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)

Epiroc Drilling Tools is a manufacturing company that produces tools for rock mining and excavation. The company adopted the principles and framework of Lean Product Development in their R&D department with few practices of an agile framework called Scrum. These agile practices are used in the pre-study phase or the knowledge value stream of their lean product development. Hence, this research is limited to the knowledge value stream within the R&D department. The use of agile project management in manufacturing industry is unique and majority of the agile frameworks are specifically designed to suit the needs of software development companies. Several theories like Scrum, Lean, Kanban and DSDM were studied by the researchers to scrutinize the current framework of the department. The challenges and the similarities of the currently used framework with several other agile frameworks and the companies are discussed. Several qualitative research methods were adopted to know the viewpoints of the working employees in the department which are compared with other companies like Volvo Cars, ABB, LShift, EnergySoftware and from another division of Epiroc called Rocktec Automation who faced some similar challenges while practicing agile project management. After further research on the theories and comparison of the process, roles of the working employees and documentations within the knowledge value stream, DSDM had more similarities with the currently used framework than Scrum. This allowed to recommend ways that can fill the missing gaps using practices of DSDM without altering the existing working procedure in the knowledge value stream. This ensures that the improvement in the knowledge value stream remains continuous. On the contrary, a brief discussion is included on whether there is a need to be agile for manufacturing industries or is it just a changing trend in the field of project management.

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.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-22T22:00:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Eliane Figueiredo Collins.pdf: 2314673 bytes, checksum: 8403bd67cffed913ac9029447401f980 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-04-25 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / For some time, the professional software development companies are looking for new technical alternatives in order to optimize their processes, to deliver products to market as soon as possible and to meet customer expectations, increasingly demanding and intolerant of software failures. In this sense, the agile software development is gaining more space and consequently the software testing area which was previously considered a separate phase of development has changed over time to adapt to this new reality. The test automation activity is seen as key of agile development, but many teams still don t know how it should be done, who should take responsibility and run it and the correct procedures for this activity to be successful. Although the literature mentions about the particularities activities and best practices in this scenario, there are few related works and lack of experience reports or case studies that show, in practice, examples of use this from start to finish the automation strategy adopted. This paper aims to contribute to improving the quality of agile processes, and proposes an approach that involves the application of agile manifesto values in the activities of test automation, which can be used regardless of agile methodology adopted. In this study, observations were made on empirical about testing practices in agile projects developed at Nokia Technology Institute (INdT) and an experimental implementation of this approach at the Center for Electronic and Information Technology (CETELI), Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM). Experimental reports are available with different strategies for the automation of software testing and identification of some important issues to deal with difficulties in adapting testers and developers in this new scenario. / Há algum tempo as empresas desenvolvedoras de software profissional vêm buscando novas alternativas técnicas com o objetivo de otimizar seus processos, entregar produtos para o mercado o mais cedo possível e ainda atender as expectativas dos clientes cada vez mais exigentes e intolerantes a falhas de software. Com isso, as metodologias ágeis de desenvolvimento de software estão ganhando mais espaço e consequentemente a área de testes de software que antes era considerada uma fase separada do desenvolvimento vem passando por mudanças para se adaptar a esta nova realidade. A atividade de automação de teste passou a ser vista como peça chave para o desenvolvimento ágil, porém muitas equipes ainda não sabem como ela deve ser feita, quem deve assumir a responsabilidade e execução dela e os procedimentos para que essa atividade seja bem sucedida. Embora a literatura mencione particularidades sobre as atividades realizadas e as melhores práticas nesse cenário, são poucos os trabalhos relacionados e há falta de relatos de estudos de caso ou exemplos de utilização que mostrem, na prática, do início ao fim, a estratégia de automação adotada. Este trabalho tem como objetivo contribuir para a melhoria da qualidade dos processos ágeis, propondo uma abordagem que envolve a aplicação de valores presentes no manifesto ágil nas atividades de automação de teste, que podem ser utilizadas independentemente da metodologia ágil adotada. Nesta pesquisa, foram realizadas observações empíricas sobre as práticas de testes em projetos ágeis desenvolvidos no Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia (INdT) e um experimento de aplicação dessa abordagem no Centro de Tecnologia Eletrônica e da Informação (CETELI), da Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM). São disponibilizados relatos experimentais com diferentes estratégias relativas a automação de teste de software e a identificação de algumas questões importantes para lidar

Context: Agile/lean development has been successful situations where small teams collaborate over long periods of time with project stakeholders. Unclear is how such teams plan and coordinate their work in such situations where inter-dependencies with other projects exist. In large organizations, scattered teams and complex team structure makes it difficult for every stakeholder to have a clear understanding of project information. These factors make it difficult for large‐scale organizations to adopt the agile/lean development paradigm. Objectives: The goal of conducting this study is to find the information visualization techniques that ease or resolve the challenges of agile development in large-scale organizations. The study reports the challenges of agile development and information visualization techniques in literature and reported by industrial experts. Additionally, proposed a guideline that how information visualization technique can be used to ease or resolve related challenge of agile development. Methods: For this particular study, two research methodologies are used; Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and Industrial Survey. Two SLRs are performed for finding 1) challenges of agile development and 2) information visualization techniques in agile development. Data sources like Engineering Village (Inspec/ Compendex), IEEE Explore digital library, ACM digital library, Science Direct, ISI-Web of knowledge; Scopus were used to select primary study. Industrial survey was conducted in order to obtain empirical evidence to our findings. In survey, mainly questions were related to challenges of agile development and information visualization techniques practiced by industrial experts. Results: 84 different challenges of agile development found in literature and by applying grounded theory we found 9 distinct categories of challenges. There were 55 challenges reported by industrial experts in survey which later grouped into 10 distinct challenges. 45 information visualization techniques found in literature and grouped into 21 distinct technologies. There were 47 different information visualization techniques reported by industrial experts. When we grouped these techniques there were 9 distinct technologies found by applying open, axial and selective coding of grounded theory Conclusions: Systematic Literature Review and Industrial Survey confirmed that information visualization techniques can be used to ease or resolve challenges of agile development. Along with other visualization techniques, Data Flow Diagrams, UML, Use Case Diagrams, Burn Down Charts, Scrum Story Board, Kanban Boards and Gantt Chart are highly reported techniques found through systematic literature review and later confirmed by industrial experts. On the other hand, through survey we found that industrial experts mainly rely on informal and customized information visualization techniques to visualize information.

