This study is part of scientific research carried out by researchers at the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki. We are investigating factors that contribute to performance in software development teams, and developing methods and processes for understanding, monitoring, and improving software development performance. This information is an important prerequisite in creating a high-performing organisation.
The purpose of this questionnaire is to investigate the value structures of practitioners working with software development. We believe that software development is much more to practitioners than just the methods and procedures described in methodologies like Scrum, XP, Kanban, and others. This is well described by Jim Highsmith in his essay on the history of the Agile Manifesto:
"At the core, I believe Agile Methodologists are really about "mushy" stuff–about delivering good products to customers by operating in an environment that does more than talk about "people as our most important asset" but actually "acts" as if people were the most important, and lose the word "asset". So in the final analysis, the meteoric rise of interest in—and sometimes tremendous criticism of—Agile Methodologies is about the mushy stuff of values and culture." (Jim Highsmith, 2001, http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html)
Many practitioners, perhaps including yourself, have a deep intuitive certainty about what it is that makes software development work (or not work). However, despite years of research, there is still a lack of an equally deep scientific understanding of these human factors. Our aim is to advance the scientific understanding of this important phenomenon by combining the expertise of practitioners with sound scientific methods.
The second round of the survey will start during the first half of 2014. We are currently recruiting participants for this round.
How will I benefit from the research?
How will my organisation benefit from the research?
Why are Agile values important?
How is this questionnaire different from other questionnaires on Agile software development?
How can a survey benefit software development?
How long does it take to complete the survey?
How do I fill in the questionnaire?
What browsers can I use? Can I use a mobile client?
Why is there a copyright notice on the bottom of the survey form?
Do you collect any data besides what is visible in the survey form?
How is the data from this questionnaire used?
You can benefit in at least three ways:
You are helping to advance both the science and practice of software development. Better understanding of human factors in software development can lead to more efficient development tools, methods, and processes, and can contribute to better communication and well-being in software development environments.
You can get the results. At the end of the survey, there is an option to indicate whether you want to receive a brief report on the initial survey results, as well as an option to indicate whether you want to receive more information as the research progresses. This information may be of use to you in your work with software development.
You enable others to learn. In addition to this, the scientific results of the research will be disseminated in scientific conferences and journals, where they will be available for researchers and practitioners to improve on.
Your organisation can choose to participate in the research by having a contact person register your organisation.
Once your organisation is registered, and there are at least 5 respondents, we can calculate a value profile for your organisation. Using this profile, you can
Once your organisation is registered, you should notify members of your organisation to participate in the study. It is important that they remember to indicate the name of their organisation in their response, so that we can find the responses related to your organisation.
While five responses is the minimum, more responses will give better results, since the statistical analysis will have better validity. If we have not received the minimum number of responses within 30 days of your registration, we will notify you and provide an opportunity to gather more responses.
Individual responses will not be visible in the profile. The profile is an aggregate of all responses from your organisation, and it is not possible to identify individual responses.
Research shows that values, beliefs, and attitudes influence behaviour. Software development is a young discipline, and there are many values and beliefs regarding what works and what does not work to produce good software. At its core, Agile Software Development includes a discussion about values in software development. However, the structure of these values have not been scientifically investigated. One step towards getting the right results in any activity is to understand the value system of the people performing that activity. Because of this, it is important to understand Agile values.
There are many questionnaires that attempt to measure "Agility", "readiness" for an Agile transformation, and other constructs that are related to Agile software development. Some of them can provide useful information for practitioners and can, at the very least, inspire interesting and fruitful discussions. However, according to our findings, most of them leave much to be desired from a scientific standpoint. There are many concerns as to their validity and reliability. Also, they are often just checklists that can be used to see if certain practises are being conducted in a software development team or organisation, and they reveal little about the complex human factors that are involved in Agile thinking.
In contrast, this questionnaire has been designed from the outset to investigate Agile values in a way that lends itself to careful assessment of validity and reliability. We expect that our research results will advance the state of the art rather than being just another survey.
A well-designed questionnaire-based research approach relies on the connection between thoughts, emotions, actions, and language. Language reflects how we as humans structure our perceptions. The structure of language can thus be used to determine many things that are relevant to humans. For example, automatic processing of natural language takes advantage of the patterns inherent in written language.
In a similar way, we will use the patterns of meaning in natural language to infer higher-order structure in a large number of responses to this survey. In this way, we can reach meaningful results regarding human factors in a certain subset of software development practitioners.
The survey should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
The questionnaire consists of two parts. Each part begins with specific instructions on what to do. There are no right or wrong answers, and you do not need to be an "expert" to complete this questionnaire. We only ask you to state your opinion honestly and as accurately as possible.
Answer every item.
You can use almost any browser. The questionnaire uses standard HTML and some JavaScript, most of which is optional. The questionnaire works with many mobile clients, but has not been optimised for small screens.
The copyright notice on the bottom of the survey form is part of the web survey tool we are using. We do not share information with the company who has developed the tool.
We collect some additional data in order to understand how respondents find the survey, when responses are received, and what we can do to best reach our audience. We do this using built-in data collection features in the web survey tool, and using Google Analytics and Google AdWords. When your responses are saved in our database, they are accompanied by a timestamp. The general pages, such as this FAQ page, have Google Analytics enabled. The survey pages themselves do not have Google Analytics enabled. The final page of the survey, which is displayed after your browser has submitted your answers, has Google Analytics enabled. It also includes a Google AdWords conversion trigger. At that stage, there is no information that can link you to your survey replies, and no third party can access your responses at any stage of the process.
We use this information in order to manage the respondent sample so that we get a good coverage of responses.
The data from this questionnaire will be analysed in anonymous form, and in no event will your identity be revealed. When results from the questionnaire are reported, you will remain anonymous and it will not be possible to identify your answers among the results.
The data collected will be used strictly for research purposes. Any commercial applications based on the research will require additional work to adapt the research results.