software project technical quality, with collective ownership attenuating the relationship and coding standards strengthening the relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Usability in agile software development: A tertiary study

In the last years the interest in developing research on integration of usability and agile software development has been increasing. The number of systematic literature reviews, systematic mapping studies and non-systematic reviews, related to this thematic has also increased. Nevertheless, there is no analysis on the quality of these published secondary studies, nor is there a consolidated research that brings the answer of how to integrate these two areas. The goal of this paper is to categorize secondary studies related to the integration of usability and agile software development and present a critical analysis on the quality of the selected studies. To accomplish this goal a tertiary study was performed to categorize the related studies selected. Initially 3,065 papers were identified and further narrowed to 14 by applying exclusion criteria and analysis. We classified the selected studies as systematic literature reviews, systematic mapping studies and non-systematic literature reviews to report the data analysis. As a result of this study different forms to integrate usability and agile software development were detected as well as the various challenges that must be overcome for the integration success. Six main categories were identified to represent ways of integrating usability into agile development: processes, techniques, practices, recommendations, principles and different approaches. Regarding to the challenges for the integration seven main categories were also identified: issues related to tests, time, work balance, modularization, feedback, prioritization, and documentation. Although the interest in researching the integration of usability and agile software development has increased in the last years, mostly of the analyzed studies neglected the quality criteria and presented difficulties to use methods to synthetize the research results. Despite this, it has been realized that the integration of usability with agile software development is possible and is strongly aligned with user-centered design. The initial studies indicated a separation of activities and roles into specific tracks with parallel work to treat usability in agile software development, but the trend is no longer to manage and control these activities in separate ways, so new challenges are becoming to appear. Although we have identified several points of tension, the integration does not become unfeasible.     

Processes versus people: How should agile software development maturity be defined?

Maturity in software development is currently defined by models such as CMMI-DEV and ISO/IEC 15504, which emphasize the need to manage, establish, measure and optimize processes. Teams that develop software using these models are guided by defined, detailed processes. However, an increasing number of teams have been implementing agile software development methods that focus on people rather than processes. What, then, is maturity for these agile teams that focus less on detailed, defined processes? This is the question we sought to answer in this study. To this end, we asked agile practitioners about their perception of the maturity level of a number of practices and how they defined maturity in agile software development. We used cluster analysis to analyze quantitative data and triangulated the results with content analysis of the qualitative data. We then proposed a new definition for agile software development maturity. The findings show that practitioners do not see maturity in agile software development as process definition or quantitative management capabilities. Rather, agile maturity means fostering more subjective capabilities, such as collaboration, communication, commitment, care, sharing and self-organization.     

How agile software development methods reduce work exhaustion: Insights on role perceptions and organizational skills

Agile methods are widely used in the software industry as a way to more rapidly develop and deliver new software. They define iterative work processes, advocate self‐organization and openness for change, and prescribe how software developers interact with each other and external stakeholders. Despite their popularity, it is unclear how agile methods influence work exhaustion in software developers and how developer skills play into this effect. On the one hand, agile methods may reduce software developers' work exhaustion by levelling out their workload across the entire duration of a project. On the other hand, agile methods exert a high level of pressure on software developers to continuously deliver working software, create many intensive social interactions, and to frequently adapt to changes. In light of these effects, prior research could not explain why some software developers become less exhausted from using agile methods, whereas others perceive the exact opposite. Based on the job demand‐control model, we develop a theoretical model connecting agile method use to individual developer skills and to two established determinants of employee exhaustion: role conflict and role ambiguity. We tested our research model in a field study among 1894 software developers in 217 project teams that used agile methods. The random coefficient modelling results show that agile method use facilitates the achievement of clear and unambiguous role perceptions and thereby reduces work exhaustion in developers, particularly if developers possess the organizational skills to effectively interact with others in their organization. We highlight implications for theory on the individual‐level effects of software development methods and provide practical insights for software companies.     

Waste identification as the means for improving communication in globally distributed agile software development

Agile approaches highly values communication between team members to improve software development processes, even though, communication in globally distributed agile teams can be difficult. Literature proposes solutions for mitigating the challenges encountered in these environments. These solutions range from general-level recommendations and practices to the use of communication tools. However, an approach covering the whole development process for identifying challenges, and improving communication in globally distributed agile development projects, is missing. In order to address this, we conducted a case study within a globally distributed agile software development project focused on using the concept of waste as a lens for identifying non-value producing communication elements. In order to achieve this, we constructed a waste identification approach through which we identified five communication wastes, and solutions to mitigate them. These wastes can help companies identify communication issues that are present in their development efforts, while the presented waste identification technique gives them a mechanism for waste identification and mitigation. This work contributes to the scientific community by increasing the knowledge about communication in globally distributed agile development efforts.     

The Impact of an Agile Methodology on the Well Being of Development Teams

This paper describes an empirical study, which addresses the aspect of well being amongst members of the software development teams. The question of interest is whether an agile methodology has any distinct effect on the well being of the software developers. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilised, including the participative observation, focus group interviews, close-ended questionnaires and simple statistical tests such as Spearman Correlation and Mann–Whitney test. Initial results showed that an agile methodology (XP) has a positive effect on the level of enthusiasm of the software developers in the most dynamic project. To understand why XP can increase enthusiasm, results are interpreted with references to cognitive, affective and managerial properties of the practices studied. This result needs further investigation on the individual effects of each practice on the wellbeing and attitudes of Software Engineering (SE) teams.     

