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

A crescente procura por software de qualidade vem causando grande pressão sobre as empresas que trabalham com desenvolvimento de software. As entregas de produtos de software dentro do prazo e custo previstos vêm se tornando, a cada dia, um diferencial importante nesse ramo de atividade. Nesse sentido, as empresas procuram por metodologias que propiciem o desenvolvimento de produtos com qualidade, e que respeitem o custo e prazo previstos. Em resposta a essas necessidades, surgiu uma nova classe de metodologias de desenvolvimento de software, conhecidas como metodologias ágeis. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo realizado sobre as principais características existentes nessa nova classe de metodologias. Uma análise permitiu a identificação de semelhanças e diferenças existentes entre elas, o que possibilitou a criação de um modelo de referência para o desenvolvimento ágil de software. O modelo foi utilizado em uma avaliação de processo baseada no modelo de avaliação da ISO/IEC 15504. A avaliação permitiu a identificação de forças e fraquezas no processo avaliado e possibilitou a definição de ações de melhoria para que o processo avaliado se assemelhasse à um processo de desenvolvimento ágil. Palavra-chave: Metodologia ágil de desenvolvimento. Modelo de referência. Processo de desenvolvimento de software. Avaliação de processo de software / The vast demand for software with quality is causing a great pressure on the companies which work with software development. The delivery of software products within the schedule and cost is becoming, every day, an important issue in this area. Therefore, companies are seeking for methodologies to develop products with quality, within the timetable and the cost. Considering these needs, it became a new class of software development methodologies, known as agile methodologies. This research shows a work done upon the main existing characteristics in this new class of methodologies. An analysis allowed the identification of the existing similarities and differences among them, which it made possible to create a new reference model for agile software development. The agile model was used in process assessment based on assessment model from ISO/IEC 15504. The assessment alowed a identification of power and weakness on the process and alowed a definition of improvement action to the process with the intention of to approach the agile development process

A utilização de uma gestão de portfólio de projetos permite que as empresas possam se adaptar rapidamente frente as turbulências advindas do ambiente interno e externo e com isso, possam rearranjar os projetos para que estes estejam alinhados com estratégia da organização. Entretanto, o modelo tradicional de gerenciamento de portfólio possui procedimentos que não seguem necessariamente essa característica de agilidade e adaptação. Na maioria das vezes os procedimentos são pouco visíveis, extensos e poucas vezes são interativos ou divulgados por todos os níveis hierárquicos das organizações. Dessa maneira o propósito deste trabalho é a aplicação de práticas, métodos e ferramentas ágeis na gestão de portfólio de projetos. Para isto, foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura, a análise crítica do modelo tradicional por 7 especialistas da área e desenvolvimento de um modelo com base na análise das respostas das entrevistas por três especialistas sendo 2 da área acadêmica e 1 profissional da área. Os principais resultados revelam, que a existe uma escassez de trabalhos referentes a utilização de ferramentas ágeis em gestão de portfólio de projetos e na percepção dos entrevistados, a aplicação de práticas, métodos e ferramentas ágeis atende o quesito de gestão visual, melhor interação entre as equipes de trabalho, democratização da informação relativa à tomada de decisão e ferramentas alinhadas com a proposição ágil. / The use of project portfolio management allows companies to adapt quickly to the turbulence arising from the internal and external environment and with that, can rearrange the projects so that they are aligned with the organization's strategy. However, the traditional portfolio management model has procedures that do not necessarily follow this characteristic of agility and adaptation. Most of the time the procedures are barely visible, extensive and are rarely interactive or disseminated by all hierarchical levels of organizations. In this way, the purpose of this work is the incorporation of agile practices, methods and tools in project portfolio management. For this, a systematic review of the literature, the critical analysis of the traditional model by 7 specialists of the area and the development of a model based on the analysis of the answers of the interviews by three specialists were carried out, being 2 of the academic area and 1 professional of the area. The main results show that there is a shortage of work related to the use of agile tools in project portfolio management and the perception of the interviewees, the incorporation of agile practices, methods and tools attends to the question of visual management, better interaction between work teams, democratization of decision-making information and tools aligned with the agile proposition.

