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Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations

The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and th...

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Main Author: Mbekela, Unathi
Other Authors: Brown, Irwin
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Information Systems 2018
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access_status_str Open Access
author Mbekela, Unathi
author2 Brown, Irwin
author_browse Brown, Irwin
Mbekela, Unathi
author_facet Brown, Irwin
Mbekela, Unathi
author_sort Mbekela, Unathi
collection Thesis
description The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and the software developer in software development teams specifically in organizations that adopt agile methodologies to manage their software development projects. It is this misalignment between these two roles and the lack of research on the factors that influence this phenomenon that prompted the study. The study aims to investigate the factors which influence misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations with specific focus on the social dimension of alignment contrary to most studies that merely address the intellectual dimension of alignment. The research methodology followed a positivist, quantitative and deductive approach. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents in South Africa (SA) and United States of America (USA). The results show that there are four factors that have an overall influence on the misalignment between developers and testers in agile software development teams. These factors are (1) process non-compliance combined with lack of accountability, (2) conflicting interpersonal skills, (3) lack of shared domain knowledge, specifically lack of developers' knowledge about testing and (4) poor collaboration. Future research can proceed to identify the strategies that agile organizations can adopt alleviate this problem of misalignment.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:33:43.673Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2018
publishDateRange 2018
publishDateSort 2018
publisher Department of Information Systems
publisherStr Department of Information Systems
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/27298 Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations Mbekela, Unathi Brown, Irwin Information Systems The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and the software developer in software development teams specifically in organizations that adopt agile methodologies to manage their software development projects. It is this misalignment between these two roles and the lack of research on the factors that influence this phenomenon that prompted the study. The study aims to investigate the factors which influence misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations with specific focus on the social dimension of alignment contrary to most studies that merely address the intellectual dimension of alignment. The research methodology followed a positivist, quantitative and deductive approach. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents in South Africa (SA) and United States of America (USA). The results show that there are four factors that have an overall influence on the misalignment between developers and testers in agile software development teams. These factors are (1) process non-compliance combined with lack of accountability, (2) conflicting interpersonal skills, (3) lack of shared domain knowledge, specifically lack of developers' knowledge about testing and (4) poor collaboration. Future research can proceed to identify the strategies that agile organizations can adopt alleviate this problem of misalignment. 2018-02-05T13:01:34Z 2018-02-05T13:01:34Z 2017 Master Thesis Masters MCom http://hdl.handle.net/11427/27298 eng application/pdf Department of Information Systems Faculty of Commerce University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Information Systems
Mbekela, Unathi
Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
title_full Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
title_fullStr Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
title_full_unstemmed Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
title_short Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
title_sort investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations
topic Information Systems
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/27298
work_keys_str_mv AT mbekelaunathi investigatingthefactorswhichinfluencethemisalignmentbetweendevelopersandtestersinagileorganizations