Thesis (MPhil (Information Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The environment in which all organisations currently operate is undoubtably dynamic. Regardless of the nature, size or geographical location of business, companies are being forced to cope with a rapidly changing world and increasing levels of unpredictability. This thesis tracks the history of software development methodologies leading up to agile development (chapter 2). Agile development has appeared in response to the limitations of traditional development approaches and evolved to address the particular demands of a changing world (chapter 3). The theory of sensemaking is used to gain insight into the functioning of agile development. Sensemaking is introduced and a working definition of this concept is formulated (chapter 4). This research does not argue that agile development is the same as sensemaking, but rather that it can be better understood through sensemaking. Agile development can be seen as a type of sensemaking, but sensemaking is also a generic, universal cognitive ability. The structure and design of agile development is well aligned with sensemaking, and one can understand its nature and the type of management needed to support agile development better from this perspective. In fact, agile development directly supports and facilitates several important elements of the sensemaking process. For successful sensemaking to occur, certain organisational conditions need to be present. The term "managed sensemaking" is introduced to expand this notion. After performing an analysis of agile development (chapter 5), certain pertinent implications and challenges facing organisations are considered (chapter 6). By framing these implications in terms of sensemaking, practical management suggestions can be provided based on a good fit between the problem that agile development is meant to solve and the cognitive requirements of the process leading to a solution. The research conducted in this process opens the door to further research opportunities (chapter 7) and allows for the application of sensemaking in the context of software development methodologies. This study provides insight into the prevalence and functioning of agile methodologies, in software engineering contexts, by leveraging the theory of sensemaking to provide an explanation for the underlying worldview and processes constituting this approach. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die omgewing waarin alle organisasies tans funksioneer in ongetwyfeld dinamies. Maatskappye word genoop om die uitdagings van 'n vinnig-veranderende wêreld die hoof te bied, ongeag die aard, grootte of geografiese ligging van die besigheid. Hierdie tesis volg die geskiedenis van sagteware-ontwikkelingsmetodologiee tot by agile development (hoofstuk 2). Agile development het verskyn as 'n reaksie op die beperkings van tradisionele ontwikkelingsbenaderings en evolueer om aan te pas by huidige uitdagings (hoofstuk 3). Die teorie van sensemaking word gebruik om insig te verkry in die funksionering van agile development. Sensemaking word ingelei en 'n werksdefinisie word geformuleer (hoofstuk 4). Hierdie navorsing argumenteer nie dat agile development dieselfde is as sensemaking nie, maar eerder dat dit beter verstaan kan word deur sensemaking. Agile development kan wel gesien word as 'n tipe sensemaking, maar sensemaking is ook 'n generiese, universele kognitiewe vermoe. Die struktuur en ontwerp van agile development is goed belyn met sensemaking, en 'n mens kan die aard daarvan en tipe bestuur benodig om agile develop- ment te ondersteun beter verstaan vanuit hierdie perspektief. Tewens, agile development ondersteun en fasiliteer verskeie belangrike elemente van die sensemaking proses direk. Vir suksesvolle sensemaking om plaas te vind, word sekere organisatoriese toestande benodig. Die term "managed sensemaking" word ingelei om hierdie idee uit te brei. Na 'n analise van agile development (hoofstuk 5) word sekere dwingende implikasies en uitdagings, wat organisasies in die gesig staar, oorweeg (hoofstuk 6). Deur hierdie implikasies te plaas in sensemaking-terme kan praktiese bestuursvoorstelle aangebied word, gegrond op 'n goeie passing tussen die probleem wat agile development probeer aanspreek en die kognitiewe vereistes van die proses wat lei na 'n oplossing. Die navorsing wat onderneem is in hierdie proses ontsluit moontlikhede vir verdere studies (hoofstuk 7) en skep die moontlikheid vir die toepassing van sensemaking in die konteks van sagtewareontwikkelingsmetodologiee. Hierdie studie bied insig in die voorkoms en funksionering van agile methodologies in sagteware-ingenieurwese omgewings deur die teorie van sensemaking te hefboom om 'n verduideliking vir die onderliggende wereldbeeld en prosesse aan te bied.

