| 1. |
- Moe, Nils Brede, et al.
(författare)
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Finding the sweet spot for organizational control and team autonomy in large-scale agile software development
- 2021
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Ingår i: Empirical Software Engineering. - : Springer. - 1382-3256 .- 1573-7616. ; 26:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agile methods and the related concepts of employee empowerment, self-management, and autonomy have reached large-scale software organizations and raise questions about commonly adopted principles for authority distribution. However, the optimum mechanism to balance the need for alignment, quality, and process control with the need or willingness of teams to be autonomous remains an unresolved issue. In this paper, we report our findings from a multiple-case study in two large-scale software development organizations in the telecom industry. We analysed the autonomy of the agile teams in the organizations using Hackman’s classification of unit authority and found that the teams were partly self-managing. Further, we found that alignment across teams can be achieved top-down by management and bottom-up through membership in communities or through dialogue between the team and management. However, the degree of team autonomy was limited by the need for organizational alignment. Top-down alignment and control were maintained through centralized decision-making for certain areas, the use of supervisory roles, mandatory processes, and checklists. One case employed a bottom-up approach to alignment through the formation of a community composed of all teams, experts, and supporting roles, but excluding managers. This community-based alignment involved teams in decision-making and engaged them in alignment initiatives. We conclude that implementation of such bottom-up structures seems to provide one possible mechanism for balancing organizational control and team autonomy in large-scale software development. © 2021, The Author(s).
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| 2. |
- Mäntylä, Mika, et al.
(författare)
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Time pressure : a controlled experiment of test case development and requirements review
- 2014
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Ingår i: 36TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (ICSE 2014). - Hyderabad : ACM. - 9781450327565
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Time pressure is prevalent in the software industry in which shorter and shorter deadlines and high customer demands lead to increasingly tight deadlines. However, the effects of time pressure have received little attention in software engineering research. We performed a controlled experiment on time pressure with 97 observations from 54 subjects. Using a two-by-two crossover design, our subjects performed requirements review and test case development tasks. We found statistically significant evidence that time pressure increases efficiency in test case development (high effect size Cohen’s d=1.279) and in requirements review (medium effect size Cohen’s d=0.650). However, we found no statistically significant evidence that time pressure would decrease effectiveness or cause adverse effects on motivation, frustration or perceived performance. We also investigated the role of knowledge but found no evidence of the mediating role of knowledge in time pressure as suggested by prior work, possibly due to our subjects. We conclude that applying moderate time pressure for limited periods could be used to increase efficiency in software engineering tasks that are well structured and straight forward.
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| 3. |
- Nilsson Tengstrand, Sara, et al.
(författare)
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Challenges of Adopting SAFe in the Banking Industry – A Study Two Years After Its Introduction
- 2021
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Ingår i: XP 2021: Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming.Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing book series (LNBIP, volume 419). - Cham : Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH. - 1865-1356 .- 1865-1348. - 9783030780975 ; , s. 157-171
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a framework for scaling agile methods in large organizations. We have found several experience reports and white papers describing SAFe adoptions in different banks, which indicates that SAFe is being used in the banking industry. However, there is a lack of academic publications on the topic, the banking industry is missing in the scientific reports analyzing SAFe transformations. To fill this gap, we present a study on the main challenges with a SAFe transformation at a large full-service bank. We identify the challenges in the bank under study and compare the findings with experience reports from other banks, as well as with research on SAFe transformations in other domains. Many of the challenges reported in this paper overlap with the generic SAFe challenges, including management and organization, education and training, culture and mindset, requirements engineering, quality assurance, and systems architecture. However, we also report some novel challenges specific to the banking domain, e.g., the risk of jeopardizing customer relations, stability, and trust of external stakeholders. This study validates several SAFe-related challenges reported in previous work in the banking context. It also brings up some novel challenges specific to the banking industry. Therefore, we believe our results are particularly useful to practitioners responsible for SAFe transformations at other banks. © 2021, The Author(s).
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| 4. |
- Wagner, Stefan, et al.
(författare)
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Status quo in requirements engineering : A theory and a global family of surveys
- 2019
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Ingår i: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. - : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 1049-331X .- 1557-7392. ; 28:2, s. 1-48
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Requirements Engineering (RE) has established itself as a software engineering discipline over the past decades. While researchers have been investigating the RE discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, attempts to systematically derive an empirical theory in context of the RE discipline have just recently been started. However, such a theory is needed if we are to define and motivate guidance in performing high quality RE research and practice. We aim at providing an empirical and externally valid foundation for a theory of RE practice, which helps software engineers establish effective and efficient RE processes in a problem-driven manner. We designed a survey instrument and an engineer-focused theory that was first piloted in Germany and, after making substantial modifications, has now been replicated in 10 countries worldwide. We have a theory in the form of a set of propositions inferred from our experiences and available studies, as well as the results from our pilot study in Germany. We evaluate the propositions with bootstrapped confidence intervals and derive potential explanations for the propositions. In this article, we report on the design of the family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from the replication studies conducted in 10 countries with participants from 228 organisations. Our results represent a substantial step forward towards developing an empirical theory of RE practice. The results reveal, for example, that there are no strong differences between organisations in different countries and regions, that interviews, facilitated meetings and prototyping are the most used elicitation techniques, that requirements are often documented textually, that traces between requirements and code or design documents are common, that requirements specifications themselves are rarely changed and that requirements engineering (process) improvement endeavours are mostly internally driven. Our study establishes a theory that can be used as starting point for many further studies for more detailed investigations. Practitioners can use the results as theory-supported guidance on selecting suitable RE methods and techniques.
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| 5. |
- Wagner, Stefan, et al.
(författare)
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Status Quo in Requirements Engineering: A Theory and a Global Family of Surveys
- 2020
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Ingår i: Lecture Notes in Informatics. - 1617-5468. ; P-310, s. 115-116
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- While researchers have been investigating the Requirements Engineering (RE) discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, attempts to systematically derive an empirical theory in context of the RE discipline have just recently been started. We aim at providing an empirical and externally valid foundation for a theory of RE practice, which helps software engineers establish effective and efficient RE processes in a problem-driven manner. We designed a survey instrument and an engineer-focused theory that has been conducted in 10 countries. We have a theory in the form of a set of propositions inferred from our experiences and available studies, as well as the results from our pilot study in Germany. We evaluate the propositions with bootstrapped confidence intervals and derive potential explanations for the propositions.
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