Modern process management methods in agile software development

The globalization of business, technological innovations and also social change are altering requirements related to the design and utilization of software products. The development of software, above all corporate software, is an extremely complex matter. It necessitates cooperation between numerous task managers, who work on different projects, processes and domains using a wide variety of different tools and resources to assist them. Effective and efficient service provision within the software development sector requires modern process design and implementation in the form of agile and slim development methods.

Over the next 36 months, the newly formed Institute for Enterprise Systems (InES), which was established by the University of Mannheim and SAP AG, will perform research into software development methods that are more agile and slimmer. During this research, focus will be placed on the following topics:

• Analysis of the productivity and quality of new development processes and methods
• Dynamic analysis of the activities and information flows within agile and slim development processes
• Analysis of the influence that agile and slim development methods have on the learning process within development teams

Within the scope of the above-mentioned subjects, three postgraduate positions will be financed by SAP AG and the University of Mannheim, both of whom will cover one half of the costs. In relation hereto, the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg will support these appointments at the university, thereby ensuring an increase in expertise in the rapidly growing research area of software process innovations in Germany through the conferral of doctorate degrees.

This cooperation project within the Software-Cluster region will enable the subject of training for experts to be driven forward while, at the same time, ensuring topics that are of relevance for the cluster are dealt with. The objective of this cooperation is to provide talented young professionals with the ability to obtain doctoral degrees during joint research projects and, therefore, provide them with additional career options. Furthermore, this cooperation will enable an exchange of knowledge between the areas of business and science on a sustainable basis while supporting additional research projects, which are of importance from both an economic and scientific perspective. The project "Lean Research", for example, is supplementing the research activities of the Software-Cluster with further innovative aspects through its sub-project SWINNG, which is dealing with "process innovations in the software industry".

Partners:

SAP AG

University of Mannheim (Institute for Enterprise Systems)

Contact:

Herr Dr. Dirk Voelz

SAP Research Darmstadt

SAP AG

Bleichstrasse 8

64283 Darmstadt

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Herr Prof. Dr. Armin Heinzl

Full Professor and Chairperson

Information Systems I

University of Mannheim

Schloss

68131 Mannheim

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