Agile Development Environment Research Articles

Revolutionizing Frontend Development: Embracing Micro UI Architecture with Cloud Integration

Purpose: The primary aim of this study is to dissect and highlight the ongoing transformative shift in frontend development practices, predominantly spurred by the adoption of Micro UI architecture and its synergistic integration with cloud services. This transformation is poised to address critical challenges in scalability, modularity, and development efficiency that currently beset web application development. By investigating the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of Micro UI architecture in tandem with cloud technologies, the study elucidates its potential to revolutionize frontend development, enhance team dynamics, and elevate application performance. Methodology: This article adopts a comprehensive approach to explore the theoretical foundations and practical implications of Micro UI architecture and cloud integration in frontend development. The methodology encompasses a comparative analysis with the microservices approach in backend development, detailed case studies on the implementation of Micro UI with cloud services, and an empirical examination of its effects on development processes and application performance. Through this multifaceted methodology, the article aims to provide a holistic understanding of Micro UI architecture’s role in modern web development. Findings: The findings reveal that Micro UI architecture, characterized by its decoupled, component-based strategy, significantly contributes to simplifying the complexities inherent in modern web development. This architectural approach, when combined with the expansive capabilities of cloud computing, facilitates the development of more resilient, scalable, and performant frontend applications. Additionally, the study finds that this convergence enhances development efficiency, fosters better team collaboration, and promotes a more agile development environment. The integration with cloud services further ensures a seamless and robust user experience globally, underscoring the transformative potential of embracing Micro UI architecture in frontend development. Unique Contribution to Theory, Policy, and Practice: The article makes a unique contribution to the theoretical framework of frontend development by systematically articulating the concept of Micro UI architecture and delineating its integration with cloud technologies. On a practical level, it offers actionable insights and guidelines for development teams and organizations looking to adopt this innovative approach. Policy-wise, it suggests frameworks for standardizing practices and protocols in deploying Micro UI components and integrating cloud services. Recommendations include the adoption of Micro UI architecture as a standard practice in frontend development, the development of best practices for its integration with cloud services, and the encouragement of collaborative efforts across teams to leverage the full potential of this transformative approach. By doing so, the study paves the way for a new era of frontend development that is more scalable, efficient, and conducive to innovation.

An Effective Approach Towards Reducing Regression Testing Efforts by Using Topic Modeling in Agile Development Environment

An Effective Approach Towards Reducing Regression Testing Efforts by Using Topic Modeling in Agile Development Environment

Evaluating Service Computing Framework with Scrum through a Case Study

The Service Computing Framework with Scrum (SCFS) is a framework that combines Services Computing Systems Engineering (SCSE) with the Scrum Framework. This framework was created to produce a system with a good service concept by following the SCSE workflow in an agile manner through the application of Scrum principles. This paper will provide an overview of how to evaluate the SCFS framework using SOA and Agile principles through a case study. The research methodology used in this paper is a Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM). This research results in project evaluations using SCFS with good Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) parameter results. The SCFS framework can also be used in Agile development environments with fairly good parameters of velocity, story points, sprint burn down, release burn up, value delivered, and job satisfaction. In case studies conducted, this framework can help accelerate the release of service systems. The first release on the test only took 34 working days, 18 working days to get the second release, and 21 working days to get the third release. If done as a whole in one cycle, the service system will take approximately 73 working days to be used.

Онтология архитектурных знаний в совместно локализованной “живой” среде

Agile software development companies considered small entities (VSE) face a new reality of remote development. Remote communication has generated many videos derived from video calls recorded for later reference. The video calls recorded contains architectural knowledge from virtual meetings and is essential for companies facing the knowledge vaporization problem. However, only some proposals in the literature can potentially manage AK in videos. This article proposes a solution to recover this architectural knowledge contained in videos using an ontology as a classification scheme, following the architectural knowledge condensation concept. We validated our proposal to manage architectural knowledge following the Methontology guidelines. Implementing an ontology as a classification scheme represents a step forward to achieving the condensation of architectural knowledge in an agile development environment for VSE.

Benefits of using the MVC architecture design pattern in agile development environment

In the field of software development, there are two areas constantly evolving during the software engineering process, which are software development methodologies and software architecture design patterns. It has become indispensable to shed light on them in terms of the suitable selection of developers to employ the appropriate types of them to obtain more efficiency of their work together, improving the quality of the software applications, and to produce software that has a high level of accuracy.
 The aim of this research is to determine and define the features that MVC architecture design pattern and agile methodology work by software engineering and development process, and to investigate how those features, that existing in both, could assist them to work in harmony without conflict in the way of work, and whether they support each other when they employ together on one software project. Also, how that compatibility will increase their ability to improve the quality of software products,.
 Two types of research methods have been used in this paper. Firstly, we used previous studies and experiences of researches to collect and determine the most important criteria that contribute to the success and excellence of software products, which are the advantages granted by the use of both Agile methodology and MVC architecture. The second method is distributing two questioners to participants that their experiences are up to 5 years, the first one is for the MVC framework and the other is for the Agile process, both of them are distributed to investigate the extent of the existence of these criteria from the point of view of experts who participated in answering these questionnaires. We used the results of both questionnaires and previous research to study how to obtain the advantages of using the two technologies, employing them, and applying them together to increase the efficiency of the resulting software product and that they support each other in practice.

Insights into the Individual Innovation Process in the 2020s: Updating Prevalent Understanding

This paper examines individuals' experiences of their innovation process. The aim is to gain deeper insight into the features of individual innovation and thereby update the prevailing theoretical understanding of the concept of individual innovation process. To achieve this, the paper uses a qualitative single case study approach. A systematic data-driven analysis of 34 semi-structured interviews - conducted in an agile product development environment - showed that at the team member level, the individual innovation process consists of six activities: identifying needs, managing constraints, developing solutions, testing, evaluating, and implementing. The paper extends previous understanding by zooming in on the individual experience and highlights the previously unidentified role of individual agency in the innovation process. The study contributes to innovation and management literatures by challenging the current understanding of how individuals innovate, and how this process can be managed.

Towards designing a generic and comprehensive deep reinforcement learning framework

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as an effective approach for building an intelligent system, which involves multiple self-operated agents to collectively accomplish a designated task. More importantly, there has been a renewed focus on RL since the introduction of deep learning that essentially makes RL feasible to operate in high-dimensional environments. However, there are many diversified research directions in the current literature, such as multi-agent and multi-objective learning, and human-machine interactions. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a comprehensive software architecture that not only plays a vital role in designing a connect-the-dots deep RL architecture but also provides a guideline to develop a realistic RL application in a short time span. By inheriting the proposed architecture, software managers can foresee any challenges when designing a deep RL-based system. As a result, they can expedite the design process and actively control every stage of software development, which is especially critical in agile development environments. For this reason, we design a deep RL-based framework that strictly ensures flexibility, robustness, and scalability. To enforce generalization, the proposed architecture also does not depend on a specific RL algorithm, a network configuration, the number of agents, or the type of agents.

Determinants of Effective Change Management for Software Deployment Projects

Software application deployment change management is one of the emerging research themes that is gaining increased focus day by day. Our study examined the factors that affect software application deployment change management in Agile software development settings. Our study provided a systematic review and synthesized the approaches, practices, and challenges reported for adopting and implementing deployment change management. The prime objective of our study was to systematically synthesize the data extracted and formulate evidence-based practical recommendations that are influential in software deployment change management. Six research themes are proposed to evaluate the rationale of the research question. This qualitative study and systematic review explored the pertinent research articles and key findings from prominent academic databases. Based on the selected criteria, the final screening revealed 25 articles from an immense set of publications. Key findings that emerged from these publications are correlated with the six research themes: (a) timely communication with all stakeholders; (b) the reliance of deployment approaches on past experience; (c) the importance of collaboration among team members having adequate knowledge of DevOps tools; (d) the ramification of the differences among development, test, and production environments; (e) the influential areas that reap the benefits of continuous delivery and deployment; and (f) the challenges of the effective use of containerization. We also found indications of the significance of Lewin’s three-step change process model in the Agile development and deployment environment. Overall, our study deepens understanding of this thriving research area and contributes to the literature on Agile deployment and the software change management process.

A conceptual framework for effective management of conflict risk within Agile software development environments

Background: Whenever teams obtain together to work towards a common goal, the lingering of an inherent conflict risk is always a possibility. This applies to software development teams as well. Researchers even argue this inherent conflict existence as necessary. Agile development environment is no exception. The main purpose for adopting Agile is to improve the technology adequacy to facilitate organisation competitiveness. Agile manages the achievement of this through its advocacy for change, adaptability and constant satisfaction of market demands. This is because Agile enables organisations to create software of quality standard that allows for quicker response to the continuously changing market needs of todays’ world.Objectives: Henceforth, this article investigates this topic to develop a conceptual framework for effectively managing conflict risk in Agile teams, to improve the organisation technology adequacy.Method: This article employed quantitative methods for data collection and analysis. A structured online questionnaire was used for data collection and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for data analysis. Pearson’s correlation was used to test the relationships among variables.Results: The findings show affirming results on the existence of conflict risk among Agile software development teams. The results indicate that there is a strong positive significant correlation between effective interaction, discussions and quality software application. Moreover, the findings demonstrate a strong relation between effective conflict management and achievement of set agile project goals.Conclusion: Agile allows companies to address the market requirements while still being adaptive to constant change. However, the literature identifies conflict risk as one of the hindrances to realising this purpose.

Quantifying Software Quality in Agile Development Environment

Due to required efforts and the challenges involved in understanding the quantification of software quality, researchers have chosen varying quality attributes to describe the quantification of software quality. The degree of software quality is achieved from the standards and quality attributes at each development process: the adherence of software engineering principles towards realizing a product of good quality. In agile environment, the software engineering process ensures that qualities of interest are built-in and to produce software product with an acceptable level of quality. Thus, this study is aimed at quantifying six related software quality attributes. The specific objectives include identifying the software quality attributes, the design of the algorithm for measurement metrics, and to perform relational analytics of each attribute with respect to the software quality. The methodology followed an exploratory evaluation of measurement and metrics and their role in quantifying software quality in agile development environment. The study adopted existing metrics to quantify software quality attributes. Twelve opensource software projects were tested for 6 specific quality attributes and each result is quantified and presented. Results show that software number 2 (SW2) has a maintainability value of 6 minutes, 50% availability, and 0.62 reliability values. It implies that a high value of maintainability does not translate to high reliability. These values establish the relationship between attributes and enhances developers and users’ understanding of the software quality and its attributes.

A Highly Modular Software Framework for Reducing Software Development Time of Nanosatellites

The standardization of the physical aspects of nanosatellites (also known as CubeSats) and their wide adoption in academia and industry has made the mass production and availability of off-the-shelf components possible. While this has led to a significant reduction in satellite development time, the fact remains that a considerable amount of mission development time and effort continues to be spent on flight software development. The CubeSat’s agile development environment makes it challenging to utilize the advantages of existing software frameworks. Such an adoption is not straightforward due to the added complexity characterized by a steep learning curve. A well-designed flight software architecture mitigates possible sources of failure and increases mission success rate while maintaining moderate complexity. This paper presents a novel approach to a flight software framework developed specifically for nanosatellites. The software framework is characterized by simplicity, reliability, modularity, portability, and real-time capability. The main features of the proposed framework include providing a standardized and explicit skeleton for each module to simplify their construction, offering standardized interfaces for all modules to simplify communication, and providing a collection of ready-to-use common services open for further enhancement by CubeSat software developers. The framework efficiency was demonstrated through a software developed for the MeznSat mission that was successfully launched into Low Earth Orbit in September 2020. The proposed software framework proved to simplify software development for the application developer while significantly enhancing software modularity.

Building and Testing a Fuzzy Linguistic Assessment Framework for Defect Prediction in ASD Environment Using Process-Based Software Metrics

The objective of the present work is to build and test a framework which makes use of process-based software metrics to determine the defects in software projects in an agile software development environment. A methodological framework based on fuzzy linguistic modelling has been proposed to predict the defect density using various process metrics derived from literature studies to measure the attributes stated in the agile manifesto. Further, the model is investigated by using the data set from the PROMISE software engineering repository, and its performance has been compared with existing models from the literature. The proposed model shows better accuracy (for projects with size ≥ 50 KLOC) as observed from statistical results, i.e. RMSE (18.69), NRMSE (0.0110), MMRE (0.0539) and BMMRE (0.0585). The value of R2 for all projects size up to 10 KLOC is 0.993, projects with size 10–50 KLOC is 0.998, and projects with size ≥ 50 KLOC is 0.997. The main contribution of the framework lies in the use of the process metrics and their linguistic assessment. Results obtained from the linguistic model emphasise the value of concepts related to customer involvement and interactions, the collaboration between stakeholders, responding to change, i.e. flexibility, team experience, skills, communication and coordination, as per agile manifesto.

Agile Software Development Using Cloud Computing: A Case Study

Agile software development is successful due to self-organizing teams, adaptive planning, a cooperative environment with respect to communication with clients and team members, small development cycles, continuous design improvements, continuous delivery and feedback of clients. Cloud computing helps to reduce cost, enables scalability and enhances communication through its services. A generic framework with the conjunction of Agile Development and Cloud Computing (ADCC) proposed in an earlier study is evaluated in this study. The Malaysia Research and education network (MyRen) cloud is utilized to implement the framework. A case study is conducted to evaluate the framework. Before conducting the case study, the participants are educated on the ADCC framework. The results of the case study show that the performance of agile methods is improved with the usage of the ADCC framework. The improvement is measured in terms of local and distributed agile development environments.

