Agile software development practices such as eXtreme Programming (XP) and SCRUM have increasingly been adopted to respond to the challenges of volatile business environments, where the markets and technologies evolve rapidly and present the unexpected. In spite of the encouraging results so far, little is known about how agile practices affect communication. This article presents the results from a study which examined the impact of XP and SCRUM practices on communication within software development teams and within the focal organization. The research was carried out as a case study in F-Secure where two agile software development projects were compared from the communication perspective. The goal of the study is to increase the understanding of communication in the context of agile software development: internally among the developers and project leaders and in the interface between the development team and stakeholders (i.e. customers, testers, other development teams). The study shows that agile practices improve both informal and formal communication. However, it further indicates that, in larger development situations involving multiple external stakeholders, a mismatch of adequate communication mechanisms can sometimes even hinder the communication. The study highlights the fact that hurdles and improvements in the communication process can both affect the feature requirements and task subtask dependencies as described in coordination theory. While the use of SCRUM and some XP practices facilitate team and organizational communication of the dependencies between product features and working tasks, the use of agile practices requires that the team and organization use also additional plan-driven practices to ensure the efficiency of external communication between all the actors of software development.

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The impact of agile practices on communication in software development

ContextCustomer collaboration is a vital feature of Agile software development. ObjectiveThis article addresses the importance of adequate customer involvement on Agile projects, and the impact of different levels of customer involvement on real-life Agile projects. MethodWe conducted a Grounded Theory study involving 30 Agile practitioners from 16 software development organizations in New Zealand and India, over a period of 3 years. ResultsWe discovered that Lack of Customer Involvement was one of the biggest challenges faced by Agile teams. Customers were not as involved on these Agile projects as Agile methods demand. We describe the causes of inadequate customer collaboration, its adverse consequences on self-organizing Agile teams, and Agile Undercover - a set of strategies used by the teams to practice Agile despite insufficient or ineffective customer involvement. ConclusionCustomer involvement is important on Agile projects. Inadequate customer involvement causes adverse problems for Agile teams. The Agile Undercover strategies we've identified can assist Agile teams facing similar lack of customer involvement.

The impact of inadequate customer collaboration on self-organizing Agile teams

Systems and methods for developing, customizing, and deploying mobile device applications are provided through a mobile application development and deployment platform. Preferably, these systems and methods are implemented in an Internet based environment that allows non-technical users to build sophisticated, highly-customizable cross-platform mobile applications. The platform allows users to select, input, create, customize, and combine various content, design characteristics, and application components, such as modules, some of which make use of features and functionality associated with various mobile devices and mobile operating systems. In certain embodiments, the platform allows users to compile the mobile application for various mobile operating systems and generates a configuration file for the mobile application that can be distributed to end users for execution on various mobile devices. When the mobile application is installed on, or executed by the mobile device, the configuration file may enable the retrieval of various data associated with the mobile application.

Systems and methods for a mobile application development and deployment platform

Pair programming is a programming technique in which two programmers use one computer to work together on the same task. There is an ongoing debate over the value of pair programming in software development. The current body of knowledge in this area is scattered and unorganized. Review shows that most of the results have been obtained from experimental studies in university settings. Few, if any, empirical studies exist, where pair programming has been systematically under scrutiny in real software development projects. Thus, its proposed benefits remain currently without solid empirical evidence. This paper reports results from four software development projects where the impact of pair programming on software product quality was studied. Our empirical findings appear to offer contrasting results regarding some of the claimed benefits of pair programming. They indicate that pair programming may not necessarily provide as extensive quality benefits as suggested in literature, and on the other hand, does not result in consistently superior productivity when compared to solo programming.

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A multiple case study on the impact of pair programming on product quality

Decision making in traditional software development lies with the project manager. In contrast, Agile software development teams are empowered to make decisions, while the role of project manager has changed from one of command and control (i.e. to make decisions and ensure they are implemented) to one of a facilitator. This article argues that decision making in software development is not characterised by a sequence of isolated or exclusive decisions; rather, decisions are inter-related, with each decision leading to further decisions, the chain of which often spans the entire duration of a project. Over this extended period, there are several potential factors that can negatively affect the efficacy of decision making by Agile teams. One of the findings of this exploratory longitudinal study is that the high level of empowerment of a cohesive software development team undertaking an Agile project may be one of these negative factors, as empowered, cohesive teams can exhibit problems such as gro...

The role of project management in ineffective decision making within Agile software development projects

Mobile phones have been closed environments until recent years. The change brought by open platform technologies such as the Symbian operating system and Java technologies has opened up a significant business opportunity for anyone to develop application software such as games for mobile terminals. However, developing mobile applications is currently a challenging task due to the specific demands and technical constraints of mobile development. Furthermore, at the moment very little is known about the suitability of the different development processes for mobile application development. Due to these issues, we have developed an agile development approach called Mobile-D. The Mobile-D approach is briefly outlined here and the experiences gained from four case studies are discussed.

Mobile-D: an agile approach for mobile application development

Effective communication and feedback are crucial in agile development. Extreme programming (XP) embraces both communication and feedback as interdependent process values which are essential for projects to achieve successful results. Our research presents the empirical results from four different case studies. Three case studies had partially onsite customers and one had an onsite customer. The case studies used face-to-face communication to different extents along with email and telephone to manage customer-developer communication inside the development iterations. Our results indicate that an increased reliance on less informative communication channels results in higher defect rates. These results suggest that the selection of communication methods, to be used inside development iterations, should be a factor of considerable importance to agile organizations working with partially available customers. This paper also proposes some guidelines for selecting proper communication methods.

A case study on the impact of customer communication on defects in agile software development

None of the agile methods are claimed to fit all development situations. A team should attempt to adapt the methods and practices to fit their specific needs. For that reason agile principles call for self-reflection on a regular basis in order to identify where and how to make improvements. While some systematic approaches on how to execute this self-reflection process effectively have already been proposed, little empirical evidence currently exists. This paper reports empirical results based on a study where a project team conducted a self-reflection process called “post-iteration workshop” in order to improve and optimize the adopted practices in an XP project. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from four 1-2 hour workshops. The results show that with less than 4% effort it is possible to hold post-iteration workshops that significantly help to improve and optimize practices and enhance the learning and satisfaction of the project team.

Pekka Kyllönen

Papers

Mobile-D: an agile approach for mobile application development

A case study on the impact of customer communication on defects in agile software development

Self-Adaptability of Agile Software Processes: A Case Study on Post-iteration Workshops

Mobile-D: An Agile Approach for Mobile Application Development