Browsing by Author "Tell, Paolo"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for Researchers
    (IEEE, 2019) Klunder, Jil; Hebig, Regina; Tell, Paolo; Kuhrmann, Marco; Nakatumba-Nabende, Joyce; Heldal, Rogardt; Prikladnickixv, Rafael; Tuzunxvi, Eray; Pfahlxvii, Dietmar; Schneider, Kurt; MacDonellxviii, Stephen G.
    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%.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Walking through the Method Zoo: Does Higher Education really meet Software Industry Demands?
    (IEEE, 2019) Kuhrmann, Marco; Nakatumba-Nabende, Joyce; Pfeiffer, Rolf-Helge; Tell, Paolo; Klunder, Jil; Conte, Tayana; MacDonell, Stephen G.; Hebig, Regina
    Software engineering educators are continually challenged by rapidly evolving concepts, technologies, and industry demands. Due to the omnipresence of software in a digitalized society, higher education institutions (HEIs) have to educate the students such that they learn how to learn, and that they are equipped with a profound basic knowledge and with latest knowledge about modern software and system development. Since industry demands change constantly, HEIs are challenged in meeting such current and future demands in a timely manner. This paper analyzes the current state of practice in software engineering education. Specifically, we want to compare contemporary education with industrial practice to understand if frameworks, methods and practices for software and system development taught at HEIs reflect industrial practice. For this, we conducted an online survey and collected information about 67 software engineering courses. Our findings show that development approaches taught at HEIs quite closely reflect industrial practice. We also found that the choice of what process to teach is sometimes driven by the wish to make a course successful. Especially when this happens for project courses, it could be beneficial to put more emphasis on building learning sequences with other courses.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    What Makes Agile Software Development Agile?
    (IEEE transactions on software engineering, 2021) Kuhrmann, Marco; Tell, Paolo; Hebig, Regina; Klunder, Jil; Munch, Jurgen; Linssen, Oliver; Pfahl, Dietmar; Nakatumba-Nabende, Joyce
    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.