Harmonizing CMMI-DEV 1.2 and XP Method to Improve The Software Development Processes in Small Software Development Firms

Most software development organizations are small firms, and they have realized the need to manage and improve their software development and management activities. Traditional Software Process Improvement (SPI) models and standards are not realistic for these firms because of high cost, limited resources and strict project deadlines. Therefore, these firms need a lightweight software development method and an appropriate SPI model to manage and improve their software development and management processes. This study aims to construct a suitable software development process improvement framework for Small Software Development Firms (SSDFs) based on eXtreme Programming (XP) method and Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development Version 1.2 (CMMI-Dev1.2) model. Four stages are involved in developing the framework: (1) aligning XP practices to the specific goals of CMMI-Dev1.2 Key Process Areas (KPAs); (2) developing the proposed software development process improvement framework based on extending XP method by adapting the Extension-Based Approach (EBA), CMMI-Dev1.2, and generic elements of the SPI framework; (3) verifying the compatibility of the proposed framework to the KPAs of CMMI-Dev1.2 by using focus group method coupled with Delphi technique; and (4) validating the modified framework by using CMMI-Dev1.2 questionnaire as a main item to validate the suitability of the modified framework for SSDFs, and conducting two case studies to validate the applicability and effectiveness of this framework for these firms. The result of aligning XP practices to the KPAs of CMMI-Dev1.2 shows that twelve KPAs are largely supported by XP practices, eight KPAs are partially supported by XP practices, and two KPAs are not-supported by XP practices. The main contributions of this study are: software development process improvement framework for SSDFs, elicit better understanding of how to construct the framework, and quality improvement of the software development processes. There are possible avenues for extending this research to fulfil the missing specific practices of several KPAs, examining other agile practices and using CMMI-Dev1.3 to improve the framework, and conducting more case studie

Assessing the Need for Entrepreneurial Training at the Higher Educational Institutions in Ghana

Collaboration among educational institutions, governments, and industries has made significant economic impact in many countries. Keys to success in the collaboration have been environments provided by the governments that are conducive to entrepreneurship, and the industries’ contribution to experiential learning. In 2003, Ghana responding to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Agenda for Poverty Reduction, had in her strategic plan the intent to introduce entrepreneurial training as an option for all courses of study at the higher educational institutions. This mixed-method study compared the entrepreneurship traits of students who had taken an entrepreneurship course and those who had not. The bottom-line idea was to explore the job creation potential or ability among the university students in Ghana – a possible solution to youth unemployment and poverty. The study showed that the strategy of offering entrepreneurial training at the higher educational institutions in Ghana is worth implementing and supporting it. In fact, it is worthy to be emulated by other countries in the sub region. Countries seeking economic growth and poverty reduction in the 21st century should consider including entrepreneurial training to develop the creative and innovative skills of their youth. Keywords: Entrepreneurship training, poverty reduction, unemployment in Ghana, human capital, triple helix

A scalable and portable structure for conducting successful year-long undergraduate software team projects

Year-long team projects with external clients provide a well recognized opportunity for students to gain industry experience, whilst being supported and guided by staff to minimize risks. Each group should be supervised to ensure that they have enough direction and confidence to approach a new problem of significant size, without being daunted. A structure is needed that is flexible and adaptable to suit various institutional cultures but, at the same time, provides the safety net to ensure that success is likely. This paper presents a reflective analysis of teaching at three different institutions and presents the resulting distilled wisdom of experience that has produced a structured framework for capstone project units.C

Requirements engineering aspects for sustainable eLearning systems

Sustainability in software engineering is about (1) continued functionality and maintainability in changing circumstances, and (2) functionality's effect on the surrounded environment, economic and people. Frequent changes of software requirements negatively affect sustainability of software systems. To reduce the number of requirements' changes and improve sustainability, sustainability requirements have to be considered from the beginning of the requirements engineering stage of software development. Sustainability in requirements engineering has five dimensions including individual, social, technical, economic and environmental dimensions. Most of the existing work analysed only one or two dimensions and ignore the interrelated effects among other dimensions. To address this issue, we selected eLearning systems because they provide comprehensive example to study. This thesis focuses on analysing sustainability requirements of eLearning systems with regard to the five sustainability dimensions. The following studies were performed: (1) identifying theoretically the sustainability requirements of eLearning systems, (2) investigating empirically the sustainability of eLearning systems, (3) constructing a methodology for the analysis and evaluation of sustainability requirements on eLearning systems, and (4) evaluating the constructed methodology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research conducted to investigate sustainability requirements of eLearning systems covering the five sustainability dimensions. Our findings highlighted that (1) technical, economic and environmental sustainability requirements are similar to other software domains, where individual and social sustainability requirements are specific for the domain of eLearning systems, (2) individual and social sustainability requirements need to be carefully considered and analysed together because of the strong correlation, and (3) culture and gender diversity play an important role for sustainability requirements. On this basis, we developed a framework for analysing sustainability requirements of software systems as well as a web-based tool SuSoftPro (the name stands from Software Sustainability Profiling) that allows requirements engineers to: investigate sustainability of software systems based on the systems' requirements, analyse the sustainability dimensions of software systems, measure the sustainability of each individual requirement, visualise analysis results to support decision making towards high-quality software, involve stakeholders to rate their requirements for one or more of the five sustainability dimensions, and manage requirement and stakeholder details easily. We evaluated the SuSoftPro framework through case studies, comparative evaluation and a quantitative questionnaire. Our framework successfully provides a comprehensive view of analysing sustainability requirements to improve the attention to sustainability and allow practitioners to develop sustainable software