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Agile Practices: The impact on Trust in Software Project Teams

Agile Practices: The impact on Trust in Software Project Teams. Bo Sun Xiaowei Wang Mingchang Zhao. Why do we need agile software development:. Conforming to plan was no longer the primary goal

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Agile Practices: The impact on Trust in Software Project Teams

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  1. Agile Practices: The impact on Trust in Software Project Teams Bo Sun Xiaowei Wang Mingchang Zhao

  2. Why do we need agile software development: • Conforming to plan was no longer the primary goal • Major change in the requirement, scope, and technology that are outside the development team’s control often occur within a project’s life plan • The cost of change grows

  3. 1. The unforgiving honesty of working code • 2. Effectiveness of people working together with good will • Agile method: • Extreme Programming • Scrum • Adaptive Software Development

  4. Manifesto for agile software development • We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value • Individual and interactions over processes and tools • Working software over comprehensive documentation • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation • Responding to change over following a plan

  5. Advantage for agile software development: • Produce the first delivery in weeks, to achieve an early win and rapid feedback • Invent simple solutions, so there is less to change and making those changes is easier • Improve design quality continually, making the next story less costly to implement • Test constantly, for earlier, less expensive, defect detection

  6. Focus on team work and trust: Team proximity and intense interaction between team members are hallmark of all agile methods. XP: Pair programming; Crystal, Scrum, ASD: Advocate close collaboration practices including barrier-free collocated teams;

  7. The importance of trust within a team • Define: • Trust is a shared belief that you can depend on each other to achieve a common purpose. • Feeling able to rely upon another person; • Cooperating as a group; • Taking thoughtful risks; • Experiencing believable communication.

  8. Agile practice study

  9. People are core in agile practices! • Agile Manifesto places great emphasis on the team, encouraging autonomy and giving individuals the environment and support they need to get the job done. • An environment where stakeholders trust and respect each other is both a prerequisite for and a consequence of using agile methods.

  10. Need for trust • The emergence of agile teams has increased the importance of trust . • A cohesive team of members who collaborate and trust each other can be difficult. • Trust requires team members to believe that their colleagues possess the knowledge, competence, and integrity to complete their assigned tasks.

  11. Agile practice case study • We are focusing on 3 agile practices. • They are most commonly used. • Each one requires the collective participation of all team members. • The study is conducted across 3 teams with diversity in both distribution and industry setting. • Study lasts for 6 months.

  12. Diversity in teams • Case A is a distributed team in a financial services organization that develops software for internal business units. • Case B is a colocated team in an engineering organization that manufactures and supplies industrial robots. • Case C is a colocated team in an organization that develops software for the insurance industry.

  13. Results and analysis of study • We found that agile methods increased trust by increasing 1. transparency 2. accountability 3. communication 4. knowledge sharing and feedback.

  14. Status transparency and visibility • Iteration planning meeting: 1. requirements 2. indicidual task assignment 3. estimate of each task • Stand-up meeting: 1. day-to-day progression 2. potential dalays

  15. Iteration retrospectives: 1. achievements of this sprint goal 2. experience for next sprint • From the perspetive of QA: All team members and POs are aware of what they require on the project and set expectation accordingly. • Changes and any new feature are not surprising. • Transparency and visibility enhance congruence and vigilance which increace trust in software development.

  16. Accountability and collective responsibility • Team members feel responsible for not only their own estimates and promise, but also other members. developers: tasks assigned to them POs: obtain information from customers • Two ways of estimates in three cases • A: experts from particular area • B and C: collaborative estimates and discussion until final agreement.

  17. Demonstrate their own competence and trustworthiness. • They have a say or they can have a say.

  18. Open and frequent team communication • In traditional software development, communication only when it is required. (e.g. status meeting or debug) • Advantages: • Development of common awareness • Ask for or offer help • PO's existance in team • Perspective of new members • Promote a good sense of will and belonging • Lessen the magnitude of discrepancies

  19. Knowledge sharing and feedback • Supportive environment: • Any one can throw and pick up a question at anytime. • No reprimand, no negative view. • Timely feedback and response • From the perspective of PO: • Efficient in realization of features. • Build confidence if the team can deliver in time.

  20. Challenges of agile practice

  21. Challenges of Trust in Agile Team • Trust was strong in all three teams and reinforced by agile practices, particularly from the QA and PO perspectives. • We identified four factors that increased trust but also created challenges for teams.

  22. External Visibility on Project Tasks • Caused by : Transparency and visibility of project status to all stakeholders • Organizational personnel external to the team have visibility on task status but perhaps not on actual causes of delays, if any.

  23. Team Pressure • Caused by : Accountability and collective responsibility • This pressure was entirely self-inflicted, but it might be consequent to the increased visibility of tasks and personal accountability to the team.

  24. Tension between the PO and the Team • Caused by : Accountability and collective responsibility • Some team members considered PO to be a team member and others did not. • Some POs themselves didn’t feel they were part of the project team.

  25. Developers Accessibility to the PO • Caused by : Open and frequent communication within the team • From a developer’s perspective, this access must be managed and controlled so that ad hoc requests aren’t suddenly added to the requirements list without agreement from the team.

  26. Tendency to Underestimate Tasks • Caused by : Sharing knowledge and obtaining feedback • It is difficult to accurately estimate unknown tasks even though team members were mostly experienced and quite familiar with the development environment.

  27. Value of the Retrospective • Caused by : Sharing knowledge and obtaining feedback • Most interviewees placed little value in retrospective. • The retrospective limited the communication, knowledge-sharing, and feedback mechanisms for building trust.

  28. Conclusion • Types of generic trust that can affect agile methods: • Interpersonal trust • Relational trust • System trust • Trust in behavior • Trust in belief • The factors that maintain trust in agile methods: • Honesty • Communication • Cultural understanding • Personal relationships • Working together • Performance and capability.

  29. To agile PM • If you think the team has underestimated their work and are leaving velocity on the table, • If you feel that the team isn’t working hard enough or are committed enough to their work, • If you feel that quality is poor and it isn’t improving sufficiently or you feel that the team isn’t taking product quality seriously, • If you’ve got a fixed date software delivery to make and you wonder if the team is going to get there, • If you think the team has underestimated their work and are leaving velocity on the table, TRUST the team. • If you feel that the team isn’t working hard enough or are committed enough to their work, TRUST the team. • If you feel that quality is poor and it isn’t improving sufficiently or you feel that the team isn’t taking product quality seriously, TRUST the team. • If you’ve got a fixed date software delivery to make and you wonder if the team is going to get thereTRUST the team.

  30. Reference • [1] Hasnain, Eisha, and Tracy Hall. "Investigating the role of trust in Agile methods using a light weight systematic literature review." Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008. 204-207. • [2] http://www.projecttimes.com/robert-galen/the-agile-project-managerdo-you-trust-your-team.html Thank you

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