Overcoming Team Boundaries in Agile Software Development

Software development teams communicate differently by using a variety of communication tools. Successful communication leads to competitive software based on clear and quickly delivered re-quirements, as well as smoothness in bug reporting and explanation. Agile and Waterfall software development approaches have both addressed the importance of communication for their process. However, neither Agile nor Waterfall has guaranteed communication effectiveness during their development lifecycle. In this study we highlight the main differences between Agile and Waterfall approaches in the light of Media Richness Theory (MRT). We also identify the preferred commu-nication tools during a project’s lifecycle using both Agile and Waterfall models separately. A mixed-method approach was employed in this study incorporating quantitative and qualitative data from interviews and a multilingual web-based survey. The results are presented descriptively and statistically and a rank ordering of communication tools based on our participants’ preferences leads to a better understanding of how to select the best tool in a given situation. Thus a new updated MRT ranking model tailored for software development environment was developed, as well as, we conclude that communication tools are employed differently based on project stages and team member’s role. These differences in using communication tools could be also attributed to the type of transferable information or personal preferences.

In the past decade, there have been a number of notable changes in industrial software engineering, including the movement towards agility. The Agile Manifesto characterizes the term “agile”, and lists a set of principles that form a basis for agile methodologies [1], such as Extreme Programming (XP), OpenUP, and Scrum. There is creation, communication, and consumption of knowledge during (agile) software development [2]. For the success of an agile project, it is crucial that such knowledge be managed effectively. In doing so, an appropriate selection and use of certain tools and technologies can be helpful. In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of Social Web Applications, such as Wiki [3]. Indeed, a number of noteworthy uses of Wiki in software engineering have been reported [4]. However, these studies are largely independent of any software development methodology, and are centered mostly on collaboration. The primary reasons for selecting Wiki for agile software development include the following: (1) the deployment of agile methodologies, especially XP and Scrum, with teams that are increasingly geographically-dispersed, (2) the involvement in sustainable software development by organizations with basic infrastructure and modest budgets for resources, and (3) the need of inexpensive, mature, and widely-available tools for supporting iterative development, by almost anybody, at anytime, anywhere, using almost any device. The purpose of this research is to provide a framework for integrating Wiki for the purpose of facilitating the dynamics of knowledge during agile software development.

Despite of many criticisms, agile software development (Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org, [1]) philosophy has been proved to be quite successful to increase the project success rate up to a significant extent. The primary reasons behind the criticism of agile are the strong violation of the traditional disciplined software engineering theories, principles and practices. The goal of this research paper is to establish the fact that agility may also be achieved by following traditional process models especially with BRIDGE (Mandal, 2009 IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC 2009) Patiala, India, [2]) process model. Hence, the aim of this paper is to integrate the agile and traditional disciplined software development process models and establish the compatibility between both the approaches. At the beginning, we have explored the objectives and principles of agile software development. Next, we briefly discussed the BRIDGE process model and further justified that--following BRIDGE process model, the philosophy of agile may also be achieved and conclude that BRIDGE model has both the capability of traditional software development process model as well as of the agile process.

