Agila metoder används främst inom IT-sektorn och syftet med dessa metoder är att uppnå en ökad effektivitet och produktivitet. Metoderna främjar ett närmare samarbete mellan projektgrupper och kund. En ökad involvering av kund inom utveckling resulterar i kontinuerlig återkoppling på resultat och projektgrupper kan enklare försäkra sig om projektet håller sig inom ramen för att nå slutmålet med produkten. Metoderna bidrar även till en ökad flexibilitet och hantering av krav och förändringar som tillkommer under projektets gång. Teorin bakom agila metoder är tydlig, dock saknas studier som visar huruvida teorin stämmer överens med agila metoders användning i praktiken. Denna kandidatuppsats ämnar studera skillnaden mellan dessa. Studien baseras på en kvalitativ undersökning och ett omvänt deduktivt angreppssätt. Tre respondenter med olika yrkesroller inom systemutveckling har deltagit i studien för att ge ett bredare perspektiv. Resultatet visar en överenstämmelse mellan teori och praktik. Teorin beskriver utförligt hur en agil metod bör användas, vilka komponenter och roller som bör inkluderas för att nå ett tillfredställande resultat. Praktiken visar att verksamheter komponerar ihop egna metoder mer anpassade efter verksamheten och dess arbetsuppgifter. Verksamheter utgår från synsättet att ingen enskild metod är prefekt. Slutsatsen baserad på resultatet styrker praktiken, verksamheter undviker den begränsningen som medföljer genom att enbart nyttja en metod. Verksamheter som tidigare inte arbetat agilt inleder med att implementera en metod för att erhålla kunskaper kring hur arbetet bör utföras för att nå ett mer agilt tillstånd och vid ett senare skede utveckla dessa metoder för att anpassa dessa efter verksamheten. / Agile methods are most commonly used within system development and allow increased efficiency and productivity. Agile methods promote close collaboration between project groups and customers. Increased involvement of customers in the development process results in continuous feedback on the results, hence, project groups can more easily ensure that project requirements are met. Further, agile methods contribute to increased flexibility and management of requirements and changes that will occur during the project. The theory behind agile methods is clear, however, there are no studies that show whether the theory is consistent with the use of agile methods in practice. This thesis aims to study the difference between theoretical guidelines and the practical use. The study is based on a qualitative and deductive approach. Three respondents with two different professional roles in system development participated in the study to provide a broad perspective. The theory describes in detail how an agile method should be used, what components and roles should be included to yield positive outcome. The practice shows that companies compose their own methods more adapted to the business, based on the view that no single method is perfect. However, companies that have not previously worked agile began to implement a single method for gaining knowledge about how to most efficiently achieve a more agile state and later develop these methods to adapt the to the specific business. These results suggest a consistency between theory and practice. The conclusion based on the results reinforces the practical view, businesses avoid the constraint that comes with using only a single method.

The increase in complexity in software development is followed by higher pressure on several factors such as time-to-market. Software development projects are, however, found to often run over time due to many uncertainties throughout the project. Agile methodologies have become popular in managing software development projects due to their flexible, short-term, and iterative approach to working and planning. There is however a dilemma between being agile without fixed plans, and simultaneously having pressure from management and customers to set and meet a deadline, based on long-term plans. The Agile way of working includes self-organized teams that are involved in project management tasks such as planning and estimating. Agile teams create their own variances of different Agile frameworks as well as their own team characteristics, planning methods, and working ways. Important characteristics of Agile teams are, for instance, cross-functionality and adaptation. Agile planning includes activities such as the breakdown of work, effort estimation, prioritization, task assignment, and planning of iterations. These activities are commonly used in software development teams to manage their work and increase the ability to deliver on time.  This study aims to investigate how software development teams plan their work in practice and what Agile planning activities and Agile team characteristics are regarded, by the development teams, to be important for on-time delivery. Furthermore, it is interesting to investigate how the identified activities and characteristics are reflected in the teams’ actual planning. A case study is conducted on two software development teams at Ericsson’s organization Cloud RAN to investigate this matter.  The studied software development teams are found to use variations of Agile methodologies. The thesis identifies a number of Agile planning activities and team characteristics to be regarded, by the teams, as important for on-time delivery. Many of these activities and characteristics are also reflected in how the teams actually plan. However, there are some contrasting opinions regarding the activities and team characteristics. It can therefore not be stated that all the identified Agile activities and team characteristics are reflected in the actual team-level planning. The thesis also includes other findings impacting teams to deliver on time as well as factors affecting team-level planning.

Large banks are facing challenges from a new regulatory and competitive landscape which have led to 30 % of banks adopting agile using the Scaled agile framework (SAFe). The transformation process towards agile is complex and has led to a change process covering aspects such as a product development, leadership and organizational design. Currently scientific knowledge on how to conduct an agile transformation successfully is lacking. The current explorative case study aimed to provide an empirical contribution assisting theory building in the field of scaled agile. Empirical data was collected through thirteen semi structured interviews, totaling ten hours combined with ten ethnographic observations spanning 34 hours. The subsequent findings identified four approaches to scaling agile combined with eight aspects of scaled agility providing a new depth regarding how to apply them and what to achieve. The four approaches identified were: creating a virtual organization, standardization of agile methods, unifying around one portfolio and, changing towards an agile mindset. The eight aspects include strategic agility, payoff agility, business agility, product agility, agile organization, tools agility, people agility, and organizational culture. The eight aspects where synthesized into a framework from the fields of agile software development, agile portfolio management, Scrum, SAFe, Lean, New product development, Lean product development, aspects of change, emergent change models, organizational design, resistance to change, and organizational culture. In addition, insights from previous agile transformations was conducted by researching benchmark studies of the bank ING. The results indicated an initial successful implementation as the interviewees expressed joy in working with the new methods. Furthermore an effective use of all four major approaches to scaling agile was evident. The results showed that the scope of the transformation kept growing and was managed through iterative improvements. Integration of already agile parts of the organization such as projects was enabled, and initial changes in leadership and delegation as well as new roles were managed. However some struggles remained regarding product development which could not be conducted in a fully agile way due to large releases and a regulated environment. In addition dependencies between different teams limited the creation of autonomous teams capable of delivering end to end. Furthermore as the work was visualized the amount spent on non value adding activites such as preparing low value task could be avoided, which however required extensive refinement. The focus on the new methods furthermore led to less time spent with customers. One challenge that emerged was that the virtual organization started to interfere with the traditional organization. A shift in power from hierarchies to teams took place. Aspects such as recruitment and rewards remained in the old structure highlighting a double organizational culture. This provides some uncertanty regarding further adaptions in the long run. The study has provided an empirical contribution as well as conceptualization of the approaches and aspects of scaled agility which provides hypothesis that assist future theory building. In addition the implications showed to be noteworthy from as sustainability pespective by enabling ecnomic benefits such as efficency and new IT-infrastrucutre combined with good jobs and limited enviromental impacts. To validate the results more studies could be performed at other companies, other parts of banks as well as more extensive data collection such as quantitative approaces and long term observations. / Stora banker möter utmaningar från ett nya regleringar och ökad konkurrens som har lett till att 30% av bankerna har infört agila metoder genom Scaled agile framework (SAFe). Omvandlingsprocessen mot agile är komplex och leder till en förändringsprocess som täcker aspekter som produktutveckling, ledarskap och organisationsdesign och som för närvarande saknar vetenskaplig kunskap om hur den ska bedrivas framgångsrikt. Denna undersökande fallstudie syftade till att tillhandahålla ett empiriskt bidrag som hjälper till med teoriuppbyggnad inom området skalad agile genom hypotesformulering. Empiriska data samlades in genom tretton