Software Development Project Management Research Articles

Gamification strategy to promote social and human factors in the training of software engineers: A case study

AbstractSoftware Engineering is a discipline frequently reflected in training strategies. This discipline requires certain levels of abstraction to achieve the competencies and skills necessary for the professional development of future software developers. The software industry increasingly demands that professionals in this discipline have social and human skills to achieve highly productive teams. Therefore, these teams should respond to such demands in a world with increasing dependence on technology and the development of software products. Traditional pedagogical strategies often need help adapting to the new generations of software engineers and responding in a limited way to the demands of teaching processes related to this discipline. This article evaluates a gamification‐based strategy designed for the Software Engineering course at a Latin American higher education institution. This course addressed software project management as a training objective. Such a strategy was designed with a gamification‐based model to influence the productivity of software development teams. The results of using the model show its efficiency and usefulness as a guide for implementing new strategies based on gamification that considers social and human factors (SHFs) to intervene in the productivity of software development teams. The challenges designed in the proposal presented managed to promote SHFs in the participants, according to the analysis of the prepared case study. According to these results, the factors considered relate to skills and experience in managing software development projects, motivation, and communication. The activities executed by the participants in the context of the case study strengthened the human side of the team and allowed its growth to achieve its objectives.

Real to Real: Deriving Software Development Practices from Film Production Principles

AbstractSoftware development projects face significant risks of going over budget, over schedule, and of failing to deliver expected benefits. These risks have endured despite methodological changes within the industry, such as the rise in popularity of Agile. This research looks outside of the software industry and seeks inspiration from film production, which has developed different management strategies to address challenges similar to those faced by software development projects.First, an analysis of film production project management reveals four principles, each evidenced by a set of practices used throughout the industry. Next, we identify sets of practices that would enable software development projects to also align to those same four principles. The synthesis of each principle from its set of supporting film production practices is then validated through structured interviews with veteran film producers. Lastly, the derivation of each principle to a parallel set of supporting practices within the context of software development is validated in a second series of interviews with experienced software development project managers.In total, this research identifies a set of software development project management practices that mirror film production practices. These practices offer a framework for software development project managers to consider when seeking to tailor existing methodologies, particularly in scenarios that present challenges similar to those encountered in film production.

Challenges of Integrating Artificial Intelligence in Software Project Planning: A Systematic Literature Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped enhance the management of software development projects through automation, improving efficiency and enabling project professionals to focus on strategic aspects. Despite its advantages, applying AI in software development project management still faces several challenges. Thus, this study investigates key obstacles to applying artificial intelligence in project management, specifically in the project planning phase. This research systematically reviews the existing literature. The review comprises scientific articles published from 2019 to 2024 and, from the inspected records, 17 papers were analyzed in full-text form. In this review, 10 key barriers were reported and categorized based on the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework. This review showed that eleven articles reported technological challenges, twelve articles identified organizational challenges, and six articles reported environmental challenges. In addition, this review found that there was relatively little interest in the literature on environmental challenges, compared to organizational and technological barriers.

Integrating Generative AI for Advancing Agile Software Development and Mitigating Project Management Challenges

Integrating Generative AI for Advancing Agile Software Development and Mitigating Project Management Challenges

Time Effort Prediction Of Agile Software Development Using Machine Learning Techniques

To run a software development project, an effective and efficient project management mechanism is needed to coordinate the activities carried out. The agile method was developed because there are several weaknesses in the classic method that can interfere with the course of the software development process according to user desires. However, in applying agile methods, time effort estimation cannot be done properly. This can cause project managers to have difficulty preparing resources in software development in scrum projects. For this reason, this research aims to predict the time effort of agile software development using Machine Learning techniques, namely the Decision Tree, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and AdaBoost algorithms, as well as the use of feature selection in the form of RRelieff and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to improve prediction accuracy. The best-performing algorithm uses Gradient Boosting k-fold validation with PCA with an MSE value of 2.895, RMSE 1.701, MAE 0.898, and R2 0.951.

