Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming- P10

Agile Processesin Software Engineeringand Extreme Programming- P10:“The Program Commitee of XP 2000 invites you to participate in this meeting ofsoftware development researchers, professionals, educators, managers, and students.The conference brings together people from industry and academia to shareexperiences and ideas and to provide an archival source for important papers onflexible process-related topics.
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Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming- P10258 T. Seger, O. Hazzan, and R. Bar-Nahor2 Research Background2.1 Changes Introduced by Agile Software DevelopmentThe concept of “Agile development” emerged against the backdrop of the changingglobal environment. Individual status has become superior to the system; clients havebecome empowered and increasingly receive the full attention of service providers.Furthermore, technological developments, economic prosperity and new culturaltrends have all created a new industrial environment that is centered on communica-tions and information revolution [6]. In general, changes in the work environment are a kind of stress factor for employ-ees [7]. In particular, moving to agile software development requires a change in thesoftware practitioners mind set, which in turn might lead to even greater stress. Mainchanges introduced by agile software development include: team empowerment, mov-ing from a command and control structure to self-managed teams, applying very rigid(although simple) guidelines that all must follow, using social pressure to align theteam members behavior, accountability and taking responsibility, openness to criti-cism, willingness to share knowledge and expertise, willingness to admit to failures,seeking improvements, and goals orientation – willingness to do what ever is needed(testing, development, design, documentation, etc.) in order to meet the objectives.2.2 Coping with Changes and Threats in the Work EnvironmentFolkman and Lazarus [7] defined coping as a factor that mediates between the stressexperienced by the individual and the individual’s performance. In order to cope andfunction more effectively when experiencing change, the individual mobilizes, or isaffected by, individual personality attributes (for example, self-efficacy in this study),in addition to environmental resources (team climate components, in this study). Researchers who studied the effects of organizational climate on employees foundthat a positive managerial climate in the work environment is an empowering andfacilitating factor for employees (for example, [4, 11]). Thomsen, Soares, Nolan,Dallender and Arnetz [12] compared the effect on employee performance of environ-mental resources, such as managerial thoughtfulness, team collaboration etc. on theone hand, and individual personality attributes on the other hand. They found that theeffect of environmental resources on employees was at least as strong as the effect ofindividual attributes. In the present study we examine both aspects.3 Research ModelBased on previous findings described in Section 2, Figure 1 presents a schematicdescription of the research model examined in this study. The dependent variable in the present study is the practitioner’s readiness for agilesoftware development; the independent variables are team-management climate andindividual personality attributes, focusing at this stage only on individual self-efficacy.In what follows we describe the research hypotheses. How Does Readiness for Agile Development Relate to Team Climate 259 Team/Management Climate Practitioners Readiness for Agile Development Level of Individual Self-Efficacy Fig. 1. Proposed model for software practitioners readiness for agile development3.1 Team-Management ClimateThe first hypothesis is based on findings that posit a relationship between positiveteam climate, empowering managerial style and employee performance. Gillen, Baltz,Gassel, Kirsch and Vaccaro [8] found a positive correlation between positive depart-mental climate perceptions and employee performance, and coping with stress andpressure at work. As mentioned, moving to agile software development emphasizesboth the need for team cooperation and the dependencies between team members.Accordingly, the following hypothesis was formulated:Hypothesis 1: Negative correlations will be found between perceived positive teamclimate indices and the level of rejection of agile development; in other words, per-ceived positive climate relates to a high level of readiness for agile development.3.2 Individual Self-efficacyThe second hypothesis relates to individual self-efficacy, which is defined as an indi-vidual characteristic that distinguishes between individuals according to their ten-dency to perceive hard events as challenging and to perceive themselves as capable ofaccomplishing almost anything [2, 3]. Accordingly, the following hypothesis wasformulated:Hypothesis 2: Sof ...