Report From The Trenches: A Case Study In Modernizing Software Development Practices

TL;DR

This paper presents an empirical case study on how a medium-sized software company modernized its development practices with agile methods, analyzing benefits, drawbacks, and COVID-19's impact on employees.

Contribution

It provides insights into the real-world effects of adopting agile practices and highlights challenges posed by outdated technologies during modernization.

Findings

Agile practices improved perceived product quality and delivery speed.

Obsolete technologies hindered adaptation to modern development standards.

COVID-19 increased difficulties for employees adapting to new practices.

Abstract

One factor of success in software development companies is their ability to deliver good quality products, fast. For this, they need to improve their software development practices. We work with a medium-sized company modernizing its development practices. The company introduced several practices recommended in agile development. If the benefits of these practices are well documented, the impact of such changes on the developers is less well known. We follow this modernization before and during the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper presents an empirical study of the perceived benefit and drawback of these practices as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the company's employees. One of the conclusions, is the additional difficulties created by obsolete technologies to adapt the technology itself and the development practices it encourages to modern standards.