Simulating the Software Development Lifecycle: The Waterfall Model

This study employs a simulation-based approach, adapting the waterfall model, to provide estimates for software project and individual phase completion times. Additionally, it pinpoints potential efficiency issues stemming from suboptimal resource levels. We implement our software development lifecycle simulation using SimPy, a Python discrete-event simulation framework. Our model is executed within the context of a software house on 100 projects of varying sizes examining two scenarios. The first provides insight based on an initial set of resources, which reveals the presence of resource bottlenecks, particularly a shortage of programmers for the implementation phase. The second scenario uses a level of resources that would achieve zero-wait time, identified using a stepwise algorithm. The findings illustrate the advantage of using simulations as a safe and effective way to experiment and plan for software development projects. Such simulations allow those managing software development projects to make accurate, evidence-based projections as to phase and project completion times as well as explore the interplay with resources.

Incorporating statistical and machine learning techniques into the optimization of correction factors for software development effort estimation

AbstractAccurate effort estimation is necessary for efficient management of software development projects, as it relates to human resource management. Ensemble methods, which employ multiple statistical and machine learning techniques, are more robust, reliable, and accurate effort estimation techniques. This study develops a stacking ensemble model based on optimization correction factors by integrating seven statistical and machine learning techniques (K‐nearest neighbor, random forest, support vector regression, multilayer perception, gradient boosting, linear regression, and decision tree). The grid search optimization method is used to obtain valid search ranges and optimal configuration values, allowing more accurate estimation. We conducted experiments to compare the proposed method with related methods, such as use case points‐based single methods, optimization correction factors‐based single methods, and ensemble methods. The estimation accuracies of the methods were evaluated using statistical tests and unbiased performance measures on a total of four datasets, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method more clearly. The proposed method successfully maintained its estimation accuracy across the four experimental datasets and gave the best results in terms of the sum of squares errors, mean absolute error, root mean square error, mean balance relative error, mean inverted balance relative error, median of magnitude of relative error, and percentage of prediction (0.25). The p‐value for the t‐test showed that the proposed method is statistically superior to other methods in terms of estimation accuracy. The results show that the proposed method is a comprehensive approach for improving estimation accuracy and minimizing project risks in the early stages of software development.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT MANAGEMENT BASED ON WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE AND ODOO ERP

Software Development Project Management is the most important part of the Software Development Life Cycle process. The stages in project development include Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. This research uses the Work Breakdown Structure approach, which is a method used in project management to break down complex work into smaller and more manageable parts. Work Breakdown Structure helps in organizing, classifying, and describing the work to be done in a project. Odoo ERP is part of the tools that can be used for project management. Testing the project module using Blackbox Testing. The test scenario includes functional testing of the project management module. Application testing shows good results and is following existing needs. The results show that software project management using the Work Breakdown Structure approach can be implemented properly with Odoo ERP tools.

Challenges During the Period of Movement Control Order (MCO) Against the Success of Software Development Project Management Deliverables

Before it was declared a pandemic in March 2020, the Malaysian government was compelled to begin enforcing the MCO countrywide on 18 March 2020, and the World Health Organization classed the COVID-19 outbreak as a public health emergency. The MCO’s implementation significantly impacted the Malaysian economy, resulting in a 17.1% fall in GDP in the second quarter of 2020. Implementation of MCO during the Covid-19 pandemic has direct and indirect effects and implications on project management. This situation also may interfere with the project deliverables since project management is extremely sensitive to rapid changes. The issues that the project manager faces and how the software affects project deliverables have been examined in this study. From the standpoint of a software development project, the researcher will identify the challenges the IT project manager poses and their impact on project deliverables. In this study, we will evaluate whether implementing the MCO during the Covid-19 pandemic has given significant challenges to the IT Project Manager to successfully deliver the software development project. The literature review resulted in challenges; furthermore, the interview with three IT Managers of an ICT company in Malaysia discussed 18 challenges drawn from the analysis of the interviews. Hence, these findings of the innovative study area on software development have provided an enhanced judgment and interpretation on deciding mitigation strategies in the early stage of software development projects during the MCO.

