Software Development Industry Research Articles

Enhancing agile project success: a comprehensive study of risk management approaches among Malaysian practitioners

AbstractRisk management (RM) plays a role in project management in the software development field. As information technology (IT) systems become more essential across industries and IT projects continue to face failure rates effective project management becomes crucial. However, the utilization of methodologies in risk management is not widely considered, specifically in Malaysia. This study aims to investigate how software practitioners in Malaysia have implemented risk management and discover strategies that can enhance risk management for agile contexts. The main focus of this study is the limited integration of methodologies into risk management practices, which has created a gap within the software risk domain. Successful risk management is essential for the achievement of software projects, and the findings from this study can offer insights for software development organizations to make informed decisions and improve project outcomes. By utilizing a quantitative approach and adapted questionnaires, this comprehensive study collected data from 60 practitioners and conducted descriptive analysis to identify key risk elements that have significant potential to affect project performance. The findings highlight these risk elements that can significantly impact project success. Agile methodologies, with their emphasis on collaboration, communication within teams, and engagement with stakeholders, including top management, are instrumental in aligning project objectives, identifying potential risks, and resolving issues promptly. This study provides empirical insights into the risk management practices of agile practitioners in Malaysia, which can equip software development organizations with valuable knowledge for informed decision‐making. By enhancing project outcomes and guiding future strategic actions, the findings of this study can contribute to the improvement of agile risk management in the software development industry, particularly in the Malaysian context.

Analyst’s Perception on the Use of AI-based Tools in the Software Development Life Cycle

Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration has been the goal in many industries, including in the software development industry. One example of this integration comes in the form of integrating AI in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). To date, the difficulties of incorporating AI-based tools into particular phases of SDLC have not received much attention in research. Using qualitative approach, this study aims to discover the perception on the use of AI-based tools and challenges in integrating them in the analysis phase of SDLC. The study finds out that analyst have positive perception about integrating this technology in their field of work but there are some challenges while integrating this technology such as data security and reliability concern, dependency, and adapting to this technology. This study also discovers some key factors of why some analysts adopt or refuse this technology namely time, urgency, budget, and insecurities of the users.

Public Opinions on ChatGPT: An Analysis of Reddit Discussions by Using Sentiment Analysis, Topic Modeling, and SWOT Analysis

ABSTRACT The sudden arrival of AI (Artificial Intelligence) into people's daily lives all around the world was marked by the introduction of ChatGPT, which was officially released on November 30, 2022. This AI invasion in our lives drew the attention of not only tech enthusiasts but also scholars from diverse fields, as its capacity extends across various fields. Consequently, numerous articles and journals have been discussing ChatGPT, making it a headline for several topics. However, it does not reflect most public opinion about the product. Therefore, this paper investigated the public's opinions on ChatGPT through topic modelling, Vader-based sentiment analysis and SWOT analysis. To gather data for this study, 202905 comments from the Reddit platform were collected between December 2022 and December 2023. The findings reveal that the Reddit community engaged in discussions related to ChatGPT, covering a range of topics including comparisons with traditional search engines, the impacts on software development, job market, and education industry, exploring ChatGPT's responses on entertainment and politics, the responses from Dan, the alter ego of ChatGPT, the ethical usage of user data as well as queries related to the AI-generated images. The sentiment analysis indicates that most people hold positive views towards this innovative technology across these several aspects. However, concerns also arise regarding the potential negative impacts associated with this product. The SWOT analysis of these results highlights both the strengths and pain points, market opportunities and threats associated with ChatGPT. This analysis also serves as a foundation for providing recommendations aimed at the product development and policy implementation in this paper.

Future of software development with generative AI

Generative AI is regarded as a major disruption to software development. Platforms, repositories, clouds, and the automation of tools and processes have been proven to improve productivity, cost, and quality. Generative AI, with its rapidly expanding capabilities, is a major step forward in this field. As a new key enabling technology, it can be used for many purposes, from creative dimensions to replacing repetitive and manual tasks. The number of opportunities increases with the capabilities of large-language models (LLMs). This has raised concerns about ethics, education, regulation, intellectual property, and even criminal activities. We analyzed the potential of generative AI and LLM technologies for future software development paths. We propose four primary scenarios, model trajectories for transitions between them, and reflect against relevant software development operations. The motivation for this research is clear: the software development industry needs new tools to understand the potential, limitations, and risks of generative AI, as well as guidelines for using it.

