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Assignment 2 (Research Study)

This document provides a research report on utilizing agile project management methodologies and their impact on software development project success at Flock of Birds Uganda. The report finds that using agile methodologies positively impacts continuous development, timely delivery, and teamwork. It conducted a study of 110 employees, finding that agile practices promote these factors and that most employees are male, between 20-30 years old, have 1-5 years of experience, a bachelor's degree or higher, and less than 1 year of experience with agile methodologies. The report concludes that agile development enhances project success and recommends Flock of Birds continue utilizing these practices.

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madan Gaire
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136 views8 pages

Assignment 2 (Research Study)

This document provides a research report on utilizing agile project management methodologies and their impact on software development project success at Flock of Birds Uganda. The report finds that using agile methodologies positively impacts continuous development, timely delivery, and teamwork. It conducted a study of 110 employees, finding that agile practices promote these factors and that most employees are male, between 20-30 years old, have 1-5 years of experience, a bachelor's degree or higher, and less than 1 year of experience with agile methodologies. The report concludes that agile development enhances project success and recommends Flock of Birds continue utilizing these practices.

Uploaded by

madan Gaire
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Utilization of Agile Project Management

Methodologies and the success of Software


Development Projects at Flock of Birds Uganda
By Eugene M Swinnerstone & Jude T. Lubega

MITS5001

(Research Report)

Madan Lal Gaire


Student ID - 42662

26th September 2019

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Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Problem Statement 3

3. Description of the company 4

4. Objective of the study 4

5. Conduting the study 4

6. Findings 5

7. Conclusion 7

8. Recommendations 7

9. Study Limitations 7

9. Study Contribution 8

References 8

1. Introduction
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Nowadays, there is a need for improvement in the business process model in order to achieve better
output, hence organizations expect quicker deliverables from the investment they make and also
want their improved projects to adapt and follow the changing business requirements and suit the
way in which the organization works. Working in an agile way required a pile of software
development along with containing several mechanism that could support the business requirements.
Therefore, the question is – Could a process improvement project be performed in an agile way and
what would be the benefits? [1]. The advent of agile project management was in the year 2001 when
some prominent software process practitioners arrived at an agreement that – How software
development trends could produce better results?. The outcome was the agile alliance and the
manifesto for agile software development [2].
The aim of this paper is to do a research study on Flock of Birds (FoB), which is a Uganadan design
firm with its root in Netherlands. The interest for this study is the Information Communication
Technology of the organization where they basically major in Software Engineering and they use a
mixture of methodologies in project management to ensure they achieve their product or project
goals. One of the most common methods they emply is the Agile methodology and in some cases
where a client needs so, they apply Waterfall. The research study sought to assess the effect of
utilizing agile methodologies on the success of software development projects at Flock of Birds
Uganda.

2. Problem Statment
A few companies in Uganda started utilizing agile project management methodology in 2010s and it
is hypothesized that utilization of agile project management methodologies enhances software
development by increasing continuous development, timely delivery and enhancing teamwork [3]. In
a bid to improve software development at Flock of Birds, management and software developers have
embraced the use of agile project management methodologies. Despite this, the success of software
development projects is still low as evidenced by late completion of projects and low quality outputs
[4]. This study therefore sought to examine the effect of utilizing agile project management
methodologies on the success of software projects at Flock of Birds. Without this knowledge, the
quality of software development projects may continue deteriorating and eventually result in
business losses for the organization.

3. Description of the Company


Flock of Birds (FoB) was developed in February 2012 basically as an Art shop and in Septemeber
2013 the Information Communication Technology (ICT) strand of the organization was born [4].

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Efforts to improve utilization of Agile project Management methodologies to increase the opulence
rate on projects in the software industry began globally mostly after the agile Alliance meeting in
Utah, 2001 [2]. Local Organizing Committee started organizing Agile project Management
Certification courses in Uganada, the inaugural one being in Kira [3]. Flock of Birds having its roots
in the Netherlands and with operations in Germany, Poland, South Africa and Curacao Islands took it
to another level by making it its standard practice from 2013 to date.

4. Objective of the study


The objective of the study was:
- To investigate the effect of utilizing agile project management methodologies on continuous
development of software products at Flock of Birds, Uganda
- To examing the effect of utilizing agile project management methodologies on timely delivery of
software projects at Flock of Birds, Uganda
- To determing the effect of utilizing agile project management methodologies on team work at Flock
of Birds, Uganda.

5. Conducting the study


This study examines the effect of utilizing agile software development methodologies on the success
of software development projects at Flock of Birds, Uganada. Using a cross sectional design, data
was being gathered from 110 respondents using questionnaries and interview guides.