Due to increasing interest in distributed agile software development, there is a need to systematically review the literature on challenges encountered in the agile software development environment.Using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach, 32 relevant publications, dated between 2013 and 2018 were selected from four electronic databases.Data from these publications were extracted to identify the key challenges across the system development life cycle (SDLC) phases, which essentially are short phases in each agile-based iteration.5 types of key challenges were identified as impacting the SDLC phases; these challenges are Communication, Coordination, Cooperation, Collaboration and Control.In the context of the SLDC phases, the Communication challenge was discussed the most often (79 times, 33%).The least discussed challenges were Cooperation and Collaboration (26 times, 11% each).The 5 challenges occur because of distances which occur in distributed environment.This SLR identified 4 types of distances which contribute to the occurrence of these key challenges -physical, temporal, social-cultural and knowledge/experience.Of the 32 publications, only 4 included research which proposed new solutions to address challenges in agile distributed software development.The authors of this article believe that the findings in this SLR are a resource for future research work to deepen the understanding of and to develop additional solutions to address the challenges in distributed agile software development.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Agile software development (ASD) refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. The two most widely used methodologies based on the agile philosophy are scrum and extreme programming. Whichever methodology is considered, agile teams usually consist of few members and are collocated under the same roof. However, nowadays, agile practices for distributed development are gaining much momentum. The main reasons behind such practice are cheaper skilled labour, minimizing production cost, reducing time to market and increasing the quality and performance of projects. Along with the benefits obtained through globally distributed development, there are, however, many difficulties faced by various organisations. These problems are caused mostly due to distance, time and cultural differences. To meet up with the level of complexity of projects, ASD also has to keep up with many challenges, especially in cases of distributed teams. Four major challenges have been identified. First, the introduction of global software development entails a number of difficulties, especially related to knowledge sharing. For instance, lack of transparency is frequently observed within such teams, whereby a team member is totally unaware of the activities of his/her colleagues. Second, the unavailability of team members due to time zone differences adds up to the list of problems confronted by distributed teams. Third, there can be misunderstanding amongst the team member due to communication problems, especially in cases where the mother language of the team members is different. Fourth, a common issue faced by distributed teams is the loss of knowledge when an employee resigns from his/her post. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the main problems outlined above, what has been proposed is Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Knowledge4Scrum will act as a global repository for knowledge sharing in Scrum distributed teams with the possibility of creating new knowledge through data mining techniques. Valid past projects data have been collected to train and test the data mining models. The research also investigates the suitability of knowledge management in Scrum distributed teams to address the various challenges addressed above. Findings – Knowledge4Scrum supports the four knowledge management processes, namely, knowledge creation/acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application. It has been found that the aforementioned tool satisfactorily addressed issues of distance, time and cultural differences that crop-up in distributed development teams. Data mining has been the main aspect for the knowledge creation and application processes, whereby new knowledge has been determined by examining and extracting patterns from existing data found in the repository. Originality/value – A major feature of the Knowledge4Scrum tool lies in the knowledge creation and application section, where a number of data mining techniques have been utilised to identify trends and patterns in past data collected. When compared to the COnstructive COst MOdel to estimate project duration, Knowledge4Scrum gives more than satisfactory results. Such functionalities will actually help managers for future project planning and in decision-making.

Planning future Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) missions requires extensive, complex, and real-time collaboration and coordination between many Warfighting Functions and Domains such as Electronic Warfare (EW), Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT), Network Operations, and Cyber Operations. This collaboration and coordination requires synchronization of the associated domain processes and activities. Large Infrastructure projects for Command and Control (C2) are designed to integrate and align these processes through Information Technology (IT) services, such as decision aids, collaboration tools, and communication tools. New acquisition initiatives are driving infrastructure development to support the rapid fielding of capabilities through a modular software development approach. State-of-the-Art Shared Infrastructure Services can be developed using Agile Software Development (ASD) methods such as Scrum, Kanban, or Extreme Programming. However, the integration of these IT services cannot be easily planned since they are developed at the technology (i.e., software implementation) level according to the selected ASD method. Engineering the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) results in a gap between doctrinal processes and required system functionality since developers quickly code and configure small functional modular units at the technology level, while bypassing the traditional top-down waterfall flow from requirements to design. Furthermore, IaC does not explicitly require consulting a systems architecture. To improve the alignment of configured IT infrastructure services with doctrinal processes, this paper seeks to determine the extent to which agile Development Operations (DevOps) process can implement C2 doctrine while supporting dynamically-changing mission requirements and an operational environment. This paper proposes an automated Systems Engineering workflow to realize IT infrastructure services using Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and a military DevOps.

agile information systems, flexible information systems development, distributed information systems development, global software development, software development, special issue

Software testing process is an important factor affecting the quality of software testing, which plays an important role in the entire software development life cycle. In order to achieve a precise result of testing, different software testing process model will be chosen in different software development process for testing. Traditional testing process model will be chosen in traditional software development, and agile testing process model will be chosen in agile software development. However, there is no kind of testing process model proposed for a special software development which is a combination of traditional software development and agile software development. This article will propose a hybrid software testing process model aiming at a combination of traditional software development model and agile software development model. In the following sections, traditional testing process model and agile testing process model will be introduced respectively in the first place. Most attentions will be paid to the introduction and analysis of the hybrid software testing process model through one case. Furthermore, we will discuss the relationship of the data tracing involved in the testing process model.

