The software industry has always been implementing various software development methodologies to ensure efficient development, optimizing resources, time and money. Since origin of software technology, many famous methodologies like Traditional Waterfall methodology, Agile methodologies have been adopted by companies (Livermore, 2007). Scrum methodology, since its introduction, has been proving that it is the efficient methodology in various terms. Some companies implemented Scrum methodology by making suitable changes to meet the organizational processes. (Tripp, 2012)
Businesses intend to develop any software with highest quality while keeping operation costs low. Many development methodologies have been created to achieve the same, but have failed in meeting the quality and budgets. (Permana, Bali, 2015). Waterfall being the traditional methodology, many companies have been reluctant to change and are still implementing Waterfall, with which there might be loss economically. (Altameem, 2015). But since Scrum Methodology is responsive to change and is economically viable, implementing Scrum Methodology has been widespread, (Ambler 2009; Schwaber and Fichera 2005). As per reports more than 50% of businesses have been adopting Scrum Methodology (West and Grant 2010). The goal of this paper is to prove that developing software’s using Scrum Methodology is far efficient, both for quality and budget, than using Waterfall Methodology.
Any developed software should be of high quality and businesses intend to achieve this within limited budget. (Permana, Bali, 2015). Since early stages of software development many methodologies were created with the same intention, but each of them had their limitations (Avison and Fitzgerald 1998; Hirschheim et al. 1995). For this study Constructivism would be used and the gathered data would be further analyzed. This will help in validating the impact Scrum Methodology has on software development in terms of software quality, operation costs and project success. For this research using a more quantitative approach will give the expected results. Many variables will be taken into consideration and will be used to perform the research. These variables will be recorded, measured and analyzed to finally obtain a report which will solve the purpose of the research. Also non-experimental research strategy can be used to approach this research. This would be a research method which makes use of surveys, questionnaires, interviews along with numerical data, statistics to come to a quantitative result. For conducting a research using quantitative method the questions should be very specific, numerical.
The questions pertaining to this research are listed below:
The objectives for research are listed below:
The above diagram only depicts the fact that Scrum methodology is very efficient than Waterfall. If any company adopts waterfall, then it is an inefficient methodology to implement and whereas any company adopting Scrum will have a successful implementation.
H0: Implementing Scrum methodology has no impact: as there are other methodologies which may be efficient based on the organizational needs, Scrum may have no impact
Ha Implementing Scrum methodology has impact: As Scrum methodology is efficient in saving time and resources, this will have impact on organizations implementing it.
Several software methodologies have been implemented and have been emerging since last four decades. Every methodology has been implemented to address issues related to growing systems and complexity (Hirschheim et al. 1995). These methodologies haven’t been able to reduce the failure rates of projects. The failure rates continue to increase. (Standish Group, 2009). To overcome this, Scrum methodology has been introduced. This scrum methodology takes into consideration, variety of factors that are negatively affected with Waterfall. (Beck and Andres 2004; Conboy 2009). Implementing Scrum methodology has not only increased project success ratio, but also positively impacted many factors. And companies implementing this methodology have been able to complete projects on time, and saved time and resources in the process. (Boehm and Turner 2004; Cockburn 2001; Highsmith 2002; Schwaber 1996).
So, this study will help many companies which haven’t moved to Scrum methodology, in making their organizational change decision.
Scrum Methodology: “Scrum is an agile information systems and software development method with a strong focus on project management, which was formalized and tested by Schwaber and Sutherland in the mid 1990ties” (Schwaber & Beedle 2002, Schwaber 2004).
Software Development: “Software development methodology is a process of organizing a set of method and notation convention which has been defined to develop software” (Johannesson, 2003)
In the process of conducting research no human subjects are involved in this research. But the participants privacy, confidential information will be secured consistent with ethical measures. All participants consent will be obtained prior to the data collection. The process of data collection is transparent, and measures are taken to ensure participants safety. The research data doesn’t comprise of any personal information.
As for the boundaries, this research doesn’t take into consideration all the other software development methodologies except Scrum and Waterfall. This research is only focused on research questions stated above and any other questions are not covered in this research. Also this research doesn’t consider data collected by other means of collection techniques. As this research adopted a research design which uses interviews, surveys and questionnaires with 50 human participants, the analysis is limited to the data from these and any additional data will not be part of the analysis.
