Der Beruf als wesentliche Institution der Anerkennung in der modernen Gesellschaft steht im Wandel und dadurch die Anerkennungschancen und -formen der Arbeit. Fokussiert wird zunehmend Arbeit, die sich an ihrem Erfolg misst und weniger Arbeit, bei welcher die Leistung an sich im Vordergrund steht. Dadurch wird die Wertlosigkeit bestimmter Beschäftigungsgruppen gefördert sowie die De-Institutionalisierung der Anerkennung im Beruf gestärkt. Zudem entfallen durch immer flacher werdende Unternehmens-Hierarchien auch Möglichkeiten Anerkennung durch Positionssymbole auszurücken. Dies bedeutet, dass die Sichtbarmachung von Leistung und des Sich-Sichtbarmachens an Wichtigkeit gewinnt. (...)

The advent of agile methodologies has brought about an illuminating debate in Software Engineering, particularly with regard to software quality. Some studies have reported that agile methodologies do improve software quality when compared to traditional methodologies; other studies have been inconclusive or contradictory, while others have argued that empirical evidence is limited. This study sought to investigate the correlation between agile methodologies when compared to traditional methodologies for selected software quality parameters. The research design was causal comparative, as well as correlational. The approach was quantitative, using a survey as the data collection method. SPSS was used to conduct descriptive and correlational analysis for 106 responses received. The main findings were that there was a statistically significant relation between traditional methodology use and ease of system testing (p=0.014); a statistically significant relation between traditional methodology use and timeliness (p=0.02); a statistically significant relation between software quality standards used and ease of system testing (p=0.017); a statistically significant relation between active stakeholder participation on projects and ease of system interactivity (p=0.047); and a statistically significant relation between mandatory workshop interactivity (p=0.047); and a statistically significant relation between mandatory workshop attendance or training and ease of system navigation (p=0.031).Claims that agile methodology use leads to improved software quality for selected quality parameters could not be empirically validated. The association between most of the selected software quality criteria in relation to methodology use in general was not apparent. Agile methodologies are suitable in small environments. Scrum was the most widely used agile methodology by far. The popularity and adoption state of XP showed a significantly decreasing trend. Traditional and agile methodologies combined are being used (47%) more than any other methodology. Agile methodology use (28%) surpassed traditional methodology use (19%). A suitable consensus definition for agile methodologies did not emerge from the data collected. The most suitable project life cycle model was evolutionary, incremental and iterative. ‘Other’ methodologies, meaning customised agile or SDLC, are suitable, as the environment becomes increasingly large and complex. Only 13% of organisations surveyed have an agile experience of six years and beyond. Based on these findings and gaps in the literature, implications and recommendations for further research areas are proposed, where the findings and contributions of this study are found to be relevant to practice for application and to academia for further research / College of Engineering, Science and Technology / M. Sc. (Computing)

Agile methods for software development have become popular, especially since the agile manifesto was written in 2001. Many positive effects have been found in organizations using agile methods, but also several dangers. Communication and collaboration in teams is often mentioned as something that works well with the methods, but interactions between teams are often lacking. Since agile teams are cross-functional and focused on products rather than specializations, knowledge becomes spread out in the organization. Within teams, different members often have different deep knowledge, but instead have a lot of knowledge about their products in common. This allows them to discuss knowledge related to the product well, but limits their possibility to discuss advanced topics and experiences regarding their deep knowledge or specialization within their team. These issues are important to consider when applying agile methods in organizations, and the research about the issues is quite thin.   In this research, I have taken an interpretive approach and carried out a case study at the development department of a medium-sized IT company providing large software systems for the healthcare industry, for which I have used the pseudonym MedTech. Three different teams have been studied through interviews with all members as well as observations of agile practices like daily meetings. Further, I have studied three different knowledge practices that MedTech uses to complement the creation and sharing of knowledge that happens in teams. These three complementary knowledge practices had different forms and handled knowledge in different ways. One was closely related to what literature often calls communities of practice, which are groups where members share an interest and interact to deepen their knowledge. In this practice at MedTech, meetings were used to discuss experiences and knowledge about topics within specific areas. Another was more focused on one-way communication through presentations and reading tips, spreading more basic knowledge to a wider audience. The third complementary knowledge practice let employees use 12 work hours every sixth week to do whatever they wanted that related to their knowledge, allowing them to e.g. explore new technologies and be creative or simply read up on some interesting topic.   My results show that agile teams support some sharing and creation of knowledge, especially through having members work closely to each other and share experiences, and through practising their skills in daily work, with help from each other when necessary. Like other research has shown, there was however a lack of practices for interactions between teams in the agile methods. Such interactions were crucial since I found teams to be comparable to theories about communities of knowing, where teams create strong perspectives, the sharing of which is important for utilization and creation of knowledge. The complementary knowledge practice that related to communities of practice was shown to be good for connecting employees with similar specializations, who would normally be separated in different teams. This allowed for creation and sharing of knowledge as individuals needed to explain their experiences and could combine knowledge from different members of the community. The other two complementary knowledge practices were shown to be good for increasing motivation to create and share knowledge, and showing that the organization valued the knowledge of individuals.

