Plenary Lecture

Adopting Agile Software Project Management Practices: Success Factors, Changes Required, and Challenges

Dr. Subhas C. Misra


Harvard University, Boston,
U.S.A.

Email: s_c_misra@yahoo.com

Abstract: Agile software development (ASD) is an emerging approach in software engineering, initially proposed and promoted by a group of seventeen software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. They consolidated their thoughts, and defined these methods as “agile”. The approaches are based on experiences and best practices from the past by the above-mentioned group of seventeen software professionals. ASD practices give importance to development around motivated individuals, give them the freedom and flexibility to make them productive, and “think outside of the box”. The agile philosophy believes in project implementation around motivated individuals. Motivated individuals should be provided the environment, and support needed for them to make them successful. As an emerging approach of this century, agile software development has undergone limited number of empirical studies. In this keynote lecture, I advance the state-of-the-art of the research in this area by conducting survey-based ex-post-facto empirical (quantitative) studies by identifying the success factors from the perspective of software practitioners in agile software development projects. In this keynote lecture, I also suggest a ranked list of changes required and challenges involved in adopting agile software development methodologies by projects practicing plan-driven software development.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Dr. Subhas C. Misra is currently a V. Scientist at Harvard University, Boston, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree from Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada, and M.S. and M.Tech. degrees respectively from the University of New Brunswick, in Fredericton, Canada, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), at Kharagpur, India. Dr. Misra has several years of experience working in the academia, and the public and private sectors in research, teaching, consulting, project management, architecture, software design and product engineering roles. His current research interests include the areas of software management, software quality management, and information systems security, which are multidisciplinary, combining the fields of software engineering, information systems, organizational behavior, and technology and operations management. Dr. Misra has authored over 50 scholarly research papers and published 5 books.
He has won Best Research Paper Award in an international conference held in the United States. He was also the recipient of more than 15 academic awards and fellowships such as the Achievement Award at the 2007 World Congress held in Las Vegas in the United States for “contribution and dedication” to his field, and the Canadian Government’s NSERC Post Doctoral Fellowship. A mention about him and his work has also appeared in the June 8, 2007 issue of the Carleton Now newspaper. His biography has also been selected to appear in the Cambridge Blue Book, Cambridge, England, 2008.
Dr. Misra is the Managing Editor/Associate Editor of more than ten international journals. He was invited to serve as Program chair, Organizing Chair, and Session Chair in different international conferences. He has been serving in the program committees of over a dozen international conferences.
Dr. Misra was also invited to offer keynote lectures in more than a dozen international conferences in different countries of North America, Europe, and Asia. Recently, he was invited to deliver a keynote lecture in the World Congresses held in UC Berkeley (California, USA) and Imperial College (London, USA).