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How Pair Programming Influences Team Performance: The Role of Backup Behavior, Shared Mental Models, and Task Novelty
... The goals of agile methods are to increase transparency of project progress, create usable interim products and services, and respond more quickly and efficiently to new or changing customer requirements (Bick et al., 2017). The method focuses on collaboration within the software development subunit and with customers (Kude et al., 2019;Maruping & Matook, forthcoming). ...
... For example, if a legacy system needs to be moved to modern cloud environment, setting up a team of people with different backgrounds will facilitate the move. Existing research highlights that autonomy and diversity is a key of teams (Kude et al., 2019;Lee & Xia, 2010). In DevOps teams is it essential that the team members have specialist knowledge in a certain area and that they broaden their knowledge to support and fill in for each other. ...
... We show that communication and knowledge sharing in DevOps teams are enabled by competency broadening and skill distribution, as all team members take responsibility for all end-to-end development and operations activities. This fosters shared understanding and leads to better performance (Kude et al., 2019). Hence, the different competencies of development and operations are aligned. ...
A top priority of organisations around the globe is to achieve IT-business alignment at all levels of the organisation. This paper addresses operational alignment within IT functions. Traditionally, IT functions are divided into highly independent subunits. In the face of pressure to adapt to rapidly changing customer demands and to manage increasingly complex IT architectures, many organisations have begun implementing joint, cross-functional DevOps teams, which integrate tasks, knowledge and skills pertaining to planning, building, and running software product activities. In this study, we examine eight cases of DevOps implementation. We apply grounded theory to identify three mechanisms comprising a tripartite model of intra-IT alignment: individual componentization, integrated responsibility, and multidisciplinary knowledge. Our model provides insights into how alignment between development and operations can be achieved in DevOps teams within the IT function.
... Agile SD practices focus on more IS artifact-centric tasks that primarily guide the execution of the software development process itself emphasizing technical aspects and automating mechanisms (Baham & Hirschheim, 2021). The most popular of these practices stem from XP (Kude, Mithas, Schmidt, & Heinzl, 2019;VersionOne, 2019). When implementing unit testing, for example, developers use dedicated test code to (automatically) test the effects of changes to the system. ...
... Following this, scholars began to extensively examine project-and team-level effects in agile ISD. The wide range of phenomena and outcomes studied on these levels includes project and team performance, product quality, decision-making, team communication, and knowledge sharing (Coyle, Conboy, & Acton, 2015;Drury et al., 2012;Hummel, Rosenkranz, & Holten, 2015;Kude et al., 2019;Maruping, Zhang, et al., 2009). Only recently, scientific research turned significant attention towards individual-level implications of agile ISD. ...
... Team or project characteristics, such as team distribution, project complexity, or leadership practices (Windeler, Maruping, & Venkatesh, 2017), could generate further insights on boundaries of a resource-enhancing or resource-depleting effect of agile ISD practices use. Similarly, studying team performance as a valuable team-level outcome of the application of ISD practices (Kude et al., 2019;Pee, Kankanhalli, & Kim, 2010) might be complemented by taking individual-level ego depletion into account. In addition to multi-level examinations, researchers could engage in dyadic studies and compare the implications of agile ISD practices use from different stakeholder perspectives, e.g., developers and product managers (Benlian & Haffke, 2016;Yakovleva, Reilly, & Werko, 2010). ...
While much is known about the beneficial effects of agile information systems development (ISD), scholars have largely neglected to shed light on its potential downsides. Specifically, research has overlooked to examine the ambivalent implications of the specific demands placed on developers working in agile ISD teams, including potentially depleting effects. Drawing on ego depletion theory and literature, we provide a more balanced view and introduce self-regulatory resource depletion triggered by using agile ISD practices - encompassing software development (SD) and project management (PM) practices - as a theoretical perspective on why agile developers experience different levels of work-related fatigue that lead to stronger or weaker turnover intentions. Furthermore, we propose that due to the specific way in which agile ISD methods organize ISD project work, workload perceived by developers influences the intensity by which agile ISD practices affect self-regulatory resources and developers' feelings of fatigue. We examined our research model using a multimethod approach including quantitative and qualitative data. We found that agile SD practices use enhances developers' self-regulatory resources and reduces fatigue and turnover intention. Our results also show that perceived workload strengthens the energizing effects of agile SD practices use and reveals a depleting effect of agile PM practices use, with countervailing implications for turnover intention. This study contributes to agile ISD literature by drawing a more nuanced and balanced picture with both resource-enhancing and resource-draining effects of agile ISD practices use. Finally, we give managerial advice regarding factors to consider when designing and managing agile ISD projects.
... A Game also has: Platform [1-3] (PC, Console, Mobile), Genre [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] (Action, Adventure, RPG, Simulation, Strategy, Puzzle, Sports, Platformer, Shooter, Racing, Roguelike, Running 6 ), Mode [1][2][3] (Single/Multi Player, Online). ...
... Mitigation depends on the game company. Game developers report that pair programming [10] and code reviews [1] are not common in game industry while they are well-established practices in traditional software development. Similar practices could be adapted in the game industry, even pairing technical and non-technical developers. ...
Context
Given its competitiveness, the video-game industry has a closed-source culture. Hence, little is known about the problems faced by game developers. However, game developers do share information about their game projects through postmortems, which describe informally what happened during the projects.
Objective
The software-engineering research community and game developers would benefit from a state of the problems of the video game industry, in particular the problems faced by game developers, their evolution in time, and their root causes. This state of the practice would allow researchers and practitioners to work towards solving these problems.
Method
We analyzed 200 postmortems from 1997 to 2019, resulting in 927 problems divided into 20 types. Through our analysis, we described the overall landscape of game industry problems in the past 23 years and how these problems evolved over the years. We also give details on the most common problems, their root causes, and possible solutions. We finally discuss suggestions for future projects.
Results
We observe that (1) the game industry suffers from management and production problems in the same proportion; (2) management problems decreased over the years, giving space to business problems, while production problems remained constant; (3a) technical and game design problems are decreasing over the years, the latter only after the last decade; (3b) problems related to the team increase over the last decade; (3c) marketing problems are the ones that had the biggest increase over the 23 years compared to other problem types; (4) finally, the majority of the main root causes are related to people, not technologies. Conclusions: In this paper, we provide a state of the practice for researchers to understand and study video-game development problems. We also offer suggestions to help practitioners to avoid the most common problems in future projects.
... Rather than relying on a leader, agile teams evaluate and plan changes to their performance in retrospective sessions, self-assign tasks based on a prioritized product backlog, and synchronize and combine individual contributions using software tools and task boards (Project Management Institute and Agile Alliance 2017). In addition, agile teams develop and share team knowledge, skills, and abilities using techniques such as pair programming and practices such as colocation, and teams aim for generalist skill sets (Beck and Andres 2005;Kude et al. 2013). ...
... Sometimes if there's a lot of testing work Backup behaviour is recognized in agile team studies, but the focus is on how pair programming supports backup behaviour; other factors or practices that might contribute to backup behaviour are not considered. In one study, Kude et al. (2013) measured agile team effectiveness based on role-focused questionnaire data from 62 colocated scrum teams. The results showed that pair programming helps teams establish backup behaviour by improving the shared mental models among the team's developers and that backup behaviour reduces the negative effect of task novelty on performance. ...
Teamwork is crucial in software development, particularly in agile development teams which are cross-functional and where team members work intensively together to develop a cohesive software solution. Effective teamwork is not easy; prior studies indicate challenges with communication, learning, prioritization, and leadership. Nevertheless, there is much advice available for teams, from agile methods, practitioner literature, and general studies on teamwork to a growing body of empirical studies on teamwork in the specific context of agile software development. This article presents the agile teamwork effectiveness model (ATEM) for colocated agile development teams. The model is based on evidence from focus groups, case studies, and multi-vocal literature and is a revision of a general team effectiveness model. Our model of agile teamwork effectiveness is composed of shared leadership, team orientation, redundancy, adaptability, and peer feedback. Coordinating mechanisms are needed to facilitate these components. The coordinating mechanisms are shared mental models, communication, and mutual trust. We critically examine the model and discuss extensions for very small, multi-team, distributed, and safety-critical development contexts. The model is intended for researchers, team members, coaches, and leaders in the agile community.
