Agile Development
Agile methods and philosophies like e.g. Scrum are used more and more in software engineering projects in university and industry. They offer many advantages and possibilities in the development and management of software. Researching the different possibilities of agile methods, as well as the development of new methods are therefore a central research topic at our chair. We also put emphasis on the practical use of agile techniques in teaching.
Teaching
Use of agile methods in real projects with real clients within the iOS Praktikum:
- iOS Praktikum 2012
- iOS Praktikum 2013
- iOS Praktikum 2014
- Advanced Project Management (SS12)
- Advanced Project Management (SS13)
- Advanced Project Management (SS14)
Research
Many research questions, that we investigate, are related to the conduction of projects with real industry partners in innovation projects where technologies and requirements are rapidly changing and where flexibility is required. Such projects at our chair are usually very short (three months) and balanced teams with experienced as well as unexperienced developers can only work part-time on the project. In larger projects we have multiple teams working on the same project.
Important research questions in this area are e.g.:
- Setup of the project infrastructure
- Introduction of agile concepts
- Development of processes and workflows to improve the collaboration
- Organization of projects with more than 20 team members
- Balance between teaching and project management
An important part of our research are case studies of established and newly developed agile methods, that we use to find out whether the applied workflows help developers and managers to improved the outcome of the project. We conduct such case studies especially in the iOS Praktikum.
Research Members
Stephan Krusche
Dr. rer. nat.
Research Group Leader (Postdoc)
Dora Dzvonyar
Master of Science
Doctoral Candidate
Sebastian Klepper
Master of Science
Doctoral Candidate
Han Xu
Master of Science
Doctoral Candidate
Publications
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Projects Partners and Co-operations
| iOS Praktikum 2012 - Application of Agile Methods in Student Projects with Real Customers | Actiworks, Audi, B! Food, Bokowski+Laymann, B/S/H, Equinux, Graupner, MaibornWolff et. al., Siemens, Simon Pierro |
| iOS Praktikum 2013 - Application of Agile Methods in Student Projects with Real Customers | Siemens, B/S/H/, NTT Data, Maiborn Wolff et. al. & FTI, Adesso, Bokowski+Laymann, Audi, Linova, Jaimie Jacobs, Kisi |
| iOS Praktikum 2014 - Application of Agile Methods in Student Projects with Real Customers | BMW, T-Systems, Siemens IT, Siemens SPE, B/S/H/, NTT Data, equinux, Boinx Software, Adesso, Carnegie Mellon University, Praxis für Sporttraumatologie |
| iOS Praktikum WS14/15 - Application of Agile Methods in Student Projects with Real Customers | Siemens, B/S/H/, BMW, T-Systems, Allianz, Praxis für Sporttraumatologie, Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf, Incapptic, Innoactive |
| iOS Praktikum 2015 - Application of Agile Methods in Student Projects with Real Customers | T-Systems, Lufthansa, Wirecard, Allianz, Bokowsky + Laymann, BMW, Siemens, NTT Data, Audi, Bayerischer Rundfunk |
Theses Offered
Theses In Progress
Theses Finished
Masterthesis
Semi-automatic Team Composition in project-based organizations
Advisor
Dora Dzvonyar
Date
01/2017
The problem of team allocation is a complex task for humans to manage. We address this problem by exploring possible algorithmic solutions and implementing some of them in an interactive decision-support system. We collected a range of algorithmic approaches, introduced a convenient cat- egorization of them, and implemented one of the most promising ones into an actual software solution. We further held two distinct experiments with the implemented system. The results of these experiments show that the sys- tem finds an optimal team allocation with regards to the specified allocation objective and satisfies all specified constraints.
Master's Thesis
Introduction of a Standardized Continuous Delivery Workflow for Mobile Applications in a Corporate Environment
Advisor
Stephan Krusche
Date
November 2014
Mobile applications are of increasing relevance to businesses in all industries. While companies are progressively adopting agile methodologies to facilitate faster development, there is a lack of suitable workflows that accommodate all requirements and restrictions of a corporate environment. There are, however, promising approaches to continuous delivery for mobile projects in the academic field. Our goal is to transfer a well-proven process model and system from Technische Universität München (TUM) to the mobile business line at Capgemini, a multinational provider of IT consulting, outsourcing, and professional services. We describe a modified and extended process model that includes optional as well as variable subprocesses to provide a flexible solution. By allowing each project to adapt the workflow to their specific needs, we simultaneously provide a way of standardizing how continuous delivery is applied to mobile projects in the company. After evaluating our solution in eight deliberately chosen projects, results show increased frequency and thoroughness of integration, resulting in more immediate feedback about changes. Delivery is simplified and accelerated, saving both time and resources.
