Information Technology (IT) projects have a reputation of not delivering business requirements. Historical challenges like meeting cost, quality, and timeline targets remain despite the extensive experience most organizations have managing projects of all sizes. The profession continues to have high profile failures that make headlines, such as the recent healthcare.gov initiative. This research provides literary sources on agile methodology that can be used to help improve project processes and outcomes.

Implementing Agile Methodology: Challenges and Best Practices

The Agile approach and tools are popular for the management of Enterprise Application Software (EAS) development. This article focuses on the issue of inconsistency between strategic business objectives and the functionality of the software developed. Agile management tools lack the functionality of EAS project activities coordination. This article aims to rethink Agile project management using the causal modelling approach. A causal model of Agile project management using a management transaction (MT) concept was developed. The notion of the space of processes was used to identify the MTs location along the axes of aggregation, generalization, and time and to formalize their interaction specifications. Taxonomy of the coordination meta-types and types was developed using the identifiers of the MTs. The modified Agile activities hierarchy was developed, and vertical and horizontal causal interactions between Agile activities were identified. This modified Agile management model helps to consistently track the integrity of EAS project content. Complexity indicators were introduced to evaluate the EAS project complexity and their average and normalized values are presented. Additional attributes in the Agile management tool Jira are proposed. Monitoring mismatch between strategic business objectives and development activities content helps to improve the success of EAS projects delivery.

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Causal Interactions in Agile Application Development

Enterprise architecture is a growing trend that aims to help deal with the complexity of socio-technical systems such as human organizations, as well as their information technology and systems areas. Nevertheless, the contribution of enterprise architecture to the field of software engineering remains unclear. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to see how enterprise architecture is used in software development and maintenance practice. To this end, we first carried out a search in the SCOPUS database and then organized the papers according to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge to determine what areas of software engineering are covered by each research study. To understand how enterprise architecture is used, we established a classification based on ISO 42010 and TOGAF. From the systematic literature review, we noticed that the early stages of development are the most impacted by the enterprise architecture. On the other hand, we observed that enterprise architecture is of assistance in the areas of engineering management, engineering processes, and engineering models and methods; these tasks are carried out by teams or managers using different, often agile, development methods or standards. In turn, we found that the most common categories are architecture descriptions; these are often used to facilitate communication and information-sharing between different stakeholders, in addition to frameworks, which will help to establish common practices in the organization related to the joint use of enterprise architecture and software development. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/smr.2572

Contributions of enterprise architecture to software engineering: A systematic literature review

The effectiveness of internal processes is a key in modern day economy for companies of all sizes. This also includes the effectiveness in software development management and its alignment with business goals both short and long term. But it is not always easy to align IT development with organizational goals. This paper suggests a method for aligning modern software development approaches with enterprise architecture frameworks.

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Aligning agile software development with enterprise architecture framework.

This paper presents a causal modelling-based approach for aligning information systems development and business strategy execution. The purpose is to ensure alignment between the business strategy of the organization and the way the information system is built. The suggested approach is based on the Agile frameworks such as Scrum, SAF’e, enterprise modelling framework MoDAF, modelling language ArchiMate 3.0, and the causal modelling concept of management transaction (MT). MT concept is the normalized structure to reveal business needs content and bridges MODAF and Agile concepts. MT is used to Agile process description on the level of themes, initiatives, epics, and user stories. Data from three real Enterprise Application Software projects over a one-year period were used to test the method.

Karolis Noreika

Papers

Aligning agile software development with enterprise architecture framework.

Using Management Transaction Concept to Ensure Business and EAS Alignment in an Agile Environment