... A Game also has: Platform [1-3] (PC, Console, Mobile), Genre [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] (Action, Adventure, RPG, Simulation, Strategy, Puzzle, Sports, Platformer, Shooter, Racing, Roguelike, Running 6 ), Mode [1][2][3] (Single/Multi Player, Online). ...
... Mitigation depends on the game company. Game developers report that pair programming [10] and code reviews [1] are not common in game industry while they are well-established practices in traditional software development. Similar practices could be adapted in the game industry, even pairing technical and non-technical developers. ...
Context: Little is known of the problems faced by game developers. However, game developers do share information about their games projects through postmortems, which describe informally what happened during the projects. Objective: The software-engineering research community and game developers would benefit from a state of the problems of video game development, in particular the problems faced by game developers, their evolution in time, and their root causes. This state of the practice would allow researchers and practitioners to work towards solving these problems. Method: We analyzed more than 200 postmortems, comprising 927 problems divided in 20 types from 1997 to 2019. Through our analysis, we describe the overall landscape of game industry problems in the past 23 years and how these problems evolved over the years. We also give details on the most common problems, their root causes, and possible solutions. We finally provide recommendations for future projects. Results: We observe that (1) the game industry suffer from management and production problems in the same proportion; (2) management problems decreased over the years giving space to business problems, while production problems remained constant; (3a) technical and game design problems are decreasing over the years, the later only after the last decade; (3b) problems related to the team increase over the last decade; (3c) marketing problems are the ones that had the biggest increase over the 23 years compared to other problem types; (4) finally, the majority of the main root causes are related to people, not technologies. Conclusions: In this paper we provide a state of the practice for researchers to understand and study video-game development problems. We also offer recommendations to help practitioners to avoid the most common problems in future projects.
... However, many early studies were criticised for lacking theoretical underpinnings and empirical support . After calls for more rigorous academic research (Abrahamsson et al., 2009;Dingsøyr et al., 2012), numerous empirical studies have been conducted (i.e., mostly case study and field survey methods) (Huber et al., 2020;Kude et al., 2019;Maruping & Matook, 2020). These studies, some of which applied theoretical lenses to examine ASD, have helped understand how practitioners perceive, deploy and deal with challenges concerning ASD methods. ...
Over the last two decades, agile software development (ASD) has garnered much attention in both research and practice. Several ASD methods and techniques have been developed and studied. In particular, researchers have provided several theoretical perspectives on ASD and contributed rich insights to the ASD practice. Still, despite calls for a more unified theoretical understanding of ASD, a theoretical core of ASD has not been identified. This paper offers a theoretical core of ASD research, clarifying what is essential and what is less essential for IS agility, hoping to spark a scholarly discussion, and provides implications of such a core for understanding method tailoring.
... Some research has found positive associations between the use of agile methods in general (rather than of particular practices) and project success [7,8], indicating that the general use of agile methods can enhance project success. Other studies have examined the effects of particular agile practices on project success and found positive effects of pair programming [9,10] and continuous integration [11] and negative effects of daily stand-ups [10]. ...
Although agile practices are gaining in popularity, there is little evidence showing how particular agile practices, in particular those involving the client, affect the success of outsourced software projects. Data from a matched survey of sponsors and developers in 60 outsourced information systems projects indicate negative effects of continuous analysis and positive effects of joint decision making and continuous integration on project success. Moreover, interaction analyses show that some positive effects are enhanced and negative effects dampened when requirements risk is high. These findings caution against continuous analysis in outsourced projects while they support joint decision making and continuous integration. The findings also empirically substantiate the largely untested assertion that agile practices help cope with changing requirements.
... Unlike the medical practice specialties described above, patient needs do not fall into silos. In medical practice, importance is placed on team-based care (Berry and Beckham, 2014), which has been aligned with team-based and agile approaches in software development in recent years (Kude et al., 2019;Mithas and Kude, 2017). Team activities require slack time for scheduling; furthermore, these activities have inherent administrative costs, both in time and in money, which could be reduced by communications technology (Malone et al., 1987). ...
Purpose
This paper advances a research agenda for service researchers at the intersection of healthcare and information technologies to improve access to quality healthcare at affordable prices. The article reviews key trends to provide an agenda for research focusing on strategies, governance and management of key service processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper synthesizes literature in information systems, service management, marketing and healthcare operations to suggest a research agenda. The authors draw on frameworks such as the interpretive model of technology, technology acceptance model, assemblage theories and Baumol's cost disease to develop their arguments.
Findings
The paper situates strategy-related service management questions that service providers and consumers face in the context of emerging healthcare and technology trends. It also derives implications for governance choices and questions related to that.
Research limitations/implications
The paper discusses service management challenges and concludes with an agenda for future research that touches on governance and service management issues.
Practical implications
This paper provides implications for healthcare service providers and policymakers to understand new trends in healthcare delivery, technologies and facilities management to meet evolving customer needs.
Social implications
This paper provides implications for managing healthcare services that touch on many social and societal concerns.
Originality/value
This conceptual paper provides background and review of the work at the intersections of information systems, marketing and healthcare operations to draw implications for future research.
... The team and its members have to collaborate within the software development subunit and with customers when adopting agile methodologies [27,28]. This makes the team a crucial element of the process. ...
Agile development is known for efficient software development practices that enable teams to quickly develop software to cope with changing requirements. Although there is evidence that agile practices are helpful in such environments, the literature does not inform us as to whether agile practices can also be beneficial in hyper-agile environments. Such environments are characterized by an extremely fast pace of change with fluid requirements. COVID-19 vaccine distribution is one such problem that governments have had to deal with. To solve this problem, governments need to come up with robust responses by formulating teams that have the capability to provide software solutions enabling information visibility into the vaccine distribution process. Such emergent teams need to quickly understand the distribution process, oftentimes define the process itself because it might be non-existent, and build software systems to solve the problem in a matter of days. Not much is known about how systems can be developed at such a fast pace. We adopt a clinical research methodology and employ agile software development practices to develop such a mission-critical system. In the process of building the system, we learn important lessons that can be used to adapt and extend agile methodologies to be used in hyper-agile development environments. We offer these lessons as important first steps to understanding the best practices needed to develop software systems that have the capability to provide visibility into the unprecedented health challenge of distribution of life-saving COVID-19 vaccine.
... Moreover, we included the day of the study (i.e., days 1 through 10) to control for spurious effects due to time because it has been found to be a suitable proxy to account for potential general linear time trends in work/project environments (Beal et al. 2003, Gabriel et al. 2019. In terms of between-person controls, following recent AISDPU studies (Kude et al. 2019, Tripp et al. 2016, Venkatesh et al. 2020, we included age, gender, agile development experience, total work experience, team size, project size, project complexity, developer stress (jobrelated), and global life satisfaction as between-person controls in the entry survey. Accounting for the between-and within-person controls allowed us to examine the incremental validity of our predictions over these factors. ...
Despite the predominant view in the agile Information Systems Development (ISD) literature that agile ISD practices use (AISDPU) has positive ramifications for ISD teams and projects, previous research has paid considerably less attention to whether and how these practices can be simultaneously beneficial and burdensome to individual developers. In addition, much of our knowledge on AISDPU and its effects relies on research into the differences between developers over an extended period of time. Yet, agile ISD practices are typically used on a day-to-day basis and can thus be viewed as an inherently within-person phenomenon, pointing to the need for daily investigations that provide a closer look at the immediate, lived experiences of developers. Drawing on the holistic stress process model, we develop the idea that daily AISDPU can be a source of stressful situational demands with both energizing and depleting effects that may thus help or harm developer well-being. In an experience-sampling study of 131 developers who responded to daily surveys spread over ten workdays, we show that AISDPU can indeed be a double-edged sword: instrumental to developers' energy resources (by increasing work engagement) on some days, yet detrimental to their energy resources (by increasing depletion) on others-two forces with opposing effects on developer well-being. Importantly, we find that the divergent effects of AISDPU critically hinge on whether developers appraise it as a challenge or a threat. As a potential antidote, we investigate the moderating role of IT mindfulness in developers' appraisal processes. Our results show that IT mindfulness serves as a facilitator of challenge appraisals and as a buffer against threat appraisals. More broadly, this study challenges the predominant view of AISDPU as an inherently good thing and offers meaningful insights into why and when AISDPU improves versus impairs developer well-being.
