An investigation of physical and virtual communication tools in improving the accuracy, utilization, and effectiveness of Agile projects

Effective communication within agile development projects is essential. It can impact the development projects success with respect to delivering the project on time, staying within budget, and staying within the accepted levels of quality. In recent years, research efforts have been focused on exploring the agile development solution space. Research on agile communication has historically focused on communication among team members and not on communication radiators such as work in progress boards.;Contrary to much of the consulting community's suggestions, the dissertation finds that there is not a correlation with the use of work in progress boards and delivering the project on time, staying within budget, or staying within the accepted levels of quality. As a result, any improved communications effectiveness the work in progress board may provide does not improve the probability of project success.;We collected stories from scrum masters, software developers and business executives. Our user stories described how the work in progress boards help with budgeting, time to market and code quality. We did find a significant disparity between what the survey takers described in their stories and their specific evaluation of the effectiveness of the work in progress board with respect to accuracy of data, delivering the project on time, meeting customer expectations, and managing workload.;Our research hypotheses were validated by a combination of mathematical proof, story analysis and story categorization. The data collection method used in this study is Sensemaker. Sensemaker has been used comprehensively in research, offering a quantitative approach to examining what has traditionally been a qualitative domain. We recommend further research to better understand the disparity between respondent stories and evaluations.;This research contributes to the body of knowledge of systems engineering in multiple areas: internal and external project communications, agile development, and the impact of agile development work in progress boards.