Many software development teams have been implementing agile methods. As a result, a vast amount of knowledge can be found in both academic and industrial databases. Based on this information, many approaches have been developed to guide and facilitate practitioners in finding the most suitable practice. Nevertheless, not many of these approaches could gather these available experiences and make them systematically reusable to help practitioners understand agile practices in depth. In our previous work, we built an evidence-based tool to ease agile practices adoption by eficiently and efectively providing information on agile practices. In addition, we proposed a socio-intentional framework for tailoring agile methods that allows practitioners to analyze agile practices and define the right strategies for adopting them. Even though the evidence-based tool has been validated by a cohort of experts using illustrative examples, a more extensive evaluation of the framework remains to be done. The present paper aims to summarize how the evaluation of the framework in a real-life context will be conducted in future work.
Agile development is nowadays one of the most popular approaches to build software. To
gain the full benefit from adopting agile methods, software development teams can choose
to adopt them on a custom-basis depending on the context and defined criteria [
In our previous work [9], we proposed a socio-intentional framework for tailoring agile methods that allows practitioners to analyze agile practices and to define the right strategies for adopting them. Our framework aims to help practitioners decide which agile practices to implement to achieve their goals and identify how team members should work together to achieve these goals.
In order to build the socio-intentional framework, we started by building an ontology using
papers extracted through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that was presented in [10].
Similarly to many models that have been created to represent various aspects of agile methods
[
The socio-intentional framework for Agile Methods tailoring presented in [9] focuses on the intentional (why?) and social (who?) dimensions. In the framework, we propose a methodology to analyze agile practices and define the strategies the team members should apply to successfully adopt a practice based on the teams’ goals, their situations, and dependencies between team members. In our framework, a goal is defined as something a team intuitively wants to achieve, or something drawn from the problems they are experiencing or obstacles they are facing during their current development process. As an example of the latter, if a team does not understand the requirement, we can then formulate multiple goals, such as improving customer understanding and improving communication with customers. In addition to the intentional and social dimensions, the proposed methodology also addresses most of the important concerns related to agile practice adoption found in the literature. In other words, in every step in the process of analyzing agile practices, practitioners can use our OBAMA-tool to easily get the needed information. As it is hard to analyze the information listed by the tool in textual format, we proposed to represent the information in graphical models before the analysis. To do that, we
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Solution -Name -Description *ReqPuirroepdobsye/Responsible for * identified suitable modeling languages and notions by mapping the concepts and relationships in our ontology model with the notions of diferent modeling frameworks that can represent either goal or social dimensions. As result, iStar 2.0 [14] was chosen to be used in our framework as its notions match best with our agile elements. For the agile concepts that cannot be mapped, we propose extended notions for the representation. Finally, we demonstrated how to use our framework by applying it to the case of a software development project.
We have demonstrated how to analyse agile practices with the help of the OBAMA tool and
iStar 2.0 using a feasibility study in [
The goal of the research is to evaluate the socio-intentional framework with respect to its outcomes and users’ acceptance in the context of agile practice adoption within software development teams. To achieve it, there are two main points that should be investigated: (1) the efectiveness of the framework , and (2) the perception of the team members during agile practice adoption while following the framework. The former aims at evaluating if our framework can help software development teams to advance their agility level. The latter aims at evaluating whether or not the team members find the framework useful and easy to use.
The research is designed based on the guidelines for conducting case study research in software engineering [15].
From the goal of the research, we derived into three research questions: • RQ1: What are the overall outcomes of the application of socio-intentional framework? • RQ2: What are the perceptions of the practitioners on the usefulness of the framework? • RQ3: What are the perceptions of the practitioners on the ease of use of the framework? To answer these questions, triangulation—combining diferent types of data collection methods will be used. Precisely, we conduct both quantitative and qualitative research using semistructured interviews. To answer RQ1, we will design the questionnaire, and measure and compare the results from one sprint to another by following the guidelines of Patel et al.[16]. In this framework, the authors proposed a set of questionnaires we can use to evaluate the agility level of a team. In addition, the calculation and interpretation of the results were also explained. The results for the RQ1 serve for validating the usefulness of the framework based on the outcome. Questionnaires to answer RQ2 and RQ3 are designed based on [17] which were developed to validate two specific variables, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. These two variables are also known to be fundamental determinants of user acceptance. - It would be more dificult to understand agile practice with the framework - The framework allows me to plan my adoption better - Using the framework can improve my performance as a team member - The framework addressed my needs for agile practice adoption - ...