... With almost all enterprises now facing a dynamic environment, organizations are reliant on innovation to survive and to gain competitive advantages (Han and Yang, 2011;Anderson et al., 2014). This is especially true for digital ventures and software development companies during and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, as they must adapt to a rapidly changing market through innovation aimed at developing high-quality products and providing excellent services (Huang et al., 2017;Kude et al., 2019). Individual creativity is the foundation of an organization's innovation (Amabile, 1988), and for IT enterprises, as typical examples of knowledge-based organizations, innovative behavior by their professional employees is the primary source of their competitiveness. ...
Drawing on the event system and regulatory focus theory, this study constructed an impact mechanism model to investigate the relationship between the event strength of co-worker presenteeism and innovative behavior among IT professionals under the 996 work regime. In addition to test the direct effect, we examined the indirect effect of promotion focus and the moderating effect of event time in this relationship. Data were collected through an online survey administered to 374 IT professionals in China. The results showed a positive relationship between the criticality of co-worker presenteeism events and innovative behavior. An indirect effect of promotion focus was also found in this relationship. The timing of co-worker presenteeism events moderated the relationship between the criticality of co-worker presenteeism events and promotion focus. Specifically, the effect was more significant when co-worker presenteeism events occurred during project delays.
... To describe the relationships of the model elements, we built upon the literature. In particular, we adapted and generalized a concept from a related study, which depicts the application of ASD practices and the resulting behavior that causes performance increases [26]. To substantiate our understanding of the realization of ASD success, we moreover referred to the generic ISD success process model [19]. ...
Although agile software development (ASD) is widespread, the contributions of individual agile practices to development success are still largely unclear. In this paper, we explore the hidden cause-effect relationships between the application of social agile practices, the realization of social agile principles, and the resulting contribution(s) to ASD success. To capture ASD success, we consider both the effects on developer acceptance and economic business values. Based on an initial ASD success model and data from a survey of 197 developers, we found that social agile practices such as reflection, business IT alignment, and self-organization seem to particularly promote ASD success. We also found indications that the realization of these principles is primarily driven by practices such as retrospective meetings and shared leadership, whereas prominent practices like daily meetings and pair programming seem to have no effect. Our results thus call for reassessment of agile practices and their use in practice.
... The results are substantively unchanged, with positive and significant coefficients for the interaction terms of ITDA with IT investment (column (4), β = 0.570, p < 0.01) and ITCA with IT investment (column (4), β = 0.637, p < 0.05). This approach to address endogeneity is similar to those in prior research (Kude et al. 2019, Anderson et al. 2000. ...
When does IT-business alignment matter more for leveraging IT investment for firm performance? Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, we posit that firms that focus on IT-business alignment at the later stages (IT delivery, and IT change) of the IT lifecycle are able to better translate their IT investment into revenue than firms that focus on IT-business alignment at the early stage (IT investment planning) of the IT lifecycle. To test our theory, we leverage archival data from more than 120 firms in India that differ in terms of where in the IT lifecycle they focused on IT-business alignment as the key priority. We find that the positive relationship between IT investment and firm revenue is stronger for firms that focus on IT-delivery business alignment or IT-change business alignment than for firms that focus on IT-investment planning business alignment. In addition, we find that at higher levels of IT investment, firms that focus on IT-change business alignment or IT-delivery business alignment have higher revenue than firms that focus on IT-investment planning business alignment; whereas at low levels of IT investment, firms that focus on IT-investment planning business alignment outperform firms that focus on IT-delivery business alignment or IT-change business alignment. Taken together, the results suggest that IT-business alignment at the IT delivery and IT change stages of the IT lifecycle are more critical for leveraging IT investment for firm performance than IT-business alignment at the IT investment planning stage. This study contributes to theory and practice by highlighting that the stage in the IT lifecycle at which IT-business alignment is focused matters significantly for leveraging IT investment for business performance.
The use of Agile practices is typically associated to a wide array of benefits for organizations. This paper extends growing research on the ‘dark’ side of Agile by investigating the depletion of innovation in a large telco company following the large-scale implementation of Agile in R&D units. Our qualitative study reveals a shift in the organizational logics underpinning new product development, from a “navigating through unchartered waters” to a “putting out fires” logic. We tracked the change in key components of logics (goals of teams, source of legitimacy of team members and support and control systems) and explained the multi-level mechanisms through which the shift occurred, i.e., changes in processes of workflow management, work allocation, and performance management. We found that the new organizational logic negatively impacted individual attitudes towards the generation of new ideas by promoting the internalization of short-termism, a perceived drain in competences and confidence, and the lack of accountability for innovation. By focusing on changes in organizational logics, our insights expand current knowledge about the relationship between Agile implementation and individual attitudes. We also explain why unexpected effects of Agile implementation may go undetected in organizations, because they derive from multi-level, diffused, changes in the organization.
This study examines changing team cognition and cognitive artifact use as agile software development iterations progress to better understand team member interactions. The four case studies conducted observed the distributed cognition on the team changing from planning, managing, developing, and concluding tasks in iterations to deliver working functionality. Cognitive artifacts used throughout the iteration also changed. This study provides a clearer understanding of how and when team cognition and artifact use change as agile software development teams use artifacts to manage projects. Interactions between team members and artifacts move from individual to social interactions as the iteration progresses with frequent, short, continuous communication and interactions.
This study investigates how value‐added services (VAS) and customer care services (CCS) moderate the association between satisfaction with the core telephone service and overall customer satisfaction in base‐of‐the‐pyramid (BOP) markets. We propose that customers respond to VAS and CCS differently due to variations in price evaluations of these services. We further examine how the interactions among the service dimensions may differ for local and global telephone providers. We used an archival dataset from a survey of more than 3200 cellphone customers across 34 providers in seven South Asian countries that include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Maldives to test our conjectures. We find that satisfaction with VAS negatively moderates the relationship between core connection satisfaction and overall satisfaction, and satisfaction with CCS positively moderates the relationship between core connection satisfaction and overall satisfaction. Furthermore, the positive and negative interaction effects are stronger for global vs. local providers. We discuss contributions and managerial implications of the findings.
The software industry is rapidly introducing Agile Software Development methodologies
like Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), and Kanban. Even though Agile literature
proposes Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure Agile, there is a less explored
territory for Agile methods. Also, these KPIs identified are less explored for their values
and relationship with Agile principles.
The objective of this thesis is to increase knowledge and value with these KPIs in the
selected Agile methods: Scrum, XP, and Kanban. The author answers three research
questions with their sub-questions identified. The first research questions focus on
identifying key elements of Scrum, XP, and Kanban methods and understanding why are
they key elements by linking them with Agile principles. The second research question
focuses on identifying, analyzing, value creation, and building relationships of KPIs, based
on the selected key elements of Scrum, XP, and Kanban methods. The final research
question is to suggest improvements or build new KPI if needed.
The author has used the Grounded Theory approach for literature review. The author
identified 574 papers, which was further refined to 31 primary studies through the paper
selection process.
The analysis indicates that the reasons for and the effects of using metrics are focused
on the categories identified: Sprint and Project Progress Tracking, Process, Quality
Management, Software Reliability, Business Value Delivered, Continuous Improvement,
Customer Service Request, Product, Manage Changing Requirements, Sprint and Project
Planning, Communication and Collaboration, Role, Resource, Motivating People, Team
Alignment and System Design. Along with the categories, sub-categories are identified
for each category which has standard KPI and many custom KPI.
