Enabling Software Process Improvement in Agile Software Development Teams and Organisations:Thesis

摘要

Agile software development has challenged the traditional ways of delivering software as it provides a very different approach to software development. In recent decades, software process improvement (SPI) has been widely studied in the context of traditional software development, and its strengths and weaknesses have been recognized. As organizations increasingly adopt agile software development methodologies to be used alongside traditional methodologies, new challenges and opportunities for SPI are also emerging. One challenge is that traditional SPI methods often emphasize the continuous improvement of organizational software development processes, whereas the principles of agile software development focus on iterative adaptation and improvement of the activities of individual software development teams to increase effectiveness. The focus of this thesis is twofold. The first goal is to study how agile software development teams can conduct SPI, according to the values, principles and practices of agile software development, in tandem with the success factors of traditional SPI. The second goal is to study how the team-centred SPI of agile software development and the traditional view of organisational improvement can be integrated to co-exist in a mutually-beneficial manner in software development organizations. The main research methodology in this thesis is action research (AR). The empirical data is taken from six agile software development case projects. The results of this research have been published in a total of seven conference, and journal, papers.