Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Analyzing the BizDev interface in an enterprise context: a case of developers acting in business

  • Published:
Empirical Software Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Context

Currently, organizations seek to evolve software engineering methodologies targeting a wider and healthier collaboration among their functional areas. In this context, the interface between business and development (BizDev) includes all the interactions between Information Technology and business areas within an organization. Although we have been observing a small number of studies about this interface, we still consider the area lacks deeper characterization and deserves analysis in more diverse contexts.

Goal

We aimed to understand how the BizDev interface works under enterprise and innovative contexts, raising information on roles, responsibilities, and practices in the interface.

Method

We conducted a case study in a Brazilian company through the application of semi-structured interviews with fifteen people from both technology and business areas. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and further analyzed using Grounded Theory procedures, namely the open, axial, and selective coding phases. Finally, the synthesis was validated with participants.

Results

Not only we obtained relevant information on roles, responsibilities, and practices in the BizDev interface, but we also identified a phenomenon in which IT people acted in business. We observed development analysts and leaders working on defining and prioritizing requirements, analyzing business indicators, and presenting feature propositions. Also, the organizational culture strongly influenced this behavior through the sense of ownership and meritocracy. This performance is also characterized as data-driven, with IT people constantly extracting metrics and using them to validate and justify their work in business.

Conclusion

The organizational culture and the open BizDev communication were the main motivators and support for IT people to act in business. Despite the positive results, developers also delivered features that harmed some business aspects. Therefore, while we advocate organizations should review their organizational values and culture to motivate this behavior, we suggest that guidance from the business area is necessary, introducing measures to prevent business decisions from being made solely by the IT area.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability Statements

This study relies primarily on qualitative data from interviews. All the supplementary material is available at https://zenodo.org/record/8006919. It includes

-Business profile interview script;

-Tech profile interview script;

-Head of Technology interview script;

-The whole codebook with quotes for all the codes and groundedness level per code;

-A detailed analysis of the attributes and causes for good and bad BizDev communication

Notes

  1. https://www.scaledagileframework.com

  2. Throughout this paper, we refer to the company as CompanyP, and ProductP for referring to its main product, the mobile app, for confidentiality.

  3. ATLAS.ti supports different GT procedures, such as tagging codes on raw text files and creating networks connecting these codes: https://software.com.br/p/atlas-ti

  4. When interviewers at CompanyP reference Squads, they are referencing Spotify’s model of organization, in which teams (squads) should be composed of people from different areas of knowledge: https://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SpotifyScaling.pdf

  5. Slack is an instant messaging program developed for professional and organizational communications: https://slack.com/

  6. “A 1-1 is a dedicated space on the calendar and in your mental map for open-ended and anticipated conversation between a manager and an employee.” (https://wavelength.asana.com/workstyle-what-is-a-1-1/)

  7. Firebase is a set of back-end cloud computing services provided by Google, including detailed dashboards with relevant metrics for applications: https://firebase.google.com

References

  • Abrahamsson P, Salo O, Ronkainen J, Warsta J (2002) Agile Software Development Methods: Review and Analysis. VTT Publications, Finland

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown AD, Starkey K (1994) The effect of organizational culture on communication and information. J Manag Stud 31(6):807–828. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1994.tb00640.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conboy K (2009) Agility from first principles: Reconstructing the concept of agility in information systems development. Inf Syst Res 20(3):329–354. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.1090.0236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diel E, Marczak S, Cruzes DS (2016) Communication challenges and strategies in distributed devops. In: Proceedings of the IEEE 11th International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), IEEE, pp 24–28. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2016.28

  • Fitzgerald B, Stöl KJ (2015) Continuous software engineering: A roadmap and agenda. J Syst Softw 123:176–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2015.06.063

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de França BBN, Jeronimo H, Travassos GH (2016) Characterizing devops by hearing multiple voices. In: Proceedings of the 30th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, pp 53–62. https://doi.org/10.1145/2973839.2973845

