Small Software Development Teams Research Articles

Organizational Changes in Adopting Agile Approaches: A Systematic Literature Review

Although agile approaches to project management were originally developed for use by small software development teams, agile methods quickly began to be used by entire department processes and, in some cases, to the entire organization. Despite this quick adoption, there is a lack of studies seeking a better understanding of the changes that an organization needs to carry out for agile implementation at the organizational level. Therefore, a systematic literature review was conducted to organize and synthesize knowledge in this field. The main changes reported by these studies were consolidated into four major dimensions, that together, provided a consolidated view on the topic. In addition to contributing to the theory of agile approaches, it is also intended that this research will support the organizations that plan to undertake this journey of transformation, helping them plan the actions needed to achieve the desired results more consistently.

Tool for Measuring Productivity in Software Development Teams

Despite efforts to define productivity, there is no consensus in the software industry regarding what the term productivity means and, instead of having only one metric or factor that describes productivity, it is defined by a set of aspects. Our objective is to develop a tool that supports the productivity measurement of software development teams according to the factors found in the literature. We divided these factors into four groups: People, Product, Organization, and Open Source Software Projects. We developed a web system containing the factors that influence productivity identified in this work, called Productive, to support software development teams in measuring their productivity. After developed the tool, we monitored its use over eight weeks with two small software development teams. From the results, we found that software development companies can use the system to support monitoring team productivity. The results also point to an improvement in productivity while using the system, and a survey applied to users demonstrates the users’ positive perception regarding the results obtained. In future work, we will monitor the use of the tool and investigate the users’ perceptions in other project contexts.

Selection of good practices for small software development teams

The world is increasingly dependent on technology and computing systems. Software organizations are facing a highly competitive market, and thus seeking good practices and processes that help keep them competitive. The quality of their products becomes a differentiating factor and is directly associated with these processes. The software products they deliver play a major role in this competitive scenario, to which small organizations do not have easy access. Our study is directed to those small and micro-organizations that lack the necessary financial assets to hire people, adopt and implement expensive processes, or even implement good development practices. In this paper we present our approach to help those organizations find good practices to enhance their software development processes. The method consisted of obtaining a possible company profile based on technical attributes, given as input to a knowledge-based system that derived a list of possible practices to be adopted according to that profile. Then project managers can select those more suitable to the company's present demands, and implement them in smaller steps according to the organization maturity levels. The approach was currently tested in two organizations that are by now implementing the suggested practices. The proposed system is freely available through the internet.

A Guttman Scaling of CMM Level 2 Practices: Investigatingthe Implementation Sequences Underlying Software EngineeringMaturity

The Capability Maturity Model specifies several hundred key practices that must be implemented as a team moves from Level 1 to Level 5 of the model. However, the model does not specify within each level the optimal sequence in which to implement the practices. Level 2 contains 121 such practices grouped under six key process areas (KPAs) which are further subdivided into five common feature areas (CFAs). Although the KPA/CFA structure has a logical fit with the organizational structure of very large software development teams, it does not correspond to the reality of small teams. Using Level 2 audit data collected on 10 small software development teams, the authors try to determine whether the data itself can point to a more appropriate implementation strategy for small teams. The data is analyzed using Guttman scaling techniques (scalogram analysis). The results indicate that there is a single underlying, orderable dimension at Level 2 which lays out a step-by-step path upward from Level 1. The order of the items is found to map well to the familiar Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle widely used by project managers to organize and control work efforts. The extracted scale can be used as an assessment tool to provide management with a quick snapshot of a team‘s current position relative to Level 2.

Negotiating Boundaries. Configuration Management in Software Development Teams

Using case-study material from three small software development teams, this paper analyses the regionalisation of ’design spaces‘. Its main purpose is to understand problems and practices of cooperative work in such spaces. ’Configuration management‘ is used to denote both a practice and supporting software tools and their relationship. A major concern is how to develop practices and tools that support cooperation across multiple organisational and social boundaries while simultaneously being ’respectful of regionalisations‘.