AHAA- Agile, Hybrid Assessment Method for Automotive, Safety Critical SMEs

The need for software is increasingly growing in the automotive industry. Software development projects are, however, often troubled by time and budget overruns, resulting in systems that do not fulfill customer requirements. Both research and industry lack strategies to combine reducing the long software development lifecycles (as required by time-to-market demands) with increasing the quality of the software developed. Software process improvement (SPI) provides the first step in the move towards software quality, and assessments are a vital part of this process. Unfortunately, software process assessments are often expensive and time consuming. Additionally, they often provide companies with a long list of issues without providing realistic suggestions. The goal of this paper is to describe a new low-overhead assessment method that has been designed specifically for small-to-medium-sized (SMEs) organisations wishing to be automotive software suppliers. This assessment method integrates the structured-ness of the plan-driven SPI models of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Automotive SPICETM with the flexibleness of agile practices

Mapping CMMI process areas to agile best practices

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementTo maintain competitiveness, software development companies are pressured to deliver products in less time, without compromising on quality and budget. To meet this demand, companies often adopt Agile software development techniques that enable shorter delivery times through constant smaller deliveries and shorter interactive cycles in software development processes. Although the innovation and the decrease of development time provided by these techniques, companies have perceived that quality is a differentiated factor and feel the urge to maintain the quality of their software to stand out from the competitors. At this point CMMI is presented as a reference model that contains a set of practices which lead to the maturity of organizations with focus on the improvement of organization processes and reduction of processes risk of failure increasing quality. In contrast with Agile, that puts individuals and their interactions in higher importance than processes and tools and where being adaptable to changes is more important than following strictly what was planned, CMMI it is a strict traditional approach that implies extensive formalism and focus on the processes. Derived of those apparent opposite beliefs, Agile development methods and CMMI best practices are frequently perceived to be at odds with each other. There is a great discussion about CMMI ability to be Agile and Agile methods to adapt to CMMI requirements without losing agility. This study aims to map CMMI for development process areas to Agile best practices to help in the understanding of the compatibilities and incompatibilities regarding the integration of CMMI and Agile. That will guide companies into the successful integration of Agile and maturity models together taking full advantage of their capabilities leading to enhanced software development. With the integration of those two approaches it is expected that Agile practices can help mature organizations to become more flexible, and CMMI could help Agile organizations to increase processes quality, fulfilling their goals and having their competitiveness sustained

The Real World Software Process

The industry-wide demand for rapid development in concert with greater process maturity has seen many software development firms adopt tightly structured iterative processes. While a number of commercial vendors offer suitable process infrastructure and tool support, the cost of licensing, configuration and staff training may be prohibitive for the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) which dominate the Asia-Pacific software industry. This work addresses these problems through the introduction of the Real World Software Process (RWSP), a freely available, Web-based iterative scheme designed specifically for small teams and organisations. RWSP provides a detailed process description, high quality document templates - including code review and inspection guidelines - and the integrated tutorial support necessary for successful usage by inexperienced developers and teams. In particular it is intended that the process be readily usable by software houses which at present do not follow a formal process, and that the free RWSP process infrastructure should be a vehicle for improving industry standards

A lightweight assessment method for medical device software processes

This paper outlines the MDevSPICE-Adept process assessment method. MDevSPICE-Adept is a lightweight process assessment method that has been created for the MDevSPICE software process assessment model which is currently being developed for the medical device industry. MDevSPICE is a fully validated release of a medical device software process assessment model (formerly known as Medi SPICE), which was developed by the authors. While the MDevSPICE process assessment model is detailed and comprehensive, there is industry demand for a lightweight medical device software process assessment method. To address this requirement the MDevSPICE-Adept method has been developed. Details on how this has taken place and the procedures for implementing an MDevSPICE-Adept process assessment are presented. Information is also provided regarding how an MDevSPICE process assessment was undertaken in an Irish based medical device company. A summary of the issues identified from this process assessment and the actions taken to facilitate process improvement is also presented. Finally, plans for future work are discussed

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

A process based approach software certification model for agile and secure environment

In today’s business environment, Agile and secure software processes are essential since they bring high quality and secured software to market faster and more cost effectively. Unfortunately, some software practitioners are not following the proper practices of both processes when developing software. There exist various studies which assess the quality of software process; nevertheless, their focus is on the conventional software process. Furthermore, they do not consider weight values in the assessment although each evaluation criterion might have different importance. Consequently, software certification is needed to give conformance on the quality of Agile and secure software processes. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to propose Extended Software Process Assessment and Certification Model (ESPAC) which addresses both software processes and considers the weight values during the assessment. The study is conducted in four phases: 1) theoretical study to examine the factors and practices that influence the quality of Agile and secure software processes and weight value allocation techniques, 2) an exploratory study which was participated by 114 software practitioners to investigate their current practices, 3) development of an enhanced software process certification model which considers process, people, technology, project constraint and environment, provides certification guideline and utilizes the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for weight values allocation and 4) verification of Agile and secure software processes and AHP through expert reviews followed by validation on satisfaction and practicality of the proposed model through focus group discussion. The validation result shows that ESPAC Model gained software practitioners’ satisfaction and practical to be executed in the real environment. The contributions of this study straddle research perspectives of Software Process Assessment and Certification and Multiple Criteria Decision Making, and practical perspectives by providing software practitioners and assessors a mechanism to reveal the quality of software process and helps investors and customers in making investment decisions

A proposed methodology for establishing software process development improvement for small software development firms

Small software development firms represent the majority of all software firms in most countries. These firms are facing the same software engineering challenges that affect large software firms.Software Process Improvement (SPI) traditional models were developed to help large and very large firms, however small software firms could not afford these models. Furthermore, they need to manage and improve their software development processes for several reasons such as dealing with the rapid technology advances, maintaining their products, satisfying the customers’ needs and sustaining their operations. This paper presents the methodology’s stages of developing a suitable software development process improvement framework by using Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI-DEV V1.2) as the basic model for improvement and Extreme Programming (XP) method as the basic software development method