Productivity Gains from Software

New ways of developing and using software have led to higher efficiency and productivity through greater interaction between users.

Learning Objective

Explain how collaborative software increases productivity

Key Points

Collaborative software, or groupware, puts computers in the center of communications between groups of workers, managers, and technicians. This way of working has produced major gains in productivity since it was first introduced.
Examples of collaborative software include document sharing, shared calendars, instant messaging, and web conferencing.
In agile software development, solutions arise through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It involves adaptive planning and flexbile responses: tasks are broken into small increments with minimal longer-term planning, and responses evolve to problems as they arise.
The values espoused in the Agile Manifesto focus on people and functionality, rather than rigidity, documentation, and planning. It is thought that better, more useful software can be developed with these values.

Terms

Agile software development
A group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. The basic idea behind the agile method is to develop a system through repeated cycles (iterative) and in smaller portions at a time (incremental), allowing software developers to take advantage of what was learned during development of earlier parts or versions of the system.
Collaborative software
Computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals.

Example

Google Docs are a particularly popular and easy to use set of collaborative softwares. Users can link their calendars, and work on documents, spreadsheets, or presentations simultaneously and in real time. The simplicity and availability of Google Docs make them particularly popular.

Full Text

Collaborative Software

Collaborative software was originally designated as groupware and this term can be traced as far back as the late 1980s, when Richman and Slovak said, "Like an electronic sinew that binds teams together, the new groupware aims to place the computer squarely in the middle of communications among managers, technicians, and anyone else who interacts in groups, revolutionizing the way they work. "

Collaborative software has produced major gains in productivity. The definition of an office has dramatically changed as an individual is able to work efficiently as a member of a group wherever there is a computer (or an iPad, or iPhone, or Blackberry) .

Software

Collaborative software has produced major gains in productivity.

Examples of the major gains include:

Document sharing (including group editing)
Group calendars
Instant messaging
Web conferencing

Agile Software Development

Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.

It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle.

Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve long-term planning.

Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. The development cycle includes:

Planning
Requirements analysis
Design
Coding
Unit testing
Acceptance testing

This approach minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly. Stakeholders produce documentation as required.

An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration. Multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features.

According to the Agile Manifesto:

Through this work we have come to value: individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to change over following a plan. That is, while there is value in the items on the right , we value the items on the left more.

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