The relationship between organizational culture and the deployment of agile methods

Context

Systems development normally takes place in a specific organizational context, including organizational culture. Previous research has identified organizational culture as a factor that potentially affects the deployment systems development methods.

Objective

The purpose is to analyze the relationship between organizational culture and the post-adoption deployment of agile methods.

Method

This study is a theory development exercise. Based on the Competing Values Model of organizational culture, the paper proposes a number of hypotheses about the relationship between organizational culture and the deployment of agile methods.

Results

Inspired by the agile methods thirteen new hypotheses are introduced and discussed. They have interesting implications, when contrasted with ad hoc development and with traditional systems development methods.

Conclusion

Because of the conceptual richness of organizational culture and the ambiguity of the concept of agility the relationship between organizational culture and the deployment of agile systems development forms a rich and interesting research topic. Recognizing that the Competing Values Model represents just one view of organizational culture, the paper introduces a number of alternative conceptions and identifies several interesting paths for future research into the relationship between organizational culture and agile methods deployment.     

DELIVER! - An educational game for teaching Earned Value Management in computing courses

Context

To meet the growing need for education in Software Project Management, educational games have been introduced as a beneficial instructional strategy. However, there are no low-cost board games openly available to teach Earned Value Management (EVM) in computing programs.

Objective

This paper presents an educational board game to reinforce and teach the application of EVM concepts in the context of undergraduate computing programs complementing expository lessons on EVM basics.

Method

The game has been developed based on project management fundamentals and teaching experience in this area. So far, it has been applied in two project management courses in undergraduate computing programs at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. We evaluated motivation, user experience and the game’s contribution to learning through case studies on Kirkpatrick’s level one based on the perception of the students.

Results

First results of the evaluation of the game indicate a perceived potential of the game to contribute to the learning of EVM concepts and their application. The results also point out a very positive effect of the game on social interaction, engagement, immersion, attention and relevance to the course objectives.

Conclusion

We conclude that the game DELIVER! can contribute to the learning of the EVM on the cognitive levels of remembering, understanding and application. The illustration of the application of EVM through the game can motivate its usefulness. The game has proven to be an engaging instructional strategy, keeping students on the task and attentive. In this respect, the game offers a possibility to complement traditional instructional strategies for teaching EVM. In order to further generalize and to strengthen the validity of the results, it is important to obtain further evaluations.     

Conceptual scheduling model and optimized release scheduling for agile environments

Context

Release scheduling deals with the selection and assignment of deliverable features to a sequence of consecutive product deliveries while several constraints are fulfilled. Although agile software development represents a major approach to software engineering, there is no well-established conceptual definition and sound methodological support of agile release scheduling.

Objective

To propose a solution, we present, (1) a conceptual model for agile scheduling, and (2) a novel multiple knapsack-based optimization model with (3) a branch-and-bound optimization algorithm for agile release scheduling.

Method

To evaluate our model simulations were carried out seven real life and several generated data sets.

Results

The developed algorithm strives to prevent resource overload and resource underload, and mitigates risks of delivery slippage.

Conclusion

The results of the experiment suggest that this approach can provide optimized semi-automatic release schedule generations and more informed and established decisions utilizing what-if-analysis on the fly to tailor the best schedule for the specific project context.     

The impact of inadequate customer collaboration on self-organizing Agile teams

Context

Customer collaboration is a vital feature of Agile software development.

Objective

This article addresses the importance of adequate customer involvement on Agile projects, and the impact of different levels of customer involvement on real-life Agile projects.

Method

We conducted a Grounded Theory study involving 30 Agile practitioners from 16 software development organizations in New Zealand and India, over a period of 3 years.

Results

We discovered that Lack of Customer Involvement was one of the biggest challenges faced by Agile teams. Customers were not as involved on these Agile projects as Agile methods demand. We describe the causes of inadequate customer collaboration, its adverse consequences on self-organizing Agile teams, and Agile Undercover — a set of strategies used by the teams to practice Agile despite insufficient or ineffective customer involvement.

Conclusion

Customer involvement is important on Agile projects. Inadequate customer involvement causes adverse problems for Agile teams. The Agile Undercover strategies we’ve identified can assist Agile teams facing similar lack of customer involvement.     

Assessing PSP effect in training disciplined software development: A Plan-Track-Review model

Context

In training disciplined software development, the PSP is said to result in such effect as increased estimation accuracy, better software quality, earlier defect detection, and improved productivity. But a systematic mechanism that can be easily adopted to assess and interpret PSP effect is scarce within the existing literature.

