Software metrics have been proven to be useful in indicating problems in development projects, but they are limited to analyzing information captured in software artifacts. By applying metrics to communication artifacts, we want to make the development process more insightful, validate the software metrics by combining them with results derived from aspects of team communication, and make it possible to recognize problems from a very early project stage.

The team allocation for software projects is often done solely based on the subjective judgment of the project manager. The objective of this thesis is to create a hybrid system called TEASE (TEam Allocation for Software Engineering). It makes use of an algorithm while allowing user interaction to create optimal teams from a pool of persons. The project manager can adapt the generated team allocation through an intuitive user interface based on his own knowledge and experience. The focus of this thesis is the user interface of TEASE.

The problem of team allocation is a complex task for humans to manage. We address this problem by exploring possible algorithmic solutions and implementing some of them in an interactive decision-support system. We collected a range of algorithmic approaches, introduced a convenient cat- egorization of them, and implemented one of the most promising ones into an actual software solution. We further held two distinct experiments with the implemented system. The results of these experiments show that the sys- tem finds an optimal team allocation with regards to the specified allocation objective and satisfies all specified constraints.

User feedback is difficult to use as a basis for implementation. For this purpose, we introduce FeedViz, a feedback visualisation component which analyses, structures and prioritises user feedback and illustrates the results to the development team. The aim is to simplify the decision-making process as well as to capture information related to feedback which is important for rationale management.

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Deployment and publication of software can be painful and time consuming. In this thesis we address the release management of software related to continuous integration and delivery. As collaboration is a central point in agile software development, we aim to promote collaboration in the area of release management by improving the release process. We focus on the release process, as the Rugby process model describes it. This thesis deals with the usage of releases in the context of Rugby and examines their impact. We conduct an evaluation to address the use of releases in meetings. This leads to an idea that can improve the application of releases as communication models.

Continuous delivery allows software developers to deliver applications to the customer with a few clicks and therefore helps them to gather feedback fast. We present a continuous delivery process model and describe how we integrated this process model into the iOS Praktikum. We explain how we thought the concepts to the student using different teaching resources like a cross-project release-team. We evaluate the course using an online questionnaire after the end of the projects. Our observations show that participating students understood and applied the concepts of continuous delivery and are convinced about the benefits. Continuous delivery increased the amount of releases increased the speed of the delivery process compared to earlier versions of the Praktikum.

Mobile applications are of increasing relevance to businesses in all industries. While companies are progressively adopting agile methodologies to facilitate faster development, there is a lack of suitable workflows that accommodate all requirements and restrictions of a corporate environment. There are, however, promising approaches to continuous delivery for mobile projects in the academic field. Our goal is to transfer a well-proven process model and system from Technische Universität München (TUM) to the mobile business line at Capgemini, a multinational provider of IT consulting, outsourcing, and professional services. We describe a modified and extended process model that includes optional as well as variable subprocesses to provide a flexible solution. By allowing each project to adapt the workflow to their specific needs, we simultaneously provide a way of standardizing how continuous delivery is applied to mobile projects in the company. After evaluating our solution in eight deliberately chosen projects, results show increased frequency and thoroughness of integration, resulting in more immediate feedback about changes. Delivery is simplified and accelerated, saving both time and resources.

 Many software projects suffer from low customer acceptance levels, late change requests and development cost overruns. A main cause of these problems is a lack of shared understanding among stakeholders. Traditional requirements specification languages and methods face difficulties to create and maintain shared understanding. For example by representing requirements in several different models and transferring information from one model to another information is lost. Each transformation introduces errors and stakeholders are not capable of correcting those mistakes, because the models are not easy to understand. Projects without shared understanding between stakeholders are bound to fail. We propose a semiformal behavior-driven specification language that is derived from methods developed by practitioners over the last 10 years. Behavior-driven specification uses ubiquitous language to describe system behavior as acceptance criteria from a user perspective. These semiformal models are easy to understand for stakeholders and form a basis for communication across domains, thereby enabling shared understanding. We apply the behavior-driven specification language in an industrial case study with a small development team on a mobile application development project. In a survey we show that lack of shared understanding is a root cause of problems in the development team and in an experimental setup we show that behavior-driven specification establishes shared understanding of requirements. Moreover in another survey we observe the explanatory value of shared understanding as well as better acceptance and better team performance as outcomes of shared understanding in a real world project.