People Management in Agile Development

Pedro Thiago Rocha de Alc

antara

, Edna Dias Canedo

and Ruyther Parente da Costa

Faculty of Gama (FGA), University of Bras

ılia (UnB),

Area Especial de Ind

ustria, Projec¸

ao A,

P.O. Box 8114, Bras

ılia-DF, CEP 72.444-240, Brazil

Department of Computer Science, Edif

ıcio CIC/EST, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Asa Norte - University of Bras

ılia (UnB),

Keywords:

Agile Development, People Management, People in Agile.

Abstract:

The People Management (PM) is a fundamental part of managing software projects in perspective of the

development process dependent on the people they perform. The methods are focused on people and their

interactions in order to maximize the success of software projects. However, most projects still suffer from

unsuccessful risks. Given the importance of PM and its complexity, this work aims to build a PM model

for software development approaches. A Systematic Review of Literature (SRL) was carried out in order to

gather data about the state of the art in agile development. From the data collected in the SRL was proposed

the PM model. The proposed model was generically constructed to serve as a guide in PM in agile projects,

independent of the characteristics of the organization and the time it is implemented.

1 INTRODUCTION

An essential part of software project management is

People Management (PM), since the Software Deve-

lopment Process (SDP) depends on the skills, motiva-

tion and interaction of people throughout the project.

And that without good management the outcome of

the project is, in general, inadequate (Sommerville,

2010) (Pressman, 2005).

The agile manifest brings in its scope the valua-

tion of individuals and interactions to the detriment

of processes and tools, and in its principles it indica-

tes that people related to businesses and developers

must work together and daily, throughout the course

of the project (Beck et al., 2001).

PM in works of a non-manual nature, as Software

Engineering (SE) is characterized, faces at least two

major problems. A reference to the effectiveness of

the work done - Doing the right things. And the other

one of efﬁciency - Doing things right (Drucker, 1995).

Considering the complexity and importance of

PM in the SDP, especially in agile methodologies,

this work intends to analyze the academic production

in this area in order to investigate how PM is made,

which Human Aspects (HA) are desirable in a team

and which HAs are investigated in this context. And

with that create a People Management Model (PMM)

for agile development and verify its applicability.

The remainder of the paper is organized as fol-

lows. Section 2 presents the Background in which the

theoretical bases for conducting this research are rai-

sed. Section 3 - Research Methodology - describing

the methodology used. Section 4 describes the main

results of the mapping study, by characterizing the re-

search contributions in the ﬁeld. Section 5: People

Management Model - in which the proposed model

is presented. We conclude the paper presenting some

ﬁnal remarks in Section 6.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 People in Software Development

The SDP is the set of activities that leads to the pro-

duction of a software product. The activities of this

process, like all creative and intellectual activity, are

complex and depend on human judgment (Sommer-

ville, 2010).

SDP is done by people for people. Software en-

gineering is knowledge intensive and includes HA

in all phases: requirements acquisition, design, con-

struction, testing, deployment, maintenance, and pro-

ject management (John et al., 2005).

Human Aspects (HA) decisively interfere in the

success of a development project, project manage-

ment can not be limited to technical factors (Crawford

Rocha de Alcântara, P., Dias Canedo, E. and Parente da Costa, R.

People Management in Agile Development.

DOI: 10.5220/0006756400920103

In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2018), pages 92-103

ISBN: 978-989-758-298-1

et al., 2012).

SDP is people-based where their work is complex,

intellectual and creative in nature. The success of a

software project is linked to the HA involved in de-

velopment, therefore PM is of great relevance in soft-

ware projects.

2.2 People Management

PM can be understood as the new trends that are emer-

ging in the Human Resources Management of organi-

zations. For the author, PM is an approach that en-

visions people involved in an organization as human

beings and endowed with intellectual abilities (Chia-

venato, 2008).

The practice of the PM presupposes the manage-

ment of the organization together with the employ-

ees. This requires a new view of people, contrary to

the classic view that employees are only an organiza-

tional resource, servile object and passive subjects in

the productive process. It is necessary to see that the

employees of the organization are active, decision-

makers and innovators (Chiavenato, 2008).

2.2.1 Purpose of People Management

People can increase and reduce the strengths and we-

aknesses of an organization depending on how they

are handled (Chiavenato, 2008).