Enhancing Software Quality through Early-Phase of Software Verification and Validation Techniques

Purpose: The core objectives of this conducted research were threefold: first, to assess whether early-phase verification and validation (V&V)techniques, encompassing software design review, code review, and inspection, significantly contribute to defect prevention throughout the software development process; second, to evaluate the impact of these techniques on the efficiency of software development in terms of time, cost, and resource allocation; and third, to conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis between early-phase verification and validation (V&V)techniques and traditional post-development testing regarding their effectiveness in defect prevention and software quality improvement.
 Methodology: Employing an experimental approach, this study conducted case studies within Tanzanian software development organizations. Data were meticulously gathered through surveys and interviews involving software professionals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were systematically analyzed to ensure data reliability and ethical considerations.
 Findings: The research findings indicate that early-phase verification and validation (V&V) techniques shine as powerful tools for defect prevention, leading to a substantial reduction in defect counts and elevating software quality metrics, such as reliability and user satisfaction. Notably, these techniques demonstrated a favorable impact on software development efficiency by shortening development cycles and curtailing costs. When compared to traditional post-development testing, early-phase verification and validation (V&V) techniques consistently outperformed in the realm of defect prevention and software quality enhancement.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study's outcomes underscore the transformative potential of early-phase verification &validation techniques, urging the software development industry to pivot from defect detection to defect prevention. The insights garnered here offer practical guidance for organizations aiming to streamline their software development processes, economize costs, and deliver top-notch software products that closely align with user expectations. While conducted in a Tanzanian context, these findings reverberate across the global software development landscape, underscoring the universal relevance of early-phase verification and validation (V&V) techniques as pivotal enablers of software quality assurance and operational efficiency.

Optimized Strategy in Cloud-Native Environment for Inter-Service Communication in Microservices

Cloud computing has become a prominent technology in the software development industry. The term “cloud-native” is derived from cloud computing technologies and refers to the development and deployment of applications in a cloud environment. In the software industry, most enterprise-grade software buildings use the microservice architecture and cloud natively, ultimately leading to an expansive development in the software development framework. Microservices are deployed in a distributed environment and function as independent services. However, they need to communicate with each other in order to fulfill the functional requirement. Additional latency will be introduced when communicating with other services. Hence, it will impact the overall application response time and throughput. This research proposes a solution for the aforementioned problem in the cloud-native environment. A Request-response-based TCP communication solution has been developed and tested in the cloud-native, containerized environment. Experimental results showed that the turnaround time of the proposed solution is shorter than that of traditional HTTP communication methods. Furthermore, the results summarize that both vertical and horizontal scaling are improving the overall performance of the systems performance in terms of response time. Conclusively, the proposed solution improved the microservice performance and preserved the existing cloud-native qualities, such as scalability, maintainability, and portability.

Supporting Remote Customer Involvement in Distributed Agile Development: A Coordination Approach

The expansion of software development industry has led to having team members distributed across different geographical areas. While using agile development by distributed teams has many benefits, it raises many challenges and difficulties as well. Managing remote customer involvement is one of the difficulties faced by distributed agile teams. This article aims to 1) identify the key activity dependencies existing during remote customer involvement in distributed agile development, and 2) design a computer-based system capable of providing coordination support through managing these dependencies. In order to achieve these objectives, two case studies are carried out. Our findings revealed 16 dependencies existing in seven types of activity. In addition, the participatory design approach used in the design shows that a computer-based system to manage the dependencies is capable to manage 14 dependencies existing in five types of activity. This article contributes to understanding the inter-relationships between customer and agile teams and contributes also to developing advanced systems supporting remote customer involvement in distributed agile development.

Early Formalization of AI-tools Usage in Software Engineering in Europe: Study of 2023

This scientific article presents the results of a study focused on the current practices and future prospects of AI-tools usage, specifically large language models (LLMs), in software development (SD) processes within European IT companies. The Pan-European study covers 35 SD teams from all regions of Europe and consists of three sections: the first section explores the current adoption of AI-tools in software production, the second section addresses common challenges in LLMs implementation, and the third section provides a forecast of the tech future in AI-tools development for SD. The study reveals that AI-tools, particularly LLMs, have gained popularity and approbation in European IT companies for tasks related to software design and construction, coding, and software documentation. However, their usage for business and system analysis remains limited. Nevertheless, challenges such as resource constraints and organizational resistance are evident. The article also highlights the potential of AI-tools in the software development process, such as automating routine operations, speeding up work processes, and enhancing software product excellence. Moreover, the research examines the transformation of IT paradigms driven by AI-tools, leading to changes in the skill sets of software developers. Although the impact of LLMs on the software development industry is perceived as modest, experts anticipate significant changes in the next 10 years, including AI-tools integration into advanced IDEs, software project management systems, and product management tools. Ethical concerns about data ownership, information security and legal aspects of AI-tools usage are also discussed, with experts emphasizing the need for legal formalization and regulation in the AI domain. Overall, the study highlights the growing importance and potential of AI-tools in software development, as well as the need for careful consideration of challenges and ethical implications to fully leverage their benefits.

Selection of software agile practices using Analytic hierarchy process

ContextThe increasing use of software and information technology in modern society requires that the deployment of IT solutions should be more efficient and controlled. In this sense, agile methodologies are essential to achieve this goal, but a relevant question arises: Which is the right methodology for reaching that goal? ObjectiveThe purpose of the research was to study the prioritization of agile practices and improvement objectives in the context of software development, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. For this purpose, 42 agile practices, 16 improvement objectives, 4 organizations dedicated to software development in Colombia and 40 professionals in the area of information and communication technologies in the same country were considered. Methodology: The methodological approach used was mixed. On the one hand, we applied a quantitative approach for the treatment of data with the AHP method and, on the other hand, a qualitative analysis by consulting experts through a digital survey to validate the prioritization of the improvement objectives. Questionpro was used as a support tool for multicriteria comparison. ResultsThe main results show that applying AHP allowed us to prioritize 6 improvement objectives and 5 agile practices, where it is highlighted that the prioritization does not discard the other objects of comparison but allows us to put into practice the prioritized elements to favor their progressive implementation. The non-prioritized elements could be part of future iterations of multicriteria comparison that go hand in hand with capacity development and organizational maturity models in the context of global software development. ConclusionIt is highlighted that, although there is evidence of the application of multi-criteria comparison methods in the software development industry, this work applies such methods in the context of four different agile methodologies, which translates into a precedent for the conformation of hybrid methodological approaches.

Study On the Path To Improve the Leadership Of Sports Counselors And Students' Employability

Graduates "difficult employment" has become a prominent problem in the general college education, the so-called "graduation = unemployment" concept seriously affects the realization of the goal of talent training in colleges and universities. However, the employment channels of sports major itself are relatively narrow, and many students are engaged in jobs irrelevant to their major after graduation. Therefore, this paper aims to promote the improvement of college counselors' quality and employment rate by discussing the promotion path of sports counselors' leadership and students' employment ability. To sum up, in the face of increasingly complex computer application environment, the development of computer software has put forward more stringent and diversified requirements. Therefore, the introduction of layered technology to computer software development, constantly improve the computer software development environment, improve the development efficiency, shorten the software development cycle, save the cost of software development, so as to promote the sustainable and healthy development of computer software industry.

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Technology-Based Project Management Systems for Software Development

The article "Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Technology-Based Project Management Systems for Software Development" explores the efficacy of project management systems in the context of software development projects. In the dynamic landscape of software engineering, efficient project management is crucial for successful and timely delivery of high-quality software products. The study employs a comprehensive evaluation framework to assess the performance and impact of technology-based project management systems on software development projects.
 The research methodology involves a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, incorporating key performance indicators and user satisfaction surveys. The evaluation criteria encompass aspects such as project timelines, resource allocation, collaboration efficiency, and overall project success. By studying multiple case scenarios and employing a comparative analysis, the research aims to identify patterns, strengths, and weaknesses associated with different technology-based project management systems commonly used in the software development industry.
 The findings of this study are expected to contribute valuable insights to both academia and industry practitioners, shedding light on the optimal selection and utilization of project management systems for software development endeavors. As organizations increasingly rely on technology-driven solutions, understanding the effectiveness of project management systems becomes paramount for achieving enhanced productivity, streamlined workflows, and successful project outcomes in the ever-evolving field of software development.

