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Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany [email protected] @chrisma0 More than Code: Contributions in Scrum Software Engineering Teams Frederike Ramin, Christoph Matthies, Ralf Teusner July ’20 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE’20)

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Motivation & Background 2 Agile Software Development and Scrum [1] CollabNet Inc. 2019. “13th Annual State of Agile Report”. Technical Report. https://www.stateofagile.com/#ufh-i-521251909-13th-annual-state-of-agile-report [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf ■ Agile methods, e.g. Scrum, are de facto standards in SE [1] ■ Teams with all the competencies required for project work [2] Software engineers’ contributions to progress & success of modern software projects are varied

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Research Goal 3 A Model of Scrum Teamwork Contributions ■ Scrum and Agile approaches rely on visibility of project progress [3] ■ Capturing & categorizing contributions to project success ensures team awareness of accomplished work Goal: Model of Scrum contributions. Enable appropriate appraisal & appreciation of Scrum team efforts [3] Henrik Kniberg. 2015. “Scrum and XP From the Trenches” (2nd ed.). C4Media

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Definition 4 What is a Contribution of a Software Engineering Team Member? Contribution: Any activity, demanding human resources, that adds to the fulfillment of project goals, by adding value to the developed product or the (future) effectiveness of the team. ■ Technical aspects, e.g., source code changes ■ Also process improvement activities, meeting facilitation & effective communication [4] [4] D. Ford, T. Zimmermann, C. Bird, and N. Nagappan. 2017. “Characterizing Software Engineering Work with Personas Based on Knowledge Worker Actions”. ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. 394–403.

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Related Work 5 What do Software Engineers Spend their Time on? ■ Devs spend only ¼ of their time on coding-related activities [5] [5] André N Meyer, Gail C Murphy, Thomas Fritz, and Thomas Zimmermann. 2019. “Developers’ Diverging Perceptions of Productivity”. Apress, 137–146.

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Contributions in Scrum 6 Roles of the Scrum Process ■ Scrum acknowledges different task profiles / “roles” within teams [2]: ■ Product Owner (PO) ■ Scrum Master (SM) ■ Development Team (Dev.) [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf

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Model Construction 7 Contributions Listed in the Scrum Guide ■ Model from first principles, based on the seminal Scrum Guide [2] ■ Successively code text passages ■ Extract mentions of work items, tasks, meetings, project requirements and responsibilities ■ Deduplicate and cluster ■ Assign short name and designated role [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf

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Results 8 Extracted Scrum Teamwork Contributions ■ 17 individual Scrum teamwork contributions ■ Explicitly included the role All ■ Highlight level of collaboration ■ Contributions arranged along 3 dimensions ■ Technical, Contentual, Managerial ■ Based on related work [4,6] [4] D. Ford, T. Zimmermann, C. Bird, and N. Nagappan. 2017. “Characterizing Software Engineering Work with Personas Based on Knowledge Worker Actions”. ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. 394–403. [6] Judy L. Wynekoop and Diane B. Walz. 2000. “Investigating traits of top performing software developers”. Information Technology & People 13, 3 (2000), 186–195

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Example 9 Extracted Scrum Teamwork Contributions ■ Scrum Guide extracts [2] ■ ■ ■ Short name: Process Improvement ■ Role: All ■ Dimension: Managerial [2] Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. 2017. “The Scrum Guide - The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game”. Technical Report. scrumguides.org. 19 pages. http://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf

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Scrum Contribution Model 10 Scrum Contribution Model (adding to product increment utilizing technical skills) (influencing the product’s prospect and direction) (concerned with adapting the work process)

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Model Usage 11 Envisioned Use Cases for Scrum Contribution Model ■ Use Case: Scrum Team Status Check ■ Model as means of conformance analysis, contrasting model’s teamwork contributions and team’s self-identified ones ■ Mismatches represent starting points for discussion Facilitate retrospection of chosen process adaptations and their rationales

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Summary 12 A Model of Scrum Contributions ■ Structured exploration of the project member’s contributions described by the Scrum Guide ■ Constricted scope of initial model promotes clarity and traceability of construction ■ Representative of key contributions in unmodified, theoretical, “vanilla Scrum” [7] [7] Lucas Gren, Richard Torkar, and Robert Feldt. 2017. “Group development and group maturity when building agile teams: A qualitative and quantitative investigation at eight large companies”. Journal of Systems and Software 124 (2017),104–119.

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Conclusion 13 A Model of Scrum Contributions ■ Model makes the often implicit contributions of Scrum team members to project progress explicit & visual ■ Allows analyses that foster self-reflection and retrospection regarding teamwork processes & contributions May prove particularly useful in Retrospective meetings

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Recap 14 [email protected] @chrisma0

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Image Sources 15 In order of appearance ■ donation by Vectors Market from the Noun Project ■ coding by Gerald Wildmoser from the Noun Project ■ Project by Nithinan Tatah from the Noun Project ■ goal by Alice Design from the Noun Project ■ Scrum team by Sharon Showalter from the Noun Project ■ Definition by Sumana Chamrunworakiat from the Noun Project ■ analysis book by achmad mulyana from the Noun Project ■ List by hans draiman from the Noun Project ■ Check Server Status\ by Ex Eyecon from the Noun Project ■ icecream by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project ■ Curtain by NTT from the Noun Project