A utilização de uma gestão de portfólio de projetos permite que as empresas possam se adaptar rapidamente frente as turbulências advindas do ambiente interno e externo e com isso, possam rearranjar os projetos para que estes estejam alinhados com estratégia da organização. Entretanto, o modelo tradicional de gerenciamento de portfólio possui procedimentos que não seguem necessariamente essa característica de agilidade e adaptação. Na maioria das vezes os procedimentos são pouco visíveis, extensos e poucas vezes são interativos ou divulgados por todos os níveis hierárquicos das organizações. Dessa maneira o propósito deste trabalho é a aplicação de práticas, métodos e ferramentas ágeis na gestão de portfólio de projetos. Para isto, foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura, a análise crítica do modelo tradicional por 7 especialistas da área e desenvolvimento de um modelo com base na análise das respostas das entrevistas por três especialistas sendo 2 da área acadêmica e 1 profissional da área. Os principais resultados revelam, que a existe uma escassez de trabalhos referentes a utilização de ferramentas ágeis em gestão de portfólio de projetos e na percepção dos entrevistados, a aplicação de práticas, métodos e ferramentas ágeis atende o quesito de gestão visual, melhor interação entre as equipes de trabalho, democratização da informação relativa à tomada de decisão e ferramentas alinhadas com a proposição ágil. / The use of project portfolio management allows companies to adapt quickly to the turbulence arising from the internal and external environment and with that, can rearrange the projects so that they are aligned with the organization's strategy. However, the traditional portfolio management model has procedures that do not necessarily follow this characteristic of agility and adaptation. Most of the time the procedures are barely visible, extensive and are rarely interactive or disseminated by all hierarchical levels of organizations. In this way, the purpose of this work is the incorporation of agile practices, methods and tools in project portfolio management. For this, a systematic review of the literature, the critical analysis of the traditional model by 7 specialists of the area and the development of a model based on the analysis of the answers of the interviews by three specialists were carried out, being 2 of the academic area and 1 professional of the area. The main results show that there is a shortage of work related to the use of agile tools in project portfolio management and the perception of the interviewees, the incorporation of agile practices, methods and tools attends to the question of visual management, better interaction between work teams, democratization of decision-making information and tools aligned with the agile proposition.

A utilização de uma gestão de portfólio de projetos permite que as empresas possam se adaptar rapidamente frente as turbulências advindas do ambiente interno e externo e com isso, possam rearranjar os projetos para que estes estejam alinhados com estratégia da organização. Entretanto, o modelo tradicional de gerenciamento de portfólio possui procedimentos que não seguem necessariamente essa característica de agilidade e adaptação. Na maioria das vezes os procedimentos são pouco visíveis, extensos e poucas vezes são interativos ou divulgados por todos os níveis hierárquicos das organizações. Dessa maneira o propósito deste trabalho é a aplicação de práticas, métodos e ferramentas ágeis na gestão de portfólio de projetos. Para isto, foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura, a análise crítica do modelo tradicional por 7 especialistas da área e desenvolvimento de um modelo com base na análise das respostas das entrevistas por três especialistas sendo 2 da área acadêmica e 1 profissional da área. Os principais resultados revelam, que a existe uma escassez de trabalhos referentes a utilização de ferramentas ágeis em gestão de portfólio de projetos e na percepção dos entrevistados, a aplicação de práticas, métodos e ferramentas ágeis atende o quesito de gestão visual, melhor interação entre as equipes de trabalho, democratização da informação relativa à tomada de decisão e ferramentas alinhadas com a proposição ágil. / The use of project portfolio management allows companies to adapt quickly to the turbulence arising from the internal and external environment and with that, can rearrange the projects so that they are aligned with the organization's strategy. However, the traditional portfolio management model has procedures that do not necessarily follow this characteristic of agility and adaptation. Most of the time the procedures are barely visible, extensive and are rarely interactive or disseminated by all hierarchical levels of organizations. In this way, the purpose of this work is the incorporation of agile practices, methods and tools in project portfolio management. For this, a systematic review of the literature, the critical analysis of the traditional model by 7 specialists of the area and the development of a model based on the analysis of the answers of the interviews by three specialists were carried out, being 2 of the academic area and 1 professional of the area. The main results show that there is a shortage of work related to the use of agile tools in project portfolio management and the perception of the interviewees, the incorporation of agile practices, methods and tools attends to the question of visual management, better interaction between work teams, democratization of decision-making information and tools aligned with the agile proposition.

