Agile methods have become a popular project managing method within software development (Cervone, 2011, ss. 19-20; Maximini, 2015, s. 3). Though there is an absence of studies on agile methods and motivation in employees (Dybå & Dingsøyr, 2008). Furthermore, the agile manifesto (2001) explains the importance of motivated employees for the development of software.   The purpose of this study is to examine how employees in two well-known Swedish companies perceive the use and the effects of agile methods in their organization, and their internal communication. The study followed a qualitative approach to measure data collected from semi-structured interviews and includes interviews with eight developers and two agile coaches in two organizations. The theoretical framework is based on Media Richness Theory and Self-determination Theory. The selected theories help the examination why a communication channel is chosen for disseminating information and motivational factors through asking questions about their sense of autonomy, relatedness and competence.   The results show that face-to-face conversation is the efficient communication channel to disseminate information, but the most utilized channel was chat and mail to the respondents. Additionally, our respondents experience motivational factors such as the feeling of competence and relatedness as being moderately fulfilled at their workplace, though feelings of autonomy on an individual level were not fulfilled. This indicates that a complete introduction to the work method, a variation between independent and group work and face-to-face communication should be encouraged to achieve internal communication.

Context. Distributed software development teams frequently faced several issues from communication, co-ordination and control aspects. Teams are facing these issues because between teams there is socio-cultural distance, geographical distance and temporal diatance. So, the purpose of the study is to find out the acts when distributed Scrum teams face the problems. Objectives. There are several numbers of common GSD challenges or issues exist; such as, face to face meetings difficult, increase co-ordination costs and difficult to convey vision & strategy so on. The purpose of this study was to search, additional frequently occurred Global Software Development (GSD) issues or challenges. As well as, to find out the mitigation strategies, those practices by the Scrum practitioners (distributed software environment) in the industry. Methods. In this study, systematic literature review and scientific interview with distributed Scrum practitioners were conducted for empirical validation. One of the purpose for interview was to get challenges & mitigations from distributed Scrum practitioners point of view; as well as, verifying the literature review’s outcomes. Basically, we have extended the Hossain, Babar et al.’s [1] literature review and followed the similar procedures. Research papers were selected from the following sources, such as, IEEEXplore, ACM Digital library, Google Scholar, Compendex EI, Wiley InterSciene, Elsevier Science Direct, AIS eLibrary, SpringerLink. In addition, interviews were conducted from the persons who have at least six months working experience in a distributed Scrum team. Moreover, to analyze the interviews thematic analysis method has been followed. Results. Three additional common GSD challenges and four new mitigation strategies are found. Among the additional issues, one of them is communication issues (i.e. lack of trust/teamness or interpersonal relationship) and rest of them are co-ordination issues (i.e. lack domain knowledge/ lack of visibility and skill difference and technical issues). However, additional mitigation strategies are synchronizing works, preparation meeting, training and work status monitoring. Finally, frequently faced GSD issues are mapped with mitigation strategies by basing on the results obtained from SLR and interviews. Conclusions. Finally, we have got three additional GSD issues (such as, lack of trust/ teamness/ interpersonal relationship, lack of visibility/ lack of knowledge and difference in skills & technical issues) with the existing twelve common communication, co-ordination and control issues. The mitigation techniques (such as, synchronized works hour, ICT mediated synchronous communication and visit so on) for the common GSD issues has been found out and validated by Scrum practitioners. Among the existing issues, several of them use new mitigation strategies, those were gotten from practitioners. Moreover, for the two existing control issues (i.e. management of project artifacts may be subject to delays; managers must adapt to local regulations) lessening or mitigation techniques have been addressed by interviewees. This study was carried out to get the common GSD issues & mitigations from literature and distributed Scrum practitioners.

This thesis describes Scrum and with a feasibility study tests if Scrum can be applied in a project with two developers at T-systems Sweden. Key issues regarding the development process are pointed out from a baseline project. The influence of the issues in the project is later tested in the new project at the same organization. New issues were identified and studied and corrected. Interviews and literature study are used to gather information of what issues do occur and may occur. The results and analysis lead to a conclusion on what changes that should be done and what strength and weaknesses Scrum has when implemented at T-systems Sweden.

Rapporten har som mål att skapa en fördjupad förståelse kring utvecklingsmetoder, tester och automatisering inom programvaruutveckling. Innehållet i rapporten berättar vad som påverkar valet av dessa samt går igenom de teoretiska grunderna i en omfattande teoridel. Rapporten tar också upp hur valet av utvecklingsmetod påverkar möjligheten till att testa och automatisera ett projekt. Förutom den grundliga teoretiska delen finns det intervjuer med personer och företag som är insatta inom ämnet. Huvudfrågan har varit hur deras organisation anpassar utvecklingsmetoderna, testerna och automatiseringen till de olika projekt de jobbar med. För de tre första intervjuerna finns det en mer ingående analys av arbetssätt samt förslag till förbättringar. I slutsatserna har skribenterna gjort en bedömning huruvida dessa olika faktorer påverkar varandra och vad som bör tänkas på vid val av utvecklingsmetod, tester och automatisering.

This dissertation for a bachelor project in computer science at Karlstad University will describe how to conquer a challenge suggested by Tieto: How to create a secure Incident Reporting System with a high level of confidentiality and security for the contents. The system should be easy to use and encourage incident reporting, open for changes and statistics gathering, for those with the relevant authority. The result will be a requirement specification and a prototype incident management system that matches those requirements. Any employee of Tieto will be able to submit an incident report and the system will notify a security administrator at Tieto who will solve the problem. The system will be able to gather information and statistics regarding incidents which can be used as decision support.

Due to its growth at exponential rate offshore software development has become a common way of producing software by software organizations from highly industrialized countries in Europe and North America.  Previous studies have revealed that some of these organizations use agile project management frameworks in managing and running their offshore software projects. Blending agile principles and offshore software development appears to raise a contradiction as the two notions have opposite characteristics. This research focuses the implementation of agile project management frameworks such as Scrum in offshore software projects. The research project was performed by reviewing relevant literature and analyzing the results obtained from the interviews conducted to Cambio Healthcare Systems AB, a Swedish software company that offshore its software projects with Creative Technologies Pty Ltd located in Sri Lanka. The interviews were conducted to Swedish based staff involved in offshore software projects with their Sri Lankan partners. The research findings indicate that offshore software development is a challenging business and requires close monitoring to minimize its challenges. Some of the challenges include dispersion, loss of communication richness and cultural differences between the parties involved. Moreover even though the agile project management frameworks and offshore software development principles differ in nature, the findings have revealed that software organizations such as Cambio make use of these differences to minimize the challenges they face in their respective offshore software projects. The main conclusions drawn from this research is that there is not much evidence that the application of agile project management frameworks such as Scrum is feasible enough to combat the challenges. This research suggests for further research studies to collect information from staff in both offshore and onshore sites in order to formulate enough evidence on whether to apply these strategies or not.

This report covers the development of the web application Festing and the results and experiences which have been reached and learned during the process. The purpose of the study was to examine how the selling of patches could be both simplified and improved by using an advanced web application designed with focus on usability. Currently the patches are sold in a large but geographically and temporally limited market at Linköping University. The project was comprised of a case study and development of an application following the agile project framework Scrum. According to this the projects has been split up into four sprints after each of which a working product was delivered. This resulted in a usable web application with an intuitive design and multiple functions linked to the selling and buying of patches. Based on interviews, surveys and usability tests this web application is considered to have the long-term potential to take over the current physical market of textile patches. / Rapporten omfattar beskrivningen av utvecklingsprocessen för webbapplikationen Festing samt resultat och erfarenheter som uppnåtts och anskaffats under processens gång. Syftet med studien var att utveckla en avancerad webbapplikation av typ e-butik för att undersöka hur försäljningen av tygmärken kan förenklas och förbättras av en webbapplikation med fokus på användbarhet. Detta då försäljningen i dagsläget består av en stor men fysiskt och geografiskt begränsad marknad vid Linköpings universitet. Projektet har utformats som en fallstudie och utveckling av en webbapplikation enligt det agila arbetssättet Scrum. Arbetet har delats upp i fyra stycken olika sprintar där det i slutet av varje sprint ska ha levererats en fungerande delprodukt. Detta resulterade i en användbar webbapplikation med intuitiv design och flertalet funktioner kopplade till försäljning och köp av tygmärken. Utifrån intervjuer, enkätundersökningar och användbarhetstester anses denna webbapplikation ha potential till att på lång sikt kunna ta över den nuvarande fysiska försäljningen av tygmärken.

Denna kandidatuppsats har gjorts på ett IT-företag i Sverige och avgränsades till ett team på ett kontor i Växjö som arbetat i cirka ett år tillsammans efter en arbetsmetod som grundar sig på Scrum. Scrum är en agil arbetsmetod som fokuserar på täta leveranser och arbeta med korta iterationer. Det finns tidigare forskning att tillgå om agil utveckling och motivation men inte om hur deltagare i ett Scrum-team motiveras, vilket är den kunskapslucka vi vill bidra till att fylla. Syftet med uppsatsen var att ge svar på hur deltagare i ett Scrum-team motiveras att utföra sitt arbete. I undersökningen utgår vi från tre aspekter för att besvara denna fråga, Scrum som arbetsmetod, motivation och mål samt samarbete. Metoden som tillämpades för undersökningen var en kvalitativ ansats där datainsamlingsmetoderna intervjuer och observationer användes. Observationerna gjordes på ett flertal möten som var relaterade till arbetsmetoden för att få en uppfattning om hur arbetsmetoden tillämpas i teamet. Intervjuerna utfördes på sju informanter för att få en djupare förståelse för hur deltagarna motiveras utifrån de tre aspekter som undersökningen utgår från. Både observationerna och intervjuerna har sedan jämförts med teorin i diskussionen. Resultatet av datainsamlingen visar att informanterna anser att de inte använder arbetssättet Scrum till 100%. Det som informanterna anser är mest motiverande är de korta iterationer och de täta resultaten. De anser också att om någon i teamet gör bra ifrån sig motiverar detta andra i teamet till att göra ett bra arbete. Resultatet visar också att informanterna motiveras utifrån två typer av mål, personliga mål och teamets mål. / This essay is the outcome of our study made at an IT-company in Växjö, Sweden. It was restricted to a team which has used a work method based on Scrum for about a year. Scrum is an agile work method that focuses on the deliver of regularly results and with short iterations. There is prior research available about agile development and motivation, but not about how participants in a Scrum team is motivated, which is the knowledge gap we want to contribute to filling. The aim of this study was to provide answers to how participants in a Scrum team is motivated to perform their work. In this study we are looking at this from three aspects to answer this question. These aspects are scrum as a work method, teamwork, motivation and goals. A qualitative method was used in this study to retrieve data. The data was retrieved by observations and interviews. The observations was made at several meetings that was related to the work method to gain an understanding regarding how the work method isused in the team. The interviews was made with seven informants to gain a deeper understanding regarding how the participants are motivated based on the three aspects that the survey is based on. Both the observations and the interviews was compared to our choosen theory in the discussion. The results of the data collection shows that the informants do believe that they do not use the Scrum approach 100%. The informants think that it is the short iterations and frequents results that is the most motivating factors. The informants also think that when someone in the team perform well it motivates other team members to perform better.The result also shows that the informants are motivated by two types of goals, personal goals and team goals.

In this master thesis two different worldviews are compared: a mechanistic, and an organic worldview. The way we think the world and the nature work reflects on how we think organizations work, or how they ought to work. The mechanistic worldview has dominated our way of thinking since the seventeenth century, and it compares the world with a machine. The organic worldview could use a number of different metaphors, but the one addressed in this thesis is complexity theory. Complexity theory is related to chaos theory and is concerned with complex adaptive systems (cas). Complex adaptive systems exist everywhere and are systems such as the human immune system, economies, and ecosystems. What complexity theory tries to do is to understand these systems—how they arise, how they function and how order emerge in them. When looking at complex adaptive systems you can’t just look at the different parts. You must take a more holistic view and look at the whole and the interaction of the parts. If you just look at the parts you will miss the emergent properties that have emerged as the system has self-organized. One prominent aspect of these systems is that they don’t have any central authority, but somehow order do arise. In relation to organizations, complexity theory has something to say about almost all aspects of organizations: from what kind of leadership is needed, and how teams should be organized to the physical structure of the organization. To understand what complexity theory is and how to relate that to (software developing) organizations is the main focus of this thesis. Scrum is an agile and lightweight process which can be applied on development projects in general, but have been used in such diverse examples as software development projects, marketing programs, and business process reengineering (BPR) initiatives. In this thesis Scrum is used as an example of how to apply complexity theory to organizations. The result of the thesis showed that Scrum is highly influenced and compatible with complexity theory, which implies that complexity theory is of some use in software development. However, there are more work to be done to determine how effective it is, how to introduce it into organizations, and to explore more specific implementations. This master thesis should give the reader a good understanding of what complexity theory is, some specific issues to consider when applying complexity theory on organizations, and some specific examples of how to apply complexity theory on organizations.

Användbarhet är något som blir allt mer viktigt inom den tekniska världen i samma takt som teknik blir större i människans vardag. För att få in användbarhet inom system så behöver användarna vara delaktiga och därmed få uttrycka sina åsikter om systemet som ska byggas eller göras om. Detta kallas för användarmedverkan. Inom systemutveckling ska det oftast gå fort och utvecklas i olika intervaller så flexibelt som möjligt. Ett sådant arbetssätt kallas för Scrum, och är en agil metod. Denna studie handlar om vilka hinder som finns för att få in användarmedverkan inom den agila metoden Scrum. Detta ska gå att få reda på genom datainsamlingsteknikerna litteraturstudier, observationer, enkät, workshop och fokusgrupp. Studien har skett i samarbete med IT-konsultföretaget Precio som är ett konsultbaserat systemutvecklingsföretag. Resultaten visar att de stora hindren är att kunden inte tillåter kontakt med användarna, kontraktet styr, användarmedverkan kräver tid och pengar och det är svårt att veta vilka slutanvändarna är. Dessa hinder är tänkta att lösas med hjälp av en användbarhetsguide som skapats efter att ha analyserat resultaten ifrån denna studie.