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Papers by Christoph Johann Stettina

Research paper thumbnail of Is there an agile handover? An empirical study of documentation and project handover practices across agile software teams

2013 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE) & IEEE International Technology Management Conference, 2013

The growing use of agile and lean methods has heated the discussion on efficiency and sustainabil... more The growing use of agile and lean methods has heated the discussion on efficiency and sustainability of software engineering processes. During project handovers, for example, loss of knowledge has been indicated and critics of agile methods point at a lack of documentation. In this paper we take the perspective of patterns of human action, looking at the actions the teams take and the artifacts they use during a software project handover. Our results from 30 teams in small to large size projects cover the perceptions of a variety of roles and indicate that the adoption is a learning process in three interdependent phases: Environment, System and Architecture. The participants in our study perceived the biggest gaps in the usefulness of available design and requirements documentation. Based on our findings we suggest that documentation artifacts should rather support the learning process and that including maintenance staff in the development process significantly helps improving the handover.

Research paper thumbnail of Managing weak ties in collaborative work

2011 17th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, Jun 20, 2011

Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT... more Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT, these styles have a strong virtual flavour, ranging from flexwork, hot-desking and telework to virtual teams and virtual organizations. The virtuality of the styles has impacts on how employees within an organization perform their task and how they interact with colleagues, clients and supervisors, but the impact is not yet well understood. 24 board level executives from 18 Swiss knowledge firms have been interviewed about virtual work arrangements and the change these bring in networking dynamics within their organization. The contribution of the paper is that new networking dynamics can be related to complement the theory on weak, strong and absent ties. More in particular, virtual networks can be located in weak ties, thereby making strong ties less important. We point out how network dynamics are located in weak ties through which virtuality and flexibility of a network can be expressed.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards responsible workplace innovation: The rise of NWW in public knowledge organizations and their impact on governance

2014 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE), 2014

ABSTRACT Triggered by ICT development and the need to cut costs, private organizations initiated ... more ABSTRACT Triggered by ICT development and the need to cut costs, private organizations initiated a number of initiatives to prepare for a more network centric reign. One of such initiatives is commonly referred to as New Ways of Working (NWW). While the private sector has been busy finding its way through the change process, how such a workspace innovation can be made sustainable is yet to be defined. In order to contribute to responsible workspace innovation, this study takes the example of public knowledge organizations. In this multiple case study we for the first time discuss the reasons for NWW adoption in public Dutch organizations, interpretations and actual practices in use and their impact on work organization and governance mechanisms.

Research paper thumbnail of Structuring Medical Agility

Technology is omnipresent in intervention rooms, potentially having enormous impact on workflows ... more Technology is omnipresent in intervention rooms, potentially having enormous impact on workflows and on flexibility. Despite ICT systems' more flexible support of medical protocols, the styles of collaborating do not really match. Intervention support systems are as yet stand alone and not sufficiently interoperable. Taking an ICT perspective, we seek to understand medical work, how to view the way it is organized and how to improve its integration with intervention support systems, driven by highly dynamic coordination models embedded in the framework of clinical pathways.

Research paper thumbnail of Five Agile Factors: Helping Self-management to Self-reflect

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2011

In this paper a tool is proposed to foster reflection in agile software development teams. Based ... more In this paper a tool is proposed to foster reflection in agile software development teams. Based upon the qualitative model of Moe et al. , we contribute a quantitative questionnaire organized along five dimensions of agile teamwork analogous to the "Five Factor Model" in contemporary psychology. To test this survey tool and its alignment with existing studies, we have executed an empirical validation of the tool with 79 individuals and 8 international Scrum teams. We find that interteam agreement on the factors is high and that the survey tool is found very useful. The instrument offers a comparable measure to agile teams and gives recommendations for each of the factors helping to understand individual as well as organizational level barriers.

Research paper thumbnail of Necessary and neglected?

Proceedings of the 29th ACM international conference on Design of communication - SIGDOC '11, 2011

When compared to traditional development methods, agile development practices are associated with... more When compared to traditional development methods, agile development practices are associated with more direct communication and less documentation. However, few empirical studies exist that investigate the role of documentation in agile development teams. We thus employed a questionnaire to measure the perceptions of a group of agile practitioners with regard to the documentation in their projects. We obtained responses from 79 agile software development professionals and 8 teams in 13 different countries. Our findings include that over half of developers in our data set find documentation important or even very important but that too little documentation is available in their projects. Agile practitioners do not seem to agree with the agile principle that "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-toface conversation." We were able to validate this result for a set of dissimilar agile teams in various domains.

Research paper thumbnail of Contracting in Agile Software Projects: State of Art and How to Understand It

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Documentation Work in Agile Teams: The Role of Documentation Formalism in Achieving a Sustainable Practice

2012 Agile Conference, 2012

Abstract As its second guiding principle, agile software development promotes working software ov... more Abstract As its second guiding principle, agile software development promotes working software over comprehensive documentation. In this paper we investigate alignment between two different documentation practices and agile development. We report upon an experiment conducted to explore the impact of formalism and media type on various dimensions of documentation practice in agile teams. 28 students in 8 teams were divided into two groups: SAD and UML. Group SAD was to update and deliver their high-level ...

Research paper thumbnail of Academic education of software engineering practices: towards planning and improving capstone courses based upon intensive coaching and team routines

2013 26th International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T), 2013

Academic education of professional processes is challenged by a necessary balance of practical ac... more Academic education of professional processes is challenged by a necessary balance of practical activities with academic reflection. In this paper we address this issue by discussing our experiences with teaching software engineering practices and their continuous improvement. By designing a graduate course we embed an intensive coaching routine based upon agile practices with research activities to leverage knowledge of students and coaches. As a concrete example of an embedded research project we conduct an experiment on the impact of two different meeting routines on the teams satisfaction with information exchange. Our results show that the intensive coaching in individual teams is shorter in nature and more appealing to the students. Our findings suggest that software engineering education can benefit from the notion of team routines and process improvement practices contributing to maturity of students and educators.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards Flexibility and Dynamic Coordination in Computer-Interpretable Enterprise Process Models

Enterprise Interoperability V, 2012

We contribute to the understanding of collaboration in enterprise process models and adaptation t... more We contribute to the understanding of collaboration in enterprise process models and adaptation to unforeseen variations thereof. To address the need for flexibility we take an example from the life-saving domain and translate qualitatively collected process data of a concrete medical intervention into a computer-interpretable guideline model. To overcome implementation barriers we apply the coordination modeling language Paradigm, as a possible approach, which addresses coordination of collaborating components in terms of dynamic constraints. Its component McPal enables adding new behavior, and, subsequently, gradually adapting the system without quiescence.

Research paper thumbnail of Managing weak ties in collaborative work

Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT... more Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT, these styles have a strong virtual flavour, ranging from flexwork, hot-desking and telework to virtual teams and virtual organizations. The virtuality of the styles has impacts on how employees within an organization perform their task and how they interact with colleagues, clients and supervisors, but the

Research paper thumbnail of Agile portfolio management: An empirical perspective on the practice in use

International Journal of Project Management, 2014

ABSTRACT Agile project management methods revolutionized the way how software projects are execut... more ABSTRACT Agile project management methods revolutionized the way how software projects are executed and organized. The question, however, on how to enable agility outside of individual projects and help larger organizations to compete with small entrepreneurial companies requires further attention. As a possible perspective, project portfolio management provides a global view on resources and their distribution across individual projects according to strategic choices. Based on 30 interviews conducted in 14 large European organizations this study contributes to the understanding of agile project management methods applied in IT project portfolios. First, we empirically identify the domains of practice. Then, guided by literature and our data we discuss the characteristics and implications of the agile portfolio management practice in our case organizations.