halvstrukturerade intervjuer, sammanlagt tio timmar, i kombination med tio etnografiska observationer som sträckte sig över 34 timmar. Från fynden identifierades fyra metoder för att skala agile i kombination med åtta aspekter av skalad agilitet som ger ett nytt djup angående tillämpningar av dem och vad man ska uppnå. De fyra identifierade tillvägagångssätten är: skapandet av en virtuell organisation, standardisering av agila metoder, förenande kring en portfölj och förändring mot ett agilt tankesätt. De åtta aspekterna inkluderar strategisk agility, payoff agility, business agility, produkt agility, agile organisation, tools agility, resurs agility och organisationskultur. De åtta aspekterna av scalad agilitet var syntetiserade till ett ramverk baserat på ämnesområdena agil programvaruutveckling, agil portföljhantering, Scrum, SAFe, Lean, New product development, Lean produktutveckling, aspekter av förändring, framväxande förändringsmodeller, organisationsdesign, motstånd mot förändring och organisatorisk kultur. Dessutom samlades insikter från tidigare agila transformationer på banker genom att undersöka en benchmarkstudie av banken ING. Resultaten visade på initiala framgångar i genomförande då intervjuobjekten uttryckte at de metoderna var givande att arbeta med. En framgångsrik användning av alla fyra huvudsakliga tillvägagångssätt för att scala agila metoder observerades. Resultaten visade att den planerade omfattningen av omvandlingen ökade under processens gång och hanterades genom iterativa förbättringar. Integrering av redan agila delar av organisationen som projekt möjliggjordes och initiala förändringar i ledarskap och delegering liksom nya roller hanterades. Vissa utmaningar återstod emellertid som berörde produktutveckling som inte kunde genomföras på ett fullständigt agilt sätt på grund av stora leveranser och den starkt reglerade miljön. Dessutom utgjorde beroenden mellan olika team en utmaning för införandet av autonoma end-to-end team. Eftersom arbetet visualiserades kunde man också undvika mängden arbete på aktiviteter som inte tillförde värde. Förberedandet av dessa uppgifter krävde omfattande tidskrävande förfining. En nackdel med det ökade arbetet mellan olika avdelningar var att dialogen med kunder minskade. En utmaning med den virtuella organisationen var att den störde den traditionella organisationen. Till exempel genom att fördela makt från tidigare hierarkier till nya team. Dessutom kvarstod aspekter som anställningar och belöningar inom den traditionella strukturen vilket ledde till en dubbel organisationskultur. Detta kan ge en viss osäkerhet när det gäller ytterligare anpassningar på lång sikt. Studien har gett ett empiriskt bidrag till agile såväl som en konceptualisering av såväl tillvägagångssätt som olika aspekter av skalad agilitet inför framtida teoriskapande. Dessutom visade sig den agila transformation vara positiv utifrån ett hållbarhetsperspektiv genom att möjliggöra ekonomiska fördelar som effektivitet och ny IT-infrastruktur kombinerat med ansenliga arbetsvillkor och icke ökande miljöpåverkan. För att validera resultaten kan fler studier behöva utföras hos andra företag, andra delar av banker, mer omfattande datainsamling inkluderande kvantitativa metoder och mera långsiktiga observationer.

No / This paper presents a stochastic automaton approach to stock ordering for retailers of time-limited goods, in the modern supply chain network. The rationale applied is that by ordering in small quantities frequently, overstocking will be reduced, capital liquidity improved and wastage limited. A consequence for the complete supply chain is that such an approach could substantially minimise the reactive bullwhip effect, leading to more efficient utilisation, production and agility throughout the chain. Such agility and flexibility can only be achieved by full integration of stock inventory monitoring technologies (such as RFID) with enterprise integration systems (such as ERP) connected to suppliers, mediated by the internet. We undertake a comparative simulation study of stock ordering using a stochastic automaton and a naive traditional approach. This shows that stochastic ordering, prompted by a stochastic automaton, exhibits characteristic properties that are a prerequisite for reducing the bullwhip effect, thus enabling agile inventory management.

