Towards Understanding Technical Responses to Requirements Changes in Agile Teams

Madampe, Kashumi; Hoda, Rashina; Grundy, John; Singh, Paramvir

doi:10.1145/3387940.3392229

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…This is fitting, given that sales of software and related services rose by 31% from 2017 to 2019 in New Zealand to $9.8 billion, with published software accounting for $3.1 billion 3 . The positive trend is also reported in Australia; between 2005 and 2019, the productivity benefits from the growing digital economy increased Australia's steady state GDP per capita by 6.5% 4 . With the adoption of 5G and other emerging digital technologies, the contribution of things digital to productivity will only grow.…”

Section: Software Development Methods Practices and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…The Australian software industry landscape is responding to this growth with diversity, ranging from vibrant startups to Sydneybased tech giant Atlassian, known for products such as Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello. According to recent work on analysing requirements changes in Agile teams [4], the most frequently practised Agile method in Australian companies is Scrum, with a mean team size of 18 members and a mean iteration length of just under five weeks. The most followed Agile techniques are daily standups, Kanban boards, sprints, and the sprint backlog, whereas pair programming and self-assignment were the least followed practices.…”

Section: Software Development Methods Practices and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Software Engineering in Australasia

Licorish

Grundy

Blincoe

et al. 2021

SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes

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Six months ago an important call was made for researchers globally to provide insights into the way Software Engineering is done in their region. Heeding this call, we hereby outline the position Software Engineering in Australasia (New Zealand and Australia). This article first considers the software development methods, practices and tools that are popular in the Australasian software engineering community. We then briefly review the particular strengths of software engineering researchers in Australasia. Finally, we make an open call for collaborators by reflecting on our current position and identifying future opportunities.

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Section: Software Development Methods Practices and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 75%

Section: Software Development Methods Practices and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software Engineering in Australasia

Licorish

Grundy

Blincoe

et al. 2021

SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes

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“…In some cases, participants implement RCs as they receive them. We identified this phenomenon in one of our previous studies as well [55]. This technique does not follow any prioritisation or any other best practices, but simply implementing them as received.…”

Section: How Do Practitioners Approach Handling Rcs While Managing Em...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion-Centric Requirements Change Handling in Software Engineering

Madampe¹,

Hoda²,

Grundy³

2022

Preprint

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Background: Requirements Changes (RCs) -the additions/modifications/deletions of functional/non-functional requirements in software products -are challenging for software practitioners to handle. Handling some changes may significantly impact the emotions of the practitioners. Objective: We wanted to know the key challenges that make RC handling difficult, how these impact the emotions of software practitioners, what influences their RC handling, and how RC handling can be made less emotionally challenging. Method: We followed a mixed-methods approach. We conducted two survey studies, with 40 participants and 201 participants respectively. The presentation of key quantitative data was followed by descriptive statistical analysis, and the qualitative data was analysed using Strauss-Corbinian Grounded Theory, and Socio-Technical Grounded Theory analysis techniques. Findings: We found (1) several key factors that make RC handling an emotional challenge, (2) varying emotions that practitioners feel when it is challenging to handle RCs, (3) how stakeholders, including practitioners themselves, peers, managers and customers, influence the RC handling and how practitioners feel due to the stakeholder influence, and (4) practices that can be used to better handle RCs. Conclusion: Some challenges are technical and some are social which also belong to aspects of agile practice, emotional intelligence, and cognitive intelligence. Therefore, to better handle RCs with positive emotions in socio-technical environments, agility, emotional intelligence, and cognitive intelligence need to cooperate with each other.

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“…• Security team: In some cases, a security team exists in the project and they have the ability to identify NFR changes. Moreover, other stakeholders do not identify NFR changes as much as the security team, hinting that security teams are subject matter experts in NFRs whereas customer/product owner who brings other RCs often: Even though agile does not encourage use of detailed documentation [2], RCs are still documented for ease of use by the teams [14], [15]. RCs are documented in several forms such as epics, user stories, use cases, and tasks.…”

Section: Other Carriers Who Bring Requirements Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multi-dimensional Study of Requirements Changes in Agile Software Development Projects

Madampe,

Hoda,

Grundy

2020

Preprint

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Agile processes are now widely practiced by software engineering (SE) teams, and the agile manifesto claims that agile methods support responding to changes well. However, no study appears to have researched whether this is accurate in reality. Requirements changes (RCs) are inevitable in any software development environment, and we wanted to acquire a holistic picture of how RCs occur and are handled in agile SE teams in practice. We also wanted to know whether responding to changes is the only or a main reason for software teams to use agile in their projects. To do this we conducted a mixed-methods research study which comprised of interviews of 10 agile practitioners from New Zealand and Australia, a literature review, and an in-depth survey with the participation of 40 agile practitioners world-wide. Through this study we identified different types of RCs, their origination including reasons for origination, forms, sources, carriers, and events at which they originate, challenging nature, and finally whether agile helps to respond to changes or not. We also found that agile teams seem to be reluctant to accept RCs, and therefore, they use several mitigation strategies. Additionally, as they accept the RCs, they use a variety of techniques to handle them. Furthermore, we found that agile allowing better response to RCs is only a minor reason for practicing agile. Several more important reasons included being able to deliver the product in a shorter period and increasing team productivity. Practitioners stated this improves the agile team environment and thus are the real motivators for teams to practice agile. Finally, we provide a set of practical recommendations that can be used to better handle RCs effectively in agile software development environments.

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Towards Understanding Technical Responses to Requirements Changes in Agile Teams

Cited by 12 publications

References 3 publications

Software Engineering in Australasia

Software Engineering in Australasia

Emotion-Centric Requirements Change Handling in Software Engineering

A Multi-dimensional Study of Requirements Changes in Agile Software Development Projects

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