When large industrial organizations change to(or start with) an agile approach to operations, managers and some employees are supposed to be "agile leaders" often without being given a clear definition of what that comprises when building agile teams. An inductive thematic analysis was used to investigate what 15 appointed leaders actually do and perceive as challenges regarding group dynamics working with an agile approach. Team maturity, Team design, and Culture and mindset were all categories of challenges related to group dynamics that the practitioners face and manage in their work-life that are not explicitly mentioned in the more process-focused agile transformation frameworks. The results suggest that leader mitigation of these three aspects of group dynamics is essential to the success of an agile transformation.
Effective leadership is one of the key drivers of business and project success, and one of the most active areas of management research. But how does leadership work in agile software development, which emphasizes self-management and self-organization and marginalizes traditional leadership roles? To find out, this study examines agile leadership from the perspective of thirteen professionals who identify as agile leaders, in different roles, at ten different software development companies of varying sizes. Data from semi-structured interviews reveals that leadership: (1) is dynamically shared…
Seamless and continuous support for long term organizational learning needs is essential for long lasting progress of the organization. Agile process model provides an excellent opportunity to cater that specific problem and also helps in motivation, satisfaction, coordination, presentation and technical skills enhancement of agile teams. This long term learning process makes organization to sustain their current successes and lead both organization and team members to successful and dynamic market leaders.
Motivation: How immature teams can become agile is a question that puzzles practitioners and researchers alike. Scrum is one method that supports agile working. Empirical research on the Scrum Master role remains scarce and reveals contradicting results. While the Scrum Master role is often centred on one person in rather immature teams, the role is expected to be shared among multiple members in mature teams. Objective: Therefore, we aim to understand how the Scrum Master role changes while the team matures. Method: We applied Grounded Theory and conducted qualitative interviews with 53 pract…
A number of qualitative studies find that team leadership is one essential success factor for evolving into a mature agile team. One such qualitative study suggests the 9-Factor Theory of Scrum Master roles, which claims that the Scrum Master performs a set of 9 leadership roles which are transferred to the team over time (Spiegler et al., 2019). We aimed at conducting a quantitative exploration that examines the presence and change of the 9-Factory Theory in relation to team maturity. We conducted an online survey with 67 individuals at the conglomerate Robert Bosch GmbH. Descriptive statisti…
With the agile approach to managing software development projects comes an increased dependability on well functioning teams, since many of the practices are built on teamwork. The objective of this study was to investigate if, and how, team development from a group psychological perspective is related to some work practices of agile teams. Data were collected from 34 agile teams (200 individuals) from six software development organizations and one university in both Brazil and Sweden using the Group Development Questionnaire (Scale IV) and the Perceptive Agile Measurement (PAM). The result in…
Verification activities are necessary to ensure that the requirements are specified in a correct way. However, until now requirements verification research has focused on traditional up-front requirements. Agile or just-in-time requirements are by definition incomplete, not specific and might be ambiguous when initially specified, indicating a different notion of 'correctness'. We analyze how verification of agile requirements quality should be performed, based on literature of traditional and agile requirements. This leads to an agile quality framework, instantiated for the specific requireme…
After introducing agile approach in 2001, several agile methods were founded over the last decade. Agile values such as customer collaboration, embracing changes, iteration and frequent delivery, continuous integration, etc. motivate all software stakeholders to use these methods in their projects. The main issue is that for using these methods instead of traditional methods in software development, companies should change their approach from traditional to agile. This change is a fundamental and critical mutation. Several studies have been done for investigating of barriers, challenges and is…
Information technology (IT) organizations are increasing the use of agile practices, which are based on a people-centred culture alongside the software development process. Thus, it is vital to understand the social and human factors of the individuals working in agile environments, such as happiness and unhappiness and how these factors impact this kind of environment. Therefore, five case-studies were developed inside agile projects, in a company that values innovation, aiming to identify how (un)happiness impacts software engineers in agile environments. According to the answers gathered fr…
Background: The artifacts used in Agile software testing and the reasons why these artifacts are used are fairly well-understood. However, empirical research on how Agile test artifacts are eventually designed in practice and which quality factors make them useful for software testing remains sparse. Aims: Our objective is two-fold. First, we identify current challenges in using test artifacts to understand why certain quality factors are considered good or bad. Second, we build an Activity-Based Artifact Quality Model that describes what Agile test artifacts should look like. Method: We condu…
The objectives of this study was to bring out the understanding of the concept of agile IT project management; what it is and what it is not. It was also aimed at comparing the pros and cons of both agile and traditional methods of IT project management in a typical industry setting; the challenges of going purely agile, and so on. It is purely a review of literature of peer reviewed papers sourced mainly from Google Scholar. It was revealed that agile outweigh the traditional methods in terms of benefits, but its implementation poses a lot of challenges due to a number of issues, paramount am…
In large-scale agile projects, product owners undertake a range of challenging and varied activities beyond those conventionally associated with that role. Using in-depth research interviews from 93 practitioners working in cross-border teams, from 21 organisations, our rich empirical data offers a unique international perspective into product owner activities. We found that the leaders of large-scale agile projects create product owner teams. Product owner team members undertake sponsor, intermediary and release plan master activities to manage scale. They undertake communicator and traveller…