Background. Over the years, agile software development has become increasingly popular in the software industry. One of the reasons is that agile development addressed the needs of the organisations better than the traditional models, such as the waterfall model. However, the textbook version of agile development still leaves something to be desired. This could be learnt by observing the implementation of agile methods/frameworks in the industry. The teams often customize agile methods to suit their context-specific needs. When teams in the industry decide to adopt the agile way of working, they are confronted by a choice¾either they have to implement all the agile practices at a time or adopt them over the time. The former choice has shown to come with risks and, therefore, was found that practitioners generally preferred the latter. However, agile practices are not independent, they have dependencies amongst them. A new approach to agile development emerged in the recent years known as Agile Maturity Models (AMMs). AMMs claim to offer a better path to agile adoption. In AMMs, the practices are typically introduced gradually in a particular order. However, these AMMs are multifarious and haven’t been sufficiently evaluated¾especially in the industry practice. Thus, they need to be evaluated in order to understand their relevance in the industry.   Objectives. The goal is to evaluate the relevance of AMMs in the industry. By finding relevant AMMs, they could be used to alleviate the formation of agile teams and contribute toward their smoother functioning. By finding those that aren’t, this research could act as a cautionary to those practitioners who could potentially implement these AMMs and risk failure. The objectives are: identifying the agile practice dependencies in the AMMs; finding the agile practice dependencies in an agile team by conducting a case study in the industry; comparing the dependencies from the case study with those in the AMMs.
   Methods. The agile maturity models were identified and analysed. A case study was conducted on an agile team to identify the dependencies between the agile practices in the industry practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the agile team. Qualitative coding was used to analyse the collected data. The dependencies from the case study were compared with the AMMs to achieve the aim of this research.   Results. It was found that dependencies between individual agile practices in the AMMs were almost never possible to be found. However, practices suggested in each maturity levels were derived. Hence, the dependencies were found in the maturity-level level. From the case study, 20 agile practice dependencies were found. 7/8 AMMs were found to be not relevant. 1 AMM couldn’t be evaluated as it heavily relied on the practitioner’s choices.   Conclusions. The researchers could use the evaluation method presented in this thesis to conduct more such evaluations. By doing so, the dynamics present in the industry teams could be better understood. On their basis, relevant AMMs could be developed in the future. Such AMMs could help practitioners leverage agile development.

In today’s fast-paced world, there is a constant demand for better and more efficient ways of doing business. Motorola in Linköping are using the agile development framework, Scrum in their software development. A certain level of quality must also be assured of the delivered goods and services. Is it possible to use Scrum and still meet the quality requirements? This Master Thesis is performed to investigate if it is possible to achieve a quality certificate from TL 9000, the telecom industry extension of ISO 9000, when using the agile development framework Scrum. The investigation consists of interviews and observations at Motorola, Linköping, along with literature studies about quality systems and agile development. The conclusion is that it is possible to meet the TL 9000 requirements when using Scrum, under the condition that some additional processes are performed and that other parts of the organization also fulfills the remaining requirements. This is needed since there are requirements that are out of scope for the Scrum framework. Examples of the suggested additions are to follow the Scrum framework more strictly and to adopt a more specific definition of done.

Agile methods change the software processes. Agile processes such as Scrum, ExtremeProgramming (XP), Open Unified Process (OpenUP) etc. have techniques that improve softwarequality. No doubt that the purpose of these techniques is to inject quality assurance into theproject under development. This thesis presents quality assurance techniques in Open UnifiedProcess (OpenUP) along with comparative study to extreme programming (XP) for agilesoftware development. OpenUP is an agile and unified process that contains the minimal set ofpractices that help teams to be more effective in developing software. It assists to achieve qualityby an iterative and incremental approach with artifacts, checklists, guidelines, disciplines androles. On the other side XP emphasizes on values such as communication, feedback, respect,and courage. In addition, XP prescribes a collection of techniques, which aim to improvesoftware quality. Both these processes have the same purpose, to develop software that meets the stakeholder’sneeds and expectations, however they uses different approaches to achieve their goals. Thisthesis compares both processes in four different points of view, by comparing their qualitytechniques, focus in time, and cost of usage and social perspective. We have proposed an extrarole of the quality coordinator (QC) in OpenUP/XP. QC can support and coordinate project inall quality assurance activities. The objective of an extra role is to use the knowledge of QC toachieve highest possible product quality in software development process.Keywords: Agile Development, Quality assurance (QA), Open unified process (OpenUP),extreme programming (XP), Quality coordinator (QC)

