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International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination

SPICE 2017: Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination pp 455–466Cite as

The Impact of Situational Context on the Software Development Process – A Case Study of a Highly Innovative Start-up Organization

Part of the Communications in Computer and Information Science book series (CCIS,volume 770)

Abstract

Over the past six years, we have examined the impact of situational context of the software development process. Our early work involved the systematic development of a comprehensive situational factors reference framework. More recently, our efforts have focused on the application of this reference framework to different types of situational context. In this latest in a series of case studies, we examine the case of a small start-up organization, exploring in detail the process adopted. We also undertook a detailed evaluation of the situational context, carefully identifying the situational factors of greatest importance and how these factors have influenced the process design. The outcome of our case study confirms our earlier finding that a software development process is highly dependent on the organizational context. We also discovered some interesting new themes in this start-up environment, including the difficulty associated with prioritizing situational factors and the complexity that surrounds software process design. The role of organizational learning and feedback into improved development processes is also presented as a critical feature.

Keywords

  • Software development process
  • Software development context
  • Agile
  • Lean
  • Process selection

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/2094 to Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (www.lero.ie) and Enterprise Ireland grant CF20133605.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Optimality Technologies, Invent, DCU, Dublin, Ireland

    Gerard Marks

  2. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Rory V. O’Connor & Paul M. Clarke

  3. Lero, The Irish Software Research Centre, Dublin, Ireland

    Rory V. O’Connor & Paul M. Clarke

Authors
  1. Gerard Marks
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  2. Rory V. O’Connor
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  3. Paul M. Clarke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul M. Clarke .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain

    Antonia Mas

  2. University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Baleares, Spain

    Antoni Mesquida

  3. Dublin University, Dublin, Ireland

    Prof. Dr. Rory V. O'Connor

  4. Software Quality Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Terry Rout

  5. Impronova AB, Askim, Sweden

    Alec Dorling

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Marks, G., O’Connor, R.V., Clarke, P.M. (2017). The Impact of Situational Context on the Software Development Process – A Case Study of a Highly Innovative Start-up Organization. In: Mas, A., Mesquida, A., O'Connor, R., Rout, T., Dorling, A. (eds) Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination. SPICE 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 770. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67383-7_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67383-7_33

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