Principles of reforming an agile-compliant performance appraisal

This paper presents principles of reforming an Agile-compliant performance appraisal. In this study, several semi-structured interviews have been carried out and discovered eight principles for reforming an Agile-compliant performance appraisal for Agile teams. Performance appraisal for software engineers in an Agile software development environment is complex and different from the traditional software development. Performance appraisal should be aligned to Agile values, principles, and practices, which advocate interactions, collaborations, teamwork, and knowledge transfer among Agile team members. Therefore, a transition to Agile Software Development requires the implementation of Agile-compliant performance appraisal. These principles embark the proper practices and guidance to support management and Agile teams in deriving and implementing an Agile-compliant performance appraisal. Therefore, the emerged principles can be a baseline in generating an Agile-compliant performance appraisal to assess Agile team members in a fair and consistent manner. This indirectly increases motivation amongst team members and tends to produce capable workforce to perform at a higher level.

Agile Product Development—coupling explorative and established CAx methods in Early Stages of Virtual Product Development

Companies are reacting to shorter development cycles and individual customer requests by implementing agile project management such as Design Thinking, Scrum or Lean Startup. They assume that this leads to early customer feedback, prompt response to changes and collaboration across departments for efficient product success through continuous cooperation of all participants. But how can classical development processes be adapted or redesigned to become (more) agile? Which possibilities are available to product developers and designers to use methods - especially regarding CAx - in a useful and agile way? Over the past decades, numerous tools have been developed and are used by experts for specific problems. In the meantime, products can be represented as digital twins at a very high level. Currently, coupling or even merging of specific methods and tools is recognizable and necessary so that further potentials can be tapped. In many cases, this means that non-experts may come into contact with very special and complex methods and tools, which brings intuitive handling and validation of results into focus. This paper focuses on the following questions: What are suitable methods, tools and procedures, especially in agile development environments, and how can they be used? Different agile and explorative methods, tools and procedures within the CAx domain are coupled on selected scientific and industrial use cases. The process chain is then applied in the early phase of product development, in which requirements and boundary conditions are still vague, but initial knowledge about the later product already needs to be gainedif possible directly with the customer. The aim is to generate stimulating insights and iteratively generate validated models even when the product is not yet fully specified. For an agile and explorative process chain, we use 3d scanning for generating patient specific exoskeletons, hybrid CAD software for bionic and efficient modeling for Additive Manufacturing, 3d sketching for rough DMU sketches and prototype tooling to produce prototype series. The findings are then prepared for further use in common environments such as CAD for finalizing the product.

Motivators for Large-Scale Agile Adoption From Management Perspective: A Systematic Literature Review

The use of agile methods for software development has grown to a large extent in the last few years. These methods ensure the quick delivery of software products with minimal cost and user satisfaction. Though these techniques were initially developed for small developmental teams, certain challenges have been observed when these methods are applied on large scale. However, we have conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) for the identification of motivators for adopting agile methods on a large scale from a management perspective. Thus, we have identified a total of 21 motivators for adopting agile methods on a large scale from a management perspective. Among these motivators, some were marked as critical motivators depending on variables, e.g., the factors critical in one variable might not be critical in another variable. The factors which were recorded as critical in all variables are strong executive support, agile development environment training and learning, agile development expertise, team competency, and briefing of top management on agile. Furthermore, we also found that the impact of different motivators was different depending on time and place for project manager guidance, i.e., some motivators were most critical in one region while less critical in another. Similarly, some of the motivators were more critical in previous decades but less critical in recent decades because of different improvements in software processes and technologies. These motivators are also analyzed from different angles, i.e., decade-wise and region wise for project managers guidance. The motivators are extracted from a sample of 58 research papers identified via an SLR process. Finally, we have analyzed the identified motivators based on various variables, such as continents and digital libraries.