De agila projektmetoderna har använts i stor utsträckning under de senaste åren som ett sätt att motverka svagheterna med traditionella metoder. Men studierna visar att införandet av varken agila - eller traditionella metoder är effektiva i stora organisationer när det gäller stora och komplexa IT-projekt. Stödet för integrering av agila- och traditionella projektmetoder fortsätter därför att växa inom den akademiska litteraturen. Det finns för lite forskningar som beskriver hur en hybridmetod ska införas i stora och komplexa IT-projekt. Denna rapport tar fram en detaljerad projektstyrningsmodell som kommer att integrera den traditionella och agila metoden med hjälp av hybridmetoden. Rapporten beskriver även roller och möten behövs. Det används ett stort urval av vetenskaplig litteratur för att förstärka den detaljerade projektstyrningsmodellen. Den kvalitativa metoden används och intervjuer görs med respondenter från två stora organisationer; en myndighet och ett konsultbolag. Sammanlagt tretton personer intervjuas med roller som projektledare, scrummaster och produktägare. Resultatet av denna studie är ett förslag på en detaljerad tragil projektstyrningsmodell med roller och möten som behövs för att kunna uppnå en högre andel lyckosamma IT-projekt. Den tragila projektstyrningsmodellen kan användas av stora organisationer som bedriver stora eller komplexa IT-projekt. Slutsatsen är att organisationerna kan anpassa projektstyrningsmodellen efter behovet eftersom varje organisation och IT-projekt kan vara unikt.

In today’s society, IT-Companies often have a hard time estimating changed requirements. This leads to that the clients’ confidence is negatively affected and is one of the main reasons why this has to be improved. The goal with this study was to find out what the most common problems regarding this issue are in IT-companies that works with agile software development. By analyzing one IT-company through a SWOT- and pareto-analysis the most common problems have been ascertained. The SWOT analysis have been created through interviews with selected employees to get a better understanding of the problems that the IT-company is facing. Furthermore was the pareto-analysis based on a survey that was sent out to many different employees to prioritize the problems. The reason why the survey was sent to different employees was to get a more objective input. The study showed that there was many different problems that needed attention. The most important problems was that the communication towards the client regarding requirements needed to be improved, better communication internally between different departments needed to be established, a method to quickly adapt and estimate change in requirements needed to be implemented and finally a method regarding witch key employees whom need to attend the planning of the program backlog. These problems have then been studied through interviews with other IT-companies and through a literature study. The conclusions that where drawn was that the client needs to be involved and updated through the whole project. Constant monitoring and communication regarding changed requirements needs to be processed and mediated. High standards needs to be set early towards the client in order to obtain as clear an image of the requirements as possible. Many different parties need to attend to the planning process for the program backlog before the start of the project. The client needs to be aware of that changed requirements will arise and that this will lead to that the first estimation may not necessarily be absolute. As long as the client is held up to date as well as participant through the whole project and problems are detected and mediated early, change in requirements should not be a huge problem. This is after all the purpose of being agile. / I dagens läge har IT-företag svårt med att estimera förändrade krav vilket medför att förtroendet hos beställaren påverkas negativt och är en av hu-vudanledningarna till att det måste förbättras. Målet med studien har varit att försöka ta reda på de vanligaste problemområdena inom agil systemut-veckling bland IT-företag med hjälp av en SWOT- och pareto-analys. SWOT-analys konstruerades av intervjuer med anställda på ett IT-företag och an-vändes för att ta reda på problemområden. Pareto-analysen användes med hjälp av en enkät som skickades ut till anställda på samma IT-företag för att prioritera problemområdena. Enkätens svar bygger på anställda från de flesta avdelningar, vilket resulterar i en objektivare syn på resultatet. Under-sökningen har visat att det finns många områden som kan förbättras. De huvudsakliga områdena som behövde förbättras var tydligare kommunikat-ion gällande kravhantering gentemot kunden, bättre kommunikation mellan avdelningarna internt i företaget, införa en metod för att snabbt estimera samt anpassa sig till förändrade krav behövde implementeras och slutligen skapa struktur gällande vilka personer som bör delta i planeringen inför program backlog. De fyra största problemområdena har sedan undersökts med hjälp av intervjuer med andra företag och genom en litteraturstudie. Slutsatsen som drogs var att kunden behöver vara involverad och uppdate-rad genom hela projektet. Konstant uppföljning och kommunikation gäl-lande förändrade krav behöver bearbetas och förmedlas. Höga krav måste sättas på kunden i början för att få en tydlig och genomarbetad förståelse för kravspecifikationen som möjligt. Många olika parter bör vara med på planeringen inför program backlog innan projektets uppstart. Kunden bör vara medveten om att förändrade krav kommer att uppstå och att detta kommer att leda till att den första estimeringen inte nödvändigtvis kommer vara absolut. Så länge kunden är uppdaterad och delaktig genom hela pro-jektet och problem upptäcks samt förmedlas tidigt bör förändrade krav inte vara ett stort problem. Det är syftet med att vara agil.

ITC/USA 2015 Conference Proceedings / The Fifty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2015 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / Due to the quick change of business processes in organizations, software needs to adapt quickly to meet new requirements by implementing new business rules. In Research and Development (R&D) scenario, the research is highly non-linear and changes are inevitable. In this context, it is known that traditional methodologies (e.g. waterfall) may lead to the detection of failures late, increase the time and cost of development and maintenance of software. On the other hand, agile methodologies are based on Test- Driven Development (TDD), maintain the technical debt under control, maximize the Return on Investment and reduce the risks for customers and companies. In this paper, we show the use of Scrum and TDD in the development of an experimental tool that aims to make the calibration in real time of the rudder of a fighter aircraft. The preliminary results allowed to increase the coverage testing of the software and hence the quality of the tool.

Context: Software testing is the process of assessing quality of a software product to determine whether it matches with the existing requirements of the customer or not. Software testing is one of the “Verification and Validation,” or V&V, software practices. The two basic techniques of software testing are Black-box testing and White box testing. Black-box testing focuses solely on the outputs generated in response to the inputs supplied neglecting the internal components of the software. Whereas, White-box testing focuses on the internal mechanism of the software of any application. To explore the feasibility of black-box and white-box testing under a given set of conditions, a proper test automation framework needs to be deployed. Automation is deployed in order to reduce the manual effort and to perform testing continuously, thereby increasing the quality of the product. Objectives: In this research, cloud hosted application is automated using TestComplete tool. The objective of this thesis is to verify the functionality of cloud application such as test appliance library through automation and to measure the impact of the automation on release cycles of the organisation. Methods: Here automation is implemented using scrum methodology which is an agile development software process. Using scrum methodology, the product with working software can be delivered to the customers incrementally and empirically with updating functionalities in it. Test appliance library functionality is verified deploying testing device thereby keeping track of automatic software downloads into the testing device and licenses updating in the testing device. Results: Automation of test appliance functionality of cloud hosted application is made using TestComplete tool and impact of automation on release cycles is found reduced. Through automation of cloud hosted application, nearly 24% of reduction in level of release cycles can be observed thereby reducing the manual effort and increasing the quality of delivery. Conclusion: Automation of a cloud hosted application provides no manual effort thereby utilisation of time can be made effectively and application can be tested continuously increasing the efficiency and / AUTOMATION OF A CLOUD HOSTED APPLICATION

Magistro baigiamajame darbe „Laiko įverčių analizė ir vizualizavimas tiriamąjį darbą organizuojant remiantis „Agile“ praktikomis“ yra išanalizuota darbo organizavimo procesų ir projektų valdymo metodų mokslinė ir metodinė literatūra, palyginti dažniausiai naudojami darbo organizavimo metodai su klasikiniais metodais, ištirti bei susisteminti darbo organizavimo procesų ir projektų valdymo metodai. Darbe pateiktas darbo proceso užbaigimo laikotarpio prognozių sudarymo metodas, leidžiantis apskaičiuoti projekto užbaigimo laikotarpį. Taip pat pateiktas aprašyto metodo praktinis pavyzdys su apskaičiuotų reikšmių lentelėmis bei diagramomis. Darbe pateiktas pagerintas darbo proceso vaizdavimo metodas, leidžiantis įvertinti ir aiškiau pavaizduoti besikeičiančią darbų apimtį tarp iteracijų ir iteracijų metu. Iki šiol šaltiniuose buvo pateikiami metodai, nagrinėjantys tik statinės darbų apimties vaizdavimą. Šis darbas galėtų būti naudingas daugelyje veiklos sričių. Pasirinkus dėstytojo specialybę, įgytas žinias galima pritaikyti laboratorinių, praktinių bei kursinių darbų organizavimo procese. Šios žinios galėtų būti naudingos visur, kur tik gali