Table 6 Effects and moderators’ definitions
From: On the benefits and challenges of using kanban in software engineering: a structured synthesis study
Benefit – as in Ahmad et al. (2018) | Effect | Description |
|---|---|---|
Improve visibility and transparency | Work visibility | Work is visible when any software project member is able to obtain the information necessary to determine the state of the project tasks. |
Better control of project activities and tasks | Control of project activities and tasks | The availability or implementation of tools, techniques, or practices to handle, avoid, or mitigate unpredictable tasks during the software development. |
Identify impediments to flow | Flow of work | The flow of work through the software development process. |
Improve workflow | Workflow | An orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activity enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. (ISO 2017b) |
Faster time-to-market | Time-to-market | Time-to-market is the strategy of focusing on reducing the time to introduce new products to market. (Pawar et al. 1994) |
Improve prioritization of products and tasks | Task prioritization | As a principle, it means doing ‘first things first;’ as a process, it means evaluating a group of items and ranking them in their order of importance or urgency. (Barney 1986) |
Decrease defects and bugs | External Quality | A measure of the degree to which a software product enables the behavior of a system to satisfy stated and implied needs when the system including the software is used under specified conditions. NOTE: Attributes of the behavior can be verified and/or validated by executing the software product during testing and operation.(ISO 2017a) |
Improve quality | Internal Quality | A measure of the degree to which a set of static attributes of a software product satisfy stated and implied needs when the software product is used under specified conditions. NOTE 1: Static attributes include those that relate to the software architecture, structure, and its components. NOTE 2: Static attributes can be verified by the review, inspection, simulation and/or automated tools. (ISO 2017a) |
A lightweight, intuitive method | Conformance | The concept of an agreement between a process and its model is what is referred to as process conformance. |
Improve communication and collaboration | Collaboration | To work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor. (Stevenson 2010) |
Improve communication and collaboration | Communication | The imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing or using some other medium. |
Improve team motivation | Motivation | The personnel or team motivation may come from job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. |
Team building and cohesion | Team Cohesion | According to COCOMO II, the Team Cohesion accounts for the sources of project turbulence and entropy due to difficulties in synchronizing the project’s stakeholders: users, customers, developers, maintainers, interface designers, others. These difficulties may arise from differences in stakeholder objectives and cultures; difficulties in reconciling objectives; and stakeholder’s lack of experience and familiarity in operating as a team. |
Increase customer satisfaction | Customer Satisfaction | Customer satisfaction is a perception. It’s also a question of degree. It can vary from high satisfaction to low satisfaction. If customers believe that you’ve met their requirements, they experience high satisfaction. If they believe that you’ve not met their requirements, they experience low satisfaction. (ISO 2005) |
Promoting a culture of continuous learning | Continuous learning | The process by which individual and/or organizational learning is fostered on an ongoing basis. (Tannenbaum 1997) |
Strategic alignment | Strategic alignment | Alignment is related to the establishment of a shared view about software features between stakeholders. Alignment is usually necessary at any level of software development. For instance, developers should adopt the same perspective when refactoring source code. Alignment is also necessary between information systems departments and the business as a whole. |
Challenges – as in Ahmad et al. (2018) | Moderator | Description |
Setting up and maintaining Kanban | This challenge does not represent a moderator. | |
Management not ready for new method | Expertise | Expert skill or knowledge in a particular field. (Stevenson 2010) |
Poor understanding of Kanban concepts and practices | This challenge does not represent a moderator. | |
Managed communication between teams and customer | Managed communication between teams and customer | The imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing or using some other medium. (Stevenson 2010) |
Changing organizational culture | Organizational culture | A complex set of values, beliefs, assumptions, and symbols that define the way in which a firm conducts its business. (Barney 1986) |
Lack of supporting practices around the use of Kanban | Supporting practices | Supporting practices necessary or essential for the use of a method, technique or procedure. |
Lack of training | Training | The process of learning the skills you need to do a particular job or activity. (Stevenson 2010) |
Poor knowledge management | This challenge was present only in one study, which was not included in the synthesis. | |