Philipp Diebold

What Do Practitioners Vary in Using Scrum

Background: Agile software development has become a popular way of developing software. Scrum is the most frequently used agile framework, but it is often reported to be adapted in practice. Objective: Thus, we aim to understand how Scrum is adapted in different contexts and what are the reasons for these changes. Method: Using a structured interview guideline, we interviewed ten German companies about their concrete usage of Scrum and analysed the results qualitatively. Results: All companies vary Scrum in some way. The least variations are in the Sprint length, events, team size and requirements engineering. Many users varied the roles, effort estimations and quality assurance. Conclusions: Many variations constitute a substantial deviation from Scrum as initially proposed. For some of these variations, there are good reasons. Sometimes, however, the variations are a result of a previous non-agile, hierarchical organisation.

Hybrid software and system development in practice: waterfall, scrum, and beyond

Software and system development faces numerous challenges of rapidly changing markets. To address such challenges, companies and projects design and adopt specific development approaches by combining well-structured comprehensive methods and flexible agile practices. Yet, the number of methods and practices is large, and available studies argue that the actual process composition is carried out in a fairly ad-hoc manner. The present paper reports on a survey on hybrid software development approaches. We study which approaches are used in practice, how different approaches are combined, and what contextual factors influence the use and combination of hybrid software development approaches. Our results from 69 study participants show a variety of development approaches used and combined in practice. We show that most combinations follow a pattern in which a traditional process model serves as framework in which several fine-grained (agile) practices are plugged in. We further show that hybrid software development approaches are independent from the company size and external triggers. We conclude that such approaches are the results of a natural process evolution, which is mainly driven by experience, learning, and pragmatism.

Software process improvement: a systematic mapping study on the state of the art

Software process improvement (SPI) has been around for decades: frameworks are proposed, success factors are studied, and experiences have been reported.However, the sheermass of concepts, approaches, and standards published over the years overwhelms practitioners as well as researchers. What is out there? Are there new trends and emerging approaches?What are open issues? Still, we struggle to answer these questions about the current state of SPI and related research. In this article, we present results from an updated systematic mapping study to shed light on the field of SPI, to develop a big picture of the state of the art, and to draw conclusions for future research directions. An analysis of 769 publications draws a big picture of SPI-related research of the past quarter-century. Our study shows a high number of solution proposals, experience reports, and secondary studies, but only few theories and models on SPI in general. In particular, standard SPImodels likeCMMI and ISO/IEC 15,504 are analyzed, enhanced, and evaluated for applicability in practice, but these standards are also critically discussed, e.g., from the perspective of SPI in small-to-medium-sized companies, which leads to new specialized frameworks. New and specialized frameworks account for the majority of the contributions found (approx. 38%). Furthermore, we find a growing interest in success factors (approx. 16%) to aid companies in conducting SPI and in adapting agile principles and practices for SPI (approx. 10%). Beyond these specific topics, the study results also show an increasing interest into secondary studies with the purpose of aggregating and structuring SPI-related knowledge. Finally, the present study helps directing future research by identifying under-researched topics awaiting further investigation. Subjects Software Engineering

The Right Degree of Agility in Rich Processes

Many companies that change their development process to agile later adapt these methods to their specific needs, take a step back to traditional processes, or do not continue their agile initiative. Particularly in light of the huge diversity of domains from information systems to embedded systems, it is necessary to find the right degree of agility for each context. Our goal is to describe how agility can be integrated into rich processes. Bringing the advantages of these two organizational worlds together should result in a useful, pragmatic, and feasible solution. This integration can be performed using two different approaches: revolutionary and evolutionary. In the revolutionary approach, an agile method is introduced to replace the current development process. In the evolutionary approach, the existing process is enhanced with appropriate and beneficial agile aspects. Both of these approaches have advantages for specific domains or contexts. After comparing the two approaches and related implementations of the revolutionary approach, this chapter focuses on the integration of agile practices, a specific evolutionary approach, due to the lack of existing research. With our comparison on the basis of the advantages and disadvantages of these two integration approaches, their detailed description, and some related implementations, we provide a foundation for further investigation in the field of combining agile and rich processes to find the right degree of agility.

Hybrid Software Development Approaches in Practice: A European Perspective

The surveyed companies applied hybrid development approaches to specific projects even when company-wide policies for process usage existed. These approaches emerged from the evolution of different work practices and were consistently used regardless of company size or industry sector.