Orientador: Cecília Mary Fischer Rubira / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T09:09:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Braz_Alan_M.pdf: 1903353 bytes, checksum: 9bff9aefdcc11d6d8fe46490302d6291 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Os Métodos Ágeis, ou Desenvolvimento Ágil de Software (DAS), tem se popularizado, na última década, por meio de métodos como Extreme Programming (XP) e Scrum e isso fez com que fossem aplicadas no desenvolvimento de sistemas computacionais de diversos tamanhos, complexidades técnica e de domínio, e de rigor quanto à confiabilidade. Esse fato evidencia a necessidade de processos de desenvolvimento de software que sejam mais rigorosos e que possuam uma quantidade adequada de modelagem e documentação, em especial no que concerne ao projeto arquitetural, com o objetivo de garantir maior qualidade no seu resultado final. A confiabilidade pode ser alcançada adicionando elementos de tratamento de exceções às fases iniciais do processo de desenvolvimento e à reutilização de componentes. O tratamento de exceções tem sido uma técnica muito utilizada na verificação e na depuração de erros em sistemas de software. O MDCE+ é um método que auxilia a modelagem do comportamento excepcional de sistemas baseados em componentes que, por ser centrado na arquitetura, melhora a definição e a análise do fluxo de exceções entre os componentes do sistema. Este trabalho propõe uma solução para guiar o desenvolvimento de sistemas confiáveis baseados em componentes por meio da adição de práticas do MDCE+ ao Scrum, resultando no método Scrum+CE (Scrum com Comportamento Excepcional). Esse processo passa a expor os requisitos excepcionais em nível das Estórias de Usuário, adiciona testes de aceitação mais detalhados, obriga a criação do artefato de Arquitetura Inicial e adiciona um novo papel de Dono da Arquitetura. Como forma de avaliar esse método proposto, foi realizado um experimento controlado com três equipes, que desenvolveram um sistema com requisitos de confiabilidade, utilizando Scrum e Scrum+CE. Foram coletadas métricas para comparar a eficiência do novo processo e o resultado obtido, com a utilização do Scrum+CE, foi à produção de software com melhor qualidade, porém com menor número de funcionalidades / Abstract: Agile Software Development (ASD) has been on mainstream through methodologies such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum in the last decade enabling them to be applied in the development of computer systems of various size, technical and domain complexity and degress of reliability. This fact highlights the need for software development processes that are accurate and have an adequate amount of modeling and documentation, especially regarding the architectural design, aiming to increase the quality of the end result. The reliability can be achieved by adding elements of exception handling at early stages of development and through components reuse. Exception handling has been a widely used technique in detecting and fixing errors in software systems. The MDCE+ is a method that assists exceptional behavior modeling at components based systems, which is architecture-centric what improves the definition and flow analysis of exceptions between system components. This paper proposes a solution to guide the development of reliable systems based on components by adding MDCE+ practices to Scrum, resulting in the Scrum+CE method (Scrum with Exceptional Behavior). This process exposes the exceptional requirements, at the User Stories level, documents acceptance tests with more details, requires the creation of a high-level architecture artifact and adds a new role of Architecture Owner. In order to evaluate this proposed method, a controlled experiment was conducted with three teams, who developed a system with reliability requirements using Scrum and Scrum+CE. We collected metrics to compare the efficiency of the new process and the result was the production of software with better quality but with less features using Scrum+CE / Mestrado / Ciência da Computação / Mestre em Ciência da Computação

