2016-12, Anslow, Craig, Burkhard, Roger, Kropp, Martin, Mateescu, Magdalena, Vischi, Dario, Zahn, Carmen

Despite the availability of many digital agile board tools, most co-located agile software teams still use physical cardboards for their daily standup meetings. This is due to the fact that existing digital agile boards lacks supporting a collaborative workspace, direct interaction for the whole team in meetings, or making project information directly visible. In this paper we present aWall, a digital agile cardwall designed for the highly collaborative agile work style using large multi-touch wall displays. The effectiveness of aWall was evaluated in a user study with eleven software practitioners. Our findings indicate that aWall enables and encourages team work due to the large size of the wall, accessibility and visibility of large amounts of information, and possibility of customization of the interface. Based on this work, we suggest that augmenting digital cardwalls with large interactive touch technology and new interaction concepts is a useful way to support effective collaborative agile software development processes.

2016, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Biddle, Robert

Agile methodologies like Scrum or Extreme Programming have come a long way over the last fifteen years. Recent quantitative studies show that many companies have successfully adopted agile methodologies. It was found that in agile software development, experience leads to collaboration. It could also be shown that successful professional agile teams tend to use more collaboration practices. In 2013, the new Computer Science studies at the University of Applied Sciences were started. For this, a new curriculum was developed. This paper presents and discusses the lectures, labs and educational software projects in the programming and software engineering modules. It is discussed how agile collaboration and collaboration practices can be taught in the classroom. For this, the setup and observations of an agile student project are presented and different online collaboration tools are discussed. It is argued that software engineering education benefits significantly from embracing the modern collaboration tools the Internet has made available.

2015-12, Burkhard, Roger, Greiwe, Stephanie, Kropp, Martin, Mateescu, Magdalena, Zahn, Carmen

Kommunikation und Interaktion spielen eine zentrale Rolle in agilen Teams. Kombiniert mit den agilen Prinzipien wie selbst-bestimmte Teams, vollständige Kundeneinbindung oder sehr häufi-gen Releases ergeben sich neue Herausforderungen an die Zusammenarbeit im agilen Team. Doch wie sehen diese in der Praxis Schweizer Unternehmen und Firmen aus? Wie kommunizieren und kooperieren erfolgreiche agile Teams in der Realität? Neben der quantitativen Swiss Agile Study , www.swissagilestudy.ch, zum Einsatz agiler Methoden in der Softwareentwicklung im Jahr 2012 hat sich die Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz im Sommer 2013 in einem Forschungsprojekt mittels einer Interview Studie vertiefend mit der Thematik der agilen Teamarbeit in der Schweiz befasst. Dazu wurden Gruppeninterviews in elf agil arbeitenden IT-Unternehmen in der Schweiz realisiert.

2014-12, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas

Various studies show that the agile method has become a mainstream methodology for software development. When agile pioneers introduced this approach, they executed very successful projects which lead to the enormous popularity of agile development. With becoming mainstream, less experienced teams started to apply the agile approaches and news about failed agile projects appeared. This raises the question, what it needs to conduct successful agile projects. In a qualitative study we asked IT companies about the essential success factors in their successful agile projects. We found that there was a strong focus on engineering and management best practices. We found that when these practices did not work, mature teams sensed that following a recipe is not sufficient, and they started adapting the agile process to their needs. Applying a sense-making methodology like the Cynefin framework, theoretically explains our observations in the study.

2016, Kropp, Martin, Brown, Judith M., Anslow, Craig, Gossage, Stevenson, Mateescu, Magdalena, Biddle, Robert, Anslow, Craig, Campos, Pedro, Jorge, Joaquim

2016, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Perellano, Gerald

Communication and collaboration are central skills for agile development. Trust, openness, transparency and equality are core agile values and there is a shortage of software developers with these skills. How can we teach software engineering so that students get these skills together with the needed technical competences? This paper presents and discusses the setup of an innovative agile educational student project. The didactical concept is based on results from several industry studies, which give insight into the required competencies of agile software developers.

2015, Kropp, Martin, Mateescu, Magdalena, Burkhard, Roger, Zahn, Carmen, Vischi, Dario

Agile methods emphasize highly interactive and close collaboration within teams and among stakeholders. Due to still missing adequate digital tools, agile teams use mostly physical artefacts like wallboards and story cards. In this paper, we present aWall, an agile team collaboration tool for large multi-touch wall systems. aWall was designed based on empirical user research using new interaction and visualization concepts to support and foster the highly collaborative and communicative agile work style. The application is based on web technology and can be used in both co-located and distributed setting. The implemented prototypes were validated with end-users in a user workshop. In the demo, users can experience the interaction and visualization concepts hands-on.

2016, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Biddle, Robert, Abrahamsson, Pekka, Jedlitschka, Andreas

2016, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Al Hammadi, Hussain

2015, Kropp, Martin, Mateescu, Magdalena, Burkhard, Roger, Zahn, Carmen, Vischi, Dario

Agile methods emphasize highly interactive and close collaboration within teams and among stakeholders. Due to still missing adequate digital tools, agile teams use mostly physical artefacts like wallboards and story cards. In this paper, we present aWall, an agile team collaboration tool for large multi-touch wall systems. aWall was designed based on empirical user research using new interaction and visualization concepts to support and foster the highly collaborative and communicative agile work style. The application is based on web technology and can be used in both co-located and distributed setting. The implemented prototypes were validated with end-users in a user workshop.