The use of KPI in Agile Software Development methodology is identical to that of
Traditional Software Development methodology. The whole concept to use KPI in
software development is to track project progress, measure quality, identify bottlenecks
in the process resolve them, and customer satisfaction. Future work should focus on the
empirical study of these KPI for Information Technology (IT) and business alignment.
Considering the crucial role of cross-cultural virtual learning teams (VLTs) in industries and academics, this study adopts a longitudinal approach and investigates in-depth how cross-cultural VLTs collaborate effectively by examining relationships among three concepts, namely swift trust, team trust, and shared mental model (SMM). Categorizing team stages as structuring, work, and termination, our study indicates that swift trust enhances team trust at the structuring stage. At all three stages, team trust strengthens SMM, which then improves team performance. At the work stage, the impact of SMM on team performance reaches its peak. Our findings contribute to the online learning literature and practices.
This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2020, which was planned to be held during June 8-12, 2020, at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was postponed until an undetermined date.
XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a hybrid forum where agile researchers, academics, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. Following this history, for both researchers and seasoned practitioners XP 2020 provided an informal environment to network, share, and discover trends in Agile for the next 20 years.
The 14 full and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile adoption; agile practices; large-scale agile; the business of agile; and agile and testing.
With the growing interest of adopting agile methods in offshored process, many companies realized that the use of agile methods and practices in companies located outside the location of early adopters of agile methods may be challenging. India, the main destination of offshoring contracts, have received particular attention, due to the big cultural differences. Critical analysis of related studies suggests that impeding behaviors are mostly rooted in the hierarchical culture of Indian organizations and related management behavior of command-and-control. But what happens in distributed projects with a more empowering onshore management? In this paper, we present the findings from a multiple-case study of DevOps teams with members from a mature agile company located in Sweden and a more hierarchical offshore vendor from India. Based on two focus groups we list culturally different behaviors of offshore engineers that were reported to impede agile ways of working. Furthermore, we report the findings from surveying 36 offshore team members from five DevOps teams regarding their likely behavior in situations reported to be problematic. Our findings confirm a number of previously reported behaviors rooted in cultural differences that impede the adoption of agile ways of working when collaborating with offshore engineers. At the same time, our survey results suggest that among the five surveyed teams there were teams that succeeded with the cultural integration of the offshore team members. Finally, our findings demonstrate the importance of cultural training especially when onboarding new team members.
How should digital platforms engage with and invest in their online communities to shape innovation and knowledge contributions from members in their platform ecosystems? This is an important question because user contributions are important drivers of technological progress and business value. We examine the effect of platform sponsors' investments in online communities on user knowledge contributions, using fine-grained longitudinal data from a leading enterprise software vendor's community network. We focus on the sponsor practice of knowledge seeding, in which its employees provide free technical support by answering questions posted in discussion forums. We define user knowledge contribution as peer-evaluated, quality-weighted solutions that community members provide to help resolve the questions their peers raise. We show that the platform sponsor's investments in knowledge seeding have a positive, significant association with user knowledge contribution. We also find temporal and geographical variations in returns on the sponsor's knowledge investments. More specifically, returns (i.e., amount of user contribution that is stimulated) decrease with the age of the community, consistent with the observation that the most active contributors are lead users who tend to join the community early. In addition, returns vary across different countries, such that the highest returns are realized when the investment is made in countries with higher levels of information technology (IT) infrastructure, partly because country-level IT infrastructure may be associated with greater absorptive capacity of these countries. We discuss the implications for research and practice.
Human capital is becoming more critical as the global economy becomes more information intensive and service intensive. Although information systems (IS) researchers have studied some dimensions of human capital, the role of industry-specific human capital has remained understudied. The information technology enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) industry provides an ideal setting to study returns to human capital, because jobs in this industry are standardized and many professionals in this new industry have come from other industries. We build on IS and economics literature to theorize returns to human capital in the BPO industry, and we test the theory using data for over 2,500 BPO professionals engaged in call center work and other nonvoice services (e.g., accounting, finance, human resources, etc.) in India during the 2006-2008 time period. We find higher returns to industry-specific human capital than to firm-specific and general human capital. We also find that junior-level professionals, whose jobs are relatively more standardized, have higher returns to industry-specific human capital than senior-level professionals. We discuss implications for further research and practice in the global economy where inter-industry transfers and migration of skills are becoming increasingly common.
How do IT-enabled capabilities influence the ability of firms to leverage customer involvement to shape amount of innovation? This study argues and theorizes that effective processing and management of customer information flows requires that organizations possess what we call as relational information processing capability (RIPC) and analytical information processing capability (AIPC). Drawing on and extending the theories of absorptive capacity and complementarities in the context of innovation, we posit that RIPC and AIPC complement product-focused customer involvement and information-intensive customer involvement practices respectively to enhance the amount of firm innovation. To test our hypotheses, we collected archival data from more than 300 large U.S. manufacturing firms and map the relational and analytical information processing capabilities to specific IT applications.
Consistent with our theorizing, we find that RIPC positively moderates the relationship between product-focused customer involvement and amount of firm innovation; and AIPC positively moderates the relationship between information-intensive customer involvement and amount of firm innovation. In further exploratory analysis, we find a positive three-way interaction between AIPC, RIPC, and product-focused customer involvement. Taken together, our results suggest that configurations of IT-enabled capabilities alone are not enough for innovation; instead firms benefit more when specific configurations of IT-enabled capabilities are leveraged in unison with specific types of customer involvement. The study contributes to theory and practice by shedding light on important complementarities between specific types of customer involvement (product-focused customer involvement and information-intensive customer involvement) and specific IT-enabled capabilities (relational information processing capability and analytical information processing capability).
Context: Sharing expert knowledge is a key process in developing software products. Since expert knowledge is mostly tacit, the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge along with the development of a transactive memory system (TMS) are significant factors in effective software teams. Objective: We seek to enhance our understanding human factors in the software development process and provide support for the agile approach, particularly in its advocacy of social interaction, by answering two questions: How do software development teams acquire and share tacit knowledge? What roles do tacit knowledge and transactive memory play in successful team performance? Method: A theoretical model describing the process for acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge and development of a TMS through social interaction is presented and a second predictive model addresses the two research questions above. The elements of the predictive model and other demographic variables were incorporated into a larger online survey for software development teams, completed by 46 software SMEs, consisting of 181 individual team members. Results: Our results show that team tacit knowledge is acquired and shared directly through good quality social interactions and through the development of a TMS with quality of social interaction playing a greater role than transactive memory. Both TMS and team tacit knowledge predict effectiveness but not efficiency in software teams. Conclusion: It is concluded that TMS and team tacit knowledge can differentiate between low-and high-performing teams in terms of effectiveness, where more effective teams have a competitive advantage in developing new products and bringing them to market. As face-to-face social interaction is key, collocated, functionally rich, domain expert teams are advocated rather than distributed teams, though arguably the team manager may be in a separate geographic location provided that there is frequent communication and effective use of issue tracking tools as in agile teams.
SAP AG has taught more than 4,000 developers the Agile Software Engineering methodology since 2010. As such, the company offers a unique setting to study its impact on de-velopers' work. In this paper, we discuss how developers perceive the impact of pair programming and test automa-tion on software quality, delivered feature scope, and various team work aspects. We draw our findings from a company-wide survey with answers from 174 developers working in 74 teams and 15 product owners from five locations world-wide. We complement our findings with insights from two in-depths case studies with two development teams. As ex-pected, our findings confirm that the studied practices help developers develop better software. Deviating from exist-ing preconceptions, however, the responding developers do not report a significant drop in their development speed. In addition, high adopters are more proud of their own contri-butions to the team, report a better team learning, and feel more motivated.