Research paper thumbnail of Is there an agile handover? An empirical study of documentation and project handover practices across agile software teams

2013 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE) & IEEE International Technology Management Conference, 2013

The growing use of agile and lean methods has heated the discussion on efficiency and sustainabil... more The growing use of agile and lean methods has heated the discussion on efficiency and sustainability of software engineering processes. During project handovers, for example, loss of knowledge has been indicated and critics of agile methods point at a lack of documentation. In this paper we take the perspective of patterns of human action, looking at the actions the teams take and the artifacts they use during a software project handover. Our results from 30 teams in small to large size projects cover the perceptions of a variety of roles and indicate that the adoption is a learning process in three interdependent phases: Environment, System and Architecture. The participants in our study perceived the biggest gaps in the usefulness of available design and requirements documentation. Based on our findings we suggest that documentation artifacts should rather support the learning process and that including maintenance staff in the development process significantly helps improving the handover.

Research paper thumbnail of Managing weak ties in collaborative work

2011 17th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, Jun 20, 2011

Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT... more Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT, these styles have a strong virtual flavour, ranging from flexwork, hot-desking and telework to virtual teams and virtual organizations. The virtuality of the styles has impacts on how employees within an organization perform their task and how they interact with colleagues, clients and supervisors, but the impact is not yet well understood. 24 board level executives from 18 Swiss knowledge firms have been interviewed about virtual work arrangements and the change these bring in networking dynamics within their organization. The contribution of the paper is that new networking dynamics can be related to complement the theory on weak, strong and absent ties. More in particular, virtual networks can be located in weak ties, thereby making strong ties less important. We point out how network dynamics are located in weak ties through which virtuality and flexibility of a network can be expressed.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards responsible workplace innovation: The rise of NWW in public knowledge organizations and their impact on governance

2014 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE), 2014

ABSTRACT Triggered by ICT development and the need to cut costs, private organizations initiated ... more ABSTRACT Triggered by ICT development and the need to cut costs, private organizations initiated a number of initiatives to prepare for a more network centric reign. One of such initiatives is commonly referred to as New Ways of Working (NWW). While the private sector has been busy finding its way through the change process, how such a workspace innovation can be made sustainable is yet to be defined. In order to contribute to responsible workspace innovation, this study takes the example of public knowledge organizations. In this multiple case study we for the first time discuss the reasons for NWW adoption in public Dutch organizations, interpretations and actual practices in use and their impact on work organization and governance mechanisms.

Research paper thumbnail of Structuring Medical Agility

Technology is omnipresent in intervention rooms, potentially having enormous impact on workflows ... more Technology is omnipresent in intervention rooms, potentially having enormous impact on workflows and on flexibility. Despite ICT systems' more flexible support of medical protocols, the styles of collaborating do not really match. Intervention support systems are as yet stand alone and not sufficiently interoperable. Taking an ICT perspective, we seek to understand medical work, how to view the way it is organized and how to improve its integration with intervention support systems, driven by highly dynamic coordination models embedded in the framework of clinical pathways.

Research paper thumbnail of Five Agile Factors: Helping Self-management to Self-reflect

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2011

In this paper a tool is proposed to foster reflection in agile software development teams. Based ... more In this paper a tool is proposed to foster reflection in agile software development teams. Based upon the qualitative model of Moe et al. , we contribute a quantitative questionnaire organized along five dimensions of agile teamwork analogous to the "Five Factor Model" in contemporary psychology. To test this survey tool and its alignment with existing studies, we have executed an empirical validation of the tool with 79 individuals and 8 international Scrum teams. We find that interteam agreement on the factors is high and that the survey tool is found very useful. The instrument offers a comparable measure to agile teams and gives recommendations for each of the factors helping to understand individual as well as organizational level barriers.

Research paper thumbnail of Necessary and neglected?

Proceedings of the 29th ACM international conference on Design of communication - SIGDOC '11, 2011

When compared to traditional development methods, agile development practices are associated with... more When compared to traditional development methods, agile development practices are associated with more direct communication and less documentation. However, few empirical studies exist that investigate the role of documentation in agile development teams. We thus employed a questionnaire to measure the perceptions of a group of agile practitioners with regard to the documentation in their projects. We obtained responses from 79 agile software development professionals and 8 teams in 13 different countries. Our findings include that over half of developers in our data set find documentation important or even very important but that too little documentation is available in their projects. Agile practitioners do not seem to agree with the agile principle that "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-toface conversation." We were able to validate this result for a set of dissimilar agile teams in various domains.

Research paper thumbnail of Contracting in Agile Software Projects: State of Art and How to Understand It

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Documentation Work in Agile Teams: The Role of Documentation Formalism in Achieving a Sustainable Practice

2012 Agile Conference, 2012

Abstract As its second guiding principle, agile software development promotes working software ov... more Abstract As its second guiding principle, agile software development promotes working software over comprehensive documentation. In this paper we investigate alignment between two different documentation practices and agile development. We report upon an experiment conducted to explore the impact of formalism and media type on various dimensions of documentation practice in agile teams. 28 students in 8 teams were divided into two groups: SAD and UML. Group SAD was to update and deliver their high-level ...

Research paper thumbnail of Academic education of software engineering practices: towards planning and improving capstone courses based upon intensive coaching and team routines

2013 26th International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T), 2013

Academic education of professional processes is challenged by a necessary balance of practical ac... more Academic education of professional processes is challenged by a necessary balance of practical activities with academic reflection. In this paper we address this issue by discussing our experiences with teaching software engineering practices and their continuous improvement. By designing a graduate course we embed an intensive coaching routine based upon agile practices with research activities to leverage knowledge of students and coaches. As a concrete example of an embedded research project we conduct an experiment on the impact of two different meeting routines on the teams satisfaction with information exchange. Our results show that the intensive coaching in individual teams is shorter in nature and more appealing to the students. Our findings suggest that software engineering education can benefit from the notion of team routines and process improvement practices contributing to maturity of students and educators.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards Flexibility and Dynamic Coordination in Computer-Interpretable Enterprise Process Models

Enterprise Interoperability V, 2012

We contribute to the understanding of collaboration in enterprise process models and adaptation t... more We contribute to the understanding of collaboration in enterprise process models and adaptation to unforeseen variations thereof. To address the need for flexibility we take an example from the life-saving domain and translate qualitatively collected process data of a concrete medical intervention into a computer-interpretable guideline model. To overcome implementation barriers we apply the coordination modeling language Paradigm, as a possible approach, which addresses coordination of collaborating components in terms of dynamic constraints. Its component McPal enables adding new behavior, and, subsequently, gradually adapting the system without quiescence.

Research paper thumbnail of Managing weak ties in collaborative work

Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT... more Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT, these styles have a strong virtual flavour, ranging from flexwork, hot-desking and telework to virtual teams and virtual organizations. The virtuality of the styles has impacts on how employees within an organization perform their task and how they interact with colleagues, clients and supervisors, but the

Research paper thumbnail of Agile portfolio management: An empirical perspective on the practice in use

International Journal of Project Management, 2014

ABSTRACT Agile project management methods revolutionized the way how software projects are execut... more ABSTRACT Agile project management methods revolutionized the way how software projects are executed and organized. The question, however, on how to enable agility outside of individual projects and help larger organizations to compete with small entrepreneurial companies requires further attention. As a possible perspective, project portfolio management provides a global view on resources and their distribution across individual projects according to strategic choices. Based on 30 interviews conducted in 14 large European organizations this study contributes to the understanding of agile project management methods applied in IT project portfolios. First, we empirically identify the domains of practice. Then, guided by literature and our data we discuss the characteristics and implications of the agile portfolio management practice in our case organizations.