Agile software development challenges the traditional way of software development and project management. In rapidly changing environments, changing requirements and tight schedule constraints require software developers to take a different approach toward the process of software development. However, beyond a few case studies, surveys and studies focused on specific practices such as pair programming, the effectiveness and applicability of agile methods have not been established adequately. The objective of my research is to improve the understanding of and gain insights into these issues. For this purpose, I develop a system dynamic simulation model that considers the complex interdependencies among the variety of practices used in agile development. The model is developed on the basis of an extensive review of the literature as well as quantitative and qualitative data collected from real projects in seven organizations. The development of the model was guided by dynamic hypotheses on customer involvement, refactoring and quality of design. The model was refined and validated using data from independent projects. The model helps in answering important questions on the impact of customer behavior, cost of making changes and economics of pair programming. Experimentation with the model suggests that the cost of change is not constant; instead, its value changes cyclically and increases towards the later phase of development. Also, the results of simulation show that with no pair programming, fewer tasks are delivered and it costs more to deliver a task when compared to development with pair programming. Further, customer behavior has a major impact on project performance. The quality of customer feedback is found to be very critical to the successful of an agile software development project. The primary contribution of this research is the simulation model of agile software development that can be used a tool to examine the impact of agile practices and management policies on critical project variables including project scope, schedule, and cost. This research provides a mechanism to study agile development as a dynamic system of practices rather than using a static view and in isolation. The results from this study are expected to be of significant interest to practitioners of agile methods by providing them a simulation environment to examine the impact of their practices, procedures and management policies.

<p>På senare tid har agila systemutvecklingsmetoder trätt fram på marknaden, metoder som värderar flexibilitet, kundmedverkan och fokus på utvecklingsteamet och fungerande mjukvara snarare än fokus på utvecklingsverktygen och dokumentation. Vi vet dock inte vilken typ av systemutvecklingsmetod som verkligen är bättre än den andra. Den här uppsatsen består av en historisk översikt av systemutvecklingsmetoder och en undersökning kring graden av belåtenhet med olika typer av systemutvecklingsmetoder och attityden till de agila värderingarna. Genom en kvantitativ studie har svenska organisationer som utövar systemutveckling tillfrågats angående detta. Resultaten är inte helt säkra, men anspelar på att utövare av mer traditionella systemutvecklingsmetoder var något mer nöjda med sin metod än utövare av agila metoder var, men de agila utövarna var istället mer nöjda med hur deras metod hjälper dem med att tillgodose kundernas behov och önskemål än de traditionella utövarna var. Båda typerna av systemutvecklare var mer positiva till de agila värderingarna än deras motsatser, men de agila metodutövarna var positiva till en större utsträckning.</p> / <p>Recent times have seen the emergence of agile software development methods, valuing flexibility, customer collaboration, and focus on the development team and working software rather than focus on tools and documentation. What is unknown is which type of software development method is really better than the other. This thesis consists of a historical overview of software development methods and an investigation of the level of satisfaction with different types of software development methods and the attitude towards the agile values. Through a quantitative study, Swedish software development organizations have been heard regarding these issues. The results, although not fully statistically supported, indicate that practisers of more traditional software development methods were slightly more satisfied with their methods than practisers of agile methods were, but the agile method practisers were instead more satisfied with how their method helped them in satisfying their customers’ wants and needs than the traditional method practisers were. Both types of software developers were more positive towards the agile values than their counterparts, but the practisers of agile software development methods were so to a greater extent.</p>

Zugl.: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2006 / Hergestellt on demand

Projects that work in complex, uncertain, and dynamic environments, such as research and development (R&amp;D) projects, require a different approach to project management. New approaches have been developed in the last decades as a response to traditional project management to address the uniqueness of the project characteristics. In the mid-1990s, Agile Project Management (APM) was introduced which aimed to address projects that face high levels of complexity and uncertainty. APM aims to develop innovative and complex products that face a constant changing environment.   APM enables a project manager to cope with the challenges presented by R&amp;D projects by delivering customer value through innovative products and a leadership-collaboration management style, which would require certain competences. Traditional PM has focused on the importance of technical competences for successful PM. However, in the last decades two more set of competences have gained importance, contextual and behavioral competences. Several studies have demonstrated the importance of behavioral competences for project managers dealing with highly complex and uncertain projects. Competences such as leadership, communication, flexibility, and creativity have been identified as essential behavioral competences for project managers in turbulent project environments.   This study aims to show what behavioral competences are needed for an agile project manager engaged in R&amp;D projects in the Swedish biotechnology sector. In this way, the research will extend the existing evidence of APM and behavioral competences to a new industry, due to the limited focus of the current research on software development agile projects. The methodology of the study follows a qualitative strategy and a case study design that focuses on the biotechnology sector in the Umeå region. The study achieves an intensive examination of the behavioral competences through a semi-structured interviews method with respondents from five organizations, which represent different segments of the sector.   The findings of the research study show that organizations in the biotechnology sector in Sweden use APM to deliver R&amp;D projects. These organizations follow the APM characteristics to address complexity, uncertainty, and dynamism in R&amp;D projects. In addition, the findings present evidence that behavioral competences are highly important for agile project managers in the biotechnology sector, and considered as the most important competences. Furthermore, the biotechnology sector acknowledges the importance of four competences: creativity, communication, flexibility, and leadership. The four identified behavioral competences allow an agile project manager to enable APM characteristics such as iterative and adaptive life cycles, change management, flexible planning, people orientation, collaborative leadership style, small and self-organized teams, tacit knowledge, and informal communication. The findings suggest that by enabling these characteristics, an agile project manager is able to deliver customer value through innovation and leadership-collaboration management style, hence, successfully addressing the characteristics of a biotechnology R&amp;D project in Sweden.

Agile methodologies have become a popular and widely accepted method for managing software development. Since the inception of the Agile Manifesto over ten years ago, agile development techniques have superseded waterfall methods in many, if not most, software development organizations. Despite its apparent success, many companies have struggled with the adoption and implementation of agile, and exactly what level of adoption provides optimum agility. Agility is commonly held in the literature to be constructed of elements external to a company or project but may in fact be composed of both external and internal elements. The exact relationship of the adoption of agile development techniques and their relationship to the actual agility of a business remain unclear. A primary contributor to this uncertainty is the somewhat amorphous definition of agile itself. In academic literature, the concept is still relatively young and loosely defined. In practice, organizations have largely opted for a hybrid approach to agile, mixing its concepts and methods with existing Stage Gate or waterfall methodologies. This has made the management of agile even more complex. Crucially, there is no definition or criterion available to determine the appropriate mix of agile and waterfall processes in an embedded software development context nor is there a method to determine the impact of one against the other. These issues beg the question: how do organizations manage agility? This interpretive case study provides an empirical account of how stakeholders manage both market and process agility in an embedded systems context via a hybrid agility implementation and product genesis. As a result, we provide the notion of agile vorticity, as the point at which market and process agility collide to produce business momentum at a specific point of innovation within the agile business vortex.

Software engineering techniques have been employed for many years to guide software product creation. In the last decade the appropriateness of many techniques has been questioned, given unacceptably high rates of software project failure. In light of this, there have emerged a new set of agile software development methodologies aimed at reducing software projects risks, on the basis that this will improve the likelihood of achieving software project success. Recent studies show that agile methods have been gaining increasing industry attention. However, while the practices recommended by agile methodologies are said to reduce risks, there exists little evidence to verify this position. In addition, it is posited that the very processes recommended by agile methodologies may themselves introduce other risks. Consequently, this study addresses the risks inherent in the human collaboration practices that are central to agile methods. An analysis of the risk management literature reveals that personality conflicts and customer-developer disagreements are social risks that occur through human collaboration. These risks negatively affect team cohesion and software project success. Personality conflicts are said to be mostly influenced through poor team formation, whereas customer-developer disagreements are induced through excessive customer direct interaction. However, these risks are not adequately addressed by standard risk management theories. Furthermore, an evaluation reveals that these risks are also not considered by existing software tools.This study therefore designs and implements a web-based solution to lessen the social risks that may arise in agile projects. The Agile Social-Risk Mitigation Tool (ASRMT) offers support for personnel capability assessment and management and for remote customer feature management, extending the customer's access through an interface. Using software engineering experts to evaluate ASRMT, the tool is shown to effectively address social risk management theories, and is considered likely to assist agile developers in their handling of social risks. In addition, above and beyond its intended purpose, ASRMT is also likely to assist agile teams with general project management. The findings of the ASRMT user evaluations demonstrate sufficient proof of concept to suggest that such a tool could have value in live software projects.

Thesis--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-41).

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Oulu, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Zugl.: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2009

<p>Det här arbetet har med hjälp av en kvalitativ undersökning tagit fram framgångsfaktorer för parprogrammering. Detta har genomförts med hjälp av intervju samt enkätundersökningar med sex respondenter. Då litteraturen inte behandlar hur parprogrammering kan bli framgångsrikt har detta arbete haft som syfte för att göra detta. Resultatet har kategoriserats i fyra nivåer. Exempel på framtagna framgångsfaktorer är att:</p><p>• ledningen måste införskaffa kunskaper om parprogrammering</p><p>• projektledaren uppmuntrar till byte av par ofta</p><p>• projektdeltagarna är öppna och mottagbara för konstruktiv kritik</p>