Agile software development has gained significant importance the recent years. Software practitioners have recognized the importance of agile development due to the benefits offered. Therefore, agile software development has been identified as the replacement to traditional or plan driven style of development. There are different frameworks or methods, which follow agile principles, known as agile methodologies. SCRUM and XP are the most popular and widely used agile methods or framework. There are different types of agile methodologies, each containing a set of practices, which can be adapted and implemented in an organization. However, there is still a need for empirical studies to understand the factors like requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques, which can enable successful implementation of agile practices in software organizations. In this study, the primary objective is to provide a comprehensive model or framework to practitioners, which includes the list of important requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques while implementing agile, and also pertaining to adoption/implementation of individual agile practices specific to SCRUM and XP. This model also includes the categorization of the requirements/modifications and challenges into different levels of an organization, to which they mostly apply. This conceptual model or framework can aid the practitioners in understanding and implementing agile practices in a better way in their organizations. In this study, an industrial survey is conducted in order to identify the list of important requirements/modifications that are needed to implement agile, challenges faced during implementation, and mitigation strategies/techniques needed to address the challenges. Also, categorization of the identified lists into different levels of the organization is also performed using survey. A systematic literature review is performed in order to identify the primary lists of requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques, which are further validated and classified using survey. Also, systematic literature review is used to identify the list of requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques that are needed while implementing individual agile practices specific to SCRUM and XP. Based on the systematic literature review, 53 primary studies were identified which are relevant to the research area. Upon analyzing the primary studies, the list of requirements/modifications, challenges and solutions are identified for generic agile adoption/implementation and also pertaining to individual practices specific to SCRUM and XP. Thereupon, an industrial survey is conducted where, identified list of requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques are provided to the respondents. Respondents were asked to classify the obtained aspects based on the level of importance. Also, they were asked to categorize the obtained requirements/modifications and challenges into different levels of an organization. The survey has obtained 48 responses from different parts of the world. From the results of survey, requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques are classified based on the level of importance. Also, requirements/modifications and challenges are categorized into different levels of an organization. Using the obtained factors, a conceptual model or framework was constructed for practitioners that can enable them to understand and implement agile practices in their organizations in a better way. To conclude this research, a comprehensive model or framework was constructed using the final list of important requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques while implementing/adopting agile and also pertaining to the individual agile practices, and also based on the categorization of the requirements and challenges into levels of an organization, where they are applicable. The final list of identified lists of requirements/modifications; challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques pertaining to individual agile practices can help practitioners to understand the implementation criteria of agile practices in software organizations. It was observed from the results of survey that perception of literature and practitioners are different in terms of usage of agile practices, as some practices, which were given high focus in the literature, were not given equal priority by the respondents. Empirical findings also help to identify change in policies and procedures and change to open workspace as most important requirements/modifications, organizational resistance and lack of motivated programmers as most critical challenges and proper training and inclusion of experts as most used mitigation strategies/techniques. Moreover, it was concluded that there is also a need for further full-scale empirical works on identifying the factors that affect adoption of agile. Practitioners can identify the benefits from this research and researchers can extend this work to remaining agile methodologies. / Agile systemutveckling har fått stor betydelse de senaste åren. Programvaru utövare har insett vikten av agila utvecklings grund av de förmåner som erbjuds. Därför har agile mjukvaruutveckling identifierats som ersättare till traditionella eller planen driven stil av utveckling. Det finns olika ramar eller metoder, som följer agila principer, så kallade agila metoder. SCRUM och XP är de mest populära och mest använda agila metoder eller ramverk. Det finns olika typer av agila metoder, var och en innehåller en uppsättning metoder, som kan anpassas och genomföras i en organisation. Det finns dock fortfarande ett behov av empiriska studier för att förstå de faktorer som krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker, som kan göra det möjligt för ett framgångsrikt genomförande av agila metoder i mjukvaruorganisationer.  I denna studie, är det primära målet att ge en heltäckande modell eller ramverk för utövare, vilket inkluderar en lista över viktiga krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker samtidigt genomföra vig, och även avseende antagande / genomförande av enskilda agila metoder specifika SCRUM och XP. Denna modell innehåller även kategoriseringen av de krav / modifieringar och utmaningar i olika nivåer i en organisation, till vilken de oftast gäller. Denna konceptuella modell eller ramverk kan hjälpa utövarna att förstå och genomföra agila metoder på ett bättre sätt i sina organisationer. I denna studie är en industriell undersökning för att identifiera listan över viktiga krav / ändringar som behövs för att genomföra vig, utmaningar under genomförandet, och begränsnings strategier / tekniker som behövs för att ta itu med utmaningarna. Också, kategorisering av de identifierade listorna i olika nivåer i organisationen är också utföras med undersökningen. En systematisk litteraturöversikt görs för att identifiera de primära listor krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker, som är validerade längre och klassificerade med hjälp enkät. Dessutom är systematisk litteraturöversikt används för att identifiera en lista över krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker som behövs samtidigt genomföra enskilda agila metoder som är specifika för SCRUM och XP. / +918500053444

Kravhantering inom systemutveckling utgör basen för vad som ska utvecklas. Agila systemutvecklingsmetoder blir vanligare för varje dag som går. Det har dock ofta visat sig finnas utmaningar med hur man anpassar just kravhanteringen till de agila metoderna. Verksamheter har olika förutsättningar för att arbeta agilt. Lantmäteriet i Gävle uttryckte ett behov att undersöka varför den agila praxis man hade inte följdes av alla utvecklingsteam i samband med kravhanteringen. Syftet med denna uppsats var därför att undersöka varför vissa utvecklingteam i en verksamhet arbetade agilt med sin kravhantering medan vissa inte gjorde det. För att undersöka detta utförde jag en fallstudie där jag med hjälp av enkäter och intervjuer samlade in data från både utvecklare och personer på verksamhetssidan som var inblandade i kravhanteringen. Resultaten visade att orsakerna till att en agil kravhantering fungerade så olika var flera. Genom att använda en tematisk analys kunde jag urskilja några framträdande orsaker. Kommunikation och flexibilitet samt kunskap och förståelse för olika perspektiv var teman som utgjorde positiva faktorer. De teman som istället utgjorde negativa faktorer var bland andra otydliga roller, brist på direktiv, en övertro till metoder och processer, osynk mellan verksamhet och IT, prioriteringsproblem, förvaltningsplaner, attityder och IT-arkitektur. / Requirements engineering within software development is the foundation of what needs to be developed. Agile methods in software development become more common every day. It has however often been shown that there are certain challenges with how to adopt the requirements engineering to the agile methodology. Businesses have different preconditions for agile methods. Lantmäteriet in Gävle had a need to examine why not all the developing teams followed agile methods within the requirements engineering process. The purpose with this thesis was thus to examine why some developing teams in an organization worked in an agile manner with the requirements engineering, and some did not. To do this I performed a case study where I collected data through questionnaires and interviews from both developers and people from the business side. The results showed that the reasons for these differences were multiple. Communication and flexibility, and knowledge and understanding for different perspectives were the positive factors. The themes that hindered an agile way of working were, among others, unclear roles, lack of direction, too much reliance on methods and processes, discrepancy between business and IT, prioritizing issues, management plans, attitudes and IT architecture.

Software engineering practices have experienced significant changes over the period of past two decades. Keeping in view the competitive market trends, now is the high time for many organizations to shift from traditional waterfall models to more agile technologies like Scrum [22][23]. A change of this magnitude is often not easy to undertake. The reason that both software engineering techniques are different in many respects, organizations require considerable amount of analysis of the whole transitioning process and possible scenarios that may occur along the way. Small and medium organizations are normally very skeptical to the change of this magnitude. The scale of change is not limited to only software processes, in fact, difficult part is to deal with old attitudes and thinking processes and mold them for the new agile based Scrum development. The process of change therefore need to be understood in the first place and then carefully forwarded to the implementation phase.