Recent years have witnessed that standard telecommunication services evolved more and more to next generation value-added services. This fact is accompanied by a change of service characteristics as new services are designed to fulfil the customer’s demands instead of just focussing on technologies and protocols. These demands can be very specific and, therefore, diverse potential service functionalities have to be considered by the service providers. To make matters worse for service providers, a fast transition from concept to market product and low price of a new service is required due to the increasing competition in the telecommunication industry. Therefore, effective test solutions need to be developed that can be integrated in current value-added service development life-cycles. Besides, these solutions should support the involvement of all participating stakeholders such as the service provider, the test developers as well as the service developers, and, in order to consider an agile approach, also the service customer. This thesis proposes a novel framework for functional testing that is based on a new sort of description language for value-added services (Service Test Description). Based on instances of the Service Test Description, sets of reusable test components described by means of an applied Statecharts notation are automatically selected and composed to so-called behaviour models. From the behaviour models, abstract test cases can be automatically generated which are then transformed to TTCN-3 test cases and then assembled to an Executable Test Suite. Within a TTCN-3 test system, the Executable Test Suite can be executed against the corresponding value-added service referred to as System Under Test. One benefit of the proposed framework is its application within standard development life-cycles. Therefore, the thesis presents a methodology that considers both service development and test development as parallel tasks and foresees procedures to synchronise the tasks and to allow an agile approach with customer involvement. The novel framework is validated through a proof-of-concept working prototype. Example value-added services have been chosen to illustrate the whole process from compiling instances of the Service Test Description until the execution of automated tests. Overall, this thesis presents a novel solution for service providers to improve the quality of their provided value-added services through automated functional testing procedures. It enables the early involvement of the customers into the service development life-cycle and also helps test developers and service developers to collaborate.

This diploma thesis aims at the development of agile software projects of an existing company. The main goal of this dissertation has been to identify and analyze the most frequent current problems of the company, then to summarize their impact and to propose the best possible way of dealing with them. As an integral part, the aim of the dissertation has also been the creation of an internal knowledge base which can help to prevent those problems from happening in future projects and to share mutual experiences. To fulfil this goal, it has been necessary to learn all the problems of the agile software development, to know the most widely used agile methodologies and some latest facts and recent trends in the area of agile projects. It has also been necessary to carry out the SWOT analysis of the company and analyze the results of the internal agile development survey. The next thing which had to be done was the identification and description of the most frequent problems of agile development projects and the assessment of the categories of projects which occur in the company and linking the problems with each of the categories. The content of the internal knowledge base was created to correspond with the results of my diploma thesis. The contribution of this dissertation is the identification and assessment of the most fre-quent problems of agile projects of an existing company, identification of possible impacts and recommendation of possible solutions. The other contribution is the identification of the project categories which are linked to the identified problems. Last but not least, the main benefit of this thesis is the creation of a new internal project management knowledge base which will help to share the experience among all the projects and in this way it will help to prevent the spread of these problems. This diploma thesis is divided into two main parts, theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part, there is a definition of "agile methodologies", a description of their typical examples and statistics as well as modern trends in the area of the development of agile projects. The practical part is divided into four chapters. They contain the results of the company's SWOT analysis and the results of the internal agile development survey. Then there is a presentation of the identified agile development problems, their possible impact and the recommendation how to deal with them. There is a full description of all the identified categories of projects and their identified problems with their assessment criteria as well as time-proven ways how to effectively deal with them. The last chapter contains and internal project management knowledge base which has been done by myself. The knowledge base may be very useful in the project management now and in the future.

In this diploma thesis are described guidelines of implementation of Business Intelligence solution to organization. Thesis explains all stages of the project, from evaluation of busi-ness needs to construction and deployment of Business Intelligence application. Project management is the main focus of this thesis. Theoretical part of the thesis describes all stages of implementation and important development activities performed during them. The thesis compares the differences between implementation according to guidelines and The Agile development of Business Intelligence projects. The practical part examines the implementation of BI application to a specific company. The goal of this section is to show the link between consecutive stages of implementation. Implementation is realized according the guidelines set in theoretical part of thesis.