Objective

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of devising a feasible assessment model that ties up critical software engineering values with the pertinent PSP metrics.

Method

A systematic review of the literature was conducted to establish such an assessment model (we called a Plan-Track-Review model). Both mean and median approaches along with a set of simplified procedures were used to assess the commonly accepted PSP training effects. A set of statistical analyses further followed to increase understanding of the relationships among the PSP metrics and to help interpret the application results.

Results

Based on the results of this study, PSP training effect on the controllability, manageability, and reliability of a software engineer is quite positive and largely consistent with the literature. However, its effect on one’s predictability on project in general (and on project size in particular) is not implied as said in the literature. As for one’s overall project efficiency, our results show a moderate improvement. Our initial finding also suggests that a prior stage PSP effect could have an impact on later stage training outcomes.

Conclusion

It is concluded that this Plan-Track-Review model with the associated framework can be used to assess PSP effect regarding a disciplined software development. The generated summary report serves to provide useful feedback for both PSP instructors and students based on internal as well as external standards.     

Systematized nomenclature of medicine clinical terms (SNOMED CT) to represent computed tomography procedures

Objective

To evaluate the ability of systematized nomenclature of medicine clinical terms (SNOMED CT) to represent computed tomography procedures in computed tomography dictionaries used in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Methods

This study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage computed tomography dictionaries were collected and consolidated to one master list. The duplicated procedure names were deleted from the list. In the second stage the unique data items from the master list were matched with the SNOMED CT concepts. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of SNOMED CT were investigated.

Results

After eliminating 680 duplicate procedures from the total of 833, the study sample consisted of 153 data items. For pre-coordination, SNOMED CT had sensitivity of 56% and for post-coordination SNOMED CT had sensitivity of 98%.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that SNOMED CT is a valid nomenclature for representing computed tomography procedures.     

Towards understanding the underlying structure of motivational factors for software engineers to guide the definition of motivational programs

Aim

In this article, factors influencing the motivation of software engineers is studied with the goal of guiding the definition of motivational programs.

Method

Using a set of 20 motivational factors compiled in a systematic literature review and a general theory of motivation, a survey questionnaire was created to evaluate the influence of these factors on individual motivation. Then, the questionnaire was applied on a semi-random sample of 176 software engineers from 20 software companies located in Recife-PE, Brazil.

Results

The survey results show the actual level of motivation for each motivator in the target population. Using principal component analysis on the values of all motivators, a five factor structure was identified and used to propose a guideline for the creation of motivational programs for software engineers.

Conclusions

The five factor structure provides an intuitive categorization for the set of variables and can be used to explain other motivational models presented in the literature. This contributes to a better understanding of motivation in software engineering.     

SOAdapt: A process reference model for developing adaptable service-based applications

Context

The loose coupling of services and Service-Based Applications (SBAs) have made them the ideal platform for context-based run-time adaptation. There has been a lot of research into implementation techniques for adapting SBAs, without much effort focused on the software process required to guide the adaptation.

Objective

This paper aims to bridge that gap by providing an empirically grounded software process model that can be used by software practitioners who want to build adaptable SBAs. The process model will focus only on the adaptation specific issues.

Method

The process model presented in this paper is based on data collected through interviews with 10 practitioners occupying various roles within eight different companies. The data was analyzed using qualitative data analysis techniques. We used the output to develop a set of activities, tasks, stakeholders and artifacts that were used to construct the process model.

Results

The outcome of the data analysis process was a process model identifying nine sets of adaptation process attributes. These can be used in conjunction with an organisation’s existing development life-cycle or another reference life-cycle.

Conclusion

The process model developed in this paper provides a solid reference for practitioners who are planning to develop adaptable SBAs. It has advantages over similar approaches in that it focuses on software process rather than the specific adaptation mechanism implementation techniques.     

Problems in the interplay of development and IT operations in system development projects: A Delphi study of Norwegian IT experts

Context

The assumption of the presented work is that the ability of system developers and IT operations personnel to cooperate effectively in system development projects has great impact on the quality of the final system solution, as well as on the service level of its subsequent operation.

Objective

The present research explores the interplay of system development and IT operations and the challenges they are meeting. We are especially interested in identifying problems encountered between these two parties in system development projects.