A crescente procura por software de qualidade vem causando grande pressão sobre as empresas que trabalham com desenvolvimento de software. As entregas de produtos de software dentro do prazo e custo previstos vêm se tornando, a cada dia, um diferencial importante nesse ramo de atividade. Nesse sentido, as empresas procuram por metodologias que propiciem o desenvolvimento de produtos com qualidade, e que respeitem o custo e prazo previstos. Em resposta a essas necessidades, surgiu uma nova classe de metodologias de desenvolvimento de software, conhecidas como metodologias ágeis. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo realizado sobre as principais características existentes nessa nova classe de metodologias. Uma análise permitiu a identificação de semelhanças e diferenças existentes entre elas, o que possibilitou a criação de um modelo de referência para o desenvolvimento ágil de software. O modelo foi utilizado em uma avaliação de processo baseada no modelo de avaliação da ISO/IEC 15504. A avaliação permitiu a identificação de forças e fraquezas no processo avaliado e possibilitou a definição de ações de melhoria para que o processo avaliado se assemelhasse à um processo de desenvolvimento ágil. Palavra-chave: Metodologia ágil de desenvolvimento. Modelo de referência. Processo de desenvolvimento de software. Avaliação de processo de software / The vast demand for software with quality is causing a great pressure on the companies which work with software development. The delivery of software products within the schedule and cost is becoming, every day, an important issue in this area. Therefore, companies are seeking for methodologies to develop products with quality, within the timetable and the cost. Considering these needs, it became a new class of software development methodologies, known as agile methodologies. This research shows a work done upon the main existing characteristics in this new class of methodologies. An analysis allowed the identification of the existing similarities and differences among them, which it made possible to create a new reference model for agile software development. The agile model was used in process assessment based on assessment model from ISO/IEC 15504. The assessment alowed a identification of power and weakness on the process and alowed a definition of improvement action to the process with the intention of to approach the agile development process

La question de la transition numérique est primordiale en conception architecturale. L’objectif de notre recherche est de proposer des pratiques collaboratives afin de faciliter cette transition numérique. Nous nous concentrons sur des pratiques dites « agiles » permettant d’améliorer la communication et la coordination entre architectes, ingénieurs ou encore le maître d’ouvrage. Ces pratiques doivent permettre à ces acteurs d’échanger leurs intentions architecturales et de les évaluer tout en s’assurant que leurs propositions sont satisfaisantes vis-à-vis des besoins du client. Ces pratiques consistent à remplir collaborativement un cahier d’intentions, nécessitant alors confrontations d’opinions, à jouer à un jeu de cartes obligeant tous les concepteurs à prendre la parole, à réaliser des réunions courtes et quotidiennes afin d’expliquer son avancement ou encore à être un coach dont l’objectif est de faciliter la vie de ses collaborateurs. / The question of digital transition is a key issue in architectural design. The objective of our research is to propose collaborative practices to facilitate this digital transition. We focus on so-called "agile" practices to improve communication and coordination between architects, engineers or project owner. These practices must allow these actors to exchange their architectural intentions and evaluate them while ensuring that their proposals are satisfactory concerning the client's needs. These practices consist in collaboratively filling out a book of intentions, requiring confrontations of opinions, playing a card game obliging all designers to speak out, holding short, daily meetings to explain their progress or being a coach, whose objective is to make life easier for their employees.

Theme of this thesis is how to choose between agile methodologies of software development. Several agile methodologies, such as SCRUM, Kanban and eXtreme programming are described and also methods of choosing between methodologies or management techniques are discussed. New method of multi-criteria decision process on how to choose between Agile methodologies based on multi-dimensionality is presented with option of improving agile experience by adopting additional techniques. Diploma thesis can serve as managers' hand-book for those who want to change their current software development methodologies or are searching for ways of improving their agile adoption.

