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Masters Degrees (Information Systems and Technology)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/6927

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Information Systems and Technology) by Subject "Agile software development."

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    The adoption of agile software development methodologies by organisations in South Africa.
    (2015) Vanker, Cassim.; Klopper, Rembrandt.; Naidoo, Karunagaran.
    The software development life cycle (SDLC) is considered to be the oldest software de-velopment methodology and is often described as a deliberate, methodical and structured approach that is used by development teams to develop information systems. There are two SDLC methodologies, which are currently being utilized by programming practition-ers, namely traditional development and Agile development. The traditional view to software development assumes that the customer does not have a full understanding of their requirements and would thus need a detailed specification de-signed before development begins. Unlike the traditional view, the agilest views software as unpredictable and rely on people and their creativity rather than on processes. Anecdotal evidence suggests various benefits associated with Agile methodologies, these include increased collaboration, the quality of the end product, transparency and produc-tivity. An international Survey conducted, amongst software development companies, shows that 80% of respondents indicated that they had practiced Agile. While international research shows the popularity of Agile methodologies very little is known about Agile in South Africa. This research provides insight into the adoption of Agile, by South African organisations. The results of the study indicate that Agile methods are being used by organisations in South Africa. However, there is no evidence to suggest its being used overwhelming. Furthermore, this study uses the Gartner hype cycle as the underpinning theoretical model and places Agile methods on the Gartner hype cycle as being in the trough of disillusionment.
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    Critical success factors that influence the performance of agile software development methodologies in organisations.
    (2020) Peters, Yeshmeeta Deodutt.; Marimuthu, Mudaray.
    The agile manifesto was brought into existence in 2001 and agile as a methodology was derived in the 1990s. The reason for the formulation of this methodology was to create methods to produce software in a better manner that could fulfill the customer’s needs in an environment that was iterative and controlled. The types of agile methodologies being followed are Scrum, extreme project management, adaptive project management, and dynamic project management method and scrum is the most widely utilized. There is insufficient research into the hierarchy of importance of the critical success factors that affect agile projects. Critical success factors of organisational structure, people, process, technical and, project factors have been identified in previous studies, however, the ranking of these factors in terms of the level of importance for agile success has not been studied enough. These critical factors are classified as Technical, Organisational, Process, Project, and People categories. There were suggestions from researchers that test automation and cloud computing can also positively affect the success of a project using agile. Since these two factors were not studied in conjunction with the other critical factors mentioned previously, this study extended previous studies by incorporating these factors. This study expanded the factors by including cloud computing and test automation as possible critical factors to the successful implementation of agile software development. The research method chosen for this study was the quantitative method. The data was collected using questionnaires and was analyzed via descriptive and inferential statistics. To achieve an acceptable statistical power, a sample size of 200 agile practitioners was targeted, but the researcher was able to obtain 110 responses. SPSS version 27.0 was used for the descriptive and inferential data analysis and the statistical tests. The main findings indicated that people, technical factors, and test automation were the top three critical success factors in terms of importance. The project, people, and organisational structure were the top three critical success factors in terms of performance. Cloud computing was found to be less important whereas test automation was found to be an important factor for agile success. Significant gaps were identified between the critical success factors and their performance in organisations. The study recommends that organisations place additional emphasis on the critical success factors that affect agile success and the performance of these factors to close the gap identified in this study. Further recommendations are to provide adequate training in agile processes.
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    An integration of traditional project management principles into Agile software development methodologies.
    (2016) Mapongwana, Yonga.; Ranjeeth, Sanjay.
    A large amount of money and effort has been invested by companies into establishing their project management (PM) environment and processes which follow the classical phased approach where requirements are defined upfront and fixed. However organisations also desire to react more quickly to new global challenges and to the changing business environment. These business requirements then result in the failure of these classical approaches to PM. There is therefore a need to enhance the current PM environment so that it is more adoptive to changes in the business environment. As a result of these changes in the business landscape agile software development methodologies (ASDM) have acquired a lot of popularity in the software development community. This popularity is being driven by their dynamic nature and the notion that user requirements do not have to be fully specified in the initial phases of the development process. This has resulted in the improvement in success levels of information systems (IS) projects that have made use of an ASDM. A shift to ASDM can increase the success rate of IS projects and mitigate some issues that are typical for heavy weight methods. Good examples can be found in the case studies (Balada, 2013; Raithatha, 2007), where agile methods were successfully used in software development projects of all sizes and complexity. However introducing ASDM for large and complex projects particularly in large enterprises can introduce a number of challenges (Thamhain, 2014). While agile principles foster great flexibility and agility in changing environments, they are very difficult to realize in larger projects that require more execution formality and discipline to deal with the specific complexities (Waardenburg & Vliet, 2013). In order to address these problems, the current study investigates the problem of integrating Traditional Project Management (TPM) techniques into the development of large scale IS projects in large enterprises with complex IT landscapes that make use of AM. This study followed a hybrid approach combining both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Data collection entailed semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The sampling strategy that was used was purposive sampling. A phenomenographic approach was used to obtain an insight into the experience of software development (SD) by software practitioners who made use of ASDM. The qualitative data elicited from this phase of the study was analysed thematically to identify aspects of AM that had a pivotal influence on software practitioners’ perspective on ASDM. A substantive component of this phenomenographic incursion was to establish whether there was some form of resonance between ASDM and PM or whether these methodologies were diametrically opposite to one another. The objective of the qualitative component of the study was to obtain sufficient information to enable the development of a model for SD that integrated the principles of PM into ASDM. This phase of the study was followed-up by a quantitative phase that was underpinned by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) in order to ascertain software practitioners’ acceptance of the proposed model (referred to as the Agile-Project Management Model (APMM)) The results of the UTAUT-based acceptance test indicate that the proposed APMM received a high acceptance rate by the software practitioners who constituted the main subjects of the current study.