Capstone Projects and their Transition into the Software Development Industry: A 10 Year Systematic Review of Literature

This study sought to examine the existing software engineering and Information Technology practices covered in final-year capstone projects in higher institutions of learning around the world, and the possibility of commercializing products developed from these projects. The researchers undertook a Systematic Literature Review methodology. The researchers used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) tools, including Litmaps and Connected Papers for literature identification, while Quillbot and Scholarly A.I. were used for summary writing. Manual full paper review, data extraction and synthesis, and quantitative analyses were done on the final dataset using Microsoft Word, Excel, and Rayyan.ai. Eighty-eight papers from ACM Library, IEEE, Science Direct, EBSCOHost, Emerald Insight, Taylor & Francis, and Google Scholar were reviewed. Most papers were from Western countries, with only a few from Africa. Findings indicate a remarkable movement from traditional software engineering practices such as Waterfall to modern agile methods such as Scrum and Kaban. There was an increased use of Generative A.I. and Machine learning platforms such as GitHub and Arduino in projects profiled. Common scripting languages used by students were Java and Python. Most projects were undertaken in groups, with no prospective client. Most capstone courses were purely academic endeavours, and only a few were ever commercialized and transformed into industry products. One limitation of the review is that it includes grey literature from conferences and student theses. The study provides insights into State-of-the-Art approaches that can be adopted by higher institutions of learning to improve capstone courses.

Identify and Prioritize the Challenges of Customer Knowledge in Successful Project Management: An Agile Project Management Approach

The main advantage of Agile Project Management (APM) lies in its ability to investigate and resolve issues that arise during the project period, making timely adjustments to save resources and deliver successful projects on time and at a lower cost. Customers play a crucial role in determining many of these changes, highlighting their special involvement in managing projects using an agile approach. This paper prioritizes the factors influencing challenges related to customer knowledge in APM, initially identifying three categories: individual, organizational, and technological factors. Expert opinions from the software development industry verified these factors, while the DANP method explored their causal relationships and importance. The analysis revealed organizational factors’ impact on the other two categories, with individual factors ranking highest, followed by technological factors. Notable challenges related to customer knowledge include lack of time for knowledge sharing, reluctance to adopt information technology systems, ineffective communication between knowledge-holders and seekers, inadequate training on new technology, and a lack of awareness regarding knowledge benefits for project partners. These findings are presented as suggestions to project teams for effectively managing agile projects and addressing customer knowledge challenges. By implementing these recommendations, projects can achieve greater efficiency and success.

Gear Transmission System Based on Cloud Platform

Based on the Amazon cloud platform, the development and application scenarios of industrial software for gear transmission systems are introduced. Taking the geometric dimension calculation transmission with involute cylindrical gear as an example, the design idea, development process and system architecture design of the transmission design software based on the cloud platform are expounded. Results show that the developed software of transmission system design based on the cloud platform can meet the requirements of accurate calculation, fast response and operation.

A Hybrid Requirements Management Model for Software Development and Acquisition in the Pharmaceutical Industry

A Hybrid Requirements Management Model for Software Development and Acquisition in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Critical success factors for DevOps adoption in information systems development

Adopting DevOps is challenging since it makes a significant paradigm shift in the Information Systems Development process. DevOps is a trending approach attached to the Agile Software Development Methodology, which facilitates adaptation to the customers' rapidly-changing requirements. It keeps one front step by introducing software operators who support the transmission between software and implementation into the software development team by confirming faster development, quality assurance, and easy maintenance of Information Systems (IS). However, software development companies reported challenges in adopting DevOps. It is critical to control those challenges while getting hold of the benefits by studying Critical Success Factors (CSF) for adopting DevOps. This study aimed to analyze the use of DevOps approach in IS developments by exploring CSFs of DevOps. A systematic literature review was applied to identify CSFs. These factors were confirmed by interviewing DevOps practitioners while identifying more frequent CSFs in the software development industry. Finally, the research presents a conceptual model for CSFs of DevOps, which is a guide to reap the DevOps benefits while reducing the hurdles for enhancing the success of IS. The conceptual model presents CSFs of DevOps by grouping them into four areas: collaborative culture, DevOps practices, proficient DevOps team, and metrics & measurement.

Trends of Software Development Methodologies Toward DevOps: Analysis and Review

Background: The trend of software development has always been challenging for industry experts and software developers. There is tremendous growth in software development methodologies under the influence of evolving technologies and the rising demands of society. The 2019 pandemic forced software developers to shut down their offices and begin working from home, thereby, highlighting the critical necessity for a shared development and operations teams platform. As a result, the development trend moves from waterfall and Agile towards DevOps. Objective: The objective of the research is to review and comparatively analyze the availability factor of different selective and required features in software development methodologies. Software development industries will be benefited in appropriate methodology selection based on the requirement. Methods: The analysis is based on review of different development methodologies based on existing literature study, Google, and Stack Overflow Trends followed by tabular comparison of Waterfall, Iterative, Prototype, Spiral development models under Traditional and Rapid Application Development (RAD), Scrum, Kanban, XP for Agile methods with DevOps automation culture on essential features. Results: The moving trend towards DevOps, from Traditional and Agile development, demonstrate the most recent market swings for these models. Although Traditional models adhere to outdated software development methodologies, they are included in this high-quality survey and evaluation because of their widespread use in the software industry and prominent researcher’s survey work. Conclusion: Software developers, students, and researchers will all find it simple to comprehend the workings of development processes as a result of this analytical review. Additionally, it will also make it easier for these target audiences to choose relevant and effective models for software development.

A Comparative Analysis of Regression Models for Software Effort Estimation

Software Effort Estimation is the utmost task in software engineering and project management. This is important to estimate cost properly and the number of people required for a project to be developed. Many techniques have been used to estimate cost, time, schedule and required manpower for software development industries. Nowadays software is developed in a more complex way and its success depends on efficient estimation techniques. In this research, we have compared five regression algorithms on different projects to estimate software effort. The main advantage of these models is they can be used in the early stages of the software life cycle and that can be helpful to project managers to conduct effort estimation efficiently before starting the project. It avoids project overestimation and late delivery. Software size, productivity, complexity and requirement stability are the input vectors for these regression models. The estimated efforts have been calculated using Ridge Regression, Lasso Regression, Elastic Net, Random Forest and Support Vector Regression. We have compared unitedly these models for the first time as software effort estimators. R-squared Score, Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) are calculated for these regression models. Ridge, Lasso and Elastic Net show comparatively better results among others.

A methodological approach for mobile applications development: MethApp4Mob

The mobile platform has challenged the software development industry, with the consequent need to adapt commonly used methodologies. The study presents MethApp4Mob: a methodological approach based on the traditional technical phases of software development and industrial project experience. It consists of 8 phases: negotiation, planning, design, implementation and alpha testing, beta testing and feedback analysis, promotion, application publication, release and maintenance, and mechanisms to optimize the software development process. MethApp4Mobile tries to keep the balance between a simple and practical approach without losing formality. Validations results encourage its possible application to offer a robust and easy-to-apply methodology in an industrial context.

Aplikasi Penjadwalan Dan Monitoring Terapi Anak Dengan Autisme Berbasis Android Menggunakan Metode RUP (Rational Unified Proces)

Currently, the trend is that the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (autism) is growing in Indonesia is showing an increasing number and a wider spread, not only in urban areas but also in villages and remote areas. Early and intensive treatment and choosing the right method will make a difference for children with autism to achieve behavior that is appropriate to the child's age. The method of handling autistic children is often called an intervention or a treatment that is repeated. Intervention or therapy is carried out at a child autism center or service. Based on the research team's search for autism service centers (PLA), there are approximately 20 autism and disability service centers in Denpasar. Autism service centers usually have therapy services including speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and aquatic therapy. At this time, the use of smartphones has become a way of life for almost all levels of society. People are used to using Android smartphones to communicate through social media. In general, these smartphones have not been utilized optimally for productive activities. This research will discuss an Android-based application that was developed to assist administration services to PLA in the form of data collection on children with autism. The system development method used is the RUP (Rational Unified Process) method. RUP is a software engineering method developed by collecting various best practices in the software development industry. The system to be built has 2 actors, namely the PLA admin and parents as users. The PLA admin is in charge of managing administration such as child data, therapy data, therapy schedules and history of therapy results. Based on the calculation results from the Likert scale, the authors conclude that the level of user satisfaction in terms of benefits ranges from 88.5% which is in the satisfied category, in terms of effectiveness it is obtained 91.1% which is in the very satisfied category, in terms of interface it is obtained 86.5% which is in the very category satisfied and in terms of content, it was found that 89% were in the very satisfied category.