Lower cost and shorter time-to-market expectations are the major drivers of software productivity improvements. To manage productivity effectively, it is important to identify the most relevant difficulties and develop strategies to cope with them. Agile methods, including Extreme Programming and Scrum, have evolved as approaches to simplify software development process, potentially leading to better productivity. They aim to shorten development time and handle the inevitable changes resulting from market dynamics. Although the industry has extensively adopted agile methods, little research has empirically examined the software development agility construct regarding its dimensions, determinants, and effects on software development performance. Understanding this construct could help determine where to concentrate management efforts (and related financial resources) from a practical standpoint and where to focus research efforts from an academic perspective. Considerable research has been directed at identifying factors that have a significant impact on software development productivity. In general, the studied productivity factors were related to product, personnel, project, process, or organizational issues. Continuously evaluating productivity factors is important, as factors may change under new software engineering practices. However, little research has investigated the major factors influencing agile team productivity. ]The goal of this thesis was to explore productivity definitions, factors, and monitoring in agile teams and to improve the practice based on the collected evidence and gained knowledge. This thesis presents five novel contributions: C1 - Empirical verification of the importance of productivity for companies adopting agile methods and its perceived benefits; C2 - Rationale for the definition of productivity in the context of agile methods; C3 - Empirical verification of agile team productivity factors; C4 - A conceptual framework for agile team productivity factors and their impact; C5 - A team productivity monitoring process considering adaptability and an evaluation of the usefulness of agile team productivity metrics. / Menor custo e expectativa de menor time-to-market são os principais motivadores para melhorias de produtividade de software. Para gerir eficazmente a produtividade, é importante identificar as dificuldades mais relevantes e desenvolver estratégias para lidar com elas. Os métodos ágeis, incluindo Programação Extrema e Scrum, evoluíram como abordagens para simplificar o processo de desenvolvimento de software, potencialmente levando a uma melhor produtividade. Eles visam reduzir o tempo de desenvolvimento e lidar com as mudanças inevitáveis decorrentes da dinâmica do mercado. Embora a indústria tenha adotado amplamente métodos ágeis, há pouco entendimento científico do construto agilidade em desenvolvimento de software em relação às suas dimensões, determinantes e efeitos sobre o desempenho no desenvolvimento de software. Compreender esse construto poderia ajudar a determinar onde concentrar os esforços de gestão (e recursos financeiros relacionados) de um ponto de vista prático, assim como onde concentrar os esforços de investigação de uma perspectiva científica. Pesquisa considerável tem sido direcionada para identificar os fatores com impacto significativo na produtividade de desenvolvimento de software. Em geral, os fatores de produtividade estudados foram relacionadas ao produto, pessoas, projeto, processo ou questões organizacionais. Avaliar fatores de produtividade continuamente é importante, pois os fatores podem mudar quando novas práticas de engenharia de software são adotadas. No entanto, poucos estudos investigaram fatores influenciando a produtividade de times ágeis. O objetivo desta tese é explorar definições, fatores e monitoramento de produtividade em times ágeis e melhorar a prática baseada em evidência. Esta tese apresenta cinco novas contribuições: C1 - Verificação empírica da importância de produtividade para as empresas que adotam métodos ágeis e seus benefícios percebidos; C2 - Justificativa para a definição da produtividade no contexto de métodos ágeis; C3 - A verificação empírica de fatores de produtividade em times ágeis; C4 - Um arcabouço conceitual de fatores de produtividade em times ágeis e seu impacto; C5 - Um processo de acompanhamento de produtividade de times ágeis, considerando adaptabilidade e uma avaliação da utilidade de métricas de produtividade para esses times.

Text in English / Scrum is the most adopted and under-researched Agile methodology. The research conducted on Scrum adoption is mainly qualitative. Therefore, there was a need for a quantitative study to investigate Scrum adoption challenges. The general objective of this study was to investigate the factors that have a significant relationship with Scrum adoption as perceived by Scrum practitioners working within South African organisations. To achieve this objective a narrative review to synthesise the existing challenges was conducted, followed by the use of these challenges in the development of a conceptual framework. After that, a survey questionnaire was used to test and evaluate the developed framework. The research findings indicate that relative advantage, complexity, and sprint management are factors that have a significant linear relationship with Scrum adoption. The findings are generalisable to the population, and the author recommends that organisations review the findings during their adoption phase of Scrum. / Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) / University of South Africa (UNISA) / School of Computing / M.Sc. (Computing)

The thesis deals with problems of agile methodologies in the settings of virtual teams. It begins with the description of virtual teams and their models and deals with both theoretical and practical aspects of mutual communication of their team members. The thesis follows with general characteristics of agile approach and their demonstration on representative methodologies. One of them (methodology Scrum) is described in detail in the next chapter and linked with possibilities of its deployment within virtual teams. Practical part of the thesis deals with the design and implementation of a software application that is focused on effective communication support of virtual teams that utilize Scrum. Deployment of this application is discussed within a case study of a real project which team faced problems of agile software development in the settings of virtual team on a daily basis.