Current Software Development Practices Research Articles

A systematic literature review on Agile, Cloud, and DevOps integration: Challenges, benefits

Context:In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, integrating DevOps, cloud, and agile methodologies is crucial for meeting software demands. However, this integration remains under-researched. Objective:This study explores the integration of Agile, Cloud, and DevOps in today’s software development landscape. It aims to analyze the challenges and benefits associated with merging these three approaches, focusing on their impact on software testing and the role of mindset in successful implementation and identifying the most suitable Agile methodologies. Methods:This investigation utilizes a Systematic Literature Review(SLR) to enrich comprehension of this integration in current software development practices. Results:The analysis of 31 articles highlights benefits such as improved collaboration and accelerated development, despite challenges with tool proliferation. Platforms like Jenkins, GitLab, Kubernetes, and Docker show promise in addressing these complexities. Our study examines the advantages and challenges of this integration, focusing on its impact on software testing and the role of mindset in successful implementation and identifying the most suitable Agile methodologies. Conclusion:The integration of Agile, DevOps, and Cloud signifies a vital move towards collaborative, scalable, and automated methods, crucial for swift delivery, enhanced quality, and ongoing competitiveness. This unified approach is fundamental for organizational advancement and innovation in the ever-evolving software development realm. Further research should tackle challenges in merging these methods and delve into their interactions with emerging technologies to refine practices for increased efficiency.

Continuous software security through security prioritisation meetings

Software security needs to be a continuous endeavour in current software development practices. Frequent software updates, paired with an ongoing flow of security breaches, requires software companies to address software security throughout development and post deployment. Prescriptive software security approaches do not match well with agile software development and its emphasis on self-management. Agile approaches are however in favour of meetings as a coordination and problem-solving strategy. This article investigates the role of regular security meetings centred on making security priorities and decisions for achieving continuous software security. Through technical action research and an observational case study, we studied variations of such meetings in three companies. We found that such meetings can reach key stakeholders, make security more visible, and contribute to ongoing security prioritisation. Thus, security meetings are a promising approach, especially for small and medium sized development companies with basic yet immature security competence. Future research should investigate further the role of such meetings and how best to organise them for different contexts and needs. For this we outline implications for research and practice, e.g., related to participants and how to organise the discussions and prioritisations in the meeting.

Early prediction for merged vs abandoned code changes in modern code reviews

The modern code review process is an integral part of the current software development practice. Considerable effort is given here to inspect code changes, find defects, suggest an improvement, and address the suggestions of the reviewers. In a code review process, usually, several iterations take place where an author submits code changes and a reviewer gives feedback until is happy to accept the change. In around 12% cases, the changes are abandoned, eventually wasting all the efforts. In this research, our objective is to design a tool that can predict whether a code change would be merged or abandoned at an early stage to reduce the waste of efforts of all stakeholders (e.g., program author, reviewer, project management, etc.) involved. The real-world demand for such a tool was formally identified by a study by Fan et al. [1]. We have mined 146,612 code changes from the code reviews of three large and popular open-source software and trained and tested a suite of supervised machine learning classifiers, both shallow and deep learning based. We consider a total of 25 features in each code change during the training and testing of the models. The best performing model named PredCR (Predicting Code Review), a LightGBM-based classifier achieves around 85% AUC score on average and relatively improves the state-of-the-art [1] by 14-23%. In our empirical study on the 146,612 code changes from the three software projects, we find that (1) The new features like reviewer dimensions that are introduced in PredCR are the most informative. (2) Compared to the baseline, PredCR is more effective towards reducing bias against new developers. (3) PredCR uses historical data in the code review repository and as such the performance of PredCR improves as a software system evolves with new and more data.

Assessment of the Impact of the Hybrid Software Development Approach

The paper focuses on enhancing the current or modern software development practices in Information Technology (IT) organizations. The research paper aims to address the gap between various hybrid software development approaches and existing practices that contribute to software development practices. The methodology adopted here is to obtain data from software professionals and understand how the current practices in the software development industry have contributed to the productivity of the employees and the IT organization, which has been done with the help of a survey questionnaire and by analyzing existing research articles and papers on the software development practices. This research is a conceptual model focused on a modern hybrid approach for software development, rather than focusing on a single software development approach, which can help IT organization increase productivity and deliver business value beyond customer expectations. The cost to build and time to market a software product or a software service can reduce by integrating the required software development practices. Today, staying relevant in the competitive market can be made easier by choosing the best available software development practices, frameworks, and models to fit an organization’s value and knowledge system. The conceptual model aims to reduce the gap between various hybrid software development approaches and existing practices contributing to software development. The paper concludes by discussing the benefits of the hybrid software development approach and urge IT organizations to adopt it as per their software development requirements and customer requirements.

Re-examining the relationship between ease of use and usefulness for the net generation

The technology acceptance model, and extensions of it, suggests a causal relationship between the perceived ease of use and usefulness of an information technology system. Using a dataset based on the responses from 247 undergraduate business students in relation to their use of an educational technology system, we compared competing structural equation models of technology acceptance. We found support for our hypotheses indicating that, while ease of use is important, it does not determine perceived usefulness. Task-technology fit is, however, a direct causal antecedent of perceived usefulness and this relationship is modified by perceived ease of use. The results of this study suggest that technology acceptance models may need to be revised to consider changes in users’ perceptions and behaviour related to the use of mobile computing technology and current software development practices.

Attributes Contributing to Students' Use of Quality Software Development Practices

In 2001 the “McCracken group”, through a multi-institutional study, concluded that many students finishing their introductory programming courses could not program due to a lack of problem solving skills. In 2004 Lister established that students have a fragile grasp of skills to read and interpret code. Humphrey suggests that educators must shift their focus from the programs that the students create to the data of the processes the students use. This paper addresses the problem of poor performing students through an investigation of their quality appraisal techniques (QATs) and development processes. Firstly, a survey was conducted to determine the current software development practices used by a group of undergraduate Computer Science students. Numeric data collected revealed that the current practices used by the majority of students would not be sufficient to produce quality programs. Secondly, a case study was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the various factors that are likely to influence students’ intention to use QATs. Analysis of numeric data collected through a survey revealed that students’ intentions to use QATs are driven by ease of use, compatibility, usefulness, result demonstrability, subjective norm and career consequences. Thirdly, an experiment was conducted to determine students’ perceptions on the use of process measurement data to improve their current software development practices. Analysis of numeric and narrative data revealed that performance measurement data could provide students with useful information to adopt proper development practices.

Exploring the Belief Systems of Software Development Professionals

It is commonly accepted that an individual's beliefs and actions are based on his or her assessment and perceptions of the world. In order to determine what practices an individual is likely to follow at any given time, it is necessary to understand the individual's behavioral intention in a given circumstance. From an Information Technology perspective, a software development professional's belief systems are potentially the basis for the adoption and implementation of new and innovative work practices and processes. In this article, we explore the belief systems of software development professionals in order to understand the beliefs underlying intention and practice, and we seek answers about how they adopt or reject new and innovative software development processes and practices. The results point out a strong influence of past experiences, personality types, and repeated behavior on current software development processes and practices in industrial settings.

Manufacturing execution systems: A vision for managing software development

Software development suffers from a lack of predictability with respect to cost, time, and quality. Predictability is one of the major concerns addressed by modern manufacturing execution systems (MESs). A MES does not actually execute the manufacturing (e.g., controlling equipment and producing goods), but rather collects, analyzes, integrates, and presents the data generated in industrial production so that employees have better insights into processes and can react quickly, leading to predictable manufacturing processes. In this paper, we introduce the principles and functional areas of a MES. We then analyze the gaps between MES-vision-driven software development and current practices. These gaps include: (1) lack of a unified data collection infrastructure, (2) lack of integrated people data, (3) lack of common conceptual frameworks driving improvement loops from development data, and (4) lack of support for projection and simulation. Finally, we illustrate the feasibility of leveraging MES principles to manage software development, using a Modularity Debt Management Decision Support System prototype we developed. In this prototype we demonstrate that information integration in MES-vision-driven systems enables new types of analyses, not previously available, for software development decision support. We conclude with suggestions for moving current software development practices closer to the MES vision.