An Empirical Study on Code Smell Introduction and Removal in Deep Learning Software Projects

With increasing popularity of Deep Learning (DL) software development, code quality issues arise in DL software development. Code smell is one of the factors which reduce the quality of source code. Several previous studies investigated the prevalence of code smell in DL software systems to evaluate the quality of DL source code. However, there is still a lack of understanding of the awareness of individual DL developers in code smell. To more deeply understand the code smell risk in DL software development, it is needed to investigate the code smell awareness of DL developers. In this paper, we present an empirical study on code smell practices of DL developers. Specifically, we performed a quantitative analysis on code smell introduction and removal practices of DL developers. We collected a dataset of code smell introduction and removal history of DL developers from several open source DL software GitHub repositories. We then quantitatively analyzed the collected dataset. As a result of the quantitative analysis, we observed the following three findings on code smell introduction and removal practices of DL developers. First, DL developers tend to perform code smell introduction practice more than code smell removal practice. Second, DL developers have slightly broader code smell introduction scope than code smell removal scope. Third, regular and irregular DL developers have less difference in both code smell introduction and removal practices. The results indicate that DL developers have very poor awareness on code smell risk. Our findings suggest that DL software development project managers should provide a helpful guideline that makes DL developers actively participate code smell removal tasks.

Pengembangan Aplikasi E-learning dengan Metode Rapid Application Development

The development of the E-learning application is part of the solution for convenience in carrying out teaching and learning activities, the process of receiving and sending a digital document in the form of learning videos and ebooks is the most important part so that information can be accessed quickly and easily. Special methods are needed to build e-learning applications more quickly and according to needs. Requirements Planning plays a very important role in the software development process, project management in software development and one of the processes is to estimate that the software produced is according to a predetermined schedule and cost. The Rapid Application Development Method is a life cycle strategy aimed at To provide development that is much faster and get results with better quality, UML (Unified Modeling Language) is a language that has become a decent standard in designing, visualizing and documenting software.

Digitalization in Knowledge Management Systems for Project and Operational Management in Software Development to Increase Efficiency

PT Snack Sehat is a manufacturing company that produces healthy snacks and beverages in Indonesia. Its IT division has a software department that manages all creation and maintenance of information system projects. Although the software department planned and monitored project development thoroughly during their work, 42% of projects were late in 2020. Those late projects' costs led to financial loss and kept rising through 2020-2021. Digitalization is how technologies affect several aspects of life, like social interactions, business operations, and how people work. Digitalization improved and sped up knowledge-sharing processes within the organization. Since knowledge sharing is done more frequently, the absorptive capacity will also be improved. This brings up the question of how to design a KM program with digital tools that will help PT Snack Sehat to increase its efficiency in project development and operation support. The primary data for this research was gathered from KM Assessment using APO KM Framework and focus group discussion with top and middle-level managers from PT Snack Sehat. To develop a KM program, the research will use Six Steps KM Processes, which consist of KM Project, KM Assessment, KM Planning, K-Development, KM Implementation, and KM Evaluation. The development steps will include defining the objectives of the KM program, answering questions related to the knowledge management components (people, process, and technology), determining the knowledge management strategy based on KM objectives, and setting the action plan to get ten commitments from top-level management. The results show several processes and methods that need to be added to the current KM: KM Orientation & Training, Shadowing, Sharing Knowledge Checklist, Lesson Learned Document, Document Validation, and Document Organization. The complete knowledge management process will also be mapped in a Knowledge Stock and Flow Diagram using SECI Matrix. Keywords: Project Development, Operational Management, Six Steps KM Processes, SECI Matrix, Digitalization, Absorptive Capacity, Efficiency

A Study on Optimization and Allocation of Requirements during the Software Development Life Cycle in Digital Align Private Limited

