Enabling the Usability Heuristics of Agile Base Systems to Improve Quality of Local Software Industry

Many agile software development practices are promoted to improve the quality of software products. In recent years agile software development overlooked the usability features that effected system productivity.Usability is a main feature of interaction. Interaction is a way of a farming relationship between people and designed objects. An interactive model provides the way to band application together to achieve target user’s need. Usability gained attention of researchers and engineers because of its own importance. Agile software methods and usability engineering played a major role for producing better and reliable products, because both of them are concepts of methods as well as practices. The purpose of this research was to highlight the need of usability practices. The proposed model demonstrates that usability heuristics were much compatible with agile methodologies and would help to improve its productivity by reducing time and cost. Action research was applied for the development of framework proposed. The framework was evaluated using case study and further results were compared with existing related work

Introducing Team Coordination Framework to Support Globally Distributed Teams for Pakistani Software Industry

Collaborative effort is required in DSD (Distributed Software Development) in order to develop software in manageable components. Immense effort is taking place due to the cultural, geographical and temporal distances among project teams in Pakistani Software Industry to this end. The purpose of this study is to propose a solution during DSD that will help the distributed teams in coordinating their activities. Our solution enhances the management associated activities and assists in optimal usage of team coordination in dispersed settings. The method that we used is single case study type, which involved distributed software business to assess the usefulness and efficiency related to Pakistan’s DSD industries, and has shown strong tendency of participants towards the effectiveness of proposed team coordination framework. Results indicate that the predictable solution will look up the group management, which is considered as a vigorous issue of Pakistani DSD industry. Furthermore, it will assist in resolving the problems of team coordination in distributed situation. One of the most significant current discussion about the proposed solution suggested that it helps in human communication methods team coordination in a distributed environment

Modelo de gestión de proyectos de TI basado en enfoques híbridos aplicado a sistemas de ejecución de manufactura para la industria cementera

El presente trabajo propone un modelo de gestión de gestión de proyectos de TI basado en la Guía del PMBOK, y en el marco de trabajo para proyectos ágiles Scrum. La construcción del modelo se realizó basado en una revisión bibliográfica existente, así como también en encuestas realizadas a expertos dentro de Cementos Argos, los cuales se encargaron de dar lineamientos específicos y validar el modelo propuesto. Los resultados obtenidos en la validación de las variables dieron como resultado una aceptación general del modelo híbrido diseñado, evidenciando la necesidad de un cambio de paradigma hacia el uso de prácticas ágiles, en una organización que históricamente ha gestionado sus proyectos de manera secuencial bajo modelos predictivos.This paper proposes an IT project management model based on the sixth edition PMBOK guide and the framework for agile projects Scrum. The model was built based on an existing bibliographic review, as well as surveys conducted by experts within Cementos Argos, which were responsible for giving specific guidelines and validating the proposed model. The results obtained in the validation of the variables resulted in a general acceptance of the hybrid model designed, demonstrating the need for a paradigm shift towards the use of agile practices, in an organization that has historically managed its projects sequentially under predictive models

An improved requirement change management model for agile software development

Business requirements for software development projects are volatile and continuously need improvement. Hence, popularity of Agile methodology increases as it welcomes requirement changes during the Agile Software Development (ASD). However, existing models merely focus on change of functional requirements that are not adequate to achieve software sustainability and support change requirement processes. Therefore, this study proposes an improved Agile Requirement Change Management (ARCM) Model which provides a better support of non-functional requirement changes in ASD for achieving software sustainability. This study was carried out in four phases. Phase one is a theoretical study that examined the important issues and practices of requirement change in ASD. Then, in phase two, an exploratory study was conducted to investigate current practices of requirement changes in ASD. The study involved 137 software practitioners from Pakistan. While in phase three, the findings from the previous phases were used to construct the ARCM model. The model was constructed by adapting Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) method which consists of four 4 stages. Every stage provides well-defined aims, processes, activities, and practices. Finally, the model was evaluated by using expert review and case study approaches. There were six experts involved to verify the model and two case studies which involved two software companies from Pakistan were carried out to validate the applicability of the proposed model. The study proposes the ARCM model that consists of three main components: sustainability characteristics for handling non-functional requirements, sustainability analysis method for performing impact and risk analysis and assessment mechanism of ARCM using Goal Question Metrics (GQM) method. The evaluation result shown that the ARCM Model gained software practitioners’ satisfaction and able to be executed in a real environment. From the theoretical perspective, this study introduces the ARCM Model that contributed to the field of Agile Requirement Management, as well as the empirical findings that focused on the current issues, challenges and practices of RCM. Moreover, the ARCM model provides a solution for handling the nonfunctional requirements changes in ASD. Consequently, these findings are beneficial to Agile software practitioners and researchers to ensure the software sustainability are fulfilled hence empowers the companies to improve their value delivery