Gender issues have recently been discussed extensively with respect to the computing fields (Bair & McGrathe-Cohoon, 2005; Camp, 2002; Margolis & Fisher, 2002). One of the discussed issues is the “shrinking pipeline” phenomenon (Camp, 1997). Camp shows how, in addition to the shrinking of the pipeline upon transition from high school to graduate school, the pipeline has been shrinking also at the bachelor-degree level since 1983. She argues that since the number of women at the bachelor’s level affects the number of women at levels higher in the pipeline and in the job market, this phenomenon is of great concern. The shrinking pipeline is explained in various ways. Among other explanations, the image of the field as requiring long hours of programming is a dominant one. Here is an illustrative case. The April 3, 2003, edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Business News addressed the question of why more women are not involved in the tech fields.1 This question was discussed by a panel, assembled by the Pittsburgh Technology Council a week before the article was published, which included some of the region’s most successful women. Among other arguments, Robbin Steif, chief financial officer of Maya Design, said, “It might be an issue of self-selection—women might not be risk takers.” Then she added, “It might also have something to do with the work/family issue, because entrepreneurs work way more than 40 hours per week.” This article focuses on software development teams using one of the agile software development methods. A high quality of working software is the primary measure of progress; however, agile software development processes, in addition, promote a sustainable pace for all the individuals (developers and users) involved in the software development process,2 welcome requirement changes even in late stages of the development, and favor face-to-face communication. Based on our observations of agile software teams both in academia and in industry, we claim that such software development frameworks enable women to gain new and better positions in the hi-tech industry in general and in software development teams in particular. We view this article as an example of how diversity can be achieved in software teams. In our current research, we explore other dimensions by which diversity can be achieved in software teams, such as minorities and nationalities. The perspective and data that are presented in this article are part of our research about human aspects of software engineering, specifically our comprehensive research about cognitive and organizational aspects of agile software development methods both in the industry and academia (Dubinsky & Hazzan, 2004; Dubinsky, Talby, Hazzan, & Keren, in press; Hazzan & Dubinsky, 2003a, 2003b; Tomayko & Hazzan, 2004).q

This research work explores the trends in formal and agile software development methods. Software development has evolved, from the era of “code and fix” to methods categorized as “heavyweight” and “lightweight”. The heavyweight methods are championed by the waterfall method, while agile methods are considered the lead in lightweight methods of software development. Both methods have proven records of successes and failures. Bridging the divide between them and harmonizing their symbiotic properties has the synergy of creating beneficial and more robust methodology with complementary advantage which is termed ambidexterity. Ambidexterity allows for a high level approach of selecting a methodology on the basis of the problem requirements, and coordinates their independent processes complementarily without conflict. Keywords: Global Software Development, Agile Software Development, off Shoring, Near-shoring, Distribution

Agile software development has proliferated over the last two decades and become one of the dominant frameworks used by software development companies. Agile development methods and User Experience (UX) both strive towards providing software that meets the users’ needs. The purpose of this study is twofold; firstly, to study the current literature and approaches of integrating UX into Agile software development with the intention of combining it into good development practices for use by Agile and UX practitioners. Secondly, to investigate how UX is integrated into Agile in the South African context thus confirming if literature from studies conducted abroad apply within the South African context. A review of the literature confirms that there are a significant number of publications on Agile software development from a South African perspective (Joseph and Santana 2016; Chiyangwa and Mnkandla 2017; Sebega and Mnkandla 2017; Mudarikwa and Grace 2018). However, there are no publications that have explored UX integration within an Agile software environment. Recent research attempts, such as those by Coleman (2018) and Brosens (2018), are evidence of the growing interest in UX; however, these studies do not provide a higher level of abstraction on Agile UX integration practices. This research presents results of a qualitative study on how UX and Agile can be integrated. UX cannot be quantified or adequately explained by using variables or experiments. The grounded theory research method has been used. It is qualitative in nature and the theory consists of iterative data collection and analysis with an aim of producing a theory. The results of this study highlighted approaches for increasing user involvement in Agile and good development practices to integrate UX into Agile. It also highlighted issues and challenges experienced. This research offers insight for UX/Agile practitioners and adds academic value in the form of a generic framework for the integration of UX into Agile. The framework has been developed through the lens of the Design Thinking paradigm.

Aim/Purpose: This paper aims to describe how various Kanban elements can help alleviate two prominent types of challenges, communication and collaboration in Global Software Development (GSD). Background: Iterative and Lean development methodologies like Kanban have gained significance in the software development industry, both in the co-located and globally distributed contexts. However, little is known on how such methodologies can help mitigate various challenges in that occur in a globally distributed software development context. Methodology: The study was conducted using a single-case study based on a general inductive approach to analysis and theory development. Through the literature review, collaboration and communication challenges that GSD teams face were identified. Data collected through semi-structured interviews was then inductively analyzed to describe how the case-study teams employed various Kanban elements to mitigate communication and collaboration challenges they face during GSD. Findings: The study found that some Kanban elements, when properly employed, can help alleviate collaboration and communication challenges that occur within GSD teams. These relate to Inclusion Criteria, Reverse Items, Kanban Board, Policies, Avatars, and Backlog. Contribution: The paper contributes to knowledge by proposing two simple concept maps that detail the specific types of communication and collaboration challenges which can be alleviated by the aforementioned Kanban elements in GSD. Recommendations for Practitioners: This paper is relevant to GSD teams who are seeking ways to enhance their team collaboration and communication as these are the most important elements that contribute to GSD project success. It is recommended that relevant Kanban elements be used to that effect, depending on the challenges that they aim to alleviate. Future Research: Future research can investigate the same research questions (or similar ones) using a quantitative approach.