  • Gruhn V, Schäfer C (2015) Bizdevops: because devops is not the end of the story. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Software Methodologies, Tools, and Techniques, Springer, pp 388–398. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22689-7_30

  • Karvonen T, Sharp H, Barroca L (2018) Enterprise agility: Why is transformation so hard? In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Agile Software Development, Springer, pp 131–145. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91602-6_9

  • Knauss E, Yussuf A, Blincoe K, Damian D, Knauss A (2018) Continuous clarification and emergent requirements flows in open-commercial software ecosystems. Requir Eng 23:97–117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-016-0259-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moreira C, de França B (2019) Towards a healthier collaboration at the business-development interface. In: Proceedings of the XXII Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE), pp 86–99

  • Nyrud H (2017) Bizdev teams in agile software development. Master’s thesis, University of Oslo

  • Oriol M, Stade M, Fotrousi F, Nadal S, Varga J, Seyff N, Abello A, Franch X, Marco J, Schmidt O (2018) Fame: Supporting continuous requirements elicitation by combining user feedback and monitoring. In: Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 26th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), pp 217–227. https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2018.00030

  • Palomares C, Franch X, Quer C, Chatzipetrou P, López L, Gorschek T (2021) The state-of-practice in requirements elicitation: an extended interview study at 12 companies. Requir Eng 26(2):273–299. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-020-00345-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Petersen K, Gencel C (2013) Worldviews, research methods, and their relationship to validity in empirical software engineering research. In: Proceedings of the 2013 Joint Conference of the 23rd International Workshop on Software Measurement and the 8th International Conference on Software Process and Product Measurement, IEEE, pp 81–89. https://doi.org/10.1109/IWSM-Mensura.2013.22

  • Putta A, Uludağ Ö, Hong SL, Paasivaara M, Lassenius C (2021a) Why do organizations adopt agile scaling frameworks? a survey of practitioners. In: Proceedings of the 15th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), pp 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3475716.3475788

  • Putta A, Uludağ Ö, Paasivaara M, Hong SL (2021b) Benefits and challenges of adopting safe-an empirical survey. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Agile Software Development, Springer, Cham, pp 172–187. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78098-2_11

  • Remta D, Buchalcevova A (2021) Product owner’s journey to safe®–role changes in scaled agile framework®. Information 12(3):107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Runeson P, Höst M (2009) Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empir Softw Eng 14(2):131–164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-008-9102-8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Agile S (2011) Scaled agile framework. https://www.scaledagileframework.com, [Online; accessed 04-Jun-2023]

  • Sharp H, Robinson H (2010) Three ‘c’s of agile practice: collaboration, coordination and communication. In: Agile Software Development, Springer, pp 61–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12575-1_4

  • Strauss A, Corbin J (1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Sage Publications, Inc

  • trode DE, Huff SL, Tretiakov A (2009) The impact of organizational culture on agile method use. In: Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE, pp 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2009.436

  • Van Waardenburg G, Van Vliet H (2013) When agile meets the enterprise. Information and Software Technology 55(12):2154–2171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2013.07.012

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weiss RS (1995) Learning from strangers: The art and method of qualitative interview studies. Simon and Schuster

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the Brazilian Company and the participants for supporting this research. We thank the reviewers for all their suggestions, many of which we incorporated into the paper and significantly improved it. This research was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. Also supported by UNICAMP, Amazonas State Research Support Foundation - FAPEAM, Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), and CNPq process 314174/2020-6

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Computação, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

    Caique G. Moreira & Breno B. N. de França

  2. Instituto de Computação, Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, Brazil

    Tayana U. Conte

Authors
  1. Caique G. Moreira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Breno B. N. de França
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tayana U. Conte
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Breno B. N. de França.

Ethics declarations

Conflicts of interest

The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest

Additional information

Communicated by: Slinger Jansen.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Moreira, C.G., de França, B.B.N. & Conte, T.U. Analyzing the BizDev interface in an enterprise context: a case of developers acting in business. Empir Software Eng 28, 154 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10383-y

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10383-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation