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Agile software development methods are characterized by developer’s empowerment through self-organization, incremental requirements and constant knowledge sharing. Despite some effort to elaborate how successfully agile methods can be applied in co-located development teams, little is known on how the same is done when the development teams are distributed. Our research focus is to uncover factors that influence the successful application of agile methods in distributed development teams using a software development company as our case study. With three distributed teams applying different agile methods, we conducted focused ethnography alongside interviews to comprehend what and how various factors under distributed development teams influence successful agile methods application. It seems, all that matters is team structure, team spirit, effective communication, product requirements, and knowledge sharing. The team structure has more influence than other factors and therefore our suggestions for successful application of agile methods in distributed software development is to focus on the development team, above all factors. The analysis shows that the development methods themselves have little to do with the successful application of agile methods in distributed software development teams.

Very little research in software engineering has focused on the model of a programmer working alone. These so-called cowboys are disdained for not working in teams to build software. In reality many cowboys work by themselves due to the circumstances of their work environment, not because they are unable or unwilling to work with well with others. These solo programmers could benefit from a methodology to assist them in consistently developing reliable software on time and within budget while satisfying the customer's needs. Cowboy was designed to help fill this void. This agile-based system incorporates the benefits of agile methodologies into a lightweight, customer-centered approach to software development for the lone developer. This thesis describes Cowboy and its successful application in developing a prototype for a web application.

Agila metoder och modeller ses ofta som nytänkande och används idag flitigt av företag och organisationer runt om i värden. I realiteten är grunden till det agila metoderna idag 13 år och mycket har hänt, både teknisk och kring sättet vi arbetar, sedan 2001. Den agila metodiken baseras på två dokument, det agila manifestet och de agila principerna, där principerna är till för att konkretisera manifestet. Eftersom principerna är konkreta anser vi att de har en stark koppling till hur agil utveckling de facto bedrivs. Vi har därför valt att undersöka hur principerna står sig bland utvecklarna över ett decennium efter att de skrevs samt om utvecklarna ser ett behov av revidering och vilka delar de i så fall skulle vilja förändra. För att ta reda på detta genomförde vi fyra intervjuer med utvecklare som alla hade olika erfarenhet av agilt arbete samt utgick från en tidigare kvantitativ undersökning i ämnet. Slutsatsen av undersökning är att de agila principerna fortfarande står sig bra bland utvecklarna men att det finns ett behov av revidering. Original utformningen är dock så pass väl fungerande att behovet inte är omedelbart. Det finns flera ämnen som våra respondenter tagit upp som är viktiga att ta hänsyn till där kvalitet och dokumentation är de ämnen som står ut i mängden. I mångt och mycket överensstämmer vårt resultat med den undersökning vi utgått från vilket tyder på att den bild som förmedlas av de båda undersökningarna har en god förankring hos utvecklarna, även om det finns områden där våra resultat skiljer sig från varandra. / Agile methodology and models has a wide group of supporters among organizations and companies and is often seen as innovative. The agile methods are now 13 years and a lot has happened since then, both in our ways of working and in the technology we use. The agile methodology is based on two documents, the agile manifesto and the agile principles. The principles embodies the manifesto and in our view creates a strong connection with reality and by that a strong connection with how software is developed. To find out if the principles still are viable and used among developers and if a revision of them is needed we performed a survey based on four interviews and a previously conducted quantitative study. The conclusion of this survey is that the principles are used and works well in development projects and are well thought of by the developers but there is still a need for a revision. How this revision would look and when it should be done is hard to say, the need for it aren’t urgent because of the general support of the original principles are still strong. There are a couple of different areas that our respondents point out as important where quality and documentation stands out as the most important that organizations working agile have to focus on in their daily work. Our survey and the study we used as an inspiration ends up in mostly the same conclusions with only few differences, which we see as a confirmation that our study reflects the developers’ view.

The present work is focused on project management and the relationship of this discipline to agile approaches. The aim was to design a generic agile project management methodolo-gy, which is based on Agile values and attitudes. Although the proposed methodology is mainly based on agile software development methodologies, it is also applicable to any type of project. The secondary objective was to propose possible ways of using this generic agile project management methodology in teaching 4IT414 - ICT Project Management, including the creation of documents to support this application. The work is divided into theoretical and practical. First the author defined the basic terms and knowledge of project management and subsequent-them, then also agile approaches and methodologies. In the practical part was introduced generic methodology for agile pro-ject management and proposed a possible way of involving the teaching methodology, including the design documents to serve. The objectives were met. Work can serve students agile approaches and project management, their teachers and the general public. The proposed methodology may be used for studies and real environments in various companies and institutions.

Agile Methoden sind in der industriellen Anwendung Stand der Technik, wobei Scrum das am häufigsten verwendete Prozess-Framework zur effektiven Entwicklung komplexer Produkte ist. Entworfen wurde Scrum von Ken Schwaber und Jeff Sutherland, die ebenfalls 2001 das agile Manifest mitentwickelten, welches die vier Werte und zwölf Prinzipien für die Arbeit mit agilen Methoden definiert. Scrum zeichnet sich unter anderem durch flache Hierarchien aus. Hierdurch erhalten Mitarbeitende zunehmend Verantwortung und es entsteht aufgrund der vermehrt stattfindenden Kommunikation eine erhöhte Transparenz in allen Prozessen. Diese Eigenschaften bringen viele Vorteile aber auch Herausforderungen mit sich. Einerseits kann hohe Transparenz durch Offenlegung der Arbeit zu Unsicherheit seitens der Mitarbeitenden führen, andererseits sorgt die erhöhte Verantwortung auch für einen größeren Einfluss der einzelnen Team-Mitglieder auf das Ergebnis der Arbeitsprozesse. Die Motivation und Leistungsbereitschaft der Mitarbeitenden sind demzufolge ausschlaggebend für die erfolgreiche Produktentwicklung mit Scrum. Gamification ist ein neuer, vielversprechender Ansatz zur Steigerung der Motivation und wird dabei definiert als „die Verwendung von Spiel-Designelementen in Nicht-Spielkontexten“. Die dieser Veröffentlichung zugrundeliegende Forschung bildet die Grundlage zur Entwicklung von dedizierten Gamification-Strategien mit dem Ziel der Optimierung von Motivation und folglich der Leistung der Mitarbeitenden im Scrum-Entwicklungsprozess.

In the modern world, Scrum is widely adopted by many companies for software development, no matter the size of the company. As Scrum provides rapid development and meets the customer needs in a faster and efficient way, many companies want to move towards Scrum but moving towards Scrum is difficult and challenging due to different barriers for example cost, lack of experience, and so on. This thesis is to address the barriers which are involved during the Scrum adoption for software start-up companies such as communication, team mindset, backlog refining, daily stand up, and retrospective meetings. In this research report, these issues are divided based on the factors such as organization, people, process, and tools. We have figured out these barriers using action research based on the observation done during the Scrum team meetings and through interviews and surveys.