Software prototyping is considered to be one of the most important tools that are used by software engineersnowadays to be able to understand the customer’s requirements, and develop software products that are efficient,reliable, and acceptable economically. Software engineers can choose any of the available prototyping approaches tobe used, based on the software that they intend to develop and how fast they would like to go during the softwaredevelopment. But generally speaking all prototyping approaches are aimed to help the engineers to understand thecustomer’s true needs, examine different software solutions and quality aspect, verification activities…etc, that mightaffect the quality of the software underdevelopment, as well as avoiding any potential development risks.A combination of several prototyping approaches, and brainstorming techniques which have fulfilled the aim of theknowledge extraction approach, have resulted in developing a prototyping approach that the engineers will use todevelop one and only one throwaway prototype to extract more knowledge than expected, in order to improve thequality of the software underdevelopment by spending more time studying it from different points of view.The knowledge extraction approach, then, was applied to the developed prototyping approach in which thedeveloped model was treated as software prototype, in order to gain more knowledge out of it. This activity hasresulted in several points of view, and improvements that were implemented to the developed model and as a resultAgile Prototyping AP, was developed. AP integrated more development approaches to the first developedprototyping model, such as: agile, documentation, software configuration management, and fractional factorialdesign, in which the main aim of developing one, and only one prototype, to help the engineers gaining moreknowledge, and reducing effort, time, and cost of development was accomplished but still developing softwareproducts with satisfying quality is done by developing an evolutionary prototyping and building throwawayprototypes on top of it.

This thesis is focused on Best Practices of agile methodologies, their application to the most common problems of project management and their integration into PRINCE2. The thesis will be focused mainly on the application of individual agile practices, not on the whole methodologies. This thesis will be divided into two main parts. In the first part PRINCE2 methodology basics, chosen agile methodology practices and Best Practices itself will be introduced. In the second part the most common problems of project management will be defined. Then every Best Practice will be applied to the defined problems and various aspects of PRINCE2. In the end the most usable Best Practices based on the results of research will be evaluated.

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)

Produzierende Unternehmen, die traditionelle Produktentwicklungsmethoden mit linearen und rigiden Prozessen nutzen, sind zunehmend weniger in der Lage, den Veränderungen in Märkten und Technologien gerecht zu werden. Der klassische Stage-Gate Prozesses nach Cooper lässt kein adäquates Reagieren auf diese Veränderungen zu, sodass es zu Verzögerungen in der Entwicklung und späten Änderungen am Produkt im weiteren Projektverlauf kommt. Aus diesem Grund werden agile Methoden innerhalb etablierter plangetriebener Ansätze integriert, um durch kurzfristige und wiederkehrende Planungs-aktivitäten und ein iteratives Vorgehen in der Entwicklung eine schnellere Anpassung an mögliche Veränderungen während der Projektdurchführung zu ermöglichen. Die Anwendung agiler Methoden, die aus der Softwareentwicklung entstammen, kann jedoch nicht ohne Anpassungen erfolgen, da sich der Entwicklungsprozess physischer Produkte beispielsweise hinsichtlich der Modularisierung des Gesamtsystems in kleinere Inkremente deutlich von der Vorgehensweise in der Softwareentwicklung unterscheidet. Um die Einführung agiler Methoden unternehmensspezifisch und zweckmäßig gestalten zu können, soll die Basis für einen unternehmensspezifischen Problemlösungsprozess gelegt werden, mit dem Agilität in die Prozesse eingeführt werden kann. Dazu soll herausgefunden werden, inwieweit Entwickler aus der Praxis den Bedarf für eine individuelle Einführung von Agilität sehen. Dazu werden Interviews mit Experten aus Unternehmen geführt, um die Implementierung agiler Methoden im Rahmen der physischen Produktentwicklung in der Praxis zu hinterfragen und zukünftige Forschungspotentiale zu explizieren. Daraus werden Hypothesen hinsichtlich einer individuellen Einführung von Agilität in die Entwicklungsprozesse produzierender Unternehmen abgeleitet und in einer quantitativen Umfrage überprüft. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eindeutig den Bedarf für eine individuelle Einführung von Agilität in den jeweiligen Anwendungsfall.

The ain of this thesis is to define and describe specific challenges occuring on the crossroard between project management and knowledge management with the focus on agile software development and agile modeling. Based on the found and verified problem it tries to find a existing solution. After that, it analyses, specifies and designs an own solution. Focusing on covering of three different perspectives makes this thesis unique. After process of design, there are technologies defined. For all used technologies there is described detailed implementation of the application. The third-party technologies are connected in this application.This connection creates the extra added value for the application and user in processes of agile software development and agile modeling.