Software Development Management Research Articles

Performance on agile teams: Relating iteration objectives and critical decisions to project management success factors

ContextWhile project management success factors have long been established via the golden triangle, little is known about how project iteration objectives and critical decisions relate to these success factors. It seems logical that teams’ iteration objectives would reflect project management success factors, but this may not always be the case. If not, how are teams’ objectives for iterations differing from the golden triangle of project management success factors? ObjectiveThis study identifies iteration objectives and the critical decisions that relate to the golden triangle of project management success factors in agile software development teams working in two-week iterations. MethodThe author conducted semi-structured interviews with members across three different agile software development teams using a hybrid of XP and Scrum agile methodologies. Iteration Planning and Retrospective meetings were also observed. Interview data was transcribed, coded and reviewed by the researcher and two independently trained research assistants. Data analysis involved organizing the data to identify iteration objectives and critical decisions to identify whether they relate to project management success factors. ResultsAgile teams discussed four categories of iteration objectives: Functionality, Schedule, Quality and Team Satisfaction. Two of these objectives map directly to two aspects of the golden triangle: schedule and quality. The agile teams’ critical decisions were also examined to understand the types of decisions the teams would have made differently to ensure success, which resulted in four categories of such decisions: Quality, Dividing Work, Iteration Amendments and Team Satisfaction. ConclusionThis research has contributed to the software development and project management literature by examining iteration objectives on agile teams and how they relate to the golden triangle of project management success factors to see whether these teams incorporate the golden triangle factors in their objectives and whether they include additional objectives in their iterations. What’s more, this research identified four critical decisions related to the golden triangle. These findings provide important insight to the continuing effort to better assess project management success, particularly for agile teams.

Analysis of Web Attack and Design of Defense System

With the growing popularity of Web applications and Web attacks increasing; Web applications protection and data security have become the core focus of the information security system of enterprises and institutions. The paper briefly presents the harm of the common several kinds of Web attacks, and analyzes their principle, gives their defense measures. On this basis, the defense system of both software and hardware design is proposed. It achieves software defense design based on Web software development and Web application management, and hardware defense design based on H3C SecBlade IPS, to effectively guarantee the security of Web applications.

The Selection of Agile Development's Effort Estimation Factors Based on Principal Component Analysis

Software development managers could improve the quality of software products through controlling the development time and budget in software development process by using software effort estimation. But until now, there have not effective methods estimating effort for agile development. In this paper, the author extracts agile development data from thousands of projects data provided by ISBSG DATA Release 11, and analyze agile development data using the method of principal component analysis. Finally, the paper gets out the set of agile development factor affecting effort estimation.

Research on Software Product Development Project Management

Project organization and management software development project management model is the best form of software development enterprises in China's understanding of software development project management has been greatly improved. Traditional software development projects have different characteristics, therefore how flexible application for software project management theory and strategies of the main research objectives of domestic software development project management. Our software in enterprise application software development project management, general shortcomings in implementation, this article on software research and development analysis and project management of implementation strategies.

THE CHALLENGE OF IMPLEMENTING SCRUM AGILE METHODOLOGY IN A TRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

Agile software development management is gradually gaining more profile and followers among technology companies. The current article presents a study on agile methodologies in contrast to traditional methodologies as well as the motivation to implement agile software development management techniques in small projects by providing an overview of the challenges, objectives, reasons, advantages and disadvantages compared to traditional software development management.

UI Programming in Scrum

Agile development methods are key to the future of flexible software systems. Scrum is one of the vanguards of the new way to manage software development when business conditions are changing. However; the tricky part in agile software development is that there is no manual which tells you exactly how to do it. Scrum teams have to experiment and continuously adapt the process until it suits the specific situation and to overcome the challenges. The aim of this research paper is to address the quality challenges and issues in Scrum implementation and proposing solutions to overcome or minimize the issues. The common issues in Scrum implementation are Scope Creep, Requirement changes which is inherent, the biggest challenge of inadequate time to prepare test plans, minimal requirements documentation to prepare the test cases, highly compressed test execution cycles, minimal time for regression. In addition [10] communication and building trust is another issue if the team is working in a distributed environment. These factors may result in having an adverse impact on the quality of the product delivered. To overcome this to an extent the concept of the “principle of factor sparsity” or [13] pareto principle can be applied which states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This was originally described by Vilfredo Pareto and later formalized by Joseph Juran.The principle is just a rule of thumb, but an important one. Whether the percentages are really 80/20 or 70/30 or 90/10, the reality is that most things are caused by a few underlying factors. The same applies for Scrum and 80% of the quality issues would a raise from the tasks that are performed related to 20% of the stories .So; concentration on the vital few stories or tasks to arrest the critical issues and having a technique to double check the code quality delivered by agile scrum teams would provide better results. UI programming is one such new technique proposed. For an increase in quality and decrease in the defects generation; the call for a UI programming can be taken by the product owner while creation of product backlog or can be taken by the team along with product owner during the sprint planning meeting when actually the tasks are defined. The tasks that are candidates for UI programming would base on the story/tasks criticality, complexity, likeliness of being source for defects bugs, the need for high quality. At times the story and all its tasks defined can be candidates for UI programming or specific tasks within the story can be candidates for UI programming. In nutshell, the UI programming can be used in any projects which are implementing scrum and are having considerable quality issues in the implementations.