Productivity improvement in the software industry is one of the major challenges facing many software development companies in this century. Most companies have adopted agile methodologies in order to profit from the benefits claimed for them. Agile methodologies are characterised by frequent software delivery, short feedback loops, quicker response to change, and problem identification earlier in the development process. The agile approach has been recognised as paving a way for companies to acquire higher software productivity, delivering good-quality and cost-effective software, enabling software development companies to respond to business challenges with their demands for high quality, high performance and high development speed in delivering the final product. For companies that adopt agile methodologies, understanding the factors that influence their teams’ software development productivity is a challenging task for management and practitioners today. In this research, an analysis is presented that identifies productivity factors that affect agile teams. It is a study of agile methods to identify common agile practices and/or values that have impact on productivity, and describes suitable metrics that could be used to measure agile team productivity. A qualitative research approach was used, and the case study was chosen as the research strategy. Two South African companies that are located in two different provinces and that adopted agile methodologies in their software development, were selected for the case studies. Qualitative content analysis was used in the research to permit subjective interpretation of factors that influence agile team productivity, and to analyse to what extent these factors affected productivity. This research has shown that an understanding of the factors that influence an agile team’s productivity gives significant insight into the way agile teams work, motivates team members to work together, and leads to uniform metrics in tracking each team’s progress. The study indicates that tracking an agile team’s work and providing adequate tools needed to execute their tasks results in improving agile team productivity. It should be recognised that using metrics to measure performance in agile teams is helpful in creating a team’s culture and trust. In this study, it was found that the factors identified in both literature and case studies affected productivity in the two companies under study, both positively and negatively. The study also found that applying the correct metrics in assessing, analysing and reviewing an agile team’s performance is important when monitoring productivity. Successful software delivery is only possible if individuals are committed to their work, are provided with the necessary tools and have access to a stable working environment. In addition, individual factors such as knowledge, skills, abilities, personalities and experience should be considered when forming agile teams. Consideration of these factors will result in grouping people that are able to work together and achieve a common goal, which is important in improving productivity. A conceptual framework for agile team productivity was proposed. The discussion of the findings is presented in more detail in this research. / School of Computing / M.Sc. (Computing)

In today’s volatile market, retail companies struggle for survival as they have to become more flexible and dynamic. Thus, they change the organization, implementing agile methods. However agile is more than a set of practices and therefore the implementation process needs to be accompanied by organizational development to accomplish successful organizational change. This has been shown to be difficult for retail companies due to their size, defined silos, comfortable long-established ways of doing things and strong bureaucratic hierarchical culture. This thesis studies the implementation of agile in a large-scale retail organization and uses organizational development as a tool for deeper understanding and analysis. The study has been conducted at one of Sweden's leading retail organizations, where the research design contains two phases: one pre-study phase where a deeper understanding of the company and the transformation is achieved resulting in a problem formulation and the second phase where the main study is directed by the problem formulation and leads to an analysis and conclusion. The analysis is based on empirics gathered from three separate teams and is divided into three interconnected change phases, “Preparation”, “Implementation” and “Desired state”. From the analysis in the preparation and implementation phases; strengths and challenges within the organization were identified. Together with a maturity model to evaluate the implemented agile practices and an organizational culture assessment instrument to evaluate people and culture, the strengths and challenges were then used to estimate their current state and compare it to their future desired state. In conclusion, the strengths of the case company were that, when implemented, the observed teams incorporated the agile ceremonies and ways of work successfully. However, there were challenges identified in relation to resistance within management, there was a general lack of support from the sponsors and confusion about the managerial roles. There was also a lack of communication, cooperation and synchronizations between teams. / I dagens flyktiga marknader kämpar företag inom dagligvaruhandeln för att överleva då de måste bli mer flexibla och dynamiska i deras strategi. För att bemöta detta ändrar företagen sin strategi genom implementering av agila metoder. Emellertid handlar att vara agil inte bara om att använda sig av olika verktyg och övningar för att ändra hur man arbetar, utan för att implementeringen av agila metoder ska vara lyckad, måste den följas med av en lyckad organisationsförändring. En sådan agil implementering och organisationsförändring har visats vara komplicerad i just dagligvaruhandeln på grund av organisationernas ofta stora storlek, definierade silos, komfortabla gamla traditioner och starka hierarkiska organisationskultur. Denna uppsats studerar implementationen av agilt i ett storskaligt företag inom dagligvaruhandeln och använder sig av organisationsutveckling som ett verktyg för att nå en djupare förståelse och analys. Analysen är uppdelad i tre olika sammanhängande faser “Förberedelse”, “Implementering”, och “Önskat Tillstånd”. Empirin analysen är baserad på kommer från tre olika separata team, vilka är i olika faser av den agila transformationen. I förberedelse- och implementeringsfaserna identifieras styrkor och utmaningar hos företaget. Dessa används sedan tillsammans med en mognadhetsmodell, för att evaluera de agila tillvägagångssätten samt ett bedömningsinstrument för organisationskultur, för att evaluera personer och kultur, i syfte att sedan utvärdera det nuvarande tillståndet i jämförelse med det önskade. Sammanfattningsvis lyckades de observerade teamen att framgångsrikt implementera de agila metoderna och arbetssätten. Däremot identifierades flera utmaningar i relation till motstånd inom management. Det fanns en generell förvirring kring chefs rollernas betydelse och det saknades stöd från ledningsgruppen. Slutligen identifierades även förbättringsområden inom kommunikation, samarbete och synkronisering mellan olika team.