As teams have become an increasingly necessary component of organizational structure, organizations have turned to team development interventions in hopes of facilitating performance gains in their teams. However, it is critical to understand that team development interventions are not “one size fits all.” This review provides a close examination of the two most prevalent intervention approaches, team training and team building, in order to highlight their contributions to improving teams when designed according to team development science.
Various types of organizations must manage rapidly changing operational contexts. To respond to these demands, organizations are relying more heavily on team-based work arrangements. Effectively managing such performance requires a systematic, broad approach to measuring team effectiveness that is comprehensive and sound, yet unobtrusive. One aspect of teamwork that is critical to success in these types of environments is adaptation. Teams must be able to react quickly and accurate to the changing environment. To effectively manage adaptive team performance in such contexts, there is a need to better understand team adaptation as well as to generate better team performance measurement systems. To this end, a review and synthesis of the empirical, theoretical, and methodological literatures concerning team adaptation, performance, and measurement is conducted to develop theoretically-based principles to guide development of effective team adaptation measurement systems as well as to inform future research. We propose six guiding principles that capture core features of team adaptation and serve as an aid in the development of team performance measurement systems. These principles are rooted in recent theoretical work on team adaptation and are presented at a level of abstraction suitable for generalization across performance measurement contexts and purposes. Behavioral markers describing processes associated with each principle and example measurement strategies are presented to illustrate development of specific measurement tools and metrics, based on the principles. The principles and behavioral markers presented can guide development of measurement systems to assess, train, and improve team adaptation, a core capacity of effective organizations. Future research needs to expand upon the principles advanced here to provide theoretically grounded and methodologically rigorous tools to help performance management professionals develop adaptive team capacities.
ABSTRACT Regression coefficients cannot be interpreted as causal if the relationship can be attributed to an alternate mechanism. One may control for the alternate cause through an experiment (e.g., with random assignment to treatment and control) or by measuring a corresponding confounding variable and including it in the model. Unfortunately, there are some circumstances under which it is not possible to measure or control for the potentially confounding variable. Under these circumstances, it is helpful to assess the robustness of a statistical inference to the inclusion of a potentially confounding variable. In this article, an index is derived for quantifying the impact of a confounding,variable on the inference of a regression coefficient. The index is developed for the bivariate case and then generalized to the multivariate case, and the distribution of the index is discussed. The index also is compared with existing indices and procedures. An example is presented for the relationship between socioeconomic background and educational attainment, and a reference distribution for the index is obtained. The potential for the index to inform causal inferences is discussed, as are extensions. INTRODUCTION: “BUT HAVE YOU CONTROLLED FOR ...?” As is commonly noted, one must be cautious in making causal inferences from statistical
This paper presents a model of team learning and tests it in a multimethod field study. It introduces the construct of team psychological safety—a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking—and models the effects of team psychological safety and team efficacy together on learning and performance in organizational work teams. Results of a study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company, measuring antecedent, process, and outcome variables, show that team psychological safety is associated with learning behavior, but team efficacy is not, when controlling for team psychological safety. As predicted, learning behavior mediates between team psychological safety and team performance. The results support an integrative perspective in which both team structures, such as context support and team leader coaching, and shared beliefs shape team outcomes.
We develop and test a theory of relational cohesion, which predicts how and when people in exchange become committed to their relationship. The theory focuses on dyads within networks and predicts that more equal power and greater total, or mutual, power promote exchanges that arouse positive emotions and create perceptions of the relation as a cohesive unit. The behavioral consequences are a tendency for actors to (1) stay in the exchange relation despite attractive alternatives, (2) provide each other token gifts, and (3) contribute to a new joint venture. Three laboratory experiments test and support the theory. Our results suggest that complementary emotional/ affective and uncertainty-reduction processes explain the effect of repetitive exchanges on commitment formation. The broad implication is that frequent exchanges by the same actors in a network result in their relation becoming a valued object in itself and a source of informal constraint on malfeasance.
Ever since the agile manifesto was created in 2001, the research community has devoted a great deal of attention to agile software development. This article examines publications and citations to illustrate how the research on agile has progressed in the 10 years following the articulation of the manifesto. Specifically, we delineate the conceptual structure underlying agile scholarship by performing an analysis of authors who have made notable contributions to the field. Further, we summarize prior research and introduce contributions in this special issue on agile software development. We conclude by discussing directions for future research and urging agile researchers to embrace a theory-based approach in their scholarship.
Although shared team mental models are believed to be important to team functioning, substantial interstudy differences in the manner in which mental models are operationalized has impeded progress in this area. We use meta-analysis to cumulate 23 independent studies that have empirically examined shared mental models (SMMs) in relation to team process and performance and test three aspects of measurement as potential moderators: elicitation method, structure representation, and representation of emergence. Results indicate the way in which SMMs are measured and represented at the team level of analysis reveal meaningful distinctions in observed relationships. Specifically, shared mental model operationalization impacts the observed relationship between SMMs and team process; importantly, only methods that model the structure or organization of knowledge are predictive of process. Conversely, while the magnitude of the relationship differed across measurement method, SMMs were positively related to team performance regardless of the manner of operationalization. In summary, knowledge structure is predictive of team process, and both knowledge content and structure are predictive of team performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We examine the relationship between firms’ human resources (HR) practices and their information technology (IT) practices,
focusing on the dichotomy between autonomy and control. We define facilitating HR practices as those that exhibit the following characteristics: worker autonomy, connectedness, learning, valuing individuals, trust,
and flexibility in business processes. We then characterize facilitating IT practices, which are practices that facilitate employee collaboration, autonomy, and wider access to information. We contrast these
categories of practice to traditional HR and monitoring IT, respectively. Drawing from theories of complementarities and configuration, we propose that alignment between HR and IT
strategies originates at the level of individual practices. We consider the effects of this alignment on worker performance.
We then ground our discussion in exploratory empirical and qualitative results.
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.
The basic work unit in innovative software organizations is the team rather than the individual. Such teams consist of "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable". Work teams have many advantages, such as increased productivity, innovation, and employee satisfaction. However, their implementation doesn't always result in organizational success. It isn't enough to put individuals together and expect that they'll automatically know how to work effectively as a team. Lack of redundancy and conflict between team and individual autonomy are key issues when transforming from traditional command-and-control management to collaborative self-managing teams.
While software is so important for all facets of the modern world, software development itself is not a perfect process. Agile software engineering methods have recently emerged as a new and different way of developing software as compared to the traditional methodologies. However, their success has mostly been anecdotal, and research in this subject is still scant in the academic circles. This research study was a survey study on the critical success factors of Agile software development projects using quantitative approach.Based on existing literature, a preliminary list of potential critical success factors of Agile projects were identified and compiled. Subsequently, reliability analysis and factor analysis were conducted to consolidate this preliminary list into a final set of 12 possible critical success factors for each of the four project success categories – Quality, Scope, Time, and Cost.A survey was conducted among Agile professionals, gathering survey data from 109 Agile projects from 25 countries across the world. Multiple regression techniques were used, both at the full regression model and at the optimized regression model via the stepwise screening procedure. The results revealed that only 10 out of 48 hypotheses were supported, identifying three critical success factors for Agile software development projects: (a) Delivery Strategy, (b) Agile Software Engineering Techniques, and (c) Team Capability.Limitations of the study are discussed together with interpretations for practitioners. To ensure success of their projects, managers are urged to focus on choosing a high-caliber team, practicing Agile engineering techniques and following Agile-style delivery strategy.
Agile software development represents a major departure from traditional, plan-based approaches to software engineering. A systematic review of empirical studies of agile software development up to and including 2005 was conducted. The search strategy identified 1996 studies, of which 36 were identified as empirical studies. The studies were grouped into four themes: introduction and adoption, human and social factors, perceptions on agile methods, and comparative studies. The review investigates what is currently known about the benefits and limitations of, and the strength of evidence for, agile methods. Implications for research and practice are presented. The main implication for research is a need for more and better empirical studies of agile software development within a common research agenda. For the industrial readership, the review provides a map of findings, according to topic, that can be compared for relevance to their own settings and situations.