The perceptions of the practitioners on the ease of the framework - The framework is confusing - I perform wrong activities frequently when using the framework - Using the framework is often frustrating - I need to consult the person in charge often to keep using the framework - Using the framework requires a lot of my mental efort - ...
Our framework aims to help a novice team that does not dispose of any help from an Agile Coach or Scrum master. This kind of team generally is not aware of where to start and what they need to focus on to successfully adopt agile methods. To meet these criteria, we will select two groups of master-level students in Computer Science that have been assigned to develop software in an agile fashion in the context of their curriculum. The selected groups will have the most similar background in terms of knowledge and experience in software development. To compare the results, one group will be introduced to the framework that includes the tool and the methodology, while another will manage and discover how to implement agile on its own.
For both groups, the survey will be conducted in multiple rounds. Each round is conducted at the beginning of each sprint during the project and it is divided into two parts. In the first part, the participants will be asked to answer survey questions that would take between 10 to 20 minutes. The purposes, the questionnaire, and the procedure are however diferent between the two groups. One group (Gr1) will be asked only the questions related to the RQ1 without any introduction to the framework. For another group (Gr2), the framework will be introduced in the first round of the survey. During the introduction to the framework, participants will learn how to select and adopt agile practices using the tool and methodology. Gr2 will be asked to answer the questions related to all research questions. In the second part, a semi-structured interview will be conducted. The interview provides the chance to discuss with the participants the answers they give in the survey. For both groups, we gather insightful information and in-depth understanding of the teams’ situations so that we can evaluate the teams’ agility levels. In the case of the Gr2, the interviews aim to also investigate the perceptions of the usefulness and the ease of the framework. The data collected from the interview will be used as supportive information for the survey.
This paper presented a summary of a case study we plan to use to evaluate the socio-intentional framework. In a real-life context, groups of master-level students are chosen to conduct a case study. The three main points we aim to investigate: (1) the overall outcome generated by the application of the framework, (2) the usefulness of the framework, and (3) the ease of the framework. A combination of surveys and semi-structured interviews will be used for data collection. While the data from the survey will be regarded as the primary data, the interviews will be used as supportive information. [8] E. Van Kelle, J. Visser, A. Plaat, P. van der Wijst, An empirical study into social success factors for agile software development, in: 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, IEEE, 2015, pp. 77–80. [9] S. Kiv, S. Heng, Y. Wautelet, M. Kolp, Towards a systematic socio-intentional framework for agile methods tailoring, in: 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI), volume 2, IEEE, 2021, pp. 143–152. [10] S. Kiv, S. Heng, M. Kolp, Y. Wautelet, Agile methods knowledge representation for systematic practices adoption, in: Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 20th International Conference, XP 2019, Montréal, QC, Canada, May 21–25, 2019, Proceedings 20, Springer International Publishing, 2019, pp. 19–34. [11] Y. Wautelet, S. Heng, M. Kolp, I. Mirbel, Unifying and extending user story models, in: International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, 2014, pp. 211–225. [12] S. Kiv, S. Heng, Y. Wautelet, S. Poelmans, M. Kolp, Using an ontology for systematic practice adoption in agile methods: Expert system and practitioners-based validation, Expert Systems with Applications 195 (2022) 116520. [13] S. Kiv, Y. Wautelet, S. Heng, M. Kolp, Obama, an ontology-based software tool for agile method adoption, arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.02207 (2022). [14] F. Dalpiaz, X. Franch, J. Horkof, istar 2.0 language guide, arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.07767 (2016). [15] P. Runeson, M. Host, A. Rainer, B. Regnell, Case study research in software engineering:
Guidelines and examples, John Wiley & Sons, 2012. [16] C. Patel, M. Ramachandran, Agile maturity model (amm): a software process improvement framework for agile software development practices, International Journal of Software Engineering, IJSE 2 (2009) 3–28. [17] F. D. Davis, Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology, MIS quarterly (1989) 319–340.