Risks in Distributed Agile Development: A Review

AbstractThere has been is a growing trend in software development through distributed agile approach and so, the study of risks in such environments becomes imperative. A number of studies have discussed about the problems faced by distributed agile teams. This study attempts to consolidate the existing studies on risks in distributed agile development. It helps in uncovering the areas of risk management in distributed agile, in which extensive work has been done and also presents the type of work that needs further consideration

Coordination in Distributed Agile Software Development: A Systematic Review

In order to decrease the consumer return transaction cost, e-commerce platform Alibaba invited an insurance company to develop a new type of insurance to compensate consumers for returns, which is called return-freight insurance. The new insurance has resulted in online return\u27s explosive growth. However, some online retailers still choose to offer complimentary return-freight insurance to signal their products\u27 quality. Using signaling theory, we build a conceptual economic model to explore what kind of online retailer should adopt this strategy under incomplete information. Based on the fact that each product\u27s return probability, profit, and insurance compensation are different, our main results show the separating equilibria, where only high-quality online retailers will offer complimentary return-freight insurance. Interestingly, return-freight insurance profit and compensation play different roles in the signal effect. The insurance premium plays a deep role while the compensation plays at the surface, because consumers could only observe the compensation when purchasing

Guidelines for creating a testing process for a software - case study of comparing testing of two different size of slot game projects

Nowadays an important part of software development life cycle is software testing. As software and systems become more complex and integrated with other software and systems the importance of software testing becomes critical part of a successful software development process. Testing itself has a little value but for the software the testing is necessary. Well planned software testing can make mediocre software a great one whereas poorly executed testing can even harm the final product. Thus, it is important that there is well designed testing process for a software project. As every software project differ from each other the testing process can also vary from project to project. There are multiple levels, types and techniques of testing that can implemented to a testing process made for a certain software project. Creating an efficient and functional testing process can be a difficult task. In the case study of the paper it is concluded that two similar software projects of different size have multiple differences but do not force of creating two different testing process as both use the same kind development life cycle and both software projects are the same type, slot games. The major difference for testing is that as a major software project, compared to a minor one, has more requirements it is important to consider them in testing strategy and planning but not in the testing process

Customized agile development process for embedded software development

Agile software development has grown in popularity starting from the agile manifesto declared in 2001. However there is a strong belief that the agile methods are not suitable for embedded, critical or real-time software development, even though multiple studies and cases show differently. This thesis will present a custom agile process that can be used in embedded software development. The reasons for presumed unfitness of agile methods in embedded software development have mainly based on the feeling of these methods providing no real control, no strict discipline and less rigor engineering practices. One starting point is to provide a light process with disciplined approach to the embedded software development. Agile software development has gained popularity due to the fact that there are still big issues in software development as a whole. Projects fail due to schedule slips, budget surpassing or failing to meet the business needs. This does not change when talking about embedded software development. These issues are still valid, with multiple new ones rising from the quite complex and hard domain the embedded software developers work in. These issues are another starting point for this thesis. The thesis is based heavily on Feature Driven Development, a software development methodology that can be seen as a runner up to the most popular agile methodologies. The FDD as such is quite process oriented and is lacking few practices considered commonly as extremely important in agile development methodologies. In order for FDD to gain acceptance in the software development community it needs to be modified and enhanced. This thesis presents an improved custom agile process that can be used in embedded software development projects with size varying from 10 to 500 persons. This process is based on Feature Driven Development and by suitable parts to Extreme Programming, Scrum and Agile Modeling. Finally this thesis will present how the new process responds to the common issues in the embedded software development. The process of creating the new process is evaluated at the retrospective and guidelines for such process creation work are introduced. These emphasize the agility also in the process development through early and frequent deliveries and the team work needed to create suitable process.Siirretty Doriast

Chaste: an open source C++ library for computational physiology and biology

Chaste - Cancer, Heart And Soft Tissue Environment - is an open source C++ library for the computational simulation of mathematical models developed for physiology and biology. Code development has been driven by two initial applications: cardiac electrophysiology and cancer development. A large number of cardiac electrophysiology studies have been enabled and performed, including high performance computational investigations of defibrillation on realistic human cardiac geometries. New models for the initiation and growth of tumours have been developed. In particular, cell-based simulations have provided novel insight into the role of stem cells in the colorectal crypt. Chaste is constantly evolving and is now being applied to a far wider range of problems. The code provides modules for handling common scientific computing components, such as meshes and solvers for ordinary and partial differential equations (ODEs/PDEs). Re-use of these components avoids the need for researchers to "re-invent the wheel" with each new project, accelerating the rate of progress in new applications. Chaste is developed using industrially-derived techniques, in particular test-driven development, to ensure code quality, re-use and reliability. In this article we provide examples that illustrate the types of problems Chaste can be used to solve, which can be run on a desktop computer. We highlight some scientific studies that have used or are using Chaste, and the insights they have provided. The source code, both for specific releases and the development version, is available to download under an open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licence at http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/chaste, together with details of a mailing list and links to documentation and tutorials

DevOps Continuous Integration: Moving Germany’s Federal Employment Agency Test System into Embedded In-Memory Technology

This paper describes the development of a continuous integration database test architecture for a highly important and large software application in the public sector in Germany. We apply action design research and draw from two emerging areas of research – DevOps continuous integration practices and in-memory database development – to define the problem, design, build and implement the solution, analyze challenges encountered, and make adjustments. The result is the transformation of a large test environment originally based on Oracle databases into a flexible and fast embedded in-memory architecture. The main challenges involved overcoming the differences between the SQL specifications supported by the development and production systems and optimizing the test runtime performance. The paper contributes to theory and practice by presenting one of the first studies showing a real-world implementation of a successful database test architecture that enables continuous integration, and identifying technical design principles for database test architectures in general

Software Quality Assurance and Android Application Development: A Comparison among Traditional and Agile Methodology

This paper focuses on software quality assurance in android application development with focus on approaches to confirm software quality in android applications. In this work, we compare the waterfall model with agile-scrum methodologies to realize software quality assurance with special focus on mobile applications. This research allows us to answer, “Which process model and practices are available for android software development along with focus on quality assurance?” The other research focus in this paper is “How auditors, developers and testers play their defined roles to maintain quality in mobile application development?” Agility for software development has transformed into a preferred and favored method for mobile application development. The major aim of this research is to contribute for a better knowledge for mobile application development methodologies practiced by the organizations for the development of applications based on systematic literature review

Management of quality requirements in agile and rapid software development: A systematic mapping study

Context: Quality requirements (QRs) describe the desired quality of software, and they play an important role in the success of software projects. In agile software development (ASD), QRs are often ill-defined and not well addressed due to the focus on quickly delivering functionality. Rapid software development (RSD) approaches (e.g., continuous delivery and continuous deployment), which shorten delivery times, are more prone to neglect QRs. Despite the significance of QRs in both ASD and RSD, there is limited synthesized knowledge on their management in those approaches. Objective: This study aims to synthesize state-of-the-art knowledge about QR management in ASD and RSD, focusing on three aspects: bibliometric, strategies, and challenges. Research method: Using a systematic mapping study with a snowballing search strategy, we identified and structured the literature on QR management in ASD and RSD. Results: We found 156 primary studies: 106 are empirical studies, 16 are experience reports, and 34 are theoretical studies. Security and performance were the most commonly reported QR types. We identified various QR management strategies: 74 practices, 43 methods, 13 models, 12 frameworks, 11 advices, 10 tools, and 7 guidelines. Additionally, we identified 18 categories and 4 non-recurring challenges of managing QRs. The limited ability of ASD to handle QRs, time constraints due to short iteration cycles, limitations regarding the testing of QRs and neglect of QRs were the top categories of challenges. Conclusion: Management of QRs is significant in ASD and is becoming important in RSD. This study identified research gaps, such as the need for more tools and guidelines, lightweight QR management strategies that fit short iteration cycles, investigations of the link between QRs challenges and technical debt, and extension of empirical validation of existing strategies to a wider context. It also synthesizes QR management strategies and challenges, which may be useful for practitioners.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft