Nilay V. Oza

Positioning Agility

Exploring the Sources of Waste in Kanban Software Development Projects

The application of agile software methods and more recently the integration of Lean practices contribute to the trend of continuous improvement in the software industry. One such area warranting proper empirical evidence is a project’s operational efficiency when using the Kanban method. This short paper takes a new angle and explores waste in the Kanban-driven software development project context. A preliminary research model is presented for helping the consequent replication of the study. The results from the empirical analysis suggest Kanban can be an effective method in visualizing and organizing the current work, but does not prevent waste from creeping in, although the overall project outcome may be successful.

Lean Enterprise Software and Systems - First International Conference, LESS 2010, Helsinki, Finland, October 17-20, 2010. Proceedings

Lean Software Development

Does cloud computing deliver the promised benefits for IT industry?

Cloud computing has captured the attention of both the researchers and practitioners alike. Companies and other cloud users are expecting to receive significant benefits from the new cloud based technologies. To what extent these benefits materialize for enterprise IT is not clearly understood. In this paper, we examine the perceived benefits of cloud computing from the cloud users' perspectives. Cloud users include users of SaaS/PaaS/IaaS, ranging from end-users, to service developers and system administrators. Using content analysis techniques, we examine one of the major discussion forums of cloud computing. Rather than offering a yes/no answer to the question posed, we offer five empirically drawn insights on the perceived benefits of cloud computing. It is proposed that the empirical insights gained are valuable to both researchers and practitioners. The value lies in a more holistic view on the promised benefits' landscape.

Agile Software Development Methods: A Comparative Review1

Although agile software development methods have caught the attention of software engineers and researchers worldwide, scientific research still remains quite scarce. The aim of this study is to order and make sense of the different agile approaches that have been proposed. This comparative review is performed from the standpoint of using the following features as the analytical perspectives: project management support, life-cycle coverage, type of practical guidance, adaptability in actual use, type of research objectives and existence of empirical evidence. The results show that agile software development methods cover, without offering any rationale, different phases of the software development life-cycle and that most of these methods fail to provide adequate project management support. Moreover, quite a few methods continue to offer little concrete guidance on how to use their solutions or how to adapt them in different development situations. Empirical evidence after ten years of application remains quite limited. Based on the results, new directions on agile methods are outlined.