A Case Study on Tool Support for Collaboration in Agile Development

We report on a longitudinal case study conducted at the Italian site of a large software company to further our understanding of how development and communication tools can be improved to better support agile practices and collaboration. After observing inconsistencies in the way communication tools (i.e., email, Skype, and Slack) were used, we first reinforced the use of Slack as the central hub for internal communication, while setting clear rules regarding tools usage. As a second main change, we refactored the Jira Scrum board into two separate boards, a detailed one for developers and a high-level one for managers, while also introducing automation rules and the integration with Slack. The first change revealed that the teams of developers used and appreciated Slack differently with the QA team being the most favorable and that the use of channels is hindered by automatic notifications from development tools (e.g., Jenkins). The findings from the second change show that 85% of the interviewees reported perceived improvements in their workflow. Despite the limitations due to the single nature of the reported case, we highlight the importance for companies to reflect on how to properly set up their agile work environment to improve communication and facilitate collaboration.