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Hybrid Software Development with Scrum: Perceptions of Brazilian Software Practitioners
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Scrum teams are at the heart of the Scrum framework. Nevertheless, an integrated and systemic theory that can explain what makes some Scrum teams more effective than others is still missing. To address this gap, we performed a seven-year-long mixed-method investigation composed of two main phases. First, we induced a theoretical model from thirteen exploratory field studies. Our model proposes that the effectiveness of Scrum teams depends on five high-level factors - responsiveness, stakeholder concern, continuous improvement, team autonomy, and management support - and thirteen lower-level factors. In the second phase of our study, we validated our model with a Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis using data from about 5,000 developers and 2,000 Scrum teams that we gathered with a custom-built survey. Results suggest a very good fit of the empirical data in our theoretical model ( CFI = 0.959, RMSEA = 0.038, SRMR = 0.035). Accordingly, this research allowed us to (1) propose and validate a generalizable theory for effective Scrum teams and (2) formulate clear recommendations for how organizations can better support Scrum teams.
The world of software engineering is constantly discovering new ways that lead to an increase in team performance in the production of software products and, at the same time, brings the customer's further satisfaction. With the advent of agile methodologies in software development, these objectives have been considered more seriously by software teams and companies. Due to their very nature, agile methodologies have the potential to be integrated with other methodologies or specific managerial approaches defined in line with agility objectives. One of the cases is Six Sigma, which is used in organizations by focusing on organizational change and process improvement. In the present study, attempts were made to present the hybrid software development approach, including Scrum, as the most common agile and Six Sigma methodology. This approach was practically used in a case study, and the obtained results were analyzed. The results of this evaluation showed that this hybrid method could lead to the increased team performance and customer satisfaction. However, besides these two achievements, an increase in the number of re-works, number of defects discovered, and the duration of the project implementation were also observed. These cases are in line with the main objectives of Scrum and Six Sigma and are justifiable and acceptable due to achieving those objectives.
In the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK® Guide), the IEEE Computer Society establishes a baseline for the body of knowledge for the field of software engineering, and the work supports the Society’s responsibility to promote the advancement of both theory and practice in this field. It should be noted that the Guide does not purport to define the body of knowledge but rather to serve as a compendium and guide to the knowledge that has been developing and evolving over the past four decades. Now in Version 3.0, the Guide’s 15 knowledge areas summarize generally accepted topics and list references for detailed information.
The editors for Version 3.0 of the SWEBOK® Guide are Pierre Bourque (École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Université du Québec) and Richard E. (Dick) Fairley (Software and Systems Engineering Associates (S2EA)).
Agile methods were proposed to address the problems of traditional or plan-based software development, e.g., late customer feedback or resistance to change. However, unlike plan-based methods, they are not designed for long-term planning or to cope with large projects. Software companies want the ability of a fast reaction to changes but also the ability of long-term planning. To profit from the strength of both approaches, software companies often use a combination of agile and plan-based methods, called hybrid development approaches. These approaches depend on the respective context of each company. Therefore, the companies have to properly arrange and connect the phases, activities, roles, and ar-tifacts from plan-based and agile approaches individually in their hybrid development approach. This is considered as the organization of hybrid development approaches. However, the organization of hybrid approaches is often difficult for the companies. Until now, research considers only the chosen development methods without the organization of hybrid development approaches. With my work, I want to strengthen the understanding of how hybrid approaches are organized and get a detailed picture of the challenges when organizing hybrid approaches. Based on my findings, I want to develop measures to support practitioners while organizing their development approach. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Collaboration in software development ; Agile software development; Waterfall model. KEYWORDS Hybrid software development; agile software development; plan-based software development; software process
Among the multitude of software development processes available, hardly any is used by the book. Regardless of company size or industry sector, a majority of project teams and companies use customized processes that combine different development methods - so-called hybrid development methods. Even though such hybrid development methods are highly individualized, a common understanding of how to systematically construct synergetic practices is missing. In this paper, we make a first step towards devising such guidelines. Grounded in 1,467 data points from a large-scale online survey among practitioners, we study the current state of practice in process use to answer the question: What are hybrid development methods made of? Our findings reveal that only eight methods and few practices build the core of modern software development. This small set allows for statistically constructing hybrid development methods. Using an 85% agreement level in the participants' selections, we provide two examples illustrating how hybrid development methods are characterized by the practices they are made of. Our evidence-based analysis approach lays the foundation for devising hybrid development methods.
