1 Agile Experience communication and collaboration in agile software development teams Elizabeth Whitworth 7th September, 2006

2 Research quest?on What is the experience of being in an agile software development team ?

3 Research quest?on How do agile practices structure and mediate the experience of individuals developing software? What are the socio-psychological characteristics surrounding agile practices and individuals within a software development team?

4 Study data 18 one-on-one interviews agile software development literature and community interaction

5 Content of interviews cohesive vs. non-cohesive teams agile vs. non-agile teams personal experiences and/or team activity project characteristics

6 Grounded theory theory generation: line-by-line coding memoing and analysis of data results of study: high level understanding confirmation from participants

7 Cohesive teamwork strong feelings of excitement teams that ‘clicked,’‘gelled,’‘really worked together’’ agile methodologies were seen to support team cohesiveness; more so than traditional software development methodologies

8 Agile practices the planning game continuous integration iterative development and delivery

9 Agile practices daily stand-ups information radiators shared team rooms pairing

10 Ease & speed Agile culture: openness, honesty  transparent environment trust, respect  action-based culture whole team involvement and availability  frequent interaction and immersion

11 Collective activity Buy-in to shared team goals: provide the most business value to the customer in the least amount of time

12 Collective activity prioritization & chunking of activity development around working software    reduce cognitive load importance and immediacy discipline and rigor clear measures of success

13 holistic awareness & understanding of team of project of product Context-rich information exchange and activity

14 holistic awareness & understanding team: familiarity and understanding observe and refine working relationships project: involvement and interest helping and support product: purpose and meaning opportunistic action and collaboration

15 Whole team awareness & feedback constant feedback: whole team awareness and understanding commitment towards team goals frequent and noticeable progress for example: highly visible information radiators daily or weekly team meetings

16 Whole team awareness & feedback whole team agreement, approval, and action frequent and informal team interactions              social accountability and responsibility recognition and appreciation support and motivation shared team goals self-regulating teams

17 Conclusion detailed and transparent planning and activity certainty in the project environment social accountability and support Holistic understanding and competence security and control investment and involvement pride and ownership balance of structure and freedom individual freedom and initiative ability to assess relative importance of goals

18 Next steps further investigation: observational studies psychological literature areas for future study: critical success factors negative phenomena agile practices application: non-traditional contexts

19 Quest?ons

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23 Conceptual framework Teamworking ‘Self-regulating’, ‘self-managing’, ‘high-performance’ sociotechnical systems theory “the study of the relationships and inter-relationships between the social and technical parts of any system.” - Coakes (2000) systems thinking holistic, emergent effects, dynamics of regulation

24 Study focus: the agile system This study involved the agile system made up of individuals, agile technology, and the group as a whole Particularly the relationships between system entities interdependencies emergent effects, such as flow feedback and feedforward mechanisms effects of technology

25 Interview data 18 interviews: five developers, three interaction designers, five project managers, two agile coaches, three developers/project managers Recruited at conferences, and through contacts in the agile software development community 5 members of the same software development team Software development community: agile software development conferences and workshops practitioner literature (print and online ) online correspondence

26 Conducting interviews Example Questions (initial): Could you pick a software development team that you found particularly enjoyable or exciting to work in and describe it to me? Could you describe the physical space the team was in? What was the experience of working in such a team? Did you feel that [being in the same room] effected your interactions with your team-mates? How so? Example Questions (later): Did you feel like you were part of the team? Why/why not? Did you feel that you were able to approach your team members to ask for help? Why/why not? How was responsibility divided among team members? How did you ensure that everything that needed to get done got done?

27 Coding Coding occurred line-by-line and provided a means of comparison across diverse participant experiences Common themes were extracted as categories and explored across situations/participants

28 Theoretical categories Theoretical categories and related properties and dimensions were developed based on codes and memos Diversity of data in this study, and complex nature of interactions made it difficult to define a core category about which to construct a comprehensive theory

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31 extra notes - awareness Details?

32 extra notes - conclusion Success, progress and change