Several experiments on the effects of pair versus solo programming have been reported in the literature. We present a meta-analysis of these studies. The analysis shows a small significant positive overall effect of pair programming on quality, a medium significant positive overall effect on duration, and a medium significant negative overall effect on effort. However, between-study variance is significant, and there are signs of publication bias among published studies on pair programming. A more detailed examination of the evidence suggests that pair programming is faster than solo programming when programming task complexity is low and yields code solutions of higher quality when task complexity is high. The higher quality for complex tasks comes at a price of considerably greater effort, while the reduced completion time for the simpler tasks comes at a price of noticeably lower quality. We conclude that greater attention should be given to moderating factors on the effects of pair programming.
The study of cross-functional teams remains popular given the use of teams to integrate cross-functional expertise to achieve higher performance in innovative projects. A related stream of research shows that teams are associated with higher performance only in cases of highly innovative projects. Such research is based on the assumption that organizations can freely choose integration mechanisms on a project-by-project basis. However, this assumption is flawed in cases where organizations, such as software development laboratories, commit to a team-based organizational design on a more permanent basis. With software development teams working on projects with varying degrees of innovativeness, we investigate the effects of Hoegl and Gemuenden’s (2001) measure of teamwork quality on the performance of teams with moderately and highly innovative projects. Using data from 575 members, leaders, and managers of 145 software development projects, results show that teamwork quality is associated with team efficiency (i.e., adherence to schedule and budget) only in projects posing high task innovativeness. The relationship between teamwork quality and team effectiveness (i.e., quality of outcome), however, is not moderated by task innovativeness. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
The scrum software development process has recently gained much popularity as an agile method primarily focusing on project management. Scrum has been derived as a set of principles of good management of software projects, from experienced practitioners. In this paper, we discuss the elements of Scrum in relation to a proposed theory of the "big five" components for effectiveness in small teams. We also discuss the theory of scrum in relation to these components, and in relation to a case study of a start-up Scrum team.
In software development, team-based work structures are commonly used to accomplish complex projects. Software project teams must be able to utilize the expertise and knowledge of participants without overwhelming individual members. To efficiently leverage individuals' knowledge and expertise, software project teams develop team cognition structures that facilitate their knowledge activities. This study focuses on the emergence and evolution of team cognition in software project teams, and examines how communication activity and team diversity impact the formation of these structures. A longitudinal study was conducted of 51 database development teams. The results suggest that some forms of communication and team diversity affect the formation of team cognition. Frequency of meetings and phone calls were positively related to the formation of team cognition, while e-mail use had no effect. Gender diversity had a strong and positive effect on the development of team cognition and the effect remained stable over time. Implications for the practical potential and limitations of purposive team construction as a strategy for improving software development team performance are discussed.
This study examines whether individuals, groups, and organizational units learn from experience in software development and whether this learning improves productivity. Although prior research has found the existence of learning curves in manufacturing and service industries, it is not clear whether learning curves also apply to knowledge work like software development. We evaluate the relative productivity impacts from accumulating specialized experience in a system, diversified experience in related and unrelated systems, and experience from working with others on modification requests (MRs) in a telecommunications firm, which uses an incremental software development methodology. Using multilevel modeling, we analyze extensive data archives covering more than 14 years of systems development work on a major telecommunications product dating from the beginning of its development process. Our findings reveal that the relative importance of the different types of experience differs across levels of analysis. Specialized experience has the greatest impact on productivity for MRs completed by individual developers, whereas diverse experience in related systems plays a larger role in improving productivity for MRs and system releases completed by groups and organizational units. Diverse experience in unrelated systems has the least influence on productivity at all three levels of analysis. Our findings support the existence of learning curves in software development and provide insights into when specialized or diverse experience may be more valuable.
Software development is a complex undertaking that continues to present software project teams with numerous challenges. Software project teams are adopting extreme programming (XP) practices in order to overcome the challenges of software development in an increasingly dynamic environment. The ability to coordinate software developers' efforts is critical in such conditions. Expertise coordination has been identified as an important emergent process through which software project teams manage non-routine challenges in software development. However, the extent to which XP enables software project teams to coordinate expertise is unknown. Drawing on the agile development and expertise coordination literatures, we examine the role of collective ownership and coding standards as processes and practices that govern coordination in software project teams. We examine the relationship between collective ownership, coding standards, expertise coordination, and software project technical quality in a field study of 56 software project teams comprising 509 software developers. We found that collective ownership and coding standards play a role in improving software project technical quality. We also found that collective ownership and coding standards moderated the relationship between expertise coordination and software project technical quality, with collective ownership attenuating the relationship and coding standards strengthening the relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
As software development projects continue to be over budget and behind schedule, researchers continue to look for ways to improve the likelihood of project success. In this research we juxtapose two different views of what influences software development team performance during the requirements development phase. In an examination of 66 teams from 15 companies we found that team skill, managerial involvement, and little variance in team experience enable more effective team processes than do software development tools and methods. Further, we found that development teams exhibit both positive and negative boundary-spanning behaviors. Team members promote and champion their projects to the outside environment, which is considered valuable by project stakeholders. They also, however, guard themselves from their environments; keeping important information a secret from stakeholders negatively predicts performance.
Digital ventures, start-ups growing by drawing on and adding to digital infrastructures, can scale their business at an unprecedented pace. We view such rapid scaling as a generative process by which a venture’s user base increases significantly between two points in time through digital innovation. We studied WeCash, a Chinese digital venture, nearly doubling its user base monthly, to learn more about this generative process. We trace three contingent mechanisms underpinning rapid scaling: data-driven operation, instant release, and swift transformation. We explain these mechanisms and how they interact in the rapid scaling of digital ventures. The research offers an agency perspective on scaling of digital ventures that speaks to the digital innovation literature.
In this paper, we develop conjectures for understanding how information technology (IT) strategy and IT investments jointly influence profitability and the market value of the firm. We view IT strategy as an expression of the dominant strategic objective that the firm chooses to emphasize, which can be revenue expansion, cost reduction, or a dual emphasis in which both goals are pursued. Using data from more than 300 firms in the United States, we find that at the mean value of IT investments, firms with a dual IT strategic emphasis have a higher market value as measured by Tobin's Q than firms with a revenue or a cost emphasis, but they have similar levels of profitability. Of greater importance, IT strategic emphasis plays a significant role in moderating the relationship between IT investments and firm performance. Dual-emphasis firms have a stronger IT-Tobin's Q relationship than revenue-emphasis firms. Dual-emphasis firms also have a stronger IT-profitability relationship than either revenue- or cost-emphasis firms. Overall, these findings imply that, at low levels of IT investment, the firm may need to choose between revenue expansion and cost reduction, but at higher levels of IT investment, dual-emphasis in IT strategy or IT strategic ambidexterity increasingly pays off.
Studies that combine moderation and mediation are prevalent in basic and applied psychology research. Typically, these studies are framed in terms of moderated mediation or mediated moderation, both of which involve similar analytical approaches. Unfortunately, these approaches have important shortcomings that conceal the nature of the moderated and the mediated effects under investigation. This article presents a general analytical framework for combining moderation and mediation that integrates moderated regression analysis and path analysis. This framework clarifies how moderator variables influence the paths that constitute the direct, indirect, and total effects of mediated models. The authors empirically illustrate this framework and give step-by-step instructions for estimation and interpretation. They summarize the advantages of their framework over current approaches, explain how it subsumes moderated mediation and mediated moderation, and describe how it can accommodate additional moderator and mediator variables, curvilinear relationships, and structural equation models with latent variables.
We introduce a taxonomy that reflects the theoretical contribution of empirical articles along two dimensions: theory building and theory testing. We used that taxonomy to track trends in the theoretical contributions offered by articles over the past five decades. Results based on data from a sample of 74 issues of the Academy of Management Journal reveal upward trends in theory building and testing over time. In addition, the levels of theory building and testing within articles are significant predictors of citation rates. In particular, articles rated moderate to high on both dimensions enjoyed the highest levels of citations.
