Hugh Robinson

An Ethnographic Study of XP Practice

Agile methods are a response to more rigorous and traditional approaches to software development which are perceived to have failed both customers and software development practitioners. eXtreme Programming (XP) is an example agile method and we report on an ethnographic study of XP practice carried out in a small company developing web-based intelligent advertisements. We identify five characterizing themes within XP practice and summarize these findings in terms of XP culture.

Models of motivation in software engineering

Motivation in software engineering is recognized as a key success factor for software projects, but although there are many papers written about motivation in software engineering, the field lacks a comprehensive overview of the area. In particular, several models of motivation have been proposed, but they either rely heavily on one particular model (the job characteristics model), or are quite disparate and difficult to combine. Using the results from our previous systematic literature review (SLR), we constructed a new model of motivation in software engineering. We then compared this new model with existing models and refined it based on this comparison. This paper summarises the SLR results, presents the important existing models found in the literature and explains the development of our new model of motivation in software engineering.

Ethnographically-informed empirical studies of software practice

Over the past decade we have performed a sustained series of qualitative studies of software development practice, focusing on social factors. Using an ethnographically-informed approach, we have addressed four areas of software practice: software quality management systems, the emergence of object technology, professional end user development and agile development. Several issues have arisen from this experience, including the nature of research questions that such studies can address, the advantages and challenges associated with being a member of the community under study, and how to maintain rigour in data collection. In this paper, we will draw on our studies to illustrate our approach and to discuss these and other issues.

Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams

Mature eXtreme programming (XP) teams are highly collaborative and self-organising. In previous studies, we have observed that these teams rely on two apparently simple mechanisms of co-ordination and collaboration: story cards and the Wall. Story cards capture and embody the user stories which form the basis of implementation, while the Wall is a physical space used to organise and display the cards being implemented during the current development cycle (called an iteration). In this paper, we analyse the structure and use of story cards and the Wall in three mature XP teams, using a distributed cognition approach. The teams work in different commercial organisations developing different systems, yet we find significant similarities between their use of these two artefacts. Although simple, teams use the cards and the Wall in sophisticated ways to represent and communicate information that is vital to support their activities. We discuss the significance of the physical medium for the story cards and the Wall in an XP team and discuss the considerations that need to be taken into account for the design of technology to support the teams.

Software engineering: community and culture

Ideas and techniques from the social sciences can improve the theory and practice of the software engineering discipline. To illustrate the contributions this cross-pollination has made, the authors focus on the nature of paradigms and software quality management systems. Their studies underscore the importance of community in how new technical ideas become accepted, how despite software engineers too often prefer polemic to evidence, and the primacy given to the local guru that transcends formal organizational structures.

The Characteristics of XP Teams

What is special about XP teams? Adopting XP involves social change as well as technical change, but what characterises a successful team? What happens when a team takes on the 12 practices and four underlying values? This paper contributes empirical findings that help answer such questions. We expand on previous work that suggested four characteristics of an XP team by analysing the data from both the previous study and from a further study of another mature XP team. While there are clear differences between the two teams in terms of operating environment, their detailed implementation of the 12 practices and the teams overall character, we find that the four characteristics are present in both teams. The paper describes the characteristics in detail and discusses how those characteristics are embedded in the detail of the practices of XP as observed in the two particular settings.

User experience design and agile development: managing cooperation through articulation work

Previous discussions of how User Experience (UX) designers and Agile developers can work together have focused on bringing the disciplines together by merging their processes or adopting specific techniques. This paper reports in detail on one observational study of a mature Scrum team in a large organization, and their interactions with the UX designers working on the same project. The evidence from our study shows that Agile development and UX design practice is not explained by rationalized accounts dealing with processes or techniques. Instead, understanding practice requires examining the wider organizational setting in which the Agile developers and UX designers are embedded. Our account focuses on the situatedness of the work by making reference to values and assumptions in the organizational setting, and the consequences that those values and assumptions had for practice. In this organizational setting, cooperation between the Agile developers and UX designers was achieved through ongoing articulation work by the developers, who were compelled to engage a culturally distinct UX design division. Based on this study, insights into culture, self‐organization and purposeful work highlight significant implications for practice. Copyright

What Do We Know about Developer Motivation

Software engineers will do better work and stay with a company if they are motivated - as a result the success of software projects is likely to improve. The authors use the findings from their in-depth review of the 92 studies published in the last 25 years on software engineer motivation to give an overview of what managers need to know to improve motivation among their employees.

Organisational culture and XP: three case studies

We explore the nature of the interaction between organisational culture and XP practice via three empirically-based case studies. The case studies cover a spectrum of organisational cultures. Our findings suggest that XP can thrive in a range of organisational cultures and that the interaction between organisational culture and XP can be complex & subtle, with consequences for practice.

XP culture: why the twelve practices both are and are not the most significant thing

XP emphasises underlying values as well as the more visible twelve practices. We explore the relationship between practices and values from two perspectives: empirical and theoretical. We present empirical evidence that the twelve practices create a community in which the XP values are supported and sustained. We also present models of culture from other domains which suggest that an alternative set of practices can produce a community with the same underlying values. We conclude that the twelve practices are both significant and not significant.