Master's Thesis
Collaborative Release Management in Agile Software Development
Advisor
Stephan Krusche, Lukas Alperowitz
Date
August 2014
Deployment and publication of software can be painful and time consuming. In this thesis we address the release management of software related to continuous integration and delivery. As collaboration is a central point in agile software development, we aim to promote collaboration in the area of release management by improving the release process. We focus on the release process, as the Rugby process model describes it. This thesis deals with the usage of releases in the context of Rugby and examines their impact. We conduct an evaluation to address the use of releases in meetings. This leads to an idea that can improve the application of releases as communication models.
Master's Thesis
A Framework for Continuous Delivery in Project-based Organizations
Advisor
Stephan Krusche
Date
November 2013
Continuous delivery allows software developers to deliver applications to the customer with a few clicks and therefore helps them to gather feedback fast. We present a continuous delivery process model and describe how we integrated this process model into the iOS Praktikum. We explain how we thought the concepts to the student using different teaching resources like a cross-project release-team. We evaluate the course using an online questionnaire after the end of the projects. Our observations show that participating students understood and applied the concepts of continuous delivery and are convinced about the benefits. Continuous delivery increased the amount of releases increased the speed of the delivery process compared to earlier versions of the Praktikum.
Bachelor’s Thesis
Context-Aware Process Transformation of Anti-Patterns in Agile Software Projects
Advisor
Sebastian Klepper
Date
15.07.2016
UNKNOWN
Metrics in Agile Software Development
Supervisor
Lukas Alperowitz
Date
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Masterthesis
Application and Evaluation of s Semiformal Requirements Specification Language: a Case Study
Advisor
Yang Li and Stephan Krusche
Date
15.06.2015
Many software projects suffer from low customer acceptance levels, late change requests and development cost overruns. A main cause of these problems is a lack of shared understanding among stakeholders. Traditional requirements specification languages and methods face difficulties to create and maintain shared understanding. For example by representing requirements in several different models and transferring information from one model to another information is lost. Each transformation introduces errors and stakeholders are not capable of correcting those mistakes, because the models are not easy to understand. Projects without shared understanding between stakeholders are bound to fail. We propose a semiformal behavior-driven specification language that is derived from methods developed by practitioners over the last 10 years. Behavior-driven specification uses ubiquitous language to describe system behavior as acceptance criteria from a user perspective. These semiformal models are easy to understand for stakeholders and form a basis for communication across domains, thereby enabling shared understanding. We apply the behavior-driven specification language in an industrial case study with a small development team on a mobile application development project. In a survey we show that lack of shared understanding is a root cause of problems in the development team and in an experimental setup we show that behavior-driven specification establishes shared understanding of requirements. Moreover in another survey we observe the explanatory value of shared understanding as well as better acceptance and better team performance as outcomes of shared understanding in a real world project.
Bachelorthesis
User Feedback and Rationale Management in Continuous Software Evolution
Advisor
Dora Dzvonyar
Date
04/2016
User feedback is difficult to use as a basis for implementation. For this purpose, we introduce FeedViz, a feedback visualisation component which analyses, structures and prioritises user feedback and illustrates the results to the development team. The aim is to simplify the decision-making process as well as to capture information related to feedback which is important for rationale management.
Masterthesis
Communication Metrics in Agile Projects
Advisor
Dora Dzvonyar
Date
08/2016
Software metrics have been proven to be useful in indicating problems in development projects, but they are limited to analyzing information captured in software artifacts. By applying metrics to communication artifacts, we want to make the development process more insightful, validate the software metrics by combining them with results derived from aspects of team communication, and make it possible to recognize problems from a very early project stage.
Bachelorthesis
Development of a User Interface for Team Allocation in Software Projects
Advisor
Dora Dzvonyar
Date
10/2016
The team allocation for software projects is often done solely based on the subjective judgment of the project manager. The objective of this thesis is to create a hybrid system called TEASE (TEam Allocation for Software Engineering). It makes use of an algorithm while allowing user interaction to create optimal teams from a pool of persons. The project manager can adapt the generated team allocation through an intuitive user interface based on his own knowledge and experience. The focus of this thesis is the user interface of TEASE.