Rashina Hoda

Developing a grounded theory to explain the practices of self-organizing Agile teams

Software Engineering researchers are constantly looking to improve the quantity and quality of their research findings through the use of an appropriate research methodology. Over the last decade, there has been a sustained increase in the number of researchers exploring the human and social aspects of Software Engineering, many of whom have used Grounded Theory. We have used Grounded Theory as a qualitative research method to study 40 Agile practitioners across 16 software organizations in New Zealand and India and explore how these Agile teams self-organize. We use our study to demonstrate the application of Grounded Theory to Software Engineering. In doing so, we present (a) a detailed description of the Grounded Theory methodology in general and its application in our research in particular; (b) discuss the major challenges we encountered while performing Grounded Theory’s various activities and our strategies for overcoming these challenges; and (c) we present a sample of our data and results to illustrate the artifacts and outcomes of Grounded Theory research.

Self-Organizing Roles on Agile Software Development Teams

Self-organizing teams have been recognized and studied in various forms-as autonomous groups in socio-technical systems, enablers of organizational theories, agents of knowledge management, and as examples of complex-adaptive systems. Over the last decade, self-organizing teams have taken center stage in software engineering when they were incorporated as a hallmark of Agile methods. Despite the long and rich history of self-organizing teams and their recent popularity with Agile methods, there has been little research on the topic within software wngineering. Particularly, there is a dearth of research on how Agile teams organize themselves in practice. Through a Grounded Theory research involving 58 Agile practitioners from 23 software organizations in New Zealand and India over a period of four years, we identified informal, implicit, transient, and spontaneous roles that make Agile teams self-organizing. These roles-Mentor, Coordinator, Translator, Champion, Promoter, and Terminator-are focused toward providing initial guidance and encouraging continued adherence to Agile methods, effectively managing customer expectations and coordinating customer collaboration, securing and sustaining senior management support, and identifying and removing team members threatening the self-organizing ability of the team. Understanding these roles will help software development teams and their managers better comprehend and execute their roles and responsibilities as a self-organizing team.

Using grounded theory to study the human aspects of software engineering

Grounded Theory (GT) is increasingly being used to study the human aspects of Software Engineering. Unfortunately, the Grounded Theory method is still not widely understood in the Software Engineering discipline. We present an overview of the Grounded Theory method and discuss its use.

Multi-level agile project management challenges

Self-organizing teams are closely involved in project management activities.High team involvement in project management leads to new challenges.We present the multiple levels of agile project management challenges.Relationships between challenges at different levels were also identified.Teams and managers need to address these challenges in order to be effective. Agile software development advocates self-organizing teams that display high levels of autonomy. Self-organizing agile teams are meant to share project management activities such as estimation, planning, and requirements elicitation with managers and customers. While prior literature has explored some individual management-related issues, little is known about how the high involvement of self-organizing agile teams influences everyday project management activities. Through a Grounded Theory study involving 21 agile practitioners across six software companies implementing scrum and XP, we identified a set of eight project management challenges as experienced by and as a result of self-organizing agile teams at multiple levels. These include delayed/changing requirements and eliciting senior management sponsorship at the project level; achieving cross-functionality and effective estimations at the team level; asserting autonomy and self-assignment at the individual level, and lack of acceptance criteria and dependencies at the task level. A mapping between the emergent challenges and standard project management activities is also presented. The article also shares practical implications and guidelines for agile teams, their managers, and customers for overcoming some of these challenges.

Negotiating Contracts for Agile Projects: A Practical Perspective

The Agile Manifesto values “customer collaboration over contract negotiation”. However, in many real projects, Agile practitioners spend considerable time and effort negotiating contracts with customers. We have conducted grounded theory research in India with Agile practitioners. In this paper we present the strategies these practitioners use to overcome the problems of negotiating contracts. These strategies include changing the customers’ mindset, providing different options of working, and — in the worst case scenario — keeping the customers unaware of internal Agile practices.

Agile Undercover: When Customers Don’t Collaborate

Customer collaboration is vital to Agile projects. Through a Grounded Theory study of New Zealand and Indian Agile teams we discovered that lack of customer involvement was causing problems in gathering and clarifying requirements, loss of productivity, and business loss. “Agile Undercover” allows development teams to practice Agile despite insufficient or ineffective customer involvement. We present the causes and consequences of lack of customer involvement on Agile projects and describe the Agile Undercover strategies used to overcome them.

Balancing acts: walking the Agile tightrope

Self-organizing teams are one of the critical success factors on Agile projects - and yet, little is known about the self-organizing nature of Agile teams and the challenges they face in industrial practice. Based on a Grounded Theory study of 40 Agile practitioners across 16 software development organizations in New Zealand and India, we describe how self-organizing Agile teams perform balancing acts between (a) freedom and responsibility (b) cross-functionality and specialization, and (c) continuous learning and iteration pressure, in an effort to maintain their self-organizing nature. We discuss the relationship between these three balancing acts and the fundamental conditions of self-organizing teams - autonomy, cross-fertilization, and self-transcendence.

Embedding Reflection and Learning into Agile Software Development

The theoretical underpinnings of agile methods emphasize regular reflection as a means to sustainable development pace and continuous learning, but in practice, high iteration pressure can diminish reflection opportunities. The Reflective Agile Learning Model (REALM) combines insights and results from studies of agile development practices in India, New Zealand, and the US with Schöns theory of reflective practice to embed reflection in everyday agile practices.

Becoming agile: a grounded theory of agile transitions in practice

Agile adoption is typically understood as a oneoff organizational process involving a staged selection of agile development practices. This view of agility fails to explain the differences in the pace and effectiveness of individual teams transitioning to agile development. Based on a Grounded Theory study of 31 agile practitioners drawn from 18 teams across five countries, we present a grounded theory of becoming agile as a network of on-going transitions across five dimensions: software development practices, team practices, management approach, reflective practices, and culture. The unique position of a software team through this network, and their pace of progress along the five dimensions, explains why individual agile teams present distinct manifestations of agility and unique transition experiences. The theory expands the current understanding of agility as a holistic and complex network of on-going multidimensional transitions, and will help software teams, their managers, and organizations better navigate their individual agile journeys.

Barriers to Learning in Agile Software Development Projects

The adoption of agile methods promises many advantages for individual, team, and organizational learning. However, environmental, structural, and organizational/cultural constraints often find teams adapting agile software development methods rather than engaging in full adoption. We present results from two qualitative studies of teams and organizations that have, in many cases, adapted agile software methods to suit their needs through the omission or alteration of aspects of the method. In many cases, aspects of an agile method that are most related to learning were those that were modified or omitted. This paper utilizes the results of these studies to identify common and emergent barriers to learning. Often these barriers to learning exist according to organizational culture and the extent to which that culture influences attitudes, norms, and behaviors pertaining to learning. We present these barriers to learning and provide insight to the causes, effects, and potential ameliorations for these barriers.