Quantum software systems are emerging software engineering (SE) genre that exploit principles of quantum bits (Qubit) and quantum gates (Qgates) to solve complex computing problems that today classic computers can not effectively do in a reasonable time. According to its proponents, agile software development practices have the potential to address many of the problems endemic to the development of quantum software. However, there is a dearth of evidence confirming if agile practices suit and can be adopted by software teams as they are in the context of quantum software development. To addres…
The ability to self-organise is posited to be a fundamental requirement for successful agile teams. In particular, self-organising teams are said to be crucial in agile globally distributed software development (AGSD) settings, where distance exacerbates team issues. We used contextual analysis to study the specific interaction behaviours and enacted roles of practitioners working in multiple AGSD teams. Our results show that the teams studied were extremely task focussed, and those who occupied team lead or programmer roles were central to their teams' self-organisation. These findings have i…
In recent years, Agile methods have continued to grow into a popular means of modulating team productivity, even garnering a presence in non-software development related industries. The uptake of Agile methods has been driven by their flexibility, making them more suitable for many teams when compared to traditional approaches. However, an inevitable expectation for an Agile workflow is a higher level of change and uncertainty regarding requirements and tasks, which can ultimately have impacts on team member emotional states. The extent of such emotion impacts has motivated our research into t…
Agile software developers are required to self-organize, occupying various informal roles as needed in order to successfully deliver software features. However, previous research has reported conflicting evidence about the way teams actually undertake this activity. The ability to self-organize is particularly necessary for software development in globally distributed environments, where distance has been shown to exacerbate human-centric issues. Understanding the way successful teams self-organise should inform distributed team composition strategies and software project governance. We have u…
Research has shown that the maturity of small workgroups from a psychological perspective is intimately connected to team agility. We, therefore, tested if agile team members appreciated group development psychology training. Our results show that the participating teams seem to have a very positive view of group development training and state that they now have a new way of thinking about teamwork and new tools to deal with team-related problems. We, therefore, see huge potential in training agile teams in group development psychology since the positive effects might span over the entire soft…
Objective: The purpose of this paper is to identify the largest cognitive challenges faced by novices developing software in teams. Method: Using grounded theory, we conducted an ethnographic study for two months following four ten person novice teams, consisting of computer science students, developing software systems. Result: This paper identifies version control and merge operations as the largest challenge faced by the novices. The literature studies reveal that little research appears to have been carried out in the area of version control from a user perspective. Limitations: A qualitat…
Facing an environment increasingly complex, uncertain and changing, even in crisis, organizations are driven to be agile in order to survive. Agility, at the core heart of business strategy, represents the ability to grow in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable changes with information systems perceived as one of its main enablers. In other words, to be agile, organizations must be able to rely on agile enterprise information systems/information technology (IT/IS). Since, the agility needs are not the same among stakeholders, the objective of this research is to develop a …
Recent advances in natural-language processing and data analysis allow software bots to become virtual team members, providing an additional set of automated eyes and additional perspectives for informing and supporting teamwork. In this paper, we propose employing chatbots in the domain of software development with a focus on supporting analyses and measurements of teams' project data. The software project artifacts produced by agile teams during regular development activities, e.g. commits in a version control system, represent detailed information on how a team works and collaborates. Analy…
Software development projects management is a complex endeavor because it requires dealing with numerous unforeseen events that constantly arise along the way and that go against the expectations that had been established at the beginning. A good project leader is not so much who carries out what is planned, but rather who is able to deal with all the inconveniences that arise and, in the end, achieve a result that is as close as possible to what was expected [1]. In other words, what is most valued is the ability to adapt to changes, to face unforeseen events, to make the best decisions regar…
Self-assignment, where software developers choose their own tasks, is a common practice in agile teams. However, it is not known why developers select certain tasks. It is important for managers to be aware of these reasons to ensure sustainable self-assignment practices. We investigated developers' preferences while they are choosing tasks for themselves. We collected data from 42 participants working in 25 different software companies. We applied Grounded Theory procedures to study and analyse factors for self-assigning tasks, which we grouped into three categories: task-based, developer-bas…
This paper aims to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to propagation of competence in an Agile Scrum team. This study seeks to challenge the traditional view of bounded rationality (BR). An Agile Scrum team (Team) is expected to build problem solving competence quickly as the expected ramp up time continues to shrink. But the team has a mixture of expertise, competence and sociability levels that affect out-of-the-box performance. The objective is to expand BR into the social realm and see how teams can self-organize and reconfigure to allow effective problem solving. Studies have show…
Traditional methods for performance appraisal are not suitable for agile fast-paced software companies. This has been a realization in the software industry since the early adoption of agile methodologies. Nonetheless, software companies are still struggling to find a practical solution that fits the highly dynamic nature of their teams. In particular, high-growth companies, scaleups, need to be creative at how they approach performance appraisals. In this talk, we introduce automated review dashboards to support a seamless appraisal process and continuous visibility of software engineers' per…
Walking the Tightrope of LLMs for Software Development: A Practitioners' Perspective
Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University（墨尔本大学信息科技学院）；School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University（新加坡管理大学计算机与信息系统学院）
