Continuous Improvement in Software Development

Continuous Improvement in Software cultivationThe above principle concerns the close, daily collaboration between credit line community and clients is an important one for quick as it reassures the usability of the reaping and accordingly caliber of work to fulfil the guests requisite in the best way vi qualified (Cohn, 2005). The principle reflects the quick tax of client collaboration over signal negotiation. Schwaber (2004) highschoollights the importance of this principle as during the last decades with the increasing complexity of IT project, developers and clients claim been drifting apart due to unsuit qualified methodologies that obstruct effective customer collaboration.Requirement collection following this brisk principle goes beyond the requirement collection of traditional project management methodologies (Cobb, 2011). Beck (2000) suggests that when using XP, there should unendingly be a customer on site to be able to answer all arising questions instan taneously. Customers a good deal pack different or no expectations from a project which emphasizes the need of close collaboration to detect both discrepancies (Cohn, 2005). Cohn (2005) further argues that through daily run acrosss changing requirements originating in rapidly evolving business environment green goddess be hyperkinetic syndromeressed immediately and realignment of the strategy and deliverables is possible.However, the habituate of daily customer meetings was not achievable during the wiki project nonetheless, the aggroup was able to consult with the customer frequently through email and rattling shorts enlighten response eons allowed areas of unclarity to be resolved promptly. This close collaboration was often used to clarify small incidents in the requirements to increase the customer happiness through implementing change request without delay. When this principle is applied cautiously and thoroughly, a high level of trust can be substantial between the two parties involved (Schwaber, 2004). Highsmith (2009) further argues that trust is a very important issue to be valued as it enhances the aggroup up cohesion and lineament of collaborative work.This is supported by the experienced Group atomic number 19 has made during the wiki project. During closed circuit 1 and 2, all requirements have been comprehensively discussed and comminuted within the team and with the customer during iteration planning and initial customer consultation. After the team has started maturation the iterations harvest-feast, the customer was consulted again to resolve all remaining unclarities. Through this practice of close collaboration the note of the product was at a very high level which was reflected through the slap-up feedback from the customer. However, during iteration 3 this high level of cooperation with the customer was neglected by the team which was been reflected in the iteration review meeting. The customer was not as satisf ied with the product as in the previous two iterations, because the team failed to fulfill the customers requirements and specifications.In the subsequent iteration it was the Scrum Masters top priority to involve the customer again in to a greater extent(prenominal) detail to enhance communication and idea exchange, removing impediment between the customer and the schooling team as suggested by Schwaber (2004). To adhere and to apply this principle cleverness be one of the most valuable lessons learned in this project, as the close collaboration ensures a high quality of work and afterwards high customer joy.The principle of sustainable discipline relates to the aim of under authentic the product in a constant cubic yard without any perks in victimization velocity. Sustainability has a great significance, as the full work of fast development is aimed to be a sustainable onset (Augustine, 2005). Poppendieck and Poppendieck (2003) note that companies which have adopted l ean thinking have achieved a significant sustainable performance advantage. Stellman and Greene (2014) highlight that the breaking down of the satisfying project into littler more manageable chunks facilitates the process of determining graphic durations of every fable point or piece of work that is to be developed. The ability of estimating realistic durations enables the project team to give accurate predictions of the development time of the whole product. This supports a very steady flow of product development and the team can work in a constant and sustainable abuse (Cohn, 2005).In software development, this constant flow leads to a higher quality of code and fewer inconsistencies in the source code. In consequence, less time is needed to address bug fixing, which make the whole concept more sustainable and viable (Cohn, 2005). Bug fixing, improving flaws and making corrections often lead to a higher work load for the project team and consequently lowers the motivation and increases the stress the team experiences. The stress primarily results from the cool off existing deadline at the end of the short iteration which still ineluctably to be met, despite the amount of required re-work. Cohn (2005) further stipulates that over time, the customer throws and acknowledges the high quality, which subsequently enables trust to be developed between the customer and the project team. Cobb (2011) further points out that all team members, not adept developers, need to keep pace with all(prenominal) other throughout the whole duration of the project.In supple development, the iterations prevent team members to step in or out of the project in different phases. As a result, the development of the product is much more fluent, as all team member can built up trust and develop a high team cohesion (Cobb, 2011). Cohn (2005) further argues that this can lead to a higher motivation for the project team as they feel empower and are more willing to achieve better results. Whitworth and Biddle (2007) conclude that agile planning reduces tensions and conflicts and the consecutive development of small tasks promotes motivation in the team, which exclusively which leads to an overall quality improvement.In practice, Team Green has experienced the value of this principle, however, not in as much detail as in real-life practice. The project was already divided into weekly iterations, which established the grounds of sustainable development. However, the team experienced the value of dividing the whole project deliverables into smaller split as this practice greatly improves transparency and clearness of what requirements need to be fulfilled and how this can be achieved. The internally concord deadlines did not drastically change during the whole project duration. This way the team was able to realise a routine of weekly development, which greatly helped and supported in developing a high-quality product. Trust among the team has been develope d at the same time, which facilitated the sustainable development.An important lesson learned in this regard is the necessity of splitting the work load and thoroughly planning durations of the single pieces of work. This greatly benefits a sustainable, constant pace of development and consequently increases the product quality and customer satisfaction.The last agile principle states that the team should regularly reflect on how to become more effective and adopt their work processes accordingly. Through the alignment of the overall approach and the strategy of development, the project team aims to increase the quality baseline of the developed work. Stellman and Greene (2014) note that it is important to include retrospectives to evaluate and assess performance to get in out ways on how to become more effective in future projects. This retrospective should not be limited to one meeting at the end of a project but should be utilize immediately when any possible improvements are recognised. According to Beck (2000) the project team should use daily stand up meetings to get discuss any areas of general development improvement. If this is not possible, the team should try to incorporate a retrospective at least after finishing every iteration (Smith and Upton, 2015). Cobb (2011) elaborates on this in saying that sprints in agile are mostly much shorter than the development duration of traditional approaches, which facilitates the reflecting process.The concept of continuous improvement is linked to lean software development and based on the Kaizen doctrine and re-engineering approach to heighten the standard of status quo to achieve better quality products (Bond, 1999). Kaizen and re-engineering philosophy were originally deduced from operational management in logistics, but can be applied to other improvement processes such as Agile product development. Typically, the improvement process can be divided into quartet consecutive stages1. maintaining process status quo2. process improvement3. process re-engineering4. achieving process stability.Group Green applied this principle during most of the wiki project. In the eldest two iterations, the team held one retrospective at the end of each iteration to identify areas of improvement and ways to implement more agile principles than the ones that were already used. This practice lead to a high quality of product and customer satisfaction. However, during iteration 3 this principle was neglected and the team did not pursue the strive of further improvement. This was reflected in reduced customer satisfaction in comparison to the previous iterations. In response, the team decided to add an additional retrospective reflect on how to further improve their development process to retrieve the higher quality standard and customer satisfaction of previous iterations. Based on this positive experience of reinforcing this principle it was agreed that an additional retrospective is being held at th e end of the wiki project to ensure a high quality of final assignment report. Reflecting the whole development process, it can be said with certainty that lessons learned includes the necessity of consequently applying this principle. Only by doing so, the prerequisite is fulfilled to continuously deliver high quality products and achiever customer satisfaction.