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International Conference on Agile Software Development

XP 2010: Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming pp 28–42Cite as

Adoption of Team Estimation in a Specialist Organizational Environment

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 48))

Abstract

Specialist organizational environments and lack of redundant knowledge reduce flexibility and therefore inhibits transition to agile development. This action research reports from the adoption of team estimation as a vehicle to increase redundant knowledge within a group of specialists. The group suffered from low levels of group learning legitimized by high work pressure and a specialist organizational environment. This resulted in poor planning and optimistic task estimates which contributed to increase the work pressure even higher. I framed the research as double-loop learning; I illustrate how different barriers to team estimation arose from conflicts with existing efficiency norms and then how benefits from team estimation created sufficient momentum to change practice. The results are obtained from qualitative analysis of empirical data gathered during one year of collaboration with the group. The article contributes to understanding of barriers to group learning and agile adoption in software organizations.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF ICT, NO-7465, Trondheim, Norway

    Tor Erlend Fægri

Authors
  1. Tor Erlend Fægri
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Applied Software Engineering, Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Piazza Domenicani 3, 39100, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Alberto Sillitti

  2. University of Waikato, 3216, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Angela Martin

  3. Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Xiaofeng Wang

  4. Nokia gate5 GmbH, 10115, Berlin, Germany

    Elizabeth Whitworth

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Fægri, T.E. (2010). Adoption of Team Estimation in a Specialist Organizational Environment. In: Sillitti, A., Martin, A., Wang, X., Whitworth, E. (eds) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP 2010. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 48. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13054-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13054-0_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-13053-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-13054-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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