Current Practice in Software Development for Computational Neuroscience and How to Improve It

Almost all research work in computational neuroscience involves software. As researchers try to understand ever more complex systems, there is a continual need for software with new capabilities. Because of the wide range of questions being investigated, new software is often developed rapidly by individuals or small groups. In these cases, it can be hard to demonstrate that the software gives the right results. Software developers are often open about the code they produce and willing to share it, but there is little appreciation among potential users of the great diversity of software development practices and end results, and how this affects the suitability of software tools for use in research projects. To help clarify these issues, we have reviewed a range of software tools and asked how the culture and practice of software development affects their validity and trustworthiness.We identified four key questions that can be used to categorize software projects and correlate them with the type of product that results. The first question addresses what is being produced. The other three concern why, how, and by whom the work is done. The answers to these questions show strong correlations with the nature of the software being produced, and its suitability for particular purposes. Based on our findings, we suggest ways in which current software development practice in computational neuroscience can be improved and propose checklists to help developers, reviewers, and scientists to assess the quality of software and whether particular pieces of software are ready for use in research.

Investigating and promoting UX practice in industry: An experimental study

The efforts of addressing user experience (UX) in product development keep growing, as demonstrated by the proliferation of workshops and conferences bringing together academics and practitioners, who aim at creating interactive software able to satisfy their users. This special issue focuses on “Interplay between User Experience Evaluation and Software Development”, stating that the gap between human-computer interaction and software engineering with regard to usability has somewhat been narrowed. Unfortunately, our experience shows that software development organizations perform few usability engineering activities or none at all. Several authors acknowledge that, in order to understand the reasons of the limited impact of usability engineering and UX methods, and to try to modify this situation, it is fundamental to thoroughly analyze current software development practices, involving practitioners and possibly working from inside the companies. This article contributes to this research line by reporting an experimental study conducted with software companies. The study has confirmed that still too many companies either neglect usability and UX, or do not properly consider them. Interesting problems emerged. This article gives suggestions on how they may be properly addressed, since their solution is the starting point for reducing the gap between research and practice of usability and UX. It also provides further evidence on the value of the research method, called Cooperative Method Development, based on the collaboration of researchers and practitioners in carrying out empirical research; it has been used in a step of the performed study and has revealed to be instrumental for showing practitioners why to improve their development processes and how to do so.

Hybrid Offshoring Composite Personae and Evolving Collaboration Technologies

Abstract Inspired by round-the-clock manufacturing, the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory endeavors to transform the production of software and other intangibles into a process of continuous development. While the concept of offshore software development is well established, few enterprises are currently able to develop the same code artifacts around the clock. We discuss the benefits of applying the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory to software development. We also present a representative scenario highlighting the problems of asynchronous communication in current offshore software development practices. Further, we introduce the notion of composite persona as a potential collaboration model within the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory and explain its ability to mitigate problems arising from communicating across cultures, languages, and time-zones. Finally, we present a suite of new collaboration tools and techniques that are being developed specifically for use by composite personae in the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory.

Hybrid Offshoring

Inspired by round-the-clock manufacturing, the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory endeavors to transform the production of software and other intangibles into a process of continuous development. While the concept of offshore software development is well established, few enterprises are currently able to develop the same code artifacts around the clock. We discuss the benefits of applying the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory to software development. We also present a representative scenario highlighting the problems of asynchronous communication in current offshore software development practices. Further, we introduce the notion of composite persona as a potential collaboration model within the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory and explain its ability to mitigate problems arising from communicating across cultures, languages, and time zones. Finally, we present a suite of new collaboration tools and techniques that are being developed specifically for use by composite personae in the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory.