Fig1 : Conceptual Framework for utilization of Agile Project Management Methodologies [5]
The conceptual framework above explains how the independent and dependent variables are related
to each other. In this study, agile practices through promotion of continuous development, early
delivery and promotion of team work encourage utilization. If the output of adopting agile practices

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is postivie, then project managers will prefer adoption of agile project management including
invesing in skills that ensure continuous development and early delivery and vice versa.
It is critical that the effect of utilizing agile project management methodologies on the success of
software development projects is understood by the software development companies. Without clear
understanding of these factors, organizations may continue relying on more traditional approaches
which are less effective and efficient. This may affect the performance and profitability of the
organizations. Given this background, it was important to conduct a study to examine the effect of
utilizing agile project management methodologies on the success of software development.

6. Findings
The study found out that using agile software development methodologies has a signigicant positive
effect on continuous development, early delivery and team work on software development projects.

Fig2 : Gender of the Respondents


Accoring to the resules in Fig2, most 86 (78%) of the study respondents were male and 24 (22%)
were female. This means that most of the developers at Flock of Birds are male.

Fig3 : Age of Respondents


The results in Fig3 indicate that most 62(56.4%) of the study respondents aged between 20 and 30
yrs, 29 (26.4%) were aged between 31 and 40 yrs and only 19 (17.3%) were aged between 41 and 50
yrs. This means that most of the software developers and project managers at Flock of Birds are in
their most productibe age group.
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Fig4 : Work Experience
As seen in Fig4, almost half 52 (47%) of the study respondents had worked with the organization for
a period of between 1 and 5 yrs, followed by 32 (29%) who had worked for a period of less than 1 yr
and lastly by only 26 (24%) who had worked for more than five years. The above findings indicate
tht most of the software developers and project mangers at Flock of Birds have adequate working
experience.

Fig5: Level of Education


As per the result in Fig5 above, more than half 64(58.2%) of the study respondents were educated up
to the level of Bacheloer’s Degree, followed by 27 (24.5%) who were educated up post graduate
degree level and by 12 (10.9%) who were educated up to the level of diploma, while only 7(6.4%)
were educated just to the certificate level. The results indicate that staff at Flock of Birds are
adequately educated and hence can be relied upon their provided information on the topics covered.

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Fig6 : Experience with Agile Project Management Methodologies
As indicated in Fig6, almost a half 52(47.3%) of the study respondents had used agile project
management methodologies for a period of less than 1 year, followed by 26 (23.6%) who had
worked with agile methodologies for a period of more than 5yrs and by only 26(23.6%) who had
worked with the agile methodologies for more than 5 yrs. The above findings indicate that most of
the software developers and project managers at Flock of Birds have used agile project management
methodologies for a reasonable time and hence can be relied upon their provided information on the
topics covered.

7. Conclusion
It can be concluded that using agile driven software development methodologies enhances
continuous development of software which eventually translates into project prosperity, enhances
early delivery of software products and teamwork which eventually translates into project success.

8. Recommendations
- Since utilizing agile project management methodologies enhances continuous development, early
delivery of software projects and team work on software development projects, management at Flock
of Birds should continue using agile driven software methodologies in order to enhance software
development project opulence.

9. Study Limitations
Certainly there remains much work to be done, however this study generates preliminary findings
related to Agile Project Management in the software development world. Acknowledging the
limitation of data processing, it could be confirmed that there are few limitations in this research
study. Present study has provided some useful information but its design certainly has some flaws.

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The most serious challenge was that of failure to obtain interview appointments from all the expected
informants in the sample size. This resulted in collecting less data that would have been gathered if
all interviews had been performed.
The other limitation concerns the seemingly biased nature of informants who participated in the
research and concerns the facets that influence the utilization of agile project management
methodologies.

10.Study contribution
Finding from this study will go long way in establishing a path of how better software development
projects can be managed and better utlilized that before. This will help develop better performance
on deliverables and schedules for projects as a whole. This study should equally contribute to the
Information Technology (IT) structures and policies so as to strike a balance between faster
deliveries, cost effectiveness and team balancing.

References:
[1] Linders, B. (2011). Process Improvement, The Agile Way! Methodsandtools.com. Retrieved from
http://www.methodsandtools.com/
[2] Agile Manifesto. (2001). The Agile Manifesto. Retrieved from www.Agilemanifesto.org
[3] PMI-ACP Certification Training Course in Kira, Uganda | PMI Agile Certified Practioner Exam Prep
Classed | Invensis Learning. (2011). Invensislearning.com. Retrieved from https://invensislearning.com/
[4] Flock of Birds. (2017). n.flockofbirds.nl. Retrived from https://n.flockofbirds.nl/
[5] Kaur, R., & Mehta, R. (2011). Agile Methodology: Embracing Change in Software Development.
Semanticscholar.org. Retrived from https://semanticscholar.org/

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