A measurement model to analyze the effect of agile enterprise architecture on geographically distributed agile development

Efficient and effective communication (active communication) among stakeholders is thought to be central to agile development. However, in geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) environments, it can be difficult to achieve active communication among distributed teams due to challenges such as differences in proximity and time. To date, there is little empirical evidence about how active communication can be established to enhance GDAD performance. To address this knowledge gap, we develop and evaluate a measurement model to quantitatively analyze the impact of agile enterprise architecture (AEA) on GDAD communication and GDAD performance. The measurement model was developed and evaluated through developing the AEA driven GDAD model and associated measurement model based on the extensive literature review, model pre-testing, pilot testing, item screening, and empirical evaluation through a web-based quantitative questionnaire that contained 26 different weighted questions related to the model constructs (AEA, GDAD active communication, and GDAD performance). The measurement model evaluation resulted in validated research model and 26 measures: 7 formative items for AEA, 5 reflective items for communication efficiency, 4 reflective items for communication effectiveness, 2 reflective items for each on-time and on-budget completion, and 3 reflective items for each software functionality and quality. The results indicate the appropriateness and applicability of the proposed measurement model to quantitatively analyze the impact of AEA on GDAD communication and performance.

ACSESim: Agile and Lean software development in practice

Subject area Agile software development, Knowledge workers and Lean thinking as a management system Study level/applicability The case lends itself to students of business management, or aspiring consultants, who have been exposed to operations management in general and Lean thinking specifically. It is an advanced case study, assuming prior knowledge in these subjects and approaches the subject matter from an organisational development point of view, rather than a pure operations point of view. It is thus well suited to an elective on operational excellence on an MBA or in executive education courses in Lean thinking Case overview The case starts with Mark, manager of a software development team, hearing that he will have budget for two new developers who will join his team in the coming year. While the extra help could be useful, he was considering what the impact of new people would be on the productivity of the team, which he felt was already stretched. Mark continues to consider the entire development chain and how code changes were implemented to ACSESim’s (the company’s primary product) graphical user interfaces. Having recently been acquired by an American company, he was also under pressure to start to adopt some of the parent company’s systems, which would constitute a fairly disruptive, but necessary, change, particularly for future collaborations with other developers in the parent company. With two new developers, experience taught Mark that development could slow down owing to training efforts. To minimise disruption, he was wondering about how to get the new developers up-to-speed quickly and streamline their operations within a changing corporate environment. The case highlights the different mechanisms that were in place at ACSESim, including the use of issue trackers; Kanban boards; version control software; automated systems; stand-up meetings, etc. Each of these mechanisms is discussed briefly and shows the value they added to the development practices that were in place. This also allows students to understand Agile practices and what Lean thinking might mean in a knowledge work environment and then to consider what the proposed changes might mean and how they could be deployed. Expected learning outcomes To gain an understanding of how Lean and Agile principles can be applied in a software development environment and Lean knowledge work in general To consider the best way to manage new hires so that they can become productive in a Lean or Agile software development environment, whilst dealing with pressures to migrate to new systems. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS: 9: Operations and Logistics.

Considerations for Regression Testing Process in Agile Development Environments

Testing is central piece in agile development methodology, that fast is taking roots and at the same time it is becoming challenging, in particular due to short time periods between incremental updates of the software, as such the time for overall testing including regression testing is becoming limited. In regression testing, the changed code as well as certain portion of existing code that is impacted is to be retested. Intuitively, it seems that the best option is to automate the regression testing. However, precisely due to time constraints the automation approach is proving to be challenging for regression testing in agile development environments. As the time to create and update these automation scripts will become limiting factor in case of overnight/weekly releases. Regression testing in agile development environments should be using some prioritization of tests for next cycle to enable timely regression testing. We can use the information of future release plans, defined by the specifications for each release, and prioritize the test cases as we write them. As there can be information available for future release cycles (as there are releases in planned for short intervals) we can have some methods of using this information and make the process of regression testing process in future more effective and efficient. In this paper, we present a technique of using future builds (new enhancements, features, or fixes) to select test cases on a class of software which is used for interconnecting diverse systems in near real time fashion. The results are encouraging and the technique can be used to guide regression testing process in agile development environment.

Integration of Requirement Engineering and Artificial Intelligence: Agile Practices and Case Based Reasoning

Guidelines to the Requirement engineering along with the Agile team regarding improvement of Agile practices incorporated with Case based reasoning (CBR). Context: Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques on Agile practices to software development have acknowledged slight attention until now. Objective: In this research, we present a model which has been introduced for evolution of the Agile Software Development practices by using AI technique. Method: In this research, we have used published reports, articles, and existing case studies. Expert’s review method is used to accomplish the appraisal of this model. Result: This model has been resulted in improving the agile practices by using the concept of CBR. An addition to the SCRUM process it is beneficial to cope with reusability of requirements solutions in an Agile Development environment. Conclusion: The framework provides guidelines to the requirement engineering and also to the agile team regarding improvement of agile practices incorporated with CBR.