Agile Development Conference 

About: Agile Development Conference is an academic conference. The conference publishes majorly in the area(s): Agile software development & Project management. Over the lifetime, 81 publications have been published by the conference receiving 2420 citations.

A case study on the impact of scrum on overtime and customer satisfaction

Abstract: This paper provides results, and experiences from a longitudinal, 2 year industrial case study. The quantitative results indicate that after the introduction of a scrum process into an existing software development organization the amount of overtime decreased, allowing the developers to work at a more sustainable pace while at the same time the qualitative results indicate that there was an increase in customer satisfaction.

Exploring extreme programming in context: an industrial case study

Abstract: A longitudinal case study evaluating the effects of adopting the extreme programming (XP) methodology was performed at Sabre Airline Solutions/spl trade/. The Sabre team was a characteristically agile team in that they had no need to scale or re-scope XP for their project parameters and organizational environment. The case study compares two releases of the same product. One release was completed just prior to the team's adoption of the XP methodology, and the other was completed after approximately two years of XP use. Comparisons of the new release project results to the old release project results show a 50% increase in productivity, a 65% improvement in pre-release quality, and a 35% improvement in post-release quality. These findings suggest that, over time, adopting the XP process can result in increased productivity and quality.

Observations on balancing discipline and agility

Abstract: Agile development methodologies promise higher customer satisfaction, lower defect rates, faster development times and a solution to rapidly changing requirements. Plan-driven approaches promise predictability, stability, and high assurance. However, both approaches have shortcomings that, if left unaddressed, can lead to project failure. The challenge is to balance the two approaches to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. We believe this can be accomplished using a risk-based approach for structuring projects to incorporate both agile and disciplined approaches in proportion to a project's needs. We present six observations drawn from our efforts to develop such an approach. We follow those observations with some practical advice to organizations seeking to integrate agile and plan-driven methods in their development process.

Direct verbal communication as a catalyst of agile knowledge sharing

Abstract: This paper discusses the role of conversation and social interactions as the key element of effective knowledge sharing in an agile process. It also presents the observations made during a repeated experiment on knowledge sharing conducted in various groups of professionals and students. The study suggests that the focus on the pure codified approach is the critical reason of Tayloristic team failure to effectively share knowledge among all stakeholders of a software project. Drawing on the knowledge-as-relationship perspective of knowledge sharing we theorize that verbal face-to-face interaction facilitates achieving higher velocity by software development teams.

Agile methods for large organizations - building communities of practice

Abstract: Agile development practices respect tacit knowledge, makes communication more effective, and thus fosters the knowledge creation process. However the current agile methods, like XP, are focused on practices that individual teams or projects need, and the use of the methods in organizations consisting of multiple cooperating teams is difficult. The community of practice theory suggests that large agile organizations should have various overlapping, informal cross-team communities. This paper studies three agile methods developed at Nokia that use facilitated workshops to solve multiteam issues. The paper explains using communities of practices theory - why these methods work in multiteam settings. The results of this paper suggest that workshop practices that amass people from different parts of organizations to perform a specific well-defined task can be used effectively to solve issues that span over multiple teams and to build up communities of practice. This result suggests that the community of practice concept could provide a basis for adapting agile methods for the needs of large organizations.