Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review

Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out. We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Agile Beeswax: Mobile App Development Process and Empirical Study in Real Environment

Mobile application development is a highly competitive environment; agile methodologies can enable teams to provide value faster, with higher quality and predictability, and a better attitude to deal with the continuous changes that will arise in the mobile context application (App), and the positive impact of that on sustainable development through continuous progress. App development is different from other types of software. For this reason, our objective is to present a new agilebased methodology for app development that we call Agile Beeswax. Agile Beeswax is conceived after identifying the mobile development process’s issues and challenges, and unique requirements. Agile Beeswax is an incremental, iterative development process composed of two main iterative loops (sprints), the incremental design loop and the incremental development loop, and one bridge connecting these two sprints. Agile Beeswax is structured in six phases, idea and strategy, user experience design, user interface design, design to development, handoff and technical decisions, development, and deployment and monitoring. One of its main strengths is that it has been created with academic and business perspectives to bring these two communities closer. To achieve this purpose, our research methodology comprises four main phases: Phase 1: Extensive literature review of mobile development methodologies, Phase 2: Interviews with mobile application developers working in small to medium software companies, Phase 3: Survey to extract valuable knowledge about mobile development (which was carefully designed based on the results of the first and the second phases), and Phase 4: Proposal of a new methodology for the agile development of mobile applications. With the aim of integrating both perspectives, the survey was answered by a sample of 35 experts, including academics and developers. Interesting results have been collected and discussed in this paper (on issues such as the development process, the tools used during this process, and the general issues and challenges they encountered), laying the foundations of the methodology Agile Beeswax proposed to develop mobile apps. Our results and the proposed methodology are intended to serve as support for mobile application developers.Spanish Government European Commission RTI2018-096986-B-C3

Evolving a software development methodology for commercial ICTD projects

This article discusses the evolution of a “DistRibuted Agile Methodology Addressing Technical Ictd in Commercial Settings” (DRAMATICS) that was developed in a global software corporation to support ICTD projects from initial team setup through ICT system design, development, and prototyping, to scaling up and transitioning, to sustainable commercial models. We developed the methodology using an iterative Action Research approach in a series of commercial ICTD projects over a period of more than six years. Our learning is reflected in distinctive methodology features that support the development of contextually adapted ICT systems, collaboration with local partners, involvement of end users in design, and the transition from research prototypes to scalable, long-term solutions. We offer DRAMATICS as an approach that others can appropriate and adapt to their particular project contexts. We report on the methodology evolution and provide evidence of its effectiveness in the projects where it has been used

Revealing the Vicious Circle of Disengaged User Acceptance: A SaaS Provider's Perspective

User acceptance tests (UAT) are an integral part of many different software engineering methodologies. In this paper, we examine the influence of UATs on the relationship between users and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, which are continuously delivered rather than rolