Authors:
Nicolas Nascimento
;
Alan Santos
;
Afonso Sales
and
Rafael Chanin
Affiliation:
Polytechnical School, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Avenida Ipiranga 6681, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Keyword(s):
Software Engineering, Agile, Sprint Length.
Abstract:
Agile software development is adopted by the industry as a way to develop applications while also remaining flexible to quickly respond and adapt. At its core, agile relies heavily upon time-constrained iterations, usually named “sprints”, which should provide the development team to deliver a functional version of a software product. This study aims at understanding what is the impact of different sprint lengths in agile software teams. In order to achieve it, we have conducted a field study at a mobile software development course for eight months. The course was organized on three stages, where at each stage ten projects were simultaneously conducted. Data collection was based on project outcome including daily logs and deliverables generated by the teams. Each stage had a different sprint length (1-week, 2-week, or 3-week iterations). Our results indicate that there are differences in some aspects, including project evaluation and weekly impediments. These differences were statist
ically analyzed regarding the impacts of different sprint lengths in agile teams. Further, we have also observed some correlation between weekly impediments and project evaluation, providing indications of a possible impact on overall projects outcome.
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