Risks and risk mitigation in global software development: A tertiary study

ContextThere is extensive interest in global software development (GSD) which has led to a large number of papers reporting on GSD. A number of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) have attempted to aggregate information from individual studies. ObjectiveWe wish to investigate GSD SLR research with a focus on discovering what research has been conducted in the area and to determine if the SLRs furnish appropriate risk and risk mitigation advice to provide guidance to organizations involved with GSD. MethodWe performed a broad automated search to identify GSD SLRs. Data extracted from each study included: (1) authors, their affiliation and publishing venue, (2) SLR quality, (3) research focus, (4) GSD risks, (5) risk mitigation strategies and, (6) for each SLR the number of primary studies reporting each risk and risk mitigation strategy. ResultsWe found a total of 37 papers reporting 24 unique GSD SLR studies. Major GSD topics covered include: (1) organizational environment, (2) project execution, (3) project planning and control and (4) project scope and requirements. We extracted 85 risks and 77 risk mitigation advice items and categorized them under four major headings: outsourcing rationale, software development, human resources, and project management. The largest group of risks was related to project management. GSD outsourcing rationale risks ranked highest in terms of primary study support but in many cases these risks were only identified by a single SLR. ConclusionsThe focus of the GSD SLRs we identified is mapping the research rather than providing evidence-based guidance to industry. Empirical support for the majority of risks identified is moderate to low, both in terms of the number of SLRs identifying the risk, and in the number of primary studies providing empirical support. Risk mitigation advice is also limited, and empirical support for these items is low.

Trends of System Management Software Development in the Context of Data Center Management Automation

In the past, data centers were designed as independent hardware system and management software. With the shift from cloud-computing architecture to integrated system management and with continuing requests for lower costs, data centers are developing in the direction of automated management, which has made data center system management software increasingly important. System management software mainly provides functions like environmental monitoring, automatic control, energy monitoring, which can help data centers with integrated management and maintenance conveniently.

Automation of data normalization for implementing master data management systems

Data normalization is a laborious and costly process taking place in master data management soft-ware development in enterprises. We analyze the subtasks of the normalization and propose an approach to automating the most laborious of these subtasks. Also, we describe a software system implementing the proposed approach and automatically learning the expert skills.

The Experience of Using the Scrum Process in the Production of Learning Objects for Blended Learning

The technological resources used for pedagogical innovation in the form of distance education have increasingly been incorporated into face-to-face education. This article describes the experience of the Federal University of Lavras – Brazil – with new ways to apply technology in face-to-face undergraduate courses. This paper presents (i) the strategy for the selection of course content, which was premised on the diversification of areas of knowledge and on promoting the permanent incorporation of the resources developed in the teaching-learning process, (ii) the organization of the production process of Learning Objects based on the Scrum method, (iii) the set of best practices, inspired by the management of agile software development, as well as the contextual motivation of its use.

Investigation on Australian Agile Software Development Organizations: An Exploratory Study of Adaptable SCM Process Implementation

There have been many studies and examples in the literature separately demonstrating the benefits of Agile software development and Software Configuration Management process to software development organizations. There is, however, a general misconception that these two practice domains cannot coexist in a single environment without compromising the values of each other, and there is little reporting on such phenomenon and/or how practitioners can benefit from it. The aim of this paper is to present the findings of phase 1 of our research and to identify Australian Agile Software Development Organizations having such coexistence. This study will use 'organization size as a lens to analyze implementation variations of Agile and SCM practices and the perceived importance of SCM process in the agile environment. This research as a whole will support SCM practitioners in particular and IT practitioners in general by providing better understanding of SCM Process in agile environments. It will also contribute knowledge towards theory of lean.

Project Management Success I-C-E Model – A Work in Progress

Project management in software development has shown high rates of failure since the beginning of computation. Over the last years, several studies have sought and proposed solutions for this problem by focusing, for instance, on success critical aspects and evaluation criteria. Although these efforts have provided a significant evolution in how the work is done, project management success rates are in fact still well below the desirable values. This paper presents a work-in-progress based on an integrated approach to project management success and proposes a model that considers jointly the set of success influencers, project characteristics and evaluation criteria of success, from the initiation of a project until its closure.

The effects of information sharing, collective efficacy and team conflict on system development team performance

Understanding the factors that determine information systems development (ISD) outcomes is an important step towards successfully deploying those systems. The ISD process is an information intensive and collaborative endeavour typically performed in teams. As a result, the process involves the sharing of information among multiple individuals. Previous research has demonstrated that information sharing has a direct positive effect on team performance. However, little is known about key mechanisms that underlie this relationship. The goal of this research is to understand direct and indirect effects of information sharing in the ISD context. Specifically, collective efficacy and conflict are theorised as intervening mechanisms in the information sharing and team performance relationship. Data were collected from experienced software development professionals. Information sharing was found to influence ISD team performance directly and indirectly via team conflict and collective efficacy. The results of the study provide important insight into effectively managing software development activities.

ИнформационнаЯ технологиЯ управлениЯ качествоМ процессА разработкИ прОграммнОгО обеспечениЯ

В работе рассмотрена реализация моделей и алгоритмов, используемых при разработке плана программы усовершенствования процесса разработки программного обеспечения. Описана информационная технология, приведена диаграмма размещения для системы поддержки принятия решений, а также результаты исследований

DDMan: A Management System for Distributed Software Development in Cloud Computing Environments

In this paper, we present a management system for distributed software development in cloud computing environments, called DDMan. Cloud computing environments provide more flexibility than conventional computing environments. In particular, the platform as a service (PaaS) in cloud computing environments provides benefits for users in a variety of aspects, such as application design, development testing, software deployment, team collaboration, web service integration, database integration, and scalability. Although the process of distributed software development evolves and changes by a lot in the past decade, there are still some user needs remaining unsatisfied. For managing distributed software development in cloud computing systems, we present the DDMan system, which extends the WebSD model of distributed software development management. In DDMan, the interactions among the roles in the software development are precisely defined. In addition to the conventional web-based interface, the DDMan system also supports the interface for the Amazon cloud environment, which is an approach to a fully automatic service of distributed software development management in cloud computing environments.

Plan development process as a methodology for contemporary urban planning

The concept of the Plan Development Process is based on the possibility of application of the Unified Process methodology on urban planning process. Viewed as a way of organization of planning tasks, the urban planning process may be analyzed in the area of complex process management, particularly the area of software development management which gave rise to some of the most advanced methodologies for arrangement of tasks and standards pertaining to formal methodologies for definition and implementation of program solutions. Complex process management and urban planning face problems of similar complexity. The Unified Process methodology is one of the most successful methods for the organization of software development process. Through the application of the Unified Process methodology on urban planning process, the concept of plan development was formulated, as a methodology for contemporary planning process and the corresponding metamodel as the final level of abstraction bringing together all knowledge of a given domain.

Evaluation of an Abstract Component Model for Embedded Systems Development

Abstract —Model-driven and component-oriented development is increasingly being used in the development of embedded systems. When combined, both paradigms provide several advantages, such as higher reuse rates, and improved system quality. Performing model-driven and component-oriented development should be accompanied by a component model and a method that prescribes how the component model is used. This article provides an overview on the MARMOT method, which consists of an abstract component model and a methodology for the development of embedded systems. The paper describes a feasibility study that demonstrates MARMOT's capability to alleviate system design, verification, implementation, and reuse. Results indicate that model-driven and component-based development following the MARMOT method outperforms Agile development for embedded systems, leads to maintainable systems, and higher than normal reuse rates. Keywords —Software Development Management, Software Reusability, Modeling

ReSySTER: A hybrid recommender system for Scrum team roles based on fuzzy and rough sets

Agile development is a crucial issue within software engineering because one of the goals of any project leader is to increase the speed and flexibility in the development of new commercial products. In this sense, project managers must find the best resource configuration for each of the work packages necessary for the management of software development processes in order to keep the team motivated and committed to the project and to improve productivity and quality. This paper presents ReSySTER, a hybrid recommender system based on fuzzy logic, rough set theory and semantic technologies, aimed at helping project leaders to manage software development projects. The proposed system provides a powerful tool for project managers supporting the development process in Scrum environments and helping to form the most suitable team for different work packages. The system has been evaluated in a real scenario of development with the Scrum framework obtaining promising results.

Measuring the significance of inconsistency in the Viewpoints framework

Measuring inconsistency is crucial to effective inconsistency management in software development. A complete measurement of inconsistency should focus on not only the degree but also the significance of inconsistency. However, most of the approaches available only take the degree of inconsistency into account. The significance of inconsistency has not yet been given much needed consideration. This paper presents an approach for measuring the significance of inconsistency arising from different viewpoints in the Viewpoints framework. We call an individual set of requirements belonging to different viewpoints a combined requirements collection in this paper. We argue that the significance of inconsistency arising in a combined requirements collection is closely associated with global priority levels of requirements involved in the inconsistency. Here we assume that the global priority level of an individual requirement captures the relative importance of every viewpoint including this requirement as well as the local priority level of the requirement within the viewpoint. Then we use the synthesis of global priority levels of all the requirements in a combined collection to measure the significance of the collection. Following this, we present a scoring matrix function to measure the significance of inconsistency in an inconsistent combined requirements collection, which describes the contribution made by each subset of the requirements collection to the significance of the set of requirements involved in the inconsistency. An ordering relationship between inconsistencies of two combined requirements collections, termed more significant than, is also presented by comparing their significance scoring matrix functions. Finally, these techniques were implemented in a prototype tool called IncMeasurer, which we developed as a proof of concept.

About Our Authors

About Our Authors