Software Development Organizations Research Articles

Adaptable Software Configuration Management: An Investigation on Australian Agile Software Development Organizations

There is a general misconception on the coexistence of Agile and Software Configuration Management (SCM) practices, and a very little reporting exists about how practitioners can benefit from their coexistence or how such coexistence can improve the organizational capabilities. This paper represent phase one of the research study, with the aim to identify adaptable software configuration management process in Australian agile software development organizations. This as a result will facilitate later phases by identifying suitable candidate organization(s) for case study and providing the basis for validation and generalization of Adaptable Configuration Management Traceability Model (AcmTm) through additional quantitative study. 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 thinking.

Communication Tools in Offshore Development with Scrum

Abstract —Offshore development with Scrum is a progressively more important development approach for software development organization as it fetches attractive opportunities. Offshore development is already facing several problems and Scrum method brings more challenges in the form of their reliance of verbal communication. The aim of this paper is to present a research design for providing recommendation for rich communication system in offshore development with Scrum. It discusses the research methodology used for developing the recommendation for rich communication system. Index Terms —Communication tools , development , offshore , scrum . I. I NTRODUCTION Offshore development with Scrum has become a model in modern software industry [1]. In offshore development teams are distributed across the globe and used communication tools in order to communicate with stakeholders [2]. The main factors behind offshoring are: cost, time to market, access to skill and cheaper labor, and market proximity and these factors have motivated th e software development effort towards a globally distributed environment [2], [3]. Simultaneously, many studies show that offshore development with Scrum is risky. It has been found that projects take 2.5% more time to complete as compared to onsite development because of communication related issues [4]. A recent survey by [5] describe that success percentage of co-located team is 83%, distributed but physically reachable is 72% and distributed across the globe is 60% [5]. The research on offshore development with Scrum shows that communication is major issues [2], [6]-[8]. This paper describes the design of research for developing recommendation for rich system in offshore development with Scrum. The paper is divided into five sections. First section describes the introduction, background and related work. The second section provides purpose of this study. Third section describes research questions and motivation for these research questions. Section four consists of two parts. First part describes qualitatively research method and second part describes the quantitative research method. Last section provides conclusion.

A Taxonomy Analysis for Multi-Model Process Improvement from The Context of Software Engineering Processes and Services

The industrial and research communities in Software Engineering have shown great interest in Software Process Improvement initiatives. There are variety of process improvement that addresses the process improvement practices for software processes and services. Organizations initially started with single model implementation and progresses for more process improvement certification by adopting multi-model, as their improvement needs become increasing crucial. The software development organizations and quality departments leverage these models and frameworks to better address process improvement challenges. These frameworks differ in variety of aspects and making them difficult to compare objectively. This paper discusses on the multi-model process improvement and the integration approach. The main integration issue is the interoperability of the frameworks which may results in inefficiency of the development of the integrated framework. In relation to this, architectures for multi-model are investigated. We propose taxonomy for the multiple software process frameworks to support the understanding and comparison of diverse software quality frameworks. The research outcome is expected to identify the structural relationships among the frameworks and resolve the interoperability issues. The results derived from the taxonomy include characteristics and categories of attributes which are tailored to the discipline-specific framework and applied to three selected frameworks. The result of taxonomy analysis will be used as input for Delphi research approach.

Evaluating the impact of an agile transformation: a longitudinal case study in a distributed context

Many software-development organizations have recently started to adopt agile practices in order to benefit from the improvements they clearly bring, in terms of production speed and software quality, for example. However, in a large, distributed organization, such as Nokia Siemens Networks, an agile transformation may be a long-term, complex process, and therefore, evaluating the benefits achieved, and measuring the success of the change, can be difficult, especially in the early phases of the transformation. This paper is based on the results of a case study on the impact introducing agile practices actually had in a large, software-development organization, part of Nokia Siemens Networks. The impact of this agile transformation was evaluated in terms of how well it succeeded in achieving the goals set by the management before the transformation started. This longitudinal study included two separate analyses, made at 6 monthly intervals, which measured what agile practices were really in use in the organization, and what effects, if any, were visible in terms of the goals which had been set by the management The 6 monthly analyses included defect data metrics and opinion surveys of the personnel directly involved in the transformation. The study showed two things: firstly, that the introduction of agile practices does have the beneficial effects that one would expect, and secondly, that, using this kind of study, it is not only possible to evaluate the impact that the adoption of agile practices has in a large, established software-development company, but also that the effects are visible at a surprisingly early stage.