Background/Purpose: In order to face the challenge of optimization and allocation of necessary requirements to complete a project with in the allocated time period, the project manager must be efficient in applying different technical skills and managerial strategies to the project management process. In order to develop a software and RPA product, a company schedules different process as per the specified order and unique requirements. As the history of project management reminds that most of the industries started to implement this concept by observing the success of mega engineering projects because of the effective utilization of project management concept. Objective: This work is carried to understand the concepts of project management in software firms. To investigate the implementation and importance of these concepts and to know the role of project manager in managing the process in software development. Design/Methodology/Approach: Digital Align Private Limited, Mangalore, provides excellent and state-of-the-art customized software and hardware solutions as per the necessities of customers. In order to manage the project activities CEO, CFO and CTO all together acts as project manager. The software development project management process starts by identifying needs and recommending solutions, which can be delivered to value its stakeholders. At the second phase the actual development will begin and the developed software will be tested according to customer requirements. Findings/Results: Budgeting, cost management, finance planning etc., represented by CPM and PERT charts by using Microsoft Project and Atlassian JIRA project management software. The project resources, which are used to manage the project and allocation of technical staff are represented by histogram. With the help of Gantt Chart software development project schedule of 5 month are shown. Conclusion: To manage Digital Align business in an effective and gainful manner, the company managed overall internal and external risks of the project. By using the project management software, the company condensed the project manager’s efforts and human errors to manage multiple projects. Paper Type: Case study-based Research Analysis

Invitin Project: Scrum Framework Implementation in a Software Development Project Management

The printed invitation is commonly used in our community to invite others to special events. In Indonesian society, this has happened inviting someone from door-to-door by sending printed invitations. Due to rapid information technology development, we proposed a website-based online invitation platform, Invitin. In general, the Invitin project has three main actors, which are customer, customer service, and admin. The methodology that we used was based on the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) and applied Scrum framework. Implementing the Invitin project using Scrum helps to organize development tasks easier and provides other benefits in some cases. Thus, Scrum increases our team productivity to develop a high-quality dynamic website application.

Design and Development of Software Project Management System using Scrum

Good project management is a crucial factor for the smooth implementation of projects in an application development organization. Management activities carried out manually have the potential to result in errors in data processing, and it is difficult to monitor project progress, which often results in time and financial losses. This research was conducted to overcome this problem by building a project management system based on the Scrum method using the Laravel framework and applying a multiple linear regression algorithm in estimating time for each project activity with parameters of the number of people involved and the type of work, as well as competency mapping on the recommendations in the human resource allocations. The Scrum method is used because of its flexibility and fast adaptability to the system development process. The result of this research is a software development project management system that helps organizations in allocating human resources and time management. The resulting multiple linear regression model obtains a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 349.97. Descriptive analysis conducted on user responses stated that user responses were positive towards the use of the project management system.

Design and management of software development projects under rework uncertainty: a study using system dynamics

ABSTRACT Despite proper planning and scheduling, project execution is challenging, and one critical factor is uncertainty duringthe project implementation process. This study presents a system dynamics (SD) model as a decision-support system for model-based decision-making that considers the uncertainty of rework generation by predicting dynamic and complex project behaviour. The SD model was developedalong with a rework cycle that principally contributes to rework generation. The uncertainty ofrework generation and project performance werevisualized and integrated into decision-making components.Six different scenarios involving hiring and overtime usage were explored to ensure project performance whendesigning a feasible project plan.The novelty of this study lies inthe decision-making process for obtaining the best planning alternatives under uncertainty and project conditions. Actions should be implemented thatpredict and analyse improvised project planningprocesses and control model-based decision-making under uncertainty.

A Study on Requirement Specifications and Modifications During the Software Development Life Cycle in M/S Kakunje Software Private Limited

Background/Purpose: In order to face the challenge of optimization and allocation of necessary requirements to complete a project with in the allocated time period, the project manager must be efficient in applying different technical skills and managerial strategies to the project management process. In order to develop a software and mobile application product, a company schedules different process as per the specified order and unique requirements. As the history of project management reminds that most of the industries started to implement this concept by observing the success of mega engineering projects because of the effective utilization of project management concept. Objective: This work is carried to understand the concepts of project management in software firms. To investigate the implementation and importance of these concepts and to know the role of project manager in managing the process in software development. Design/Methodology/Approach: Kakunje Software Private Limited, Mangalore, provides excellent and state-of-the-art customized software and hardware solutions as per the necessities of customers. In order to manage the project activities CEO, CFO and CTO all together acts as project manager. The software development project management process starts by identifying needs and recommending solutions, which can be delivered to value its stakeholders. At the second phase the actual development will begin and the developed software will be tested according to customer requirements. Findings/Results: Budgeting, cost management, finance planning etc., represented by CPM and PERT charts by using Microsoft Project and Atlassian JIRA project management software. The project resources, which are used to manage the project and allocation of technical staff are represented by histogram. With the help of Gantt Chart software development project schedule of 5 month are shown. Conclusion: To manage Kakunje business in an effective and gainful manner, the company managed overall internal and external risks of the project. By using the project management software, the company condensed the project manager’s efforts and human errors to manage multiple projects. Paper Type: Case study-based Research Analysis