The objectives of the PM are varied. A good

PM should contribute to organizational effectiveness

through such things as: Helping the organization

achieve its objectives and accomplish its mission;

Providing competitiveness to the organization; Pro-

vide well-trained and well-motivated people to the or-

ganization; Increase self-actualization and people sa-

tisfaction at work; Develop and raise the quality of

life at work; Managing and driving change; Main-

tain ethical policies and socially responsible behavior;

And build the best team and the best company.

The PM must see to it that the organization and

people relate so that everyone’s goals are met, gover-

ned by a paradigm where everyone wins, not where

one wins to the detriment of the other. Figure 1 il-

lustrates the organizational and individual objectives

involved in PM.

Contrary to the classical view, in PM individual

interests are not seen in opposition to organizational

goals. In PM the individual and organizational goals

must be achieved together. For this people play cen-

tral role in PM.

Figure 1: Individual and Organizational Goals.

2.2.2 The People Management Processes

PM consists of several activities. PM policies and

practices can be summarized in six basic processes:

• People Aggregate Processes: used to include

new people in the company. They include recruit-

ment and selection of people.

• People Applying Processes: used to design the

activities that people will perform in the company,

guide and monitor their performance. They in-

clude organizational design and job design, job

analysis and job description, people orientation

and performance appraisal.

• Rewarding People Processes: used to encourage

people and meet their individual needs. They in-

clude rewards, compensation and beneﬁts, and so-

cial services.

• Processes of Developing People: used to enable

the professional and personal development of em-

ployees. They involve training, knowledge ma-

nagement and skills management, corporate le-

arning, career development programs, and other

activities.

• Processes of Keeping People: used to create sa-

tisfactory environmental and psychological con-

ditions for people’s activities. They include admi-

nistration of organizational culture, climate, disci-

pline, hygiene, safety and quality of life and main-

tenance of union relations.

• Processes of Monitoring People: used to moni-

tor and control people’s activities and verify re-

sults. They include database and management in-

formation systems.

All PM processes are equally important and act in

communication with each other, Figure 2 illustrates

the inputs and outputs of PM processes.

The purpose of PM processes is to systematize the

organization’s behavior in relation to internal and ex-

ternal inﬂuences, given the desired results to both the

organization and the people involved.

People Management in Agile Development

Figure 2: Inputs and outputs of PM Processes.

2.2.3 Responsibility of Personnel Managers

PM is a non-delegable responsibility of every execu-

tive or leader within an organization.

The leader must manage people, make decisions

about them, understand individual and group goals,

set performance standards, engage employees in the

organization, take care of appropriate training, and

pay and incentives, providing subordinates with con-

ditions contribute to the organization (Chiavenato,

2008).

2.3 Management of People in Software

Development

According to Pressman (Pressman, 2005) effective

software development management focuses on: Pe-

ople, Product, Process and Project. Since this or-

der was not deﬁned by it arbitrarily. According to the

author ”The manager who forgets that the work of the

software engineer consists of human effort will never

succeed in project management.”

For (Sommerville, 2010) people are the largest as-

sets of a software organization. They represent intel-

lectual capital and it is the responsibility of software

managers to ensure that the organization gets the best

return on investment in people. In addition, the aut-

hor indicates that improper people management is one

of the most signiﬁcant contributions to a project’s fai-

lure.

2.3.1 Practices and People Management

Processes

PM in SPD involves multiple processes, with diverse

activities and practices. It includes planning roles and

responsibilities of those involved in the project, se-

lecting people, assigning tasks, training and maintai-

ning groups, as well as controlling environmental and

cultural factors in the project, as well as monitoring

team motivation and effectiveness and efﬁciency of

the work performed.

Among the tasks for the PM are (Sommerville,

2010):

• Select the project team;

• Motivate the project team;

• Manage working groups;

• Compose groups;

• Keep cohesive groups;

• Maintain good communication between group

members;

• Organize group members;

• Provides a good working environment.

For the Project Management Body of Knowledge

(PMBOK) Guide to PM, treated as a Human Resource

Management Project, including processes: Organize

the project team; Managing a project team; Guide

the project team (Guide, 2012).

PMBOK maps Project Human Resource Manage-

ment into four processes:

• Human Resource Management Plan: to iden-

tify and document project roles, responsibilities,

required skills, reporting relationships; To create

a stafﬁng management plan.

• Acquire Project Team: to conﬁrm human re-

source availability and obtaining the necessary

team to complete project activities.

• Develop Project Team: to improve competen-

cies, team member interaction, and overall team

environment to enhance project performance.

• Manage Project Team: to track team member

performance, providing feedback, resolving is-

sues, and managing changes to optimize project

performance.

The People-CMM deﬁnes as practices for PM in

software, among them stand out: The management

of the team formation; Communication management;

Managing the work environment; Team performance

management; Team training; Compensation; Com-

petency analysis; Career development; The develop-

ment of the working group; And the development of

team culture (Curtis et al., 2002).

2.4 Agile Software Development

Methodologies

Agile software development methodologies are a set

of methodologies that follow the values and principles

outlined by the agile manifest (Beck, 2004).

ICEIS 2018 - 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

The agile manifest proposes to value: individuals

and interactions rather than processes and tools (Beck

et al., 2001).

2.4.1 SCRUM

Scrum is an agile methodology for managing and

planning software projects. A framework within

which people can address and solve complex and

adaptive problems (Alexandros et al., 2017).

This methodology is light, simple to understand,

but extremely difﬁcult to master (Schwaber, 2016).

The guide by Schwaber, Ken and Sutherland

(Schwaber, 2016) describes the three pillars to be

adopted by the Scrum methodology: Transparency;

inspection; And adaptation. To make these living pil-

lars the values of commitment, courage, focus, trans-

parency and respect are assumed and experienced by

the team. Team members should learn and explore

these values as they work with Scrum. Success in

using Scrum depends on people’s engagement in ex-

periencing these values (Schwaber, 2016).

The Scrum development process is shown in Fi-

gure 3.

Figure 3: Scrum Development Process (Ozkan and Kucuk,

2016).

In Scrum, the functionality to be implemented in

a project is maintained in the Product Backlog. The

development process occurs iteratively, each iteration

is called Sprint and has 2 to 4 weeks. At each Sprint,

a Sprint Planning Meeting is held, a planning meet-

ing where the Product Owner prioritizes the Product

Backlog items, and the Development Team separates

the activities that it will be able to implement du-

ring the Sprint that begins. The tasks selected for

Sprint are transferred from the Product Backlog to

the Sprint Backlog. In addition, each day the De-

velopment Team holds a brief meeting to align the

team members’ knowledge of the work being done.

At the end of a Sprint, the team performs a Sprint

Review, where the implemented features are presen-

ted. Finally, a Sprint Retrospective is done where the

team evaluates what has been done and plans the fu-

ture Sprint (Schwaber, 2016).

2.4.2 eXtreme Programming - XP

XP is the most widely used approach to agile deve-

lopment (Pressman, 2005), being a software develop-

ment method based on the synergy between simple

practices, and its basic values, principles and activi-

ties.

The values of XP are: communication, simpli-

city, feedback and courage (Layman et al., 2004).

The basics of XP are: fast feedback; presu-

med simplicity; incremental changes; acceptance

of change and high quality (Layman et al., 2004).

In addition to the fundamental principles, XP de-

velopment follows other principles, some of them

are: small initial investment, concrete experimenta-

tion, concrete communication, working for the in-

stincts of the staff, acceptance of responsibilities and

use of genuine metrics.

Management in XP must take into account four

variables: cost, time, quality and scope. The process

of development of XP is structured in basic activity,

they are: code, test, hear and design.

Someone needs to have a bigger view of the pro-

ject and be able to inﬂuence it when they leave the

course, this is the manager’s job, which should also

highlight what needs to be done, without delegating

who will do it. Management should be based on the

conﬁdence that the team members are willing to do

the best job, helping to make the result even better

(Beck, 2004).

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research aimed to map the state of the art of

PM in software development and to establish a People

Management Model (PMM) for agile methodologies

of software development in view of the information

collected. With this purpose, the SRL was used of

a widely diffused and formally structured scientiﬁc

methodology.

The SRL conducted in this work had as reference

the work of (Munzlinger et al., 2012) and (Keele,

2007), which describe the use of systematic reviews

in software engineering. Thus, the SRL occurred in

three sequential steps as shown in Figure 4.

Each stage is composed of well-deﬁned goals and

tasks.

In the ﬁrst stage the planning of the SRL is done,

being necessary: To identify the necessity of the re-

vision; specify research questions; develop the SRL

protocol; and validate protocol.

In the second stage the review is performed, con-

sidering the planning done in the previous step. The

People Management in Agile Development

Figure 4: SRL Flow Chart.

activities related to this phase are: select the primary

studies; deﬁne the inclusion and exclusion criteria of

the studies; perform data extraction and analysis; and

present the results.

In the third and ﬁnal step, the documentation of

the results obtained in the planning and execution is

done as well as an evaluation of the means of disse-

mination of the knowledge generated in the SRL. The

topics part of it: specify dissemination mechanisms,

formulate reports, and validate the generated reports.

3.1 Research Questions from the

Systematic Review of Literature

Considering the objective of the work, this SRL was

conducted with the purpose of answering three rese-

arch questions:

• (Research Question - RQ.1) – How is people ma-

nagement accomplished in the agile software de-

velopment process?

• (Research Question - RQ.2) – What human as-

pects, according to the literature, are desirable for

an agile development team?

• (Research Question - RQ.3) – What variables,

referring to human aspects, are observed in the

management of people in agile software develop-

ment?

3.2 Search Strategy

The SRL was performed with two strategies of sear-

ching for primary studies, one automatic and one ma-

nual.

3.2.1 Auto Search

The automatic search process was based on the se-

lection of scientiﬁc bases, which were applied search

strings. The following scientiﬁc bases were consul-

ted:

• ACM Digital Library – https://www.acm.org/;

• IEEE Explore – http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/;

• Scopus – https://www.scopus.com;

• Science Direct – http://www.sciencedirect.com/.

The selection of the bases to be researched follo-

wed two criteria:

Relevance of the Base: as a parameter of rele-

vance, the list of scientiﬁc bases proposed by (Shull

et al., 2007), considered as relevant sources in soft-

ware engineering;

Availability of Access: it were excluded the

scientiﬁc bases that did not have access available from

the university where the research took place.

To ﬁlter the publications, according to the purpose

of this SRL, the scientiﬁc bases were searched, search

strings in Portuguese and English.

The strings used were:

Portuguese: (”Gest

ao de Pessoas” and ”Desen-

volvimento de Software”) or (”Aspectos Humanos”

and ”´gil”);

English: (People Management and Software De-

velopment) or (Human Aspects and Agile).

3.2.2 Manual Search

The manual search process was based on the selection

of important conferences and journals in the area of

agile software development. All publications were

considered for title reading, due to the impossibility

of applying a search string.

The following conferences were selected for the

manual search:

• ACM Conference on Computer Supported

Cooperative Work & Social Computing;

• Hawaii International Conference on System

Sciences;

• ICSE - International Conference on Software En-

gineering.

• The periodicals: IEEE Software, Journal of Sys-

tems and Software.

The conferences and periodicals were selected ba-

sed on two criteria: the relevance of the conference

or periodical - the QUALIS classiﬁcation of Capes

was taken as a parameter of relevance and the sub-

ject addressed by conferences and periodicals (CA-

PES, 2017).

3.2.3 Selection Criteria

The selection of the studies analyzed by the SRL was

based on the research questions raised, for which the

inclusion and exclusion criteria were deﬁned and ap-

plied.

SRL publications were included that met at least

one of the following criteria:

ICEIS 2018 - 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

• (Inclusion Criterion 1 - IC.1). Publication that

deals with the management of people in the pro-

cess of agile software development;

• (Inclusion Criterion 2 - IC.2). Publication that

deals with desirable human aspects for an agile

team;

• (Inclusion Criteria 3 - IC.3). Publication that de-

als with metrics referring to human aspects used

in agile software development.

Publications that fall under one of the following

criteria were excluded from the SRL:

• (Exclusion Criteria 1 - EC.1). Article that is not

written in English or Portuguese;

• (Exclusion Criteria 2 - EC.2). Publication is not

a scientiﬁc article, it is an incomplete Articles or

Short Paper;

• (Exclusion Criteria 3 - EC.3). Articles repeated

in more than one search base;

• (Exclusion Criteria 4 - CE.4). Publication that is

not a primary study.

The process of applying the criteria followed two

steps, in the ﬁrst one the titles, abstracts and key

words of all the publications were read, being made

a pre-selection of the works to be targets of the SRL.

In the second step a complete reading of the article

was made, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Procedure for Applying the Criteria.

4 SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF

LITERATURE RESULTS

4.1 Automatic Research

The automatic search was performed from the appli-

cation of the search strings in the databases, as deﬁ-

ned in the methodology. This search considered all

publications prior to June 15, 2017.

The search string in Portuguese did not ﬁlter any

publications and in English it ﬁltered 116 publications

in the scientiﬁc bases. The distribution of publications

by base is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Publications Filtered at the Bases.

Scientiﬁc Base Publications Percentage

Scopus 54 46.6%

IEEE 44 37.9%

ACM 14 12.1%

Science Direct 4 3.4%

All the ﬁltered publications have gone through

the process of inclusion and exclusion deﬁned in this

work. In the evaluation process of the papers found,

titles, abstracts and keywords were read from each of

the 116 selected primary papers. From this reading

the selection was made according to the inclusion cri-

teria adopted.

Six publications were selected, which met at least

one of the inclusion criteria and did not ﬁt any of the

exclusion criteria.

Ninety-one publications were excluded from the

SRL, excluded because they did not meet any in-

clusion criteria. The remaining 19 scientiﬁc papers

were excluded for the following reasons: 11 Excluded

by criterion EC.2; 6 Excluded by criterion EC.3; and

2 Excluded by criterion EC.4.

The six publications selected for the SRL are pre-

sented in Table 2.

Table 2: Selected Publications in the Automatic Search se-

arch.

ID Publication

Inclusion

Criteria

ofner and Mani, 2012)

IC.1

IC.3

(Franc¸a et al., 2013)

IC.3

(da Silva et al., 2011)

IC.1

IC.3

(Hasnain et al., 2013)

IC.1

IC.2

IC.3

(Licorish et al., 2009)

IC.1

IC.2

IC.3

(Franc¸a et al., 2012)

IC.3

The Table ID column 2 will be used to refer to the

publications in the remainder of this article.

4.2 Manual Research

Publications of the last ten years of the conferences

and periodicals selected for this stage have been re-

viewed.

All the reviewed publications had at least their title

read, those that dealt with subjects potentially relevant

to this work also had their summaries read, passing

People Management in Agile Development

through the same selection criteria applied to the pu-

blications of the automatic search. From this process

six articles were selected, and are presented in the

Table 3.

Table 3: Selected Publications in Manual Search.

ID Publication

Inclusion

Criteria

(Chikersal et al., 2017)

IC.1

IC.3

(Cheng et al., 2017)

IC.3

(Bozan, 2017)

IC.3

#10

(Conboy et al., 2011)

IC.2

IC.3

#11

(Umarji and Shull, 2009) IC.1

#12

(Verner et al., 2014)

IC.1

IC.3

The Table ID column 3 will be used to refer to the

publications in the remainder of this article.

4.3 Scope of Study

Through the search mechanisms and deﬁned inclu-

sion and exclusion criteria it was possible to select

a total of 12 publications. In Table 4 the periods in

which these studies were carried out and the locations

where they occurred were presented.

Table 4: Extension of the Study.

Publication Year Country

#1 2012 India

#2 2013 Brazil

#3 2011 Brazil

#4 2013 United Kingdom

#5 2009 New Zealand

#6 2012 Brazil

#7 2017 USA

#8 2017 China

#9 2017 USA

#10 2011 Ireland

#11 2009 USA

#12 2014 United Kingdom

Studies were selected from 2009 to 2017 in 7

countries, the research reached a wide temporal and

territorial scope.

4.4 Data Extracted from Selected

Publications

Data were extracted from the selected articles refer-

ring to the three research questions of the SRL.

4.4.1 (RQ.1) How is People Management Done

in the Software Development Process?

From the selected articles, #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #11

and #12 dealt with themes that answer this research

question.

Publication #1 presents an approach to people

management adopted at an offshore development cen-

ter of a multinational software development organiza-

tion.

Publications #3 and #5 addressed the process of

building development teams and publication #7 ex-

poses the concept of collective intelligence and inves-

tigates how the composition of the team can interfere

with that intelligence.

Publication #4 investigates the impact of commu-

nication on trust among team members in agile soft-

ware development. The publications #6 and #12 map

the factors that affect the motivation of software engi-

neers and the impact of motivation on the results of

the development project.

The publication #11 addresses the difﬁculty of

measuring the performance of developers in software

projects and points out good practices to deal with

these difﬁculties.

4.4.2 (RQ.2) What Human Aspects, According

to the Literature, are Desirable for an

Agile Team?

Of the selected articles, the #4, #5 and #10 have ad-

dressed themes that answer this research question.

The publication #4 points to the ability to com-

municate as a determining human aspect to the

success of an agile software development project.

Publication #5 makes a more elaborate study of

this research question and cites qualities and weak-

nesses that are admissible according to roles to be

exercised in the organization. In addition, publica-

tion #5 highlights the importance of agile software

development have a diverse set of skills.

Publication #10 conducted multiple case studies

with 17 agile organizations. In these studies, people-

related challenges were identiﬁed, including recruit-

ment, training, motivation, and performance evalua-

tion. The study lists key issues with people in agile

development processes. In addition to identifying the

problems, the article brings a series recommendations

to deal with these problems.

ICEIS 2018 - 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

4.4.3 (RQ.3) Which Variables, Referring to

Human Aspects, are Observed in the

Management of People in Agile Software

Development?

All the articles selected dealt with at least one hu-

man aspect in MP in the context of software deve-

lopment, except for only publication #11 which de-

als only with the measurement of human aspects but

does not address any speciﬁc aspect. The Table 5 lists

all the aspects treated in the analyzed publications.

Table 5: Human Aspects Observed in Management of Pe-

ople.

Aspect

Publications

Personality #3, #5, #7, #9, #10

Motivation #2, #6, #10, #12

Productivity #2, #3, #7

Satisfaction #1, #7

Conﬁdence #4, #8

Technical Proﬁle

#3, #10

Behavior #3

Innovation #1

Engagement #1

Collaboration #9

Stability #6

Effort #6

Professional Growth

Collective Intelligence

Personality, motivation, productivity, satis-

faction, conﬁdence and technical proﬁle have ap-

peared in more than one publication. Personality,

the aspect that most appeared, was investigated in

ﬁve studies; then motivation in four and producti-

vity in three publications; satisfaction, conﬁdence and

technical proﬁle appear in two publications. The ot-

her aspects appear only in one of the publications.

4.4.4 Considerations Regarding SRL Results

The Table 6 presents an overview of the results of the

SLR.

Of the twelve publications selected, seven ad-

dressed research question 1 (RQ.1).

The MP process in the software industry was dealt

with extensively by publication #1, which presented

a MP approach adopted by a company in the area. In

addition, this study demonstrates the positive results

of this approach. With this in view, the MP model to

be created in this paper should be based on the appro-

ach presented by this study.

The team building process, part of the MP pro-

cess, is explored by publication #3 and #5 while #7

investigates how team composition impacts collective

team intelligence and is therefore a factor that should

interfere in the team composition process. The results

of these studies demonstrate the importance of the MP

team selection process in software development pro-

jects, so they should serve as input for the modeling

of this process in the MP model to be proposed.

Publication #4 addresses communication in agile

software development and suggests that communica-

tion opportunities should be incorporated and valued

in development processes.

Publications #6 and #7 investigate aspects that

affect team motivation and the impact of motivation

on project outcomes.

The SRL provided a signiﬁcant clariﬁcation regar-

ding this research question, especially regarding the

process of team formation. Regarding other MP pro-

cesses she was able to exemplify how they occur in

the software industry, since only one of the selected

studies dealt extensively with MP. The other selected

studies allowed the understanding of speciﬁc aspects

that interfere in MP.

Three of the selected papers dealt with subjects

related to research question 2 (RQ.2).

Publication #4 only points to the ability to com-

municate as a fundamental human aspect for agile

team members. Publication #5 makes a more de-

tailed survey of this issue and suggests a number of

desirable aspects according to the roles played by in-

dividuals.

And publication #10 sought to map the main is-

sues with people in the agile development processes

and also raises a series of suggestions to help solve

those problems. These results may guide PM as to

desirable human aspects in an agile team.

By its broadest character, eleven of the twelve pu-

blications contributed to research question 3 (RQ.3).

In total 14 human aspects are observed in the se-

lected studies, six of them are addressed by more than

one study. The most studied aspect was personality,

followed by motivation and productivity. Satis-

faction, conﬁdence and technical proﬁle have also

appeared in more than one publication.

In some of these publications it is detailed how

aspects are measured in the MP process, as previously

described.

5 PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

MODEL

In view of the results of the SRL and the theoretical

reference, a model of people management for agile

development based on the published literature and

good practices was proposed.

People Management in Agile Development

Table 6: Synthesis of SRL results.

Research Question Aspect Investigated Publication

RQ.1

MP Approach.

Team building process.

#3, #5 and #7

Impact of communication on trust.

Motivation of software developers.

#6 and #12

RQ.2

Communication capacity.

Qualities and Weaknesses according to the role played.

Problems with people in agile development processes.

#10

RQ.3

Personality

#3, #5, #7, #9 and #10

Motivation #2, #6, #10 and #12

Productivity #2, #3 and #7

Satisfaction #1 and #7

Conﬁdence #4 and #8

Technical Proﬁle #3 and #10

Behavior #3

Innovation #1

Engagement #1

Collaboration #9

Stability #6

Effort #6

Professional growth #6

Collective Intelligence #7

Fear #10

The model was constructed containing three steps.

The built-in model steps are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: People Management Model.

The management of people was modeled in an ite-

rative way, considering the presence of this characte-

ristic in agile development projects, so that PM occurs

concomitantly to the development process. The three

stages of the model were created to achieve speciﬁc

objectives in the PM:

• Planning: understand the context in which PM

will occur.

• Executing: perform activity of the development

process in view of PM.

• Analysing: ensure continuous improvement to

PM.

5.1 Planning

Planning should be carried out in view of PM’s ob-

jectives. It should be noted that these objectives

should not be focused only on organizational goals,

but also on the personal goals of the organization’s

employees (Chiavenato, 2008).

The planning stage is composed of the following

procedures: identify the organizational objectives to

be met by the PM, identify the personal objectives to

be met by the PM, deﬁne which PM mechanisms will

be used and deﬁne how PM results will be measured.

The implementation of these procedures will be

done in view of the agile development process. They

should be done in the initial phases of projects and re-

viewed at each iteration of the development process

adopted. The following tasks, not limited to them,

may be used to carry out the procedures of this step:

meetings with the organization’s management, meet-

ings with development team, and application of ques-

tionnaires.

Everyone interested in the MP of the organization

should be involved in the activities of this stage, being

responsible for conducting those tasks some collabo-

rator deﬁned by the organization, being able to be a

specialized team in the MP or a member of the deve-

lopment team.

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100

5.2 Execution

The execution phase of MP is responsible for the ma-

nagement of the development process based on the re-

solutions taken in the planning stage. At this stage, it

should be understood that MP processes must ensure

that internal and external inﬂuences can be controlled

so that the expected results are achieved.

The execution stage is composed of two procedu-

res: apply deﬁned PM mechanisms and gauge PM re-

sults. These procedures should be done throughout

the development process.

The following tasks, not limited to them, can be

adopted to carry out the procedures of this step: ma-

nage culture of the organization; manage employ-

ees’ careers; manage work content; manage employee

compensation; manage the hiring of new employees;

manage the application collaborators in productive

activities; manage the professional and personal de-

velopment of employees; monitor employee results;

and to apply MP measurement mechanisms.

Those responsible for carrying out these tasks are

ﬁrst and foremost the leaders of the development te-

ams. However, in view of the self-managed character

of the agile team, the whole team must share respon-

sibility for the execution of the tasks. If the organiza-

tion has specialized MP staff, this team should control

bureaucratic issues and assist in managing people, not

taking full responsibility for the area.

5.3 Analysis

The analysis step should be used to rethink the PM

from the results achieved. The procedures of this step

are: analyze the results of PM measurements, conso-

lidate good PM practices and suggest improvements

to PM.

In order to carry out these procedures, some tasks

can be performed, such as meetings with the direction

of the organization and meetings with the develop-

ment team.

As in the planning stage, all stakeholders of the

organization’s PM should be involved in the activities

of this stage, with responsibility for the performance

of these tasks by a collaborator deﬁned by the organi-

zation.

5.4 Preliminary Validation of the People

Management Model

With the objective of evaluating the proposed people

management model, we conducted a survey in a que-

stionnaire format, which was composed of 14 questi-

ons classiﬁed as follows: First group: 3 open questi-

ons – characterized by the proﬁle of respondents; Se-

cond group: 9 objectives questions – addressed the

personal objectives of those involved in PM; Third

group: 2 descriptive questions – addressed the per-

sonal goals of those involved in the PM in a generic

way.

A survey is not just the instrument (the question-

naire or checklist) for gathering information. It is a

comprehensive research method for collecting infor-

mation to describe, compare or explain knowledge,

attitudes and behavior. The purpose of a survey is

to produce statistics, that is, quantitative or numeri-

cal descriptions of some aspects of the study popula-

tion. The main way of collecting information is by

asking questions; their answers constitute the data to

be analyzed. Generally information is to be collected

from only a fraction of the population, that is a sam-

ple, rather than from every member of the population

(Kitchenham and Pﬂeeger, 2008).

