Abstract
Companies specialized in software development services and software outsourcing have adopted agile methodologies such as SCRUM and Kanban to drive the software development process. Along time, experts have introduced new methodologies that enhance agile roadmaps with lean patterns and design thinking tools. Despite the value added brought by aggregation of agile with lean and design thinking, the integrated methodology is still fuzzy at operational level. There is no scientific demonstration on the most appropriate way to alternate the steps of agile with those promoted by lean innovation and design thinking. This niche of opportunity is investigated by this paper. Conflicts and barriers generated by aggregation are treated with TRIZ. Inventive solutions are proposed to optimize the agile-lean-design thinking (ALDET) software development process considering a life-cycle perspective. Gaps identified in ALDET are additionally tackled with TRIZ and new tools of competitive engineering, including TRIZ contradiction matrix for software, are embedded within the optimized ALDET to enhance its potentiality. The methodology is called Competitive ALDET or CALDET. Its effectiveness was tested in a real project. Preliminary results demonstrate that CALDET provides a clearer and smoother path for project management, reduces ambiguities relative to traditional ALDET methodology, and increases the impact of outcomes to the user. By tackling conflicts in an iterative manner, CALDET avoids re-analysis and re-coding in software development, too. The presence of value engineering tools within the framework of CALDET reveals additional spaces of innovation, both technical and project management related.
Highlights
Companies specialized in software development services and software outsourcing have adopted agile methodologies such as SCRUM and Kanban to drive the software development process
The following generic research approach was revealed: (a) do not consider combination of concepts, but rather creation of a new concept that takes the best of the individual concepts and organize them into a value generation stream (b) depict all the three concepts along the whole life-cycle of a project in order to visualize them at operational level and see where they superpose, complement each other and where they are in conflict; (c) for the cases of superposition, keep only one of the three concepts, for the cases of complementarity add to the new model those practices, and for the cases of antagonism use inventive problem solving tools to fix the problem (e.g. TRIZ contradiction matrix [21])
This paper introduces researches conducted to understand the state of scientific progress on integrating sectorial models for managing innovative software projects into hybrids, with the purpose to bring the capacity of handling complex projects to an upper level
Summary
Software products and systems are characterized by complexity and invisibility [1]. These characteristics induce significant challenges for designers and especially for users to articulate how the system should look like from the early stages of conceptualization and development [1]; in contrast, for example, with a house project. PTELR approach was encompassed into a new philosophy of software development some 20 years ago, under a set of 14 principles called “agile manifesto” [3] These principles have been deployed by experts into some practical project management methodologies, known as agile methodologies [1], [3], and [4]. Every incrementing stage is called “sprint” and lasts about 2-4 weeks, with reviews at every 24 hours, where both development team and system owner are engaged [6] Based on the same principles as agile methodologies (i.e. uncertainty and fuzziness in defining solution in the early stages, continuous discovery by prototyping and testing, steering implication of users in co-creation and feedback), new technology driven innovation adopted a lean approach in the last decade [2]. The paper ends with findings from the application of the new model in a software project and with conclusions
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