Software process improvement: where is the evidence?: initial findings from a systematic mapping study

Software process improvement (SPI) is around for decades: frameworks are proposed, success factors are studied, and experiences have been reported. However, the sheer mass of concepts, approaches, and standards published over the years overwhelms practitioners as well as researchers. What is out there? Are there new emerging approaches? What are open issues? Still, we struggle to answer the question for what is the current state of SPI and related research? In this paper, we present initial results from a systematic mapping study to shed light on the field of SPI and to draw conclusions for future research directions. An analysis of 635 publications draws a big picture of SPI-related research of the past 25 years. Our study shows a high number of solution proposals, experience reports, and secondary studies, but only few theories. In particular, standard SPI models like CMMI and ISO/IEC 15504 are analyzed, enhanced, and evaluated for applicability, whereas these standards are critically discussed from the perspective of SPI in small-to-medium-sized companies, which leads to new specialized frameworks. Furthermore, we find a growing interest in success factors to aid companies in conducting SPI.

The agile practices impact model: idea, concept, and application scenario

Because agile development has become more important in software engineering in recent years, many companies want to become agile. One way to do so is context-specific improvement, preferably performed by selecting the right agile practices and integrating them into the current software development process. For making an appropriate selection, the impact on the improvement goals needs to be known. Therefore, the idea is to build an overall model that includes the impact of at least the most commonly used agile practices. This impact model is mainly built on these agile practices, on various impact characteristics, and on their connections. A larger example of some practices and their (possible) impact characteristics is presented. Additionally, the Agile Capability Analysis is introduced as an example application scenario of the model. The Agile Practices Impact Model presented in this paper could support context-specific integration of agility into any current development process. Nonetheless, the model needs to be filled with existing evidence.

Bridging the gap: SE technology transfer into practice: study design and preliminary results

Background: Particularly during and after research projects, technology transfer into practice plays an important role for academia to get technologies into use and for industry to improve their development. Objective: Our goal was to gain more and current knowledge about how technology transfer from software engineering (SE) research into industrial practice is accomplished best and how to measure the effectiveness of this transfer. Method: We conducted a study in the context of two German research projects, covering many different organizations from industry and academia. Results: This paper presents the design of the study and the survey performed. After introducing the concept of technology transfer we used and adapted, we present preliminary results. Conclusions: We observed that traditional means such as meetings or workshops are still the most widely used mediums for technology transfer in SE. We also discovered that, even though the duration of transfer depends on the object being transferred, the average duration is three years, which is far less than previously published (~18 years).

Process Configuration Framework Tool

Organizations considering the adoption of new methods, techniques, or tools often face the problem of how to evaluate these systematically, thoroughly, and completely. In this work we present the Process Configuration Framework Tool, a web application based on the Reference Technology platform and aimed at helping organizations find empirical evidence in a specific context. These results will help decision makers to easily find existing methods, techniques, and tools in the appropriate context and make decisions based on empirical evidence.

How Does Software Process Improvement Address Global Software Engineering

For decades, Software Process Improvement (SPI) programs have been implemented, inter alia, to improve quality and speed of software development. To set up, guide, and carry out SPI projects, and to measure SPI state, impact, and success, a multitude of different SPI approaches and considerable experience are available. SPI addresses many aspects ranging from individual developer skills to entire organizations. It comprises for instance the optimization of specific activities in the software lifecycle as well as the creation of organization awareness and project culture. In the course of conducting a systematic mapping study on the state-of-the-art in SPI from a general perspective, we observed Global Software Engineering (GSE) becoming a topic of interest in recent years. Therefore, in this paper, we provide a detailed investigation of those papers from the overall systematic mapping study that were classified as addressing SPI in the context of GSE. From the main studys result set, a set of 30 papers dealing with GSE was selected for an in-depth analysis using the systematic review instrument to study the contributions and to develop an initial picture of how GSE is considered from the perspective of SPI. Our findings show the analyzed papers delivering a substantial discussion of cultural models and how such models can be used to better address and align SPI programs with multi-national environments. Furthermore, experience is shared discussing how agile approaches can be implemented in companies working at the global scale. Finally, success factors and barriers are studied to help companies implementing SPI in a GSE context.