The participants of the survey worked on the mo-

dernization of two systems of the Brazilian Army

(BA), namely: System of Endowment of Military Em-

ployment Material (SISDOT) and System of Bulletins

(SISBOL). SISDOT is responsible for keeping all ma-

terials used by BA, such as Cantil, riﬂe, machine gun,

fuel, cars, etc. SISBOL is a Web application develo-

ped to automate the process of making bulletins and

generating the personal history of the members of the

Military Organization.

5.4.1 Analysis of Results

In relation to the personal objective, the questionnaire

questions were constructed in assertive form of re-

spondent satisfaction in relation to a particular per-

sonal objective, so that the concordant answers lead

to the understanding that the respondent is reaching

the personal objective in analysis. Thus, three of the

personal goals are not being met by more than half of

the survey participants, described below:

1. Satisfactory extra salary beneﬁts (for example:

food ticket, transportation voucher, health plan,

etc.);

2. Stability in employment;

3. Opportunities for growth (promotion, training,

etc.).

The other objectives are being achieved by more

than half of the participants, described below:

1. Satisfactory salary income;

2. Quality of life at work;

3. Freedom to work;

4. Leadership with the team;

People Management in Agile Development

101

5. Pride of the work done;

6. Proud of the organization in which you work.

Of these objectives, only Objectives 5 and 6 obtai-

ned more than 40% responses totally in accordance

with the statement, in other words, that the objective

was being achieved in a totally satisfactory way.

This result leads us to the understanding that PM

applied in the organization has failures in the search

of the personal objectives of its collaborators.

In relation to People Management and Organizati-

onal Objectives, 5 responses were obtained from pro-

fessionals linked to the PM or project managers of the

organization. The participants afﬁrmed that the PM is

done in a decentralized way and by a specialized pro-

fessional. In addition, the PM is made according to

the norms, standards, programs and deﬁned proces-

ses.

In relation to the hiring of personnel the alloca-

tion of people occurs according to the availability of

the employees. The organization provides means to

train people when there is a need for speciﬁc techni-

cal skills to perform a given activity.

Regarding aspects related to employee evaluation,

the participants mentioned that the evaluation of ser-

ver performance is precarious, since it is practically

performed for career promotion purposes and not as a

way to improve performance in their activities.

Regarding the role of the human resources team

in the PM, the team responsible for human resources

acts as Bussines Patner where it accompanies daily

all the managers of the organization in their decision-

making.

All participants in the survey answered afﬁrmati-

vely that the processes of people management are well

deﬁned by the organization, and there are processes

that formalize the personnel management procedures,

such as:

• Personnel Training Process;

• Process for Beneﬁts;

• Payroll process;

• Performance Evaluation Process – (although pre-

carious, only for the purpose of promoting).

In relation to how the people recruitment, se-

lection and integration in the projects developed in the

organization is done, the selection is made through a

public tender. The distribution of tasks and the people

performance evaluation in the work is done in a hier-

archical way, where the immediate bosses delegate

the tasks to the subordinates. The performance evalu-

ation is performed annually by the immediate super-

visor, the bosses are evaluated by their subordinates.

The evaluation process is automated and performed

by the peers and the immediate superior.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This research aimed to model how people manage-

ment should be done in agile software development

projects. For this it was necessary to understand how

the literature deals with people in the Software Deve-

lopment Process, how management of people should

occur in such processes and what speciﬁc agile met-

hodologies are relevant to management of people.

In addition, it became necessary to know:

1. How is the management of people in the process

of software development?

2. What human aspects, according to the literature,

are desirable for an agile team?

3. What variables, referring to human aspects, are

observed in the management of people in agile

software development?

To answer these questions, an SRL was con-

ducted. Following this methodology, it was possible

to ﬁnd important contributions published in this ﬁeld

of research. Some people management examples have

been found, a number of human aspects have been rai-

sed as important for a while and one can see which

are most educated in management of people (PM) for

agile development.

With the data collected, a simple and generic PM

model was proposed. That combines the basis of the

literature in the area with the good practices observed

in the studies analyzed. This model was made with

the intention of being easy to understand, adaptive to

several methodologies of software development and

inexpensive in its implementation.

As a future study, we intend to validate the model

with its application in real scenarios in the software

industry. And extension of the systematic review of

literature extension, gathering more subsidies to im-

prove the proposed model.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research work has the support of the System De-

velopment Department of the Brazilian Army.

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