2020-06, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Anslow, Craig, Biddle, Robert

In this paper we address the topic of software development team members satisfaction with their development process. We present an in-depth analysis of the results of a nationwide survey about software development in Switzerland. We wanted to find out if satisfaction relates to the applied development method, and to the use of various practices, and impacts on business, team and software issues. We found that higher satisfaction is reported more by those using Agile development than with plan-driven processes. We explored the different perspectives of developers and those with a management role and found a high consistency of satisfaction between Agile developers and Agile management, and differences with those using working plan-driven methods. We found that certain practices and impacts have high correlations to satisfaction, and that collaborative processes are closely related to satisfaction. We then explored the relationship between satisfaction and various other perspectives. Our results in this analysis are principally descriptive, but we think they can be a relevant contribution to understand the challenges for everyone involved in Agile development.

2018, Biddle, Robert, Meier, Andreas, Kropp, Martin, Anslow, Craig

2016, Meier, Andreas, Kropp, Martin, 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.

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.

2018, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Anslow, Craig, Biddle, Robert

The principles behind the Agile Manifesto begin with "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer...". It also states that Agile projects should be build around motivated and self-organized teams, which might also lead to more satisfied developers. Several studies indeed report an increased job satisfaction by anecdotal evidence. In this paper we address the topic of satisfaction by in-depth analysis of the results of a nationwide survey about software development in Switzerland. We wanted to find out if satisfaction depends on the applied development method, and, more concrete, how satisfaction relates to other elements in the development process, including the use of various practices, and the influences on business, team and software issues.

2018, Kropp, Martin, Meier, Andreas, Anslow, Craig, Biddle, Robert, Garbajosa, Juan, Wang, Xiaofeng, Aguiar, Ademar

Stress is an important workplace issue, affecting both the health of individuals, and the health of organizations. Early advocacy for Agile Software Development suggested it might help avoid stress, with practices that emphasize a sustainable pace, and self-organizing teams. Our analysis of a 2014 survey, however, suggested that stress might still be commonplace in Agile teams, especially for those with less experience. We also noticed that newcomers to Agile emphasized technical, rather than collaborative, practices, and speculated this might explain the stress. We explored this in our analysis of a follow-up survey conducted in 2016, and report our findings in this paper. We show that there are a variety of factors involved, and that avoiding stress is associated with both collaborative and technical practices, and a range of outcomes.

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

2018, Kropp, Martin, Biddle, Robert, Meier, Andreas, Anslow, Craig

In this paper we address the topic of satisfaction by analysis of the results of a national survey of software development in Switzerland. We found that satisfaction is reported more by those using Agile development than with plan-driven processes. We explored how satisfaction relates to oth-er elements in the development process, including the use of various practices, and the in!uences on business, team and software issues. We found that certain practices and in!uences have high correlations to satisfaction, and that collaborative processes are closely related to sat-isfaction, especially when combined with technical practices. Our intention in this analysis is principally descriptive, but we think the results are important to understand the challenges for everyone involved in Agile development, and can help in the transformation to Agile.

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.

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