Software development methods are usually not applied by the book. Companies are under pressure to continuously deploy software products that meet market needs and stakeholders’ requests. To implement efficient and effective development processes, companies utilize multiple frameworks, methods and practices, and combine these into hybrid methods. A common combination contains a rich management framework to organize and steer projects complemented with a number of smaller practices providing the development teams with tools to complete their tasks. In this paper, based on 732 data points collected through an international survey, we study the software development process use in practice. Our results show that 76.8% of the companies implement hybrid methods. Company size as well as the strategy in devising and evolving hybrid methods affect the suitability of the chosen process to reach company or project goals. Our findings show that companies that combine planned improvement programs with process evolution can increase their process’ suitability by up to 5%.
The application of software process models in industry includes traditional processes, agile processes, and process variants that aim at balancing traditional and agile with focus on specific industry needs. To investigate the characteristics of such hybrid software and system development approaches that combine agile and traditional approaches the HELENA project was initiated. HELENA is based on a large international survey. Based on the first HELENA survey, conducted in 2016, in 2017 a second round of surveys has been launched. This paper focuses on initial results and discussions of the data from Austria where 22 persons participated. Results showed a good balance of small and medium enterprises and large organizations. Iterative development processes and Scrum are widely spread in these organizations where traditional approaches are often combined with some agile practices.
Many organizations are adapting the use of hybrid software development approaches by combining traditional methods with flexible agile practices. This paper presents the initial results from the survey on the use of hybrid software and systems approaches. The results are from twenty one respondents from Sweden and Uganda. Our results show that the iterative model is the most widely used process model in both Sweden and Uganda. However, the traditional process models are also used in combination with the more agile models like Scrum. From the results, we also show that the large sized companies face the biggest problems during implementation of agility since they have to adhere to standards and control measures.
Many software development teams face the problem of selecting a suitable development approach fitting to their specific context. According to them, the combination of agile and traditional approaches seems to be the solution to handle this problem. However, the current state of practice with respect to hybrid approaches is not suciently examined. Most studies focus either on traditional or on agile methods, but the combination of both is not well investigated yet. The " Hybrid dEveLopmENt Approaches in software systems development " (HELENA) study performs a large-scale international survey in order to gain insights into the distribution of hybrid approaches. So far, the study indicates several reasons why companies combine agile and traditional approaches. The hybrid approaches aim at improving the frequency of delivery to customers, the adaptability and the flexibility of the process to react to change. Furthermore, it is the aim to increase the productivity. In this publication, we present the current state of the German results and outline the next steps.
Agile and traditional development approaches are used in combination in today’s software development. To improve the understanding and to provide better guidance for selecting appropriate development approaches, it is important to analyze such combinations in practice. Results obtained from an online survey strongly confirm that hybrid development approaches are widely used in industry. Our results show that hybrid development approaches: (i) have become reality for nearly all companies; (ii) are applied to specific projects even in the presence of company-wide policies for process usage; (iii) are neither planned nor designed but emerge from the evolution of different work practices; and, (iv) are consistently used regardless of company size or industry sector.
Software and system development faces numerous challenges of rapidly changing markets. To address such challenges, companies and projects design and adopt specific development approaches by combining well-structured comprehensive methods and flexible agile practices. Yet, the number of methods and practices is large, and available studies argue that the actual process composition is carried out in a fairly ad-hoc manner. The present paper reports on a survey on hybrid software development approaches. We study which approaches are used in practice, how different approaches are combined, and what contextual factors influence the use and combination of hybrid software development approaches. Our results from 69 study participants show a variety of development approaches used and combined in practice. We show that most combinations follow a pattern in which a traditional process model serves as framework in which several fine-grained (agile) practices are plugged in. We further show that hybrid software development approaches are independent from the company size and external triggers. We conclude that such approaches are the results of a natural process evolution, which is mainly driven by experience, learning, and pragmatism.
Context: Companies adapt agile methods, practices or artifacts for their use in practice since more than two decades. This adaptions result in a wide variety of described agile practices. For instance, the Agile Alliance lists 75 different practices in its Agile Glossary. This situation may lead to misunderstandings, as agile practices with similar names can be interpreted and used differently. Objective: This paper synthesize an integrated list of agile practices, both from primary and secondary sources. Method: We performed a tertiary study to identify existing overviews and lists of agile practices in the literature. We identified 876 studies, of which 37 were included. Results: The results of our paper show that certain agile practices are listed and used more often in existing studies. Our integrated list of agile practices comprises 38 entries structured in five categories. Conclusion: The high number of agile practices and thus, the wide variety increased steadily over the past decades due to the adaption of agile methods. Based on our findings, we present a comprehensive overview of agile practices. The research community benefits from our integrated list of agile practices as a potential basis for future research. Also, practitioners benefit from our findings, as the structured overview of agile practices provides the opportunity to select or adapt practices for their specific needs.
Together with many success stories, promises such as the increase in production speed and the improvement in stakeholders' collaboration have contributed to making agile a transformation in the software industry in which many companies want to take part. However, driven either by a natural and expected evolution or by contextual factors that challenge the adoption of agile methods as prescribed by their creator(s), software processes in practice mutate into hybrids over time. Are these still agile In this article, we investigate the question: what makes a software development method agile We present an empirical study grounded in a large-scale international survey that aims to identify software development methods and practices that improve or tame agility. Based on 556 data points, we analyze the perceived degree of agility in the implementation of standard project disciplines and its relation to used development methods and practices. Our findings suggest that only a small number of participants operate their projects in a purely traditional or agile manner (under 15%). That said, most project disciplines and most practices show a clear trend towards increasing degrees of agility. Compared to the methods used to develop software, the selection of practices has a stronger effect on the degree of agility of a given discipline. Finally, there are no methods or practices that explicitly guarantee or prevent agility. We conclude that agility cannot be defined solely at the process level. Additional factors need to be taken into account when trying to implement or improve agility in a software company. Finally, we discuss the field of software process-related research in the light of our findings and present a roadmap for future research.
This handbook provides a unique and in-depth survey of the current state-of-the-art in software engineering, covering its major topics, the conceptual genealogy of each subfield, and discussing future research directions. Subjects include foundational areas of software engineering (e.g. software processes, requirements engineering, software architecture, software testing, formal methods, software maintenance) as well as emerging areas (e.g., self-adaptive systems, software engineering in the cloud, coordination technology). Each chapter includes an introduction to central concepts and principles, a guided tour of seminal papers and key contributions, and promising future research directions. The authors of the individual chapters are all acknowledged experts in their field and include many who have pioneered the techniques and technologies discussed.
Readers will find an authoritative and concise review of each subject, and will also learn how software engineering technologies have evolved and are likely to develop in the years to come. This book will be especially useful for researchers who are new to software engineering, and for practitioners seeking to enhance their skills and knowledge.
HELENA Survey is a worldwide initiative that aims to investigate the use of hybrid software development approaches ranging from agile to traditional and how they combine. This article presents the initial results and observations on software development practice in Argentina, and briefly discusses two patterns of interest related to software development practice usage.
Organizations have a number of methodological options for software development ranging from traditional to agile approaches. We conducted a survey of project managers and other team members about their use of software development methodologies. Our results indicate that while agile approaches such as agile unified process and scrum are more prevalent than 10 years ago, traditional methodologies including waterfall are still popular. Interestingly, organizations are also adopting multiple methodologies on projects and choosing to follow a hybrid approach to software development. Further, their choice of methodologies is associated with certain project, team and organizational characteristics.
Although surveys are an extremely common research method, surveybased research is not an easy option. In this chapter, we
use examples of three software engineering surveys to illustrate the advantages and pitfalls of using surveys. We discuss
the six most important stages in survey-based research: setting the survey’s objectives; selecting the most appropriate survey
design; constructing the survey instrument (concentrating on self-administered questionnaires); assessing the reliability
and validity of the survey instrument; administering the instrument; and, finally, analysing the collected data. This chapter
provides only an introduction to survey-based research; readers should consult the referenced literature for more detailed
advice.
Like other sciences and engineering disciplines, software engineering requires a cycle of model building, experimentation, and learning. Experiments are valuable tools for all software engineers who are involved in evaluating and choosing between different methods, techniques, languages and tools. The purpose of Experimentation in Software Engineering is to introduce students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners to empirical studies in software engineering, using controlled experiments. The introduction to experimentation is provided through a process perspective, and the focus is on the steps that we have to go through to perform an experiment. The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides a background of theories and methods used in experimentation. Part II then devotes one chapter to each of the five experiment steps: scoping, planning, execution, analysis, and result presentation. Part III completes the presentation with two examples. Assignments and statistical material are provided in appendixes. Overall the book provides indispensable information regarding empirical studies in particular for experiments, but also for case studies, systematic literature reviews, and surveys. It is a revision of the authors' book, which was published in 2000. In addition, substantial new material, e.g. concerning systematic literature reviews and case study research, is introduced. The book is self-contained and it is suitable as a course book in undergraduate or graduate studies where the need for empirical studies in software engineering is stressed. Exercises and assignments are included to combine the more theoretical material with practical aspects. Researchers will also benefit from the book, learning more about how to conduct empirical studies, and likewise practitioners may use it as a "cookbook" when evaluating new methods or techniques before implementing them in their organization. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012. All rights are reserved.
Hybrid Software and System Development in Practice: Waterfall, Scrum, and Beyond
- Marco Kuhrmann
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Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for Researchers(ICSE-SEIP ’19)
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What Are Hybrid Development Methods Made of? An Evidence-Based Characterization
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Water-scrum-fall is the reality of agile for most organizations today
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A SoaML approach for derivation of a process-oriented logical architecture from use cases
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