Métodos ágeis são técnicas adequadas para o desenvolvimento de software sujeito a mudanças constantes. Essas mudanças não devem afetar o cronograma, orçamento do projeto e devem assegurar o atendimento às necessidades do cliente. Diversos valores, princípios e boas práticas de desenvolvimento e de condução de projeto são aplicados em projetos ágeis com esse objetivo. Algumas dessas práticas são relacionadas a atividade de teste de software. Este trabalho teve como objetivo caracterizar a atividade de teste de software aplicada dentro de métodos de desenvolvimento ágil, buscando eliminar aspectos de teste não produtivos, identificando boas práticas e, principalmente, criando formas de acompanhar e melhorar continuamente a condução da atividade de teste. A partir da caracterização da atividade foi proposta a adoção de um conjunto de métricas para facilitar o seu acompanhamento e melhoria constante da mesma. Algumas dessas métricas de acompanhamento de testes foram implementadas na ferramenta Agile Testing Metrics Management (ATMM). O objetivo principal da ferramenta é gerenciar as iterações de desenvolvimento do projeto ágil e, também, exibir a evolução das métricas relacionadas ao código que está sendo testado e aos casos de teste desenvolvidos utilizando a ferramenta JUnit. Para validar a ferramenta e as métricas foram conduzidos estudos de casos com dois projetos de software de domínios diferentes que utilizaram métodos ágeis e testes de unidade / Agile methods are appropriate techniques for software development subject to constant changes. These changes should not affect the project schedule, budget and must ensure meeting the clients needs. Several values, principles and practices of project development and driving are applied in agile projects with this goal. Some of these practices are related to software testing activity. This study aimed at characterizing the software testing activity applied to agile development methods, trying to eliminate unproductive testing aspects, identifying good practices and especially creating ways of tracking and continuously improve the test activity. From this activity characterization, it was proposed an adoption of metrics set to facilitate the monitoring and constant improvement of the activity. Some of these testing tracking metrics were implemented in the Agile Testing Metrics Management Tool (ATMM). The main goal of this tool is to manage the iterations of agile project development and, also show the metrics evolutions regarding the code that have been tested and the test cases developed using JUnit. The tool and metrics were validated by case studies that were conducted with two software projects of different domains which used agile methods and unit testing

abstract: The traditional analysis, design, develop, implement, and evaluate (ADDIE) model is inadequate for dealing with the instructional design requirements of today’s constantly evolving world. This reality is especially true at the National Simulation Center where medicine and technology are constantly changing. To provide the best care for the nation’s veterans, the educational products must too reflect the current state of medicine. The Agile ADDIE Framework was developed to overcome challenges such as a constantly changing domain, external threats to the development process, and the need for expedited timelines while still creating quality products. Using agile theory, including the agile manifesto, as a theoretical framework, the Agile ADDIE Framework was created. The Agile ADDIE Framework implements agile elements into the traditional ADDIE model, such as an iterate, assess, and align (IAA) cycle in an effort to increases in flexibility, quality, and efficiency. A mixed method action research project reviewed the impact that agile elements had on the ADDIE model at the National Simulation Center. The working group participants underwent biweekly meetings using scrum methodology. Data collection included pre- and post-intervention interviews, weekly structured reflections, focus groups that occurred throughout the development process, and a burndown log to track performance. Additionally, the course that was created using the Agile ADDIE Framework was compared to a product that was completed using the traditional ADDIE model by a panel of instructional designers. Participants identified that the Agile ADDIE Framework was able to create a higher-quality product in a shorter amount of time when compared to a training support package developed using the traditional ADDIE model. Several themes emerged from the data, including the Agile ADDIE Framework was perceived to be more flexible and engaging to subject matter experts. There was also a discussion involving lesson learned, limitations, and implications for both practice and the domains. Future research considerations include the implementation of the Agile ADDIE Framework in a more generalized study. This study presents a framework that enables traditional ADDIE model instructional design operations into an agile era. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2020

Inadequate software development collaboration processes can allow technical debt to accumulate increasing future maintenance costs and the chance of system failures. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore collaboration strategies software development leaders use to reduce the amount of technical debt created by software developers. The study population was software development leaders experienced with collaboration and technical debt at a large health care provider in the state of California. The data collection process included interviews with 8 software development leaders and reviewing 19 organizational documents relating to software development methods. The extended technology acceptance model was used as the conceptual framework to better understand the social and cognitive influences on the perceived usefulness of collaboration in reducing technical debt. An inductive analysis of the data was used for coding, triangulation, and identifying themes related to the use of collaboration strategies to reduce technical debt. Prominent themes included using collaboration at all stages of development, using continuous verification processes, promoting a participatory culture, and using tools to support distributed teams. The study findings showed an environment that promotes collaboration, a culture that encourages participation, and accessibility to collaborative tools that may reduce technical debt in software projects. The results of this study may contribute to positive social change by demonstrating how individuals with diverse backgrounds and different perspectives can work together to improve critical software that people depend on every day.