Method

We identify and rank problems by using a ranking-type Delphi study. We involved 42 Norwegian IT experts and split them into three expert panels: system developers, IT operations personnel and system owners. We then guided them through the three phases of the Delphi method - brainstorming, reduction and ranking.

Results

A comprehensive list of 66 problems, organized into seven groups, is compiled. Through a selection and ranking procedure, the panels found the following to be the six most serious problems in the interplay of system development and IT operations: (1) IT operations not being involved in the requirements specification; (2) poor communication and information flow; (3) unsatisfactory test environments; (4) lack of knowledge transfer; (5) systems being put into production before they are complete; and (6) operational routines not being established prior to deployment.

Conclusion

The sheer amount and variety of problems mentioned and the respondents’ explanations confirm that this interplay needs attention; the parties agree that they do not cooperate effectively in development projects. The results imply that IT operations should be regarded as an important stakeholder throughout several systems development activities, especially requirements analysis, testing and deployment. Moreover, such involvement should be facilitated by an increased focus on enhancing cooperation and communication.     

Resolving unwanted couplings through interactive exploration of co-evolving software entities - An experience report

Context

Frequent changes to groups of software entities belonging to different parts of the system may indicate unwanted couplings between those parts. Visualizations of co-changing software entities have been proposed to help developers identify unwanted couplings. Identifying unwanted couplings, however, is only the first step towards an important goal of a software architect: to improve the decomposition of the software system. An in-depth analysis of co-changing entities is needed to understand the underlying reasons for co-changes, and also determine how to resolve the issues.

Objective

In this paper we discuss how interactive visualizations can support the process of analyzing the identified unwanted couplings.

Method

We applied a tool that interactively visualizes software evolution in 10 working sessions with architects and developers of a large embedded software system having a development history of more than a decade.

Results

The participants of the working sessions were overall very positive about their experiences with the interactive visualizations. In 70% of the cases investigated, a decision could be taken on how to resolve the unwanted couplings.

Conclusion

Our experience suggests that interactive visualization not only helps to identify unwanted couplings but it also helps experts to reason about and resolve them.     

Human and program factors affecting the maintenance of programs with deployed design patterns

Context

Practitioners may use design patterns to organize program code. Various empirical studies have investigated the effects of pattern deployment and work experience on the effectiveness and efficiency of program maintenance. However, results from these studies are not all consistent. Moreover, these studies have not considered some interesting factors, such as a maintainer’s prior exposure to the program under maintenance.

Objective

This paper aims at identifying what factors may contribute to the productivity of maintainers in the context of making correct software changes when they work on programs with deployed design patterns.

Method

We performed an empirical study involving 118 human subjects with three change tasks on a medium-sized program to explore the possible effects of a suite of six human and program factors on the productivity of maintainers, measured by the time taken to produce a correctly revised program in a course-based setting. The factors we studied include the deployment of design patterns and the presence of pattern-unaware solutions, as well as the maintainer’s prior exposure to design patterns, the subject program and the programming language, and prior work experience.

Results

Among the factors under examination, we find that the deployment of design patterns, prior exposure to the program and the presence of pattern-unaware solutions are strongly correlated with the time taken to correctly complete maintenance tasks. We also report some interesting observations from the experiment.

Conclusion

A new factor, namely, the presence of pattern-unaware solutions, contributes to the efficient completion of maintenance tasks of programs with deployed design patterns. Moreover, we conclude from the study that neither prior exposure to design patterns nor prior exposure to the programming language is supported by sufficient evidences to be significant factors, whereas the subjects’ exposure to the program under maintenance is notably more important.     

Conducting a Business Ethnography in Global Software Development projects of small German enterprises

Context

Studying work practices in the context of Global Software Development (GSD) projects entails multiple opportunities and challenges for the researchers. Understanding and tackling these challenges requires a careful and rigor application of research methods.

Objective

We want to contribute to the understanding of the challenges of studying GSD by reflecting on several obstacles we had to deal with when conducting ethnographically-informed research on offshoring in German small to medium-sized enterprises.

Method

The material for this paper is based on reflections and field notes from two research projects: an exploratory ethnographic field study, and a study that was framed as a Business Ethnography. For the analysis, we took a Grounded Theory-oriented coding and analysis approach in order to identify issues and challenges documented in our research notes.