Software design is a knowledge intensive task that constitutes a critical part of the software development process. Using a controlled experiment involving software practitioners, this research examines two potentially useful mechanisms for improving the software design process. Specifically, this study examines the impact of structural distribution of cognition through design patterns and social distribution of cognition through collaborating pairs on design outcomes. The results indicate that the use of design patterns as external cognitive artifacts improves design quality, reduces time taken to solve a design problem, and leads to higher participant satisfaction. Collaborating pairs of software designers were compared to participants working alone but whose efforts were conjointly considered as the best and second-best members of nominal pairs. It was found that paired designers produced higher quality designs compared with the second-best members of nominal pairs, did not differ from the best member of a nominal pair, but took more time to complete a design task than either member of a nominal pair. The results also indicate that the availability of design patterns raises the performance level of the second-best member of a nominal pair, in terms of quality, and reduces task completion time when compared with a pair not using design patterns. Finally, paired designers were found to experience higher levels of task satisfaction when compared with individuals. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Context
Agile software development is an alternative software development methodology that originated from practice to encourage collaboration between developers and users, to leverage rapid development cycles, and to respond to changes in a dynamic environment. Although agile practices are widely used in organizations, academics call for more theoretical research to understand the value of agile software development methodologies.
Objective
This study uses shared mental models theory as a lens to examine practices from agile software methodologies to understand how agile practices enable software development teams to work together to complete tasks and work together effectively as a team.
Method
A conceptual analysis of specific agile practices was conducted using the lens of shared mental models theory. Three agile practices from Xtreme Programming and Scrum are examined in detail, system metaphor, stand-up meeting, and on-site customer, using shared mental models theory.
Results
Examining agile practices using shared mental models theory elucidates how agile practices improve collaboration during the software development process. The results explain how agile practices contribute toward a shared understanding and enhanced collaboration within the software development team.
Conclusions
This conceptual analysis demonstrates the value of agile practices in developing shared mental models (i.e. shared understanding) among developers and customers in software development teams. Some agile practices are useful in developing a shared understanding about the tasks to be completed, while other agile practices create shared mental models about team processes and team interactions. To elicit the desired outcomes of agile software development methods, software development teams should consider whether or not agile practices are used in a manner that enhances the team’s shared understanding. Using three specific agile practices as examples, this research demonstrates how theory, such as shared mental models theory, can enhance our understanding regarding how agile practices are useful in enhancing collaboration in the workplace.
Representing one type of team cognition, team mental models (TMMs) are organized mental representations of the key elements within a team’s relevant environment that are shared across team members. Although introduced amid considerable confusion concerning their nature and potential usefulness, there has been a proliferation of published studies over the past decade that have directly measured TMMs using a variety of methodologies and research designs. Capturing these exciting research developments, the purpose of this review was to inventory what has been accomplished thus far and to offer an agenda for the next wave of research. Specifically, we overview the conceptual underpinnings of TMMs, discuss measurement issues, and review the empirical record related to the outcomes, antecedents, and longitudinal work on TMMs. We conclude by highlighting fruitful opportunities for further research.
Organizational ambidexterity, defined as an organization's ability to be aligned and efficient in its management of today's business demands while simultaneously being adaptive to changes in the environment, has gained increasing interest in recent years. In this article, the authors review various literature streams to develop a comprehensive model that covers research into the antecedents, moderators, and outcomes of organizational ambidexterity. They indicate gaps within and across different research domains and point to important avenues for future research.
Proactivelyseeking help from others involves “social costs” because the help seeker appears incompetent, dependent, and inferior to others. This article hypothesizes that these costs are especially threatening when the help seeker is male and in a male-oriented occupational role, when the helper is in a higher or lower status role than the help seeker, and when the task is novel and central to the organization’s core competence. A field study examined physician and nurse help seeking regarding a new computer system within a large hospital. The results showed that individuals reported less help seeking when theywere male, in male-oriented occupations, and when the task was central to the organization’s core competence. Perceived social costs mediated these effects.
This study examined the development of shared mental models in software development teams over time. Contrary to predictions, team members' mental models about the group's work and each other's expertise did not become more similar over time. Structural equation modelling revealed that as role differentiation increased in these teams, it led to a decrease in interaction and a corresponding decline in shared mental models. Implications for research on shared cognition and team development are explored. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Because research on team mental models is still in its formative stages, there is a need for continued conceptual development of the construct and direct empirical support linking team mental models to team outcomes. Researchers in other fields have developed concepts that are distinct from, but clearly related to team mental models, including information sharing, transactive memory, group learning, and cognitive consensus. Although these research streams currently exist in parallel with little cross-fertilization, there is much to be gained from integration across disciplinary boundaries. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to enrich the theoretical understanding of team mental models and to broaden the empirical research base by adopting a cross-disciplinary focus and incorporating related team knowledge domains from other literatures. Based on a synthesis of various literatures, we develop a framework that delineates the relationships among team knowledge constructs. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Like all teams, knowledge teams must acquire and manage critical resources in order to accomplish their work. The most critical resource for knowledge teams is expertise, or specialized skills and knowledge, but the mere presence of expertise on a team is insufficient to produce high-quality work. Expertise must be managed and coordinated in order to leverage its potential. That is, teams must be able to manage their skill and knowledge interdependencies effectively through expertise coordination, which entails knowing where expertise is located, knowing where expertise is needed, and bringing needed expertise to bear. This study investigates the importance of expertise coordination through a cross-sectional investigation of 69 software development teams. The analysis reveals that expertise coordination shows a strong relationship with team performance that remains significant over and above team input characteristics, presence of expertise, and administrative coordination.
The use of agile methods is growing in industrial practice due to the documented benefits of increased software quality, shared
programmer expertise, and user satisfaction. These methods include pair programming (two programmers working side-by-side
producing the code) and test-driven approaches (test cases written first to prepare for coding). In practice, software development
organizations adapt agile methods to their environment. The purpose of this research is to understand better the impacts of
adapting these methods. We perform a set of controlled experiments to investigate how adaptations, or variations, to the pair
programming method impact programming performance and user satisfaction. We find that method variations do influence programming
results. In particular, better performance and satisfaction outcomes are achieved when the pair programming is performed in
face-to-face versus virtual settings, in combination with the test-driven approach, and with more experienced programmers.
We also find that limiting the extent of collaboration can be effective, especially when programmers are more experienced.
These experimental results provide a rigorous foundation for deciding how to adapt pair programming methods into specific
project contexts.
Agile Software Development methodologies have grown in popularity both among academic researchers and industrial practitioners. Among the various methodologies or practices proposed, pair programming, which is concerned with two programmers collaborating on design, coding and testing, has become a controversial focus of interest. Even though some success stories have been reported with the use of pair-programming in real software development environment, many people remain rather skeptical of the claims on pair-programming productivity. Previous studies in pair programming have only addressed the basic understanding of the productivity of pairs and they have not addressed the variation in productivity between pairs of varying skills and experience, such as between novice–novice and expert–expert. Statistical productivity measurements reported by different researchers also seem to lead to contradictory conclusions. Until now, the literature has not addressed how those results and experiments were related to each other. In this paper, we propose a controlled experiment called repeat-programming which can facilitate the understanding of relationships between human experience and programming productivity. Repeat-programming can be performed when controversial issues in non-traditional programming methodologies and development productivity need to be investigated into. To illustrate how the proposed empirical experiment can put arguable, divisive problems into perspective, we have examined the productivity in pair programming as a case study. With repeat-programming, we are able to (i) better understand why results of previous pair programming control experiments reached different conclusions as to the productivity of pair programming and (ii) most importantly, present a case in which novice–novice pairs against novice solos are much more productive than expert–expert pairs against expert solos.
Modular product design and internal integration are commonly adopted by manufacturers to improve operational performance. A number of studies argue that the adoption of product modularity significantly alters organization design, which affects the impact of internal integration on competitive capabilities. This paper thus aims to empirically explore the individual effects as well as interaction effects of product modularity and internal integration on competitive capabilities. The competitive capabilities studied in this paper include product innovativeness, low price, product quality, delivery, flexibility and customer services. After analysing the data from 251 Hong Kong manufacturers through moderated multiple regression analysis, the study found that better internal integration can significantly improve product innovativeness, product quality, delivery, flexibility and customer services, while a high level of product modularity enhances product innovativeness, flexibility and customer services. More importantly, the study shows that internal integration and product modularity can interact to improve product innovativeness and product quality. These results enhance our understanding of the interaction of product design and organizational coordination.
Context Software development depends significantly on team performance, as does any process that involves human interaction Objective Most current development methods argue that teams should self-manage Our objective is thus to provide a better understanding of the nature of self-managing agile teams, and the teamwork challenges that arise when introducing such teams Method We conducted extensive fieldwork for 0 months in a software development company that introduced Scrum. We focused on the human sensemaking, on how mechanisms of teamwork were understood by the people involved Results We describe a project through Dickinson and McIntyre's teamwork model, focusing on the interrelations between essential teamwork components Problems with team orientation, team leadership and coordination in addition to highly specialized skills and corresponding division of work were important barriers for achieving team effectiveness Conclusion Transitioning from individual work to self-managing teams requires a reorientation not only by developers but also by management This transition takes time and resources, but should not be neglected In addition to Dickinson and McIntyre's teamwork components, we found trust and shared mental models to be of fundamental importance (C) 2009 Elsevier B V All rights reserved
Although past research has investigated the impact of exploration and exploitation on firm performance, there is limited research on these effects in interorganizational relationships. We examine whether the boundary condition for ambidextrous learning can be extended from firms to long-term interorganizational relationships. Specifically, we focus on a particular aspect of learning--namely, explorative and exploitative knowledge sharing--and examine its impact on the performance of long-term relationships. We also theorize how ambidextrous management of the relationship and ontological commitment to span the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge boundaries between partners enable knowledge sharing. Our theoretical predictions are tested using data collected from both account managers at customer firms responsible for the relationship with a leading supply chain vendor and account managers at the vendor firm responsible for relationships with customers. The findings suggest that both exploratory and exploitative knowledge sharing lead to relationship performance gains, that such sharing is enabled by the ambidextrous management of the relationship, and that such sharing is facilitated by ontological commitment. Interesting differences in the enablers and consequences of both forms of knowledge sharing are detected between customers and the vendor.
Extreme programming (XP), arguably the most popular agile development methodology, is increasingly finding favor among software developers. Its adoption and acceptance require significant changes in work habits inculcated by traditional approaches that emphasize planning, prediction, and control. Given the growing interest in XP, it is surprising that there is a paucity of research articles that examine the factors that facilitate or hinder its adoption and eventual acceptance. This study aims to fill this void. Using a case study approach, we provide insights into individual, team, technological, task, and environmental factors that expedite or impede the organization-wide acceptance of XP. In particular, we study widely differing patterns of adherence to XP practices within an organization, and tease out the various issues and challenges posed by the adoption of XP. Based on our findings, we evolve factors and discuss their implications on the acceptance of XP practices.
Extreme programming is currently gaining popularity as an alternate software development methodology. Pair programming, a core practice of this methodology, involves two programmers working collaboratively to develop software. This study examined the efficacy of pair programming by comparing the performance effectiveness and affective responses of collaborating pairs with those of individual programmers treated as nominal pairs. In a controlled laboratory experiment involving student subjects, proxies for entry level programmers working on entry level tasks, two factors were manipulated: programming setting (collaborative pair versus individuals) and programming task complexity (high versus low). Participants who worked in the individual condition were randomly combined into nominal pairs. The performance and affective responses of the collaborating pairs were then compared with those of the best performers and the second best performers of each nominal pair. Results indicated that programming pairs performed at the level above the second best performers and at the level of the best performers in each nominal pair. This relationship was found to be consistent across both levels of task complexity. Consequently, there was no evidence of an “assembly bonus effect,” where the performance of a collaborating pair exceeds the performance of its best member working alone. While this finding may appear counterintuitive due to the general perception of two heads being better than one, it is consistent with the findings in small group research. When affective responses were considered, programming pairs reported higher levels of satisfaction than those of the best and second-best performing members in nominal pairs. They also showed higher levels of confidence in their performance compared to those of the second-best members. But the confidence levels of pairs were no different from those of the best performing members in nominal pairs. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are presented.
Then should software development teams have the flexibility to modify their directions and how do we Wbalance that flexibility with controls essential to produce acceptable outcomes? We use dynamic capabilities theory and an extension of control theory to understand these questions. This work is examined in a case study. Our results demonstrate that flexibility may be needed when the starting conditions are uncertain and that effective control in these situations requires use of traditional controls plus a new type of control we term emergent outcome control.
In this research, a study of the effects of coordination mechanisms and risk drivers such as project uncertainty on the performance of software development projects was conducted. Two types of coordination mechanisms were considered: vertical and horizontal. The former refers to the extent to which coordination between users and IS staff is undertaken by authorized entities such as project managers or steering committees. The latter refers to the extent to which coordination is undertaken through mutual adjustments and communications between users and IS staff. A new research model was developed by synthesizing research using the structural contingency perspective from Organization Theory a;nd the risk-based perspective in Software Engineering. The model suggests that residual performance risk, i.e., the difficulty in estimating performance-related outcomes during the later stages of the project, can clarify the relationship between project uncertainty, coordination mechanisms and performance. Eight hypotheses were derived from the model for empirical testing. Data were collected from 64 software development projects in the banking and other industries. The results provide considerable support for a revised research model. As expected, project uncertainty increases residual performance risk. Both in turn have a direct negative effect on performance. Vertical coordination significantly reduces both project uncertainty and residual performance risk. However, horizontal coordination does not have any significant effect on residual performance risk. Instead, it has a direct positive effect on project performance. Moreover, higher levels of both vertical and horizontal coordination lead to higher levels of overall performance. Their differential impacts on residual performance risk are interesting areas of future research.
Despite the popularity of agile methods in software development and increasing adoption by organizations there is debate about what agility is and how it is achieved. The debate suffers from a lack of understanding of agile concepts and how agile software development is practiced. This paper develops a framework for the organization of agile software development that identifies enablers and inhibitors of agility and the emergent capabilities of agile teams. The work is grounded in complex adaptive systems (CAS) and draws on three principles of coevolving systems: match coevolutionary change rate, maximize self-organizing, and synchronize exploitation and exploration. These principles are used to study the processes of two software development teams, one a team using eXtreme Programming (XP) and the other a team using a more traditional, waterfall-based development cycle. From the cases a framework for the organization of agile software development is developed. Time pacing, self-management with discipline and routinization of exploration are among the agile enablers found in the cases studies while event pacing, centralized management, and lack of resources allocated to exploration are found to be inhibitors to agility. Emergent capabilities of agile teams that are identified from the research include coevolution of business value, sustainable working with rhythm, sharing and team learning, and collective mindfulness.
Agility is increasingly being seen as an essential element underlying the effectiveness of globally distributed information systems development (ISD) teams today. However, for a variety of reasons, such teams are often unable develop and enact agility in dealing with changing situations. This paper seeks to provide a deeper understanding of agility through an intensive study of the distributed ISD experience in TECHCOM, an organization widely recognized for its excellence in IT development and use. The study reveals that agility should be viewed as a multifaceted concept having three dimensions: resource, process, and linkage. Resource agility is based on the distributed development team's access to necessary human and technological resources. Process agility pertains to the agility that originates in the team's systems development method guiding the project, its environmental scanning, and sense-making routines to anticipate possible crises, and its work practices enabling collaboration across time zones. Linkage agility arises from the nature of interactional relationships within the distributed team and with relevant project stakeholders, and is composed of cultural and communicative elements. The paper highlights some of the difficulties in developing agility in distributed ISD settings, provides actionable tactics, and suggests contingencies wherein different facets of agility may become more (or less) critical.