The impact of agile practices on communication in software development

Agile software development practices such as eXtreme Programming (XP) and SCRUM have increasingly been adopted to respond to the challenges of volatile business environments, where the markets and technologies evolve rapidly and present the unexpected. In spite of the encouraging results so far, little is known about how agile practices affect communication. This article presents the results from a study which examined the impact of XP and SCRUM practices on communication within software development teams and within the focal organization. The research was carried out as a case study in F-Secure where two agile software development projects were compared from the communication perspective. The goal of the study is to increase the understanding of communication in the context of agile software development: internally among the developers and project leaders and in the interface between the development team and stakeholders (i.e. customers, testers, other development teams). The study shows that agile practices improve both informal and formal communication. However, it further indicates that, in larger development situations involving multiple external stakeholders, a mismatch of adequate communication mechanisms can sometimes even hinder the communication. The study highlights the fact that hurdles and improvements in the communication process can both affect the feature requirements and task subtask dependencies as described in coordination theory. While the use of SCRUM and some XP practices facilitate team and organizational communication of the dependencies between product features and working tasks, the use of agile practices requires that the team and organization use also additional plan-driven practices to ensure the efficiency of external communication between all the actors of software development.

Agile vs. structured distributed software development: A case study

In globally distributed software development, does it matter being agile rather than structured? To answer this question, this paper presents an extensive case study that compares agile (Scrum, XP, etc.) vs. structured (RUP, waterfall) processes to determine if the choice of process impacts aspects such as the overall success and economic savings of distributed projects, the motivation of the development teams, the amount of communication required during development, and the emergence of critical issues. The case study includes data from 66 projects developed in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The results show no significant difference between the outcome of projects following agile processes and structured processes, suggesting that agile and structured processes can be equally effective for globally distributed development. The paper also discusses several qualitative aspects of distributed software development such as the advantages of nearshore vs. offshore, the preferred communication patterns, and the effects on project quality.     

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.     

A model-driven approach to adopt good practices for agile process configuration and certification

ContextThe agile development paradigm has been extensively adopted in the industry. This adoption is highly dependent on the knowledge and good practices applied by most experienced practitioners in organizations. Hence, it would be valuable to count on appropriate support to preserve and systematically use this expert knowledge in configuring agile development processes aligned with organizational standards.ObjectiveThis paper presents a model-driven approach for representing and selecting good practices to configure agile practices in development processes aligned with organizational development practices and quality standards.MethodWe define a conceptual approach for configuring agile development processes that fulfills enterprise good practices and external quality standards. This approach was implemented in a tool suite and applied to an industrial development scenario related to ISO 9001 certification.ResultsThe approach was implemented in a model-driven tool that provides automatic support for identifying good practices when configuring agile development processes. The tool also verifies consistency with development methods and quality standards, such as ISO 9001.ConclusionsThe results obtained from the industrial application indicate that practitioners can reuse expert knowledge to configure agile development processes aligned with quality certifications. Moreover, the approach also facilitates the tailoring of agile practices into concrete development processes that take advantage of organizational good practices.     

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.     

Collective agility,paradox and organizational improvisation: the development of a particle physics grid

This paper examines systems development in a global collaborative community of high‐energy physics and offers insights and implications for agile systems development in other large scale and distributed settings. The paper studies the ongoing construction of the UK's computing grid for particle physics (GridPP), a grid that is itself part of the world's largest grid, the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid. We observe in this project a collective, agile and distributed performance through which the Grid is constructed. We express this through the concept of ‘collective agility’ which captures a large distributed performance rather than the more conventional sense of agility as small‐group and deliberate systems development practices. The collective agility of GridPP is analysed as a process of ‘enacted emergence’ expressed through the dynamics of six improvisation paradoxes.     

Acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge in software development teams: An empirical study

ContextSharing expert knowledge is a key process in developing software products. Since expert knowledge is mostly tacit, the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge along with the development of a transactive memory system (TMS) are significant factors in effective software teams.ObjectiveWe seek to enhance our understanding human factors in the software development process and provide support for the agile approach, particularly in its advocacy of social interaction, by answering two questions: How do software development teams acquire and share tacit knowledge? What roles do tacit knowledge and transactive memory play in successful team performance?MethodA theoretical model describing the process for acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge and development of a TMS through social interaction is presented and a second predictive model addresses the two research questions above. The elements of the predictive model and other demographic variables were incorporated into a larger online survey for software development teams, completed by 46 software SMEs, consisting of 181 individual team members.ResultsOur results show that team tacit knowledge is acquired and shared directly through good quality social interactions and through the development of a TMS with quality of social interaction playing a greater role than transactive memory. Both TMS and team tacit knowledge predict effectiveness but not efficiency in software teams.ConclusionIt is concluded that TMS and team tacit knowledge can differentiate between low- and high-performing teams in terms of effectiveness, where more effective teams have a competitive advantage in developing new products and bringing them to market. As face-to-face social interaction is key, collocated, functionally rich, domain expert teams are advocated rather than distributed teams, though arguably the team manager may be in a separate geographic location provided that there is frequent communication and effective use of issue tracking tools as in agile teams.