As Scrum methodology is being implemented on large scale only since the past 5 years, only certain factors have to be chosen for comparison as there are very few similarities in factors between Waterfall and Scrum methodologies. Also the researcher has certain limitations in terms of time and budget. The research had to be completed within 15 weeks. This implies that the researcher had to limit the data collection methods to survey, questionnaires and interviews. And as this research uses human participants, the quality of data is dependent on knowledge and responsiveness of the participant. This may result in questionable and misleading responses.
This research is mainly focused on the Impact of Scrum Methodology, while there are many other methodologies like XP, FDD, TDD etc. Hence this literature review is only focused on Scrum Methodology and not in other Agile Methodologies. This limited the sources for this research which performed their research on Scrum Methodology. As for finding appropriate sources keywords such as ‘Scrum Methodology’, ‘Impact of Scrum Methodology’, ‘Implementing Scrum Methodology’ etc. were used. This search led to finding 5 relevant articles which are dealing with similar research. Also several other article related to Agile Methodologies have been reviewed for this research.
As Toer & Torgier (2008) stated, Scrum Methodology is widely implemented as it is more responsive to change. Scrum Methodology also introduces some new roles around which the entire methodology is based on.
Mike (2014) argues that Scrum Methodology gains its popularity because it acts as a “wrapper” for all other Software Methodologies while being supported by rest of Agile Methodologies. Mike (2014) also identifies the importance of Product Owner, as developers work closely with Product Owner in this methodology, to prioritize the product backlog and develop the functionality accordingly.
Sserena (2007) describes the product backlog and product owner in depth. The product backlog contains all the requirements for the software in form of epics, features and user stories. The product owner is responsible for managing this product backlog. Based on the priorities set by Product owner, developers set the complexity and estimate the time it takes to develop the shippable product increments. The team further decides either to add new items or make changes that helps them in taking further steps.
Ambler (2010) identifies the emphasis of lean software development which is designed to develop the software is small chunks while reviewing it, to improve the quality of end product. This way certain important features can be delivered with highest efficiency. This is discussed in depth by Moran (2014), who emphasize the importance of developing software is small increments. This way the process involved in development is review constantly, while providing communication between developers and business. Instant feedback only helps the quality of the end product. Risk is always analyzed in the process, ensuring risk management processes in place.
Yoong & Sidney (2007) identifies that traditional software methodologies have many limitations and replacing them with Scrum Methodology has benefits. Scrum Methodology also enhances trust between involved individuals. This only helps them to perform their roles efficiently. This method also emphasizes on developers working closely with the business to satisfy the business need of developing a product which has competitive advantage in the market. Fergus (2012) accurately identifies that Scrum Methodology involves lot of retrospection of the developed product from iteration to iteration. This helps the team in identifying the errors in code and correcting them to ensure the product works as per design. Scrum Methodology encourages developers to be independent. This helps in creating a good environment in workplace, where developer can perform their daily activities with motivation.
Software development
Brunetti, G discusses the current trends in the software industry, that there has been in huge rise in software packages that are being developed. Johannesson (2003) defines the steps involved in Software Development. The development usually involves collecting requirements, coding the software, testing it and then rolling into production. There can be other aspects to software development besides these too. But these are the major steps/pieces that have to be included while developing a software. This is called Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). As discussed by Langer (2012), the development can be anywhere from 3 months to several years, based on various factors like software size, team size, resources, budget etc. But every software that is being developed has to go through various phases like Inception, Requirements, Development, Testing, Roll-out to be a finished product. The various phases as explained by Langer (2012) are described below:
These different phases have to be done with precision in order to achieve the goals in developing a software.
As Brunetti, G discusses, the software development industry has been using several methodologies which suit their organizational needs in order to achieve the goal. Every company has been choosing to either implement an existing methodology or adopt and modify it to suit their organizational needs. There might also be various methods implemented which are created by the companies for their own use. Various methodologies have been introduced which were helpful in developing the software with very minimal loss and high success. Some of those methodologies have been explained below:
Factors affecting Software Development
A study by Nakki et al (2011) shows that a successful software has various factors impacting the development. These factors include well defined requirements, large teams, large code bases etc. Every methodology has tried to address these factors which also help in the success. The time period in which the software is developed has to be very efficiently decided. The number of resources, budget and several other factors are affected by the time taken to develop a software.
Kohlbacher et all (2011) highlight the importance of changing requirements and its impact on software development. After the inception, every software development methodology will use some time to gather the requirements around what software is to be developed and some key features are decided. Though the requirements are captured, it doesn’t mean that these will be final. As the project progresses, there is a high possibility that there might be changes to the requirements. This is common within every industry. But when developing a software, these changes make a huge impact on timelines of the project. Imreh & Raisinghani(2011) states that one of the reasons Waterfall methodology has become unpopular is because it is least receptive to change, and every small change in phases after development will have huge impact on timelines. Also one of the reasons Scrum and other Agile methodologies have become popular is because they are very receptive to changes in requirements. This changed the timelines only little. As the software is being developed and tested iteratively, the business had very clear idea of what is being built and how it can be modified very early on the project.
It is very important for any research to follow a Research Methods Worldview. Depending on the type of research a suitable method can be selected. There are 4 worldviews in research namely Postpositivism, Constructivism, Pragmatism, Advocacy/Participatory (Creswell, J.W. (2009). Postpositivism is based on Objective which is independent of participants, whereas research method is controlled experiment and/or survey. In this the method of data collection is Quantitative. Constructivism is subjective and is dependent on the participants. Both of these involve both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collections. (Petersen et all, 2013)
For this study Constructivism would be used and the gathered data would be further analyzed. This will help in validating the impact Scrum Methodology has on software development in terms of software quality, operation costs and project success.
As we discuss on research methods worldview, there are essentially three major types of research design Qualitative, Quantitative, and mixed method approaches. The research design is based on Research Worldview chosen for the research. As Newman & Benz, 1998 indicate, Quantitative and Qualitative approaches are not entirely different, nor completely opposite of each other. But there is a third method which is a balanced approach between qualitative and quantitative. This is called a mixed methods research. Quantitative is more towards the use of numerical and variables whereas qualitative is more words based.
For this research using a more quantitative approach will give the expected results. Many variables will be taken into consideration and will be used to perform the research. These variables will be recorded, measured and analyzed to finally obtain a report which will solve the purpose of the research. Also non-experimental research strategy can be used to approach this research. We can discard experimental research strategy for this research as this will deviate from the scope of research.
As the non-experimental research strategy is being used for this research, there is no need to establish the impact of Scrum methodology on software development before performing the research. This would be a research method which makes use of surveys, questionnaires, interviews along with numerical data, statistics to come to a quantitative result. For conducting a research using quantitative method the questions should be very specific, numerical. There might be some data available online which can also be used for research. For these purposes human participants can be chosen to provide required responses. The participants should be chosen to include IT professionals both in Technology and Business sectors. This way aspects like costs involved, quality of software can be evaluated. Along with these, independent scholars, computer science students will be included in the list. The researcher intends to use 50 participants for surveys, interviews and questionnaires. The responses will be analyzed without any bias.
After the data collection, the data has to be analyzed to yield expected results. Descriptive and inferential statistics are two approaches to analyzing the data. Descriptive approach shows what happens with the sample of data, whereas inferential method is used to further investigate and drill down to an intended result. For this research as we study the impact, it would be beneficial to use Inferential statistics approach as this will help in analyzing not only the collected data, but will also enable to further analyze beyond the immediate data.
For the responses from interviews, the conversations will be recorded and transcribed to ensure no loss in information. These responses then undergo an algorithm which breaks downs the responses. This will be helpful in performing quantitative analysis on text based responses. Also the surveys and questionnaires will also be broken down to ensure quantitative analysis for better result outcome. The numerical results then can be analyzed using MS Excel program which is an available data analysis tool. Using this tool graphs can be created to provide pictorial representation of data.
As this research is conducted on software methodologies, the population for this research would be organizations, employees etc. Various researches conducted on software development available will be analyzed for this research. As far as demographics, this research cannot be limited to a particular geographical location.
As the chosen population is wide, a sample of data should be collected and analyzed. This sample is would contain the variables chosen for this research along with small group of participants from the population. Depending on the type of sample collected, the type of statistical analysis can be chosen. Also, if the chosen sample doesn’t give similar results as the population then a different analysis needs to be done, and also the sample should be chosen to include random variables. For this research, two major groups are identified, one group which are still using Traditional methodologies, whereas the other which uses Scrum for tis software development.
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