Component-based measurement

Software industries are striving for new techniques and approaches that could improve software developer productivity, reduce time-to-market, deliver excellent performance and produce systems that are flexible, scalable, secure, and robust. Only software components can meet these demands and following this; component-based software engineering (CBSE) has emerged, which has generated tremendous interest in software development community. The paradigm shift to software components appears inevitable, necessitating drastic changes to current software development and business practices. The scope of this paper is to suggest few necessary guidelines for deriving component-based metrics. The paper discusses issues related to component-based development (CBD) and suggests a general definition of software component based on several existing definitions. Further, the paper outlines the necessity of component measurement and also discusses the limitations of traditional software metrics for component-based development (CBD) systems. Finally, this paper also suggest few necessary guidelines for CBD measurement and proposes some relevant metrics applicable to CBD systems, which after proper quantification and validation may help guiding risk and quality management of component-based systems.

Software engineering metrics for COTS-based systems

The paradigm shift to commercial off-the-shelf components appears inevitable, necessitating drastic changes to current software development and business practices. Quality and risk concerns currently limit the application of COTS based system design to noncritical applications. New approaches to quality and risk management will be needed to handle the growth of CBSs. Our metrics based approach and software engineering metrics can aid developers and managers in analyzing the return on investment in quality improvement initiatives for CBSs. These metrics also facilitate the modeling of cost and quality, although we need more complex models to capture the intricate relationships between cost and quality metrics in a CBS.

Requirements Evolution and Reuse Using the Systems Engineering Process Activities (SEPA)

As more organizations attempt to reuse previous development efforts and incorporate legacy systems, typical software development activities have transitioned from unique ground-up coding efforts to the integration of new code, legacy code, and COTS implementations. This transition has brought on a whole new set of development issues, including resolving mismatches between integrated components and tracing legacy and COTS components to requirements. This paper presents the Systems Engineering Process Activities (SEPA) methodology, developed to address these and other issues in current software development practices. SEPA aids the reuse and integration process by focusing on requirements integration and evolution, while maintaining traceability to requirements gathered from domain experts and end users. The SEPA methodology supports the development process by promoting requirements analysis prior to design, separation of domain-based and application-based (i.e. implementation-specific) requirements, and evaluating system component suitability in terms of domain and application requirements. The paper also presents an example illustrating the application of SEPA in the emergency incident response domain to facilitate requirements management and foster requirements reuse.

High integrity software development: process and tool issues

YSE and BAe Defence have recently completed an unclassified study for MoD (PE) specifically concerned with high integrity software development process and tool issues. The overall objective of the project was to produce guidance for MoD project managers on the sorts of processes and toolsets which their suppliers should be expected to deploy on projects being conducted in the context of Interim Defense Standard (IDS) 00-55 and IDS 00-56. A wide-ranging survey of industrial practice underpinned the project. This paper reports the main areas of work of the project and its results. The topics covered include: • ⊗ ideal high integrity software development including tool support requirements; • ⊗ a review of current high integrity software development practice; • ⊗ available tool support (COTS and proprietary); • ⊗ a minimum acceptable process and associated tool support; • ⊗ process and toolset hazard analysis; • ⊗ process and toolset safety cases; • ⊗ building better toolsets; • ⊗ process and toolset assessment.

Module interconnection languages

Module interconnection languages are considered essential tools in the development of large software systems. Current software development practice follows the principle of the recursive decomposition of larger problems that can be grasped, understood, and handled by specialized and usually independent teams of software engineers. After teams succeed in designing and coding their respective subsystems, they are faced with different but usually more difficult issues; how to integrate independently developed subsystems or modules into the originally planned complete system. Module interconnection languages (MILs) provide formal grammar constructs for describing the global structure of a software system and for deciding the various module interconnection specifications required for its complete assembly. Automatic processing of these formal descriptions results in a verification of system integrity and intermodular compatibility. This paper is a survey of MILs that are specifically designed to support module interconnection and includes brief descriptions of some software development systems that support module interconnection.