Results

We introduce the concept of Business Ethnography and discuss our experiences of adapting and implementing this action research concept for our study. We identify and discuss three primary issues: understanding complex global work practices from a local perspective, adapting to changing interests of the participants, and dealing with micro-political frictions between the cooperating sites.

Conclusions

We identify common interests between the researchers and the companies as a challenge and chance for studies on offshoring. Building on our experiences from the field, we argue for an active conceptualization of struggles and conflicts in the field as well as for extending the role of the ethnographer to that of a learning mediator.     

Exploring comprehensible classification rules from trained neural networks integrated with a time-varying binary particle swarm optimizer

Purpose

Extracting comprehensible classification rules is the most emphasized concept in data mining researches. In order to obtain accurate and comprehensible classification rules from databases, a new approach is proposed by combining advantages of artificial neural networks (ANN) and swarm intelligence.

Method

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are a group of very powerful tools applied to prediction, classification and clustering in different domains. The main disadvantage of this general purpose tool is the difficulties in its interpretability and comprehensibility. In order to eliminate these disadvantages, a novel approach is developed to uncover and decode the information hidden in the black-box structure of ANNs. Therefore, in this paper a study on knowledge extraction from trained ANNs for classification problems is carried out. The proposed approach makes use of particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to transform the behaviors of trained ANNs into accurate and comprehensible classification rules. Particle swarm optimization with time varying inertia weight and acceleration coefficients is designed to explore the best attribute-value combination via optimizing ANN output function.

Results

The weights hidden in trained ANNs turned into comprehensible classification rule set with higher testing accuracy rates compared to traditional rule based classifiers.     

Process models for service-based applications: A systematic literature review

Context

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a promising computing paradigm which facilitates the development of adaptive and loosely coupled service-based applications (SBAs). Many of the technical challenges pertaining to the development of SBAs have been addressed, however, there are still outstanding questions relating to the processes required to develop them.

Objective

The objective of this study is to systematically identify process models for developing service-based applications (SBAs) and review the processes within them. This will provide a useful starting point for any further research in the area. A secondary objective of the study is to identify process models which facilitate the adaptation of SBAs.

Method

In order to achieve this objective a systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing software engineering literature is conducted.

Results

During this research 722 studies were identified using a predefined search strategy, this number was narrowed down to 57 studies based on a set of strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results are reported both quantitatively in the form of a mapping study, as well as qualitatively in the form of a narrative summary of the key processes identified.

Conclusion

There are many process models reported for the development of SBAs varying in detail and maturity, this review has identified and categorised the processes within those process models. The review has also identified and evaluated process models which facilitate the adaptation of SBAs.     

Cross-domain probabilistic inference in a clinical decision support system: examples for dermatology and rheumatology

Introduction

Maintaining a large diagnostic knowledge base (KB) is a demanding task for any person or organization. Future clinical decision support system (CDSS) may rely on multiple, smaller and more focused KBs developed and maintained at different locations that work together seamlessly. A cross-domain inference tool has great clinical import and utility.

Methods

We developed a modified multi-membership Bayes formulation to facilitate the cross-domain probabilistic inferencing among KBs with overlapping diseases. Two KBs developed for evaluation were non-infectious generalized blistering diseases (GBD) and autoimmune diseases (AID). After the KBs were finalized, they were evaluated separately for validity.

Result

Ten cases from medical journal case reports were used to evaluate this “cross-domain” inference across the two KBs. The resultant non-error rate (NER) was 90%, and the average of probabilities assigned to the correct diagnosis (AVP) was 64.8% for cross-domain consultations.

Conclusion

A novel formulation is now available to deal with problems occurring in a clinical diagnostic decision support system with multi-domain KBs. The utilization of this formulation will help in the development of more integrated KBs with greater focused knowledge domains.     

Factors influencing clients in the selection of offshore software outsourcing vendors: An exploratory study using a systematic literature review

Context

Offshore software development outsourcing is a modern business strategy for developing high quality software at low cost.

Objective

The objective of this research paper is to identify and analyse factors that are important in terms of the competitiveness of vendor organisations in attracting outsourcing projects.

Method

We performed a systematic literature review (SLR) by applying our customised search strings which were derived from our research questions. We performed all the SLR steps, such as the protocol development, initial selection, final selection, quality assessment, data extraction and data synthesis.

Results

We have identified factors such as cost-saving, skilled human resource, appropriate infrastructure, quality of product and services, efficient outsourcing relationships management, and an organisation's track record of successful projects which are generally considered important by the outsourcing clients. Our results indicate that appropriate infrastructure, cost-saving, and skilled human resource are common in three continents, namely Asia, North America and Europe. We identified appropriate infrastructure, cost-saving, and quality of products and services as being common in three types of organisations (small, medium and large). We have also identified four factors-appropriate infrastructure, cost-saving, quality of products and services, and skilled human resource as being common in the two decades (1990-1999 and 2000-mid 2008).

Conclusions

Cost-saving should not be considered as the driving factor in the selection process of software development outsourcing vendors. Vendors should rather address other factors in order to compete in the OSDO business, such as skilled human resource, appropriate infrastructure and quality of products and services.     

Determinants of software quality in offshore development - An empirical study of an Indian vendor

Context

Cost advantage has been one of the primary drivers of successful offshoring engagements of Indian software and services companies. However, the emphasis has shifted to the ability of the vendors to provide high quality over cost advantage in delivering software products and services. Meeting high quality requirements of the clients is a challenge due to the very nature of development and delivery of software through offshoring.

Objective

The objective of this research paper is to identify and evaluate the key determinants of quality in the case of software projects delivered through offshoring model.

Method

A detailed survey was conducted among project managers/project leaders (leads) of a leading midsize Indian IT services company to evaluate the relationship of the determinants on the attributes of quality.

Results

Out of six determinants, our research reveals requirements uncertainty has significant association with all the attributes of quality. While process maturity and trained personnel have moderate association, communication and control, knowledge transfer and integration and technical infrastructure have relatively low association on software quality attributes in the case of offshoring.

Conclusion

It is concluded that the complexities in offshoring necessitates proper capturing of requirements. In addition high level of process maturity and availability of trained personnel to the project will help vendors to achieve software quality. The paper provides a set of implications for practice and directions for further research.     

A unit test approach for database schema evolution

Context

The constant changes in today’s business requirements demand continuous database revisions. Hence, database structures, not unlike software applications, deteriorate during their lifespan and thus require refactoring in order to achieve a longer life span. Although unit tests support changes to application programs and refactoring, there is currently a lack of testing strategies for database schema evolution.

Objective

This work examines the challenges for database schema evolution and explores the possibility of using various testing strategies to assist with schema evolution. Specifically, the work proposes a novel unit test approach for the application code that accesses databases with the objective of proactively evaluating the code against the altered database.

Method

The approach was validated through the implementation of a testing framework in conjunction with a sample application and a relatively simple database schema. Although the database schema in this study was simple, it was nevertheless able to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach.

Results

After changes in the database schema, the proposed approach found all SELECT statements as well as the majority of other statements requiring modifications in the application code. Due to its efficiency with SELECT statements, the proposed approach is expected to be more successful with database warehouse applications where SELECT statements are dominant.

Conclusion

The unit test approach that accesses databases has proven to be successful in evaluating the application code against the evolved database. In particular, the approach is simple and straightforward to implement, which makes it easily adoptable in practice.     

A methodology to assess the impact of design patterns on software quality

Context

Software quality is considered to be one of the most important concerns of software production teams. Additionally, design patterns are documented solutions to common design problems that are expected to enhance software quality. Until now, the results on the effect of design patterns on software quality are controversial.

Aims

This study aims to propose a methodology for comparing design patterns to alternative designs with an analytical method. Additionally, the study illustrates the methodology by comparing three design patterns with two alternative solutions, with respect to several quality attributes.

Method

The paper introduces a theoretical/analytical methodology to compare sets of “canonical” solutions to design problems. The study is theoretical in the sense that the solutions are disconnected from real systems, even though they stem from concrete problems. The study is analytical in the sense that the solutions are compared based on their possible numbers of classes and on equations representing the values of the various structural quality attributes in function of these numbers of classes. The exploratory designs have been produced by studying the literature, by investigating open-source projects and by using design patterns. In addition to that, we have created a tool that helps practitioners in choosing the optimal design solution, according to their special needs.

Results

The results of our research suggest that the decision of applying a design pattern is usually a trade-off, because patterns are not universally good or bad. Patterns typically improve certain aspects of software quality, while they might weaken some other.

Conclusions

Concluding the proposed methodology is applicable for comparing patterns and alternative designs, and highlights existing threshold that when surpassed the design pattern is getting more or less beneficial than the alternative design. More specifically, the identification of such thresholds can become very useful for decision making during system design and refactoring.