Mining Dependencies in Large-Scale Agile Software Development Projects: A Quantitative Industry Study
Context: Coordination in large-scale software development is critical yet difficult, as it faces the problem of dependency management and resolution. In this work, we focus on managing requirement dependencies that in Agile software development (ASD) come in the form of user stories. Objective: This work studies decisions of large-scale Agile teams regarding identification of dependencies between user stories. Our goal is to explain detection of dependencies through users’ behavior in large-scale, distributed projects. Method: We perform empirical evaluation on a large real-world dataset from an Agile software organization, provider of a leading software for Agile project management. We mine the usage data of the Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool to extract large-scale development project data for more than 70 teams running over a five-year period. Results: Our results demonstrate that dependencies among user stories are not frequently observed (the problem affects around 10% of user stories), however, their implications on large-scale ASD are considerable. Dependencies have impact on software releases and increase work coordination complexity for members of different teams. Conclusion: Requirement dependencies undermine Agile teams’ autonomy and are difficult to manage at scale. We conclude that leveraging ALM monitoring data to automatically detect dependencies could help Agile teams address work coordination needs and manage risks related to dependencies in a timely manner.
Tue 22 JunDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
13:00 - 14:30 | AgileEASE 2021 / Vision and Emerging Results Track at Zoom Chair(s): Michael Felderer University of Innsbruck | ||
13:00 22mFull-paper | Mining Dependencies in Large-Scale Agile Software Development Projects: A Quantitative Industry Study EASE 2021 Katarzyna Biesialska Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Xavier Franch Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Victor Muntés-Mulero Beawre Digital S.L. Pre-print | ||
13:22 22mFull-paper | How Do Agile Practitioners Interpret and Foster "Technical Excellence"? EASE 2021 Adam Alami IT University of Copenhagen, Maria Paasivaara LUT University, Finland & IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark & Aalto University, Finland Pre-print | ||
13:45 22mFull-paper | Tell me: Am I going to Heaven? A Diagnosis Instrument of Continuous Software Engineering Practices Adoption EASE 2021 Paulo Sérgio dos Santos Júnior , Monalessa Barcellos Ontology and Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO), Federal University of Espirito Santo, Fabiano Borges Ruy Ontology and Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO), Federal University of Espirito Santo Pre-print | ||
14:07 22mVision and Emerging Results | Empirical Findings on BDD Story Parsing to Support Consistency Assurance between Requirements and Artifacts Vision and Emerging Results Track Thiago Rocha Silva , Brian Fitzgerald Lero - The Irish Software Research Centre and University of Limerick Link to publication DOI Pre-print |