More than Code: Contributions in Scrum Software Engineering Teams

Presentation slides for the CHASE 2020 paper “More than Code: Contributions in Scrum Software Engineering Teams,” F. Ramin, C. Matthies, and R. Teusner, in IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, ACM Press, 2020. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3387940.3392241

http://www.chaseresearch.org/workshops/chase2020

Transcript

1. Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany christoph.matthies@hpi.de @chrisma0 More than Code: Contributions in Scrum Software Engineering Teams Frederike Ramin, Christoph Matthies, Ralf Teusner July ’20 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE’20)
2. Motivation & Background 2 Agile Software Development and Scrum [1] CollabNet Inc. 2019. “13th Annual State of Agile Report”. Technical Report. https://www.stateofagile.com/#ufh-i-521251909-13th-annual-state-of-agile-report [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf ▪ Agile methods, e.g. Scrum, are de facto standards in SE [1] ▪ Teams with all the competencies required for project work [2] Software engineers’ contributions to progress & success of modern software projects are varied
3. Research Goal 3 A Model of Scrum Teamwork Contributions ▪ Scrum and Agile approaches rely on visibility of project progress [3] ▪ Capturing & categorizing contributions to project success ensures team awareness of accomplished work Goal: Model of Scrum contributions. Enable appropriate appraisal & appreciation of Scrum team efforts [3] Henrik Kniberg. 2015. “Scrum and XP From the Trenches” (2nd ed.). C4Media
4. Definition 4 What is a Contribution of a Software Engineering Team Member? Contribution: Any activity, demanding human resources, that adds to the fulfillment of project goals, by adding value to the developed product or the (future) effectiveness of the team. ▪ Technical aspects, e.g., source code changes ▪ Also process improvement activities, meeting facilitation & effective communication [4] [4] D. Ford, T. Zimmermann, C. Bird, and N. Nagappan. 2017. “Characterizing Software Engineering Work with Personas Based on Knowledge Worker Actions”. ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. 394–403.
5. Related Work 5 What do Software Engineers Spend their Time on? ▪ Devs spend only ¼ of their time on coding-related activities [5] [5] André N Meyer, Gail C Murphy, Thomas Fritz, and Thomas Zimmermann. 2019. “Developers’ Diverging Perceptions of Productivity”. Apress, 137–146.
6. Contributions in Scrum 6 Roles of the Scrum Process ▪ Scrum acknowledges different task profiles / “roles” within teams [2]: ▪ Product Owner (PO) ▪ Scrum Master (SM) ▪ Development Team (Dev.) [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
7. Model Construction 7 Contributions Listed in the Scrum Guide ▪ Model from first principles, based on the seminal Scrum Guide [2] ▪ Successively code text passages ▪ Extract mentions of work items, tasks, meetings, project requirements and responsibilities ▪ Deduplicate and cluster ▪ Assign short name and designated role [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
8. Results 8 Extracted Scrum Teamwork Contributions ▪ 17 individual Scrum teamwork contributions ▪ Explicitly included the role All ▪ Highlight level of collaboration ▪ Contributions arranged along 3 dimensions ▪ Technical, Contentual, Managerial ▪ Based on related work [4,6] [4] D. Ford, T. Zimmermann, C. Bird, and N. Nagappan. 2017. “Characterizing Software Engineering Work with Personas Based on Knowledge Worker Actions”. ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. 394–403. [6] Judy L. Wynekoop and Diane B. Walz. 2000. “Investigating traits of top performing software developers”. Information Technology & People 13, 3 (2000), 186–195
9. Example 9 Extracted Scrum Teamwork Contributions ▪ Scrum Guide extracts [2] ▪ ▪ ▪ Short name: Process Improvement ▪ Role: All ▪ Dimension: Managerial [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
10. Scrum Contribution Model 10 Scrum Contribution Model (adding to product increment utilizing technical skills) (influencing the product’s prospect and direction) (concerned with adapting the work process)
11. Model Usage 11 Envisioned Use Cases for Scrum Contribution Model ▪ Use Case: Scrum Team Status Check ▪ Model as means of conformance analysis, contrasting model’s teamwork contributions and team’s self-identified ones ▪ Mismatches represent starting points for discussion Facilitate retrospection of chosen process adaptations and their rationales
12. Summary 12 A Model of Scrum Contributions ▪ Structured exploration of the project member’s contributions described by the Scrum Guide ▪ Constricted scope of initial model promotes clarity and traceability of construction ▪ Representative of key contributions in unmodified, theoretical, “vanilla Scrum” [7] [7] Lucas Gren, Richard Torkar, and Robert Feldt. 2017. “Group development and group maturity when building agile teams: A qualitative and quantitative investigation at eight large companies”. Journal of Systems and Software 124 (2017),104–119.
13. Conclusion 13 A Model of Scrum Contributions ▪ Model makes the often implicit contributions of Scrum team members to project progress explicit & visual ▪ Allows analyses that foster self-reflection and retrospection regarding teamwork processes & contributions May prove particularly useful in Retrospective meetings
14. Recap 14 christoph.matthies@hpi.de @chrisma0
15. Image Sources 15 In order of appearance ▪ donation by Vectors Market from the Noun Project ▪ coding by Gerald Wildmoser from the Noun Project ▪ Project by Nithinan Tatah from the Noun Project ▪ goal by Alice Design from the Noun Project ▪ Scrum team by Sharon Showalter from the Noun Project ▪ Definition by Sumana Chamrunworakiat from the Noun Project ▪ analysis book by achmad mulyana from the Noun Project ▪ List by hans draiman from the Noun Project ▪ Check Server Status\ by Ex Eyecon from the Noun Project ▪ icecream by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project ▪ Curtain by NTT from the Noun Project