<p>Agile software development offers a deceptively simple means to organise complex multi-participant software development while achieving fast delivery of quality software, meeting customer requirements, and coping effectively with project change. There is little understanding, however, of how agile software development projects achieve effective coordination, a critical factor in successful software projects. Agile software development provides a unique set of practices for organising the work of software projects, and these practices seem to achieve effective project coordination. Therefore, this thesis takes a coordination perspective to explore how agile software projects work, and why they are effective. The outcome of this research is a theory of coordination in co-located agile software development projects. To build a coordination theory, evidence was drawn from a multi-case study following the positivist tradition in information systems. Three cases of agile software development contributed to the theory, along with one additional non-agile project that contributed contrasting evidence. The findings show that agile software development practices form a coordination strategy addressing three broad categories of dependency: knowledge dependencies, task dependencies, and resource dependencies. Most coordination is for managing requirement, expertise, historical, and task allocation dependencies; all forms of knowledge dependency. Also present are task dependencies, which include activity or business process dependencies, and resource dependencies, which include technical or entity dependencies. The theory of coordination explains that an agile coordination strategy consists of coordination mechanisms for synchronising the project team, for structuring their relations, and for boundary spanning. A coordination strategy contributes to coordination effectiveness, which has explicit and implicit components. The primary contribution of this theory is an explanation of how agile software development practices act together to achieve effective project coordination. The coordination strategy concept can be used to select practices from agile methods to ensure software projects achieve effective coordination. In addition, once operationalised in future work, the well-grounded theoretical concepts developed in this research will provide valuable tools for measuring the coordination effectiveness of agile method adoption and adaptation.</p>

<p>Agile software development offers a deceptively simple means to organise complex multi-participant software development while achieving fast delivery of quality software, meeting customer requirements, and coping effectively with project change. There is little understanding, however, of how agile software development projects achieve effective coordination, a critical factor in successful software projects. Agile software development provides a unique set of practices for organising the work of software projects, and these practices seem to achieve effective project coordination. Therefore, this thesis takes a coordination perspective to explore how agile software projects work, and why they are effective. The outcome of this research is a theory of coordination in co-located agile software development projects. To build a coordination theory, evidence was drawn from a multi-case study following the positivist tradition in information systems. Three cases of agile software development contributed to the theory, along with one additional non-agile project that contributed contrasting evidence. The findings show that agile software development practices form a coordination strategy addressing three broad categories of dependency: knowledge dependencies, task dependencies, and resource dependencies. Most coordination is for managing requirement, expertise, historical, and task allocation dependencies; all forms of knowledge dependency. Also present are task dependencies, which include activity or business process dependencies, and resource dependencies, which include technical or entity dependencies. The theory of coordination explains that an agile coordination strategy consists of coordination mechanisms for synchronising the project team, for structuring their relations, and for boundary spanning. A coordination strategy contributes to coordination effectiveness, which has explicit and implicit components. The primary contribution of this theory is an explanation of how agile software development practices act together to achieve effective project coordination. The coordination strategy concept can be used to select practices from agile methods to ensure software projects achieve effective coordination. In addition, once operationalised in future work, the well-grounded theoretical concepts developed in this research will provide valuable tools for measuring the coordination effectiveness of agile method adoption and adaptation.</p>

PT. The Indonesian Telecommunications Industry is a provider of products and services based on digital service innovation to answer business needs to facilitate automation in consumer company organizations. Every consumer/potential partner who wants to be part of a partnership at PT. The Indonesian Telecommunications Industry previously had to register as a partner manually using a paper registration form for prospective partners, besides that the required documents were still in the form of paper documents that could be lost at any time. The concept of Agile Software Development was coined by Kent Beck and 16 colleagues by stating that agile software development is a way of building software by doing it and helping others build it at once. Agile software development methods or agile methodology is a set of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions develop through collaboration between organized teams Based on the stages of analysis of admin and user needs, it can be concluded that there are several things that must be considered and made carefully, including the programming structure, database specifications, and user interface design must be in accordance with The e-Partnership system is made to make it easier for companies to provide information about the procurement of goods or services and other informational information. As for partners of PT. The Indonesian Telecommunication Industry makes it easy to get information about procurement and other information. In addition, this system can make it easier for prospective partners to register to become partners online, because to access the main page of procurement information and other information can only be accessed by partners who already have an e-Partnership application account. Admin dashboard made to make it easier to update, add, and delete procurement information and other information. And the information will be informed through the e-Partnership website to the logged in partner.