prireikti darbo organizavimo žinių bei įgūdžių. / Analysis of time estimates and visualization organizing reseach according to Agile practices Student: Jelena Zubova Supervisor: Dr. Rimgaudas Laucius In the Master Thesis "Analysis of time estimates and visualization organizing research according to Agile practices" the following tasks are accomplished: scientific and methodical literature related to the process of work organizing and the methods of project management is reviewed; the commonly used methods of work organizing are compared to the classic methods; the methods of work organizing and project management are analyzed and systematized. The method of forecasting the time of working process is presented in the Thesis. The method allows calculating the time of working process. The example of application of this method is presented as well including tables with calculated values and diagrams. The improved method of working process visualization is presented in the Thesis. The method allows evaluating and depicting the changing volume of work between iterations as well as during iterations in a more readable way. So far only the methods dealing with the visualization of static volume of work have been proposed in the literature. The Thesis could be useful in many fields. In regard to teaching, the acquired knowledge could be used when organizing laboratory works, practicals and project works. The knowledge could be useful in every area that requires the skills of work organizing.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore a new perspective within the sustainability of project management theoretical area. The research focuses on verifying the existence of  interconnections between Agile Project Management and Social Sustainability, and on understanding how Agile Project Management impacts organisational social dynamics from a Social Sustainability point of view. Research Methodology/ Approach/ Design: Through an in-depth single-holistic case study,  the research investigates the social dynamics taking place amongst the members of an international IT company, applying an agile project management framework since more than two years. A total of six extensive semi-structured interviews have been carried out with people covering different positions within the company. By working on qualitative data from the interviews, the researchers obtained an in-vivo set of interconnected concepts. The analysis work consisted in qualitatively analysing these concepts and relations in order to build a network diagram reproducing graphically the interconnections existing between Agile Project Management elements and the Social Sustainability factors proposed by Missimer et al. (2016a, 2016b). Research Findings: The findings - obtained through the analysis of the network diagram - have been analysed with the lenses of the five factors, that have not to be degraded in order to ensure the social sustainability of a social system. It has been found that implementation of Agile Project Management, within the company’s environment, has impacted the organisation’s social dynamics in several ways. These impacts influenced in a direct or indirect way individual’s “Health”, their “Capacity to Influence”, their “Capacity to Acquire New Competences”, and their “Capacity of Meaning-Making”. By analysing the type of influence APM has on these four aforementioned factors, it has been found that it influences positively all of them. This allowed us to conclude that, according to Missimer et al. definition of Social Sustainability, Agile Project Management shows several interconnections to Social Sustainability and that it seems to benefit organisational internal social dynamics making them more socially sustainable. Research limitations: Because of the exploratory nature of the research, the empirical study has been based on a single in-depth case study. However, generalisability of the findings are limited by the inherent limitations of this inquiry strategy. Further researches will allow to verify and eventually expand or complete the proposed model. Originality/value: This research contributes to a detailed understanding of the existing relations between Agile Project Management and Social Sustainability theory. This represents a completely new point of view in the studies of Sustainability of Project Management, suggesting the validity of a new stream of research focusing on Agile Project Management as a new project management process through which promote corporate sustainability.