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Thinking Lean in Agile Software Development Projects PDF

174 Pages·2014·2.84 MB·English
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Thinking Lean in Agile Software Development Projects A qualitative study to Identify ways to improve productivity and increase business value Master of Science Thesis in the Master's Programme International Project Management BRISILDA KOLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Division of Construction Management CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Göteborg, Sweden 2014 Master's Thesis 2014:119 ii MASTER’S THESIS 2014:119 Thinking lean in agile software development projects A qualitative study to identify ways to improve productivity and increase business value Master of Science Thesis in the Master's Programme International Project Management BRISILDA KOLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Division of Construction Management CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Göteborg, Sweden 2014 iii This thesis is dedicated in loving memory of my father, Ndue Kola (1958 – 1994). iv Thinking lean in agile software development projects A Qualitative Study To Identify Factors That Can to improve productivity and increase business value Master of Science Thesis in the Master's Programme International Project Management BRISILDA KOLA © BRISILDA KOLA, 2014. Technical report no 2014:119 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Division of Construction Management Chalmers University of Technology SE-412 96 Göteborg Sweden Telephone + 46 (0)31-772 1000 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Göteborg, Sweden 2014 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my special gratitude to all those who supported me during my studies, and especially during this project. My deepest appreciation goes to the Swedish Institute for having provided me this precious opportunity to pursue my master studies in Sweden, by awarding me a scholarship. I would like to acknowledge with much appreciation the role of my supervisors Claudio Benghi and Christian Koch for the valuable comments, guidance and advice. I would like to thank all the participants of my study, for willingly sharing with me their precious time and experience, and for giving me the permission to use and publish their names and the information that they provided for the purpose of this master thesis. Thank you Mattias Gustafsson, Stefan Singman, Magnus Jonsson, Andreas Sandberg, Vincent Thavonekham, NK Shrivastava, Liang Zhang, Paul Oldfield, Steve Fenton, Tim Vermeerschen and Johnny Herrmann. A special thanks goes to my family for all the understanding, the unconditional support and the endless love provided day by day. Last but not least, many thanks go to my relatives and friends, especially to my best friend Adelina, who made my life easier just by being there, helping and supporting me all the way. vi Thinking lean in agile software development projects A Qualitative Study To Identify Factors That Can to improve productivity and increase business value Master of Science Thesis in the Master's Programme International Project Management BRISILDA KOLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Division of Construction Management Chalmers University of Technology ABSTRACT Background – The high rate failure of software development projects, which influences directly the business value of the organizations in which they take place by decreasing the revenues and affecting employees’ productivity, is the main motivation to conduct this research. Objective – The objective of this study is to find appropriate ways to measure and improve the productivity of the teams and to discover to what extent the agile methods, the integration of the lean principles and the “soft skills” of the team can be combined in order to achieve high quality results. Method – A qualitative study, consisting in interviews with only Scrum masters and online questionnaires with both Scrum masters and practitioners, was done in order to observe to what extent the views of the scholars and researchers, whose work is used to build the theoretical framework of this dissertation, apply to real life organizations operating in software development industry. Results –Scrum masters and practitioners have found several ways to measure the productivity of the teams, based on their working experiences. Agile and lean methodologies have proved to be beneficial to software developing organizations; while “leagile paradigm” remains a relatively new concept in this industry. To conclude, people are the most important asset in every organization, so their superiority is recognized and worshiped by improving the management practices. Conclusions – The integration of both agile and lean methodologies has a positive effect on software development project-driven organizations. Nevertheless, the process is often associated with challenges that can affect the productivity of the teams. Therefore, it is vii worth to find an appropriate way to measure productivity while continuously considering and improving the “people skills”. Keywords: software development, productivity, agile, Scrum, sprint, lean, Kanban, leagile, management viii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... vi PREFACE ........................................................................................................................................ xi 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Rationale for the study ................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Aim and objectives ......................................................................................................... 2 1.3. Research method ............................................................................................................ 3 1.4. Limitations ..................................................................................................................... 4 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................... 6 2.1. Software Development Productivity .............................................................................. 6 2.2. Traditional versus Agile approaches ............................................................................ 10 2.3. Embedding Lean .......................................................................................................... 23 2.4. Managing people .......................................................................................................... 32 3. METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................... 36 3.1. Qualitative vs. Quantitative .......................................................................................... 36 3.2. Research aim ................................................................................................................ 37 3.3. Research Design ........................................................................................................... 38 3.4. Data collection .............................................................................................................. 38 3.5. Data Analysis and interpretation .................................................................................. 41 3.6. Ethical considerations .................................................................................................. 42 3.7. Limitations ................................................................................................................... 42 4. RESULTS – FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................ 44 4.1. Productivity measurement and improvement ............................................................... 44 4.2. Software development life cycle .................................................................................. 46 4.3. Team size...................................................................................................................... 48 4.4. The role of agile approaches in improving the working processes .............................. 49 4.5. Moving a team to agile ................................................................................................. 51 4.6. Agile and Lean integration ........................................................................................... 54 4.7. The connections among people-technological processes-principles ............................ 56 4.8. Management actions that affect productivity ............................................................... 58 4.9. Suggestions based on the participants’ experience ...................................................... 61 5. CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................................. 66 5.1. Summary of the main findings ..................................................................................... 66 5.2. Limitation and suggestions for further research ........................................................... 69 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 70 ix APPENDICES ................................................................................................................................ 86 APPENDIX 1 – Interview Questions ........................................................................................... 87 APPENDIX 2 – Participants ........................................................................................................ 89 APPENDIX 3 – Interview Transcripts ......................................................................................... 91 A. Mattias Gustafsson ........................................................................................................... 91 B. Stefan Singman ................................................................................................................ 97 C. Magnus Jonsson ............................................................................................................. 102 D. Andreas Sandberg .......................................................................................................... 108 E. Vincent Thavonekham ................................................................................................... 112 F. NK Shrivastava .............................................................................................................. 120 G. Lian Zhang ..................................................................................................................... 127 H. Paul Oldfield .................................................................................................................. 131 I. Steve Fenton ................................................................................................................... 143 J. Tim Vermeerschen ......................................................................................................... 148 K. Johnny Hermann ............................................................................................................ 154 Appendix 4 – The online questionnaire and its results .............................................................. 158 x Table of Figures Figure 1.1. Aim and objectives .......................................................................................................... 3 Figure 1.2. Research structure of this study ....................................................................................... 4 Figure 2.1. Agile methodologies over Traditional ones according to (Beck, et al., 2001) .............. 11 Figure 2.2. Agile methods according to Lindstrom and Jeffries (2004) .......................................... 12 Figure 2.3. Feature-orientation as foundation for Agile (Kircher and Hofman, 2012, p. 217) ........ 13 Figure 2.4. Scrum meetings.............................................................................................................. 16 Figure 2.5. Factors that affect the implementation of an agile methodology (Livermore, 2008) .... 19 Figure 2.6. Question drawn from theory .......................................................................................... 22 Figure 2.7. Non-value-adding waste in business according to Liker (2004) .................................... 24 Figure 2.8. Basic principles behind lean thinking (Womack, 1996) ................................................ 25 Figure 2.9. “4-P” Model of the Toyota Way according to Liker (2004, p. 6) .................................. 25 Figure 2.10. TPS principles according to Liker (2004) .................................................................... 26 Figure 2.11. Lean methods (Peter and Lanza, 2011) ........................................................................ 28 List of Tables Table 2.1. Benefits and Challenges of implementing Agile (Mishra and Mishra, 2011) ................. 22 Table 4.1. Management actions that affect productivity...........................................................…....59

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to achieve high quality results. Method – A qualitative theoretical framework of this dissertation, apply to real life organizations operating in software Keywords : software development, productivity, agile, Scrum, sprint, lean, Kanban, leagile
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