Software Risk Assessment and Management with Rules Based on Fuzzy Approach

Up to now, several software risk parameters have been determined in order to assess and manage software development projects: Productivity, Engagement, Attention to Quality, Code Based Knowledge and Management, Adherence to Coding Guidelines and Techniques, Learning and Skills, Personal Responsibility and etc. However, there isn’t any universally accepted methodology to apply software risk assessment and management. There are three main reasons of this situation: Firstly, each part of software creation is unique. There is no compelling reason to assemble two times the same parts of software as it might be duplicated by copying it. This makes it truly difficult to make a formal and thorough correlation between two parts of software. Secondly, the current technology is something that changes at a truly fast phase. So, each time a methodology in respect to a certain wave of technology is dependable enough, it is for the most part as of recently old. Thirdly, there is a gigantic zone for innovativeness in discovering the diverse answers for a unique issue. Because of these reasons, the technique “Fuzzy Approach” has a very convenient and proper process for defining software risks due to their nature that has no certainty – uncertainty – structure and principle. Also, software risks are defined as the probability and the severity of damages that are caused by occurring of bad or undesirable events in a system. Thus, the system suffers from strategic, financial, operational, structural or integrity loss and damage. So, there is need to apply and carry out an efficient “Software Risk Assessment and Management” in order to determine and recognize software risks on time before causing problems and troubles into software projects for providing successfully accomplishment in software development process. In this paper, usability and efficiency of “Fuzzy Approached” linguistic and logical rules based on “Fuzzy Logic” in “Software Risk Assessment and Management” have been shown and expressed in detail.

Management of software development projects in Brazil using agile methods

The aim of the paper is to analyze how agile management practices are being adopted by specialists from software development technology companies in Brazil, identifying actions that contribute to the success of software implementation, aiming to ensure the survival of organizations in the market. The study counted with a literature review to support the field research with software development specialists who use the agile methodology and work in Brazil in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The results were analyzed through a descriptive statistics and content analysis. The research identified that the companies that adopt agile software management methodology in Brazil prefer the Scrum method and the development teams may be geographically distributed. The main positive points identified when adopting agile methods were the process speed, team involvement, maximization of results, involvement with the client, and simplicity. Most experts identified problems in the implementation of the agile methodology and as points of attention: management of distributed teams, scope estimation and communication. It was possible to identify the existence of a positive financial result by adopting the agile method for software development projects, as well as actions that contribute to the success of these projects, such as controlling quality using different testing techniques, project management, time, stakeholders, scope, and have agile communication, with feedback and good leadership. On the other hand, it was observed in the statistics that, although efficient, this method is still not being widely used. This research can contribute to the managers of software development companies in the use of agile methods as well as improving management decision-making.

Virtual Reality Mobile Application Development with Scrum Framework as a New Media in Learning English

<span lang="EN-US">Virtual reality is a combination of technology that are used to visualize and provide interaction with virtual environment. These environment often depict three-dimensional space which could be realistic or imaginary. One of the problem to build a virtual reality application is not yet available an approach as development lifecycle to build this virtual reality application. In this study we implement a software development project management approach which is Scrum to build a virtual reality application to be a new media for learning English. The goal is to find out how this system development approach is providing a new guide as a project management to build virtual reality application right from the project started, until the application is reach production stage or final release. Also in this study we using the unity 3D to create the virtual environment and C# as the backend programming language to build a mobile application which is made this virtual application is build using cross platform mobile development. The study concludes that mobile learning applications increase student motivation and place students as the main subject in English Lessons to support the teaching and learning process in an educational context.</span>