Defectivity profiling with dynamic COQUALMO: An explication and product quality retrospective

SUMMARYA software development organization's process trustworthiness can be enhanced through development project retrospectives or postmortems, which seek to produce lessons from mistakes and successes in the project performance. Tool support for such retrospectives is usually limited to qualitative analysis. A new model, Dynamic COQUALMO, offers quantitative support through a defectivity profile that can be calibrated to a project's actual profile of defects found over time. The model inputs can then be varied to represent alternative project decisions and conditions, providing a basis for estimating the effects of project improvements on product quality. This paper describes Dynamic COQUALMO and demonstrates its use in a project retrospective. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Patterns as objects to manage knowledge in software development organizations

The application of knowledge management strategies is essential to solve several process improvement problems in software engineering organizations. In this area, the definition and use of process patterns is an approach that several authors have extensively discussed. Nevertheless, one of the problems is the difficulty of formalizing the knowledge about the development process using patterns. This article presents the sdPP (Software Development Project Pattern) to support the management of knowledge objects that encapsulate information about the recommended practices to develop specific software projects, including explicit and tacit knowledge on software engineering effective practices. The proposal comprises a data model to define the sdPPs as knowledge objects and a tool to manage their life cycle. The authors carried out an experimental validation where 48 junior software engineers applied the sdPP framework. From the results obtained, we discuss the factors that facilitate the correct creation of sdPPs and the improvement of software product quality using the sdPP proposal. We also analyse the effort to implement the sdPP proposal to introduce knowledge management practices in software development projects and determine usefulness of the knowledge assets to adapt the sdPP framework for effective knowledge sharing in software engineering organizations.

Practical experiences in modelling software engineering practices: The project patterns approach

Software process improvement in software development organisations is a complex task that can be solved using knowledge management strategies. In this area, the definition and use of process patterns are a proven approach to apply knowledge management strategies in software engineering organisations. One of the main problems for the effective application of process patterns in the software industry is the difficulty of formalising the knowledge about the development process using these approaches. This study presents a framework to manage software project patterns. This framework (which is composed of a metamodel and a platform for patterns modelling and reuse) is able to formalise the knowledge on software development projects including software engineers' previous experience, development methodologies, references frameworks and lessons learnt. The authors carried out an empirical study at Carlos III University of Madrid, where junior software engineers used the project patterns defined in this research work. The evidences and findings obtained during the empirical study execution indicates that correctness of the pattern depends on relevance of the bibliographic references used to create it, implementation of a knowledge sharing strategy among the personnel involved and previous experience in the business areas related to the information systems being developed. The results obtained from the empirical study also envisage that the usefulness of an sdPP (Software Development Project Pattern) depends on the ease of identifying when and how to apply a specific sdPP in a software project.

Managing the software process with a software process improvement tool in a small enterprise

SUMMARYTop‐down process improvement approaches provide a high‐level model of what the process of a software development organization should be. Such models are based on the consensus of a designated working group on how software should be developed or maintained. They are very useful in that they provide general guidelines on where to start improving, and in which order. However, the majority of them have only worked in scenarios within large companies. We aim to help small software development organizations to adopt an iterative approach by providing a Process Improvement Web‐based Tool (SysProVal). This paper presents research into the proposal that a small organization may use this tool to define and implement a set of project management practices that can be strengthened using the CMMI‐DEV 1.2 model as reference. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Impact of physical ambiance on communication, collaboration and coordination in agile software development: An empirical evaluation

ContextCommunication, collaboration and coordination are key enablers of software development and even more so in agile methods. The physical environment of the workspace plays a significant role in effective communication, collaboration, and coordination among people while developing software. ObjectiveIn this paper, we have studied and further evaluated empirically the effect of different constituents of physical environment on communication, coordination, and collaboration, respectively. The study aims to provide a guideline for prospective agile software developers. MethodA survey was conducted among software developers at a software development organization. To collect data, a survey was carried out along with observations, and interviews. ResultsIt has been found that half cubicles are ‘very effective’ for the frequency of communication. Further, half cubicles were discovered ‘effective’ but not ‘very effective’ for the quality/effectiveness of communication. It is found that half-height cubicles and status boards are ‘very effective’ for the coordination among team members according to the survey. Communal/discussion space is found to be ‘effective’ but not ‘very effective’ for coordination among team members. Our analysis also reveals that half-height glass barriers are ‘very effective’ during the individuals problem-solving activities while working together as a team. Infact, such a physically open environment appears to improve communication, coordination, and collaboration. ConclusionAccording to this study, an open working environment with only half-height glass barriers and communal space plays a major role in communication among team members. The presence of status boards significantly help in reducing unnecessary communication by providing the required information to individuals and therefore, in turn reduce distractions a team member may confront in their absence. As communication plays a significant role in improving coordination and collaboration, it is not surprising to find the effect of open working environment and status boards in improving coordination and collaboration. An open working environment increases the awareness among software developers e.g. who is doing what, what is on the agenda, what is taking place, etc. That in turn, improves coordination among them. A communal/discussion space helps in collaboration immensely.

Social Capital as a Determinant Factor of Software Development Productivity

Social capital is an important network based intangible asset with a potential for maximizing individual and team productivity in a social setting like software development. It is important to investigate intervening factors that challenge software development productivity. In this paper, the authors mixed method approach harnesses a structural equation model (SEM) for its quantitative part to establish a paradigm for understanding the effects of social factors for software development organizations. The proposed SEM model measures the correlations between several potential factors associated with productivity, social productivity, and social capital that are chosen as latent variables. For the qualitative phase, an industrial focus group is used to single out these factors and their association with potential social aspects. Quantitative data is gathered from a survey conducted at a university. The qualitative phase encompasses an industrial focus group, initially starting with the factors from the literature and refined through participants’ field experience. Findings indicate that a high correlation exists between several social factors that are reported by the focus group. Finally, initial results suggest that understanding the factors that affect social capital in software development is essential for building and sustaining highly productive development environments.

Using error abstraction and classification to improve requirement quality: conclusions from a family of four empirical studies

Achieving high software quality is a primary concern for software development organizations. Researchers have developed many quality improvement methods that help developers detect faults early in the lifecycle. To address some of the limitations of fault-based quality improvement approaches, this paper describes an approach based on errors (i.e. the sources of the faults). This research extends Lanubile et al.'s, error abstraction process by providing a formal requirement error taxonomy to help developers identify both faults and errors. The taxonomy was derived from the software engineering and psychology literature. The error abstraction and classification process and the requirement error taxonomy are validated using a family of four empirical studies. The main conclusions derived from the four studies are: (1) the error abstraction and classification process is an effective approach for identifying faults; (2) the requirement error taxonomy is useful addition to the error abstraction process; and (3) deriving requirement errors from cognitive psychology research is useful.

Critical role of measures in decision processes: Managerial and technical measures in the context of large software development organizations

ContextToday, many software development organizations struggle to establish measurement programs to monitor their projects, products and units. After overcoming the initial threshold of establishing the measurement program organizations stand before the questions of which measures should be collected in order to lead to actions or at least effectively trigger decision processes. ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to investigate how to use measures in an effective way in decision processes. This dependency is examined through a case study – Ericsson in Sweden. Two models of these dependencies are recognized a priori – metrics-push and metric-pull – and in the study the models are used to describe how measures affect decisions and vice versa. MethodThe research method is a case study of the measurement program of one of the product development units of Ericsson in Sweden. The participants are carefully selected from the management teams at different levels of organizations. The objects are measures and decisions at these management levels. The instruments are interviews and observations. The results obtained at Ericsson are validated through interviews at another company – RUAG Space. ResultsThe results show that effective use of measures as evidence for decision processes does not require a large number of measures (ca. 20 at the top management level). It was found that there are four types of measures which are used in different ways in the context of decision formulation and implementation (which we call decision-measures dependency model). The critical aspects of effective measures in decision-making context are completeness, reliability and providing early warnings. It was also found that the time between the decision and when its results can be observed via measures (length of the feedback loop) is a crucial aspect determining at which organizational level a measure should be placed. ConclusionsAfter overcoming the initial threshold of establishing measurement programs the organizations demand non-functional properties from the measures. These non-functional properties like completeness, providing early-warning or trust determine whether decision processes are triggered by measures or not.

A Detailed Study of NHPP Software Reliability Models (Invited Paper)

Software reliability deals with the probability that software will not cause the failure of a system for a specified time under a specified condition. The probability is a function of the inputs to and use of the system as well as a function of the existing faults in the software. The inputs to the system determine whether existing faults, if any, are encountered. Software Reliability Models (SRMs) provide a yardstick to predict future failure behavior from known or assumed characteristics of the software, such as past failure data. Different types of SRMs are used for different phases of the software development life-cycle. With the increasing demand to deliver quality software, software development organizations need to manage quality achievement and assessment. While testing a piece of software, it is often assumed that the correction of errors does not introduce any new errors and the reliability of the software increases as bugs are uncovered and then fixed. The models used during the testing phase are called Software Reliability Growth Models (SRGM). Unfortunately, in industrial practice, it is difficult to decide the time for software release. An important step towards remediation of this problem lies in the ability to manage the testing resources efficiently and affordably. This paper presents a detailed study of existing SRMs based on Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP), which claim to improve software quality through effective detection of software faults.

An Enhanced Software Project Management Methodology Accompanying Agile and CMMI

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has conducted extensive research on improving the quality of software development process. Project management (PM) is an important part in software development organizations. Without proper software project management, it can lead to the failure of software projects. Many software projects are failed to implement the required functionality within schedule and budget. Agile process models emphasize on rapid development. These models have gained great popularity in software development community. One area, often under estimated but crucial, for every software development project, is its management. The major problem with the characteristics of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is that it does not make any contribution to the productivity of individual engineers. This paper defines when to implement agile models using CMMI to reduce the failure of software projects Index Terms—PM, CMMI, KPA.

Design of a competence model for testing teams

More and more software development organisations are paying attention to the improvement of the software testing process, because it is considered a key factor to ensure the quality of software products. However, the staff usually has problems developing testing activities because they do not have the appropriate competences to carry out these activities effectively; this results in low performance in organisations and increased costs of software products. A way to reduce this gap is developing a competence model that defines the roles who participate in the software testing activities as well as the general and technical competences required for them. Therefore this model could be applied to train staff in software testing activities and to recruit the appropriate profiles, which contribute to improving their performance. Considering that there is no published competence model specifically addressed to software testing, this study presents one that has been developed, analysing the literature and testing jobs and validated by experts in the software testing field using a survey as a validation method. So, as a result of this work, a competence model for software testing close to the software industry has been obtained.

Software process improvement to assist medical device software development organisations to comply with the amendments to the medical device directive

A recent revision to the European Medical Device Directive (MDD) 2007/47/EC made 14 amendments to the original directive (93/42/EEC). A number of these changes directly affect the development of software for use in healthcare. The most significant change in relation to medical device software development is that stand-alone software is now seen as an active medical device and should be developed following state-of-the-art medical device software development processes. State-of-the-art medical device software processes are understood within the industry as developing software in accordance with IEC 62304 and standards that are aligned with it. This study identifies how changes to the MDD affect medical device software development companies and recommendations are made as to how medical device software development companies can conform to the latest regulatory requirements. Additionally, the study provides an overview of how Medi SPICE is currently being developed to provide organisations with a single point of reference for the practices that should be implemented in order to produce regulatory compliant medical device software.

Quantifying value of adding inspection effort early in the development process: a case study

Many researchers have reported the defect growth within the evolutionary-developed large-scale systems, and increased fault slips from the early verification stages into late. This suggests that improvement in the early defect detection process control is needed. This study focuses on evaluation of adding inspection effort early in the development process. Based on the examination of the existing metrics used in defect detection process, the authors establish metrics to quantify its value from the quality and cost–benefit perspective. The effect of adding inspection effort early in the development process is evaluated in a case study using industrial data from history and an ongoing project involving three geographically distributed sites of the same globally distributed software development organisation with around 300 developers. The findings show that the expert-based decision criteria for additional investment are mostly based on quality and reliability issues, and less on costs. Consequently, the additional inspection improves significantly the quality, while the cost–benefit was not statistically significant. This leads to the conclusion that better decision criteria that would incorporate the costs and not only quality perceptions are the key for improving the product reliability, as well as the overall software life-cycle cost-efficiency. This study is motivated by the real industrial environment, and thus, contributes to both research and practice by presenting the empirical evidence.

Evaluation and Measurement of Software Process Improvement—A Systematic Literature Review

BACKGROUND-Software Process Improvement (SPI) is a systematic approach to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a software development organization and to enhance software products. OBJECTIVE-This paper aims to identify and characterize evaluation strategies and measurements used to assess the impact of different SPI initiatives. METHOD-The systematic literature review includes 148 papers published between 1991 and 2008. The selected papers were classified according to SPI initiative, applied evaluation strategies, and measurement perspectives. Potential confounding factors interfering with the evaluation of the improvement effort were assessed. RESULTS-Seven distinct evaluation strategies were identified, wherein the most common one, “Pre-Post Comparison,” was applied in 49 percent of the inspected papers. Quality was the most measured attribute (62 percent), followed by Cost (41 percent), and Schedule (18 percent). Looking at measurement perspectives, “Project” represents the majority with 66 percent. CONCLUSION-The evaluation validity of SPI initiatives is challenged by the scarce consideration of potential confounding factors, particularly given that “Pre-Post Comparison” was identified as the most common evaluation strategy, and the inaccurate descriptions of the evaluation context. Measurements to assess the short and mid-term impact of SPI initiatives prevail, whereas long-term measurements in terms of customer satisfaction and return on investment tend to be less used.

Improving quality of Ada software with range analysis

Software in critical embedded systems used in aerospace, military, and transport applications, that is, systems where quality and reliability are imperative, continues to become more complex. For example, the Boeing 787 aircraft flight control system will have about 6.5 million lines of code, the avionics software for the F-22 Raptor consists of 1.7 million lines of code and avionics software for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is expected to have 5.7 million lines of code. The Ada programming language has been a key component in these applications and is a language of choice for critical systems where reliability matters. As these systems are becoming more sophisticated, software development organizations must meet stringent software quality objectives that are mandated by the organization itself or required by customers or by government regulations. For software teams to meet these objectives, and to ideally achieve software with minimal defects, the Ada programming language alone may not provide sufficient reliability margins. Coupling the Ada language with state of the art testing and verification solutions may improve the predictability of risk. This paper examines software verification and testing approaches that have been applied to Ada programs.

Adopting Agile Software Development: Issues and Challenges

In the recent few years more and more software development organizations are striving to adopt agile software development methods and techniques. Successful agile adoption leads to producing higher quality software, enhance developers moraland at a lower cost than the traditional water wall model approach. However, Agile adoption always comes with special challenges and accordingly, fundamental organizational changes are necessary for successful outcome. The main contribution of this paper is that we present a case study for agile adoption case in a government entity in the U.A.E and we compare and analyze the outcomesobtained with other published case studies in this domain.