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- Berntsson Svensson, Richard, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Creativity Techniques for More Creative Requirements: Theory vs. Practice
- 2015
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In: EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA 2015), August 26-28. - : IEEE. - 9781467375856
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Requirements engineering was initially regarded as a front-end activity to form a basis for the coming activities of software development, which can be achieved by gathering and producing unambiguous and consistent requirements. However, in recent years, requirements engineering has been recognized as a creative process. A systematic literature review followed by an online questionnaire with practitioners were employed to identify a comprehensive overview of existing empirical evidence using creativity techniques in the requirements engineering process. The results show a limited range of applied creativity techniques with insufficient empirical evidence to adequately evaluate if the techniques create more creative requirements. The contribution of this study is threefold: First, it compares which creativity techniques have been empirically evaluated in literature. Second, it compares the identified creativity techniques. Third, it includes an examination of which creativity techniques are used in industry.
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| 2. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984, et al.
(author)
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Group Maturity and Agility, Are They Connected? - A Survey Study
- 2015
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In: EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA 2015), August 26-28. - : IEEE. - 9781467375856
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The focus on psychology has increased within software engineering due to the project management innovation "agile development processes". The agile methods do not explicitly consider group development aspects, they simply assume what is described in group psychology as mature groups. This study was conducted with 45 employees and their twelve managers (N=57) from two SAP customers in the US that were working with agile methods, and the data were collected via an online survey. The selected Agility measurement was correlated to a Group Development measurement and showed significant convergent validity, i.e., A more mature team is also a more agile team. This means that the agile methods probably would benefit from taking group development into account when its practices are being introduced.
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| 3. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984, et al.
(author)
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The Prospects of a Quantitative Measurement of Agility: A Validation Study on an Agile Maturity Model
- 2015
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In: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier BV. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 107, s. 38-49
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Agile development has now become a well-known approach to collaboration in professional work life. Both researchers and practitioners want validated tools to measure agility. This study sets out to validate an agile maturity measurement model with statistical tests and empirical data. First, a pretest was conducted as a case study including a survey and focus group. Second, the main study was conducted with 45 employees from two SAP customers in the US. We used internal consistency (by a Cronbach’s alpha) as the main measure for reliability and analyzed construct validity by exploratory principal factor analysis (PFA). The results suggest a new categorization of a subset of items existing in the tool and provides empirical support for these new groups of factors. However, we argue that more work is needed to reach the point where a maturity models with quantitative data can be said to validly measure agility, and even then, such a measurement still needs to include some deeper analysis with cultural and contextual items.
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| 4. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984
(author)
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Using the Work and Organizational Psychology Perspective in Research on Agile Software Development Teams
- 2015
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Background: The development of software has gone from more strict plan-driven projects to involve more human interaction and communication due to approaches like agile software development. With the realization of the importance of psychological aspect comes the possibility of learning from other more established research fields instead of reinventing the wheel. Objective: In the field of work and organizational psychology there is an extensive body of knowledge of work-life in many different contexts. The objective of this thesis is to show some examples of how both methods and models from psychology research can be used in software engineering and specifically to understand agile software development teams. The selected models and tools were; new aspects of work motivation in agile teams in larger organizations, statistical tests of validation (factor analysis), and using the social psychology model of group development in connection to agile teams. Method: The appended papers consist of both exploratory, correlative and validation studies. The research methods range from interviews, focus groups, and survey data as well as qualitative and quantitative interpretations. Eight companies participated consisting of two European-based and six US-based organizations, and a total of 76 people participated in the studies. The data collection procedures were also diverse ranging from recorded in-person interviews and focus groups, to online surveys and remotely recorded phone interviews. Results: The analysis included thematic ditto of interview transcripts, correlation of variables in survey data, and statistical validation tests of a survey itself. Some studies used one research methodology while other triangulate the research question in order to increase the validity of the results. The results strongly indicate that many agile maturity models need more validation, that there are work motivational aspects of employees working on agile teams in a more traditional structure, and that the group development aspect of building agile teams contributes with concrete guidance on moving teams forward. Conclusions: We conclude that there are a set of useful methods and models in work and organizational psychology that are applicable, specifically, to the agile software development context of teams, but also, more generally to a larger perspective of software engineering that involves human factors. This thesis will hopefully convince researchers and practitioners of the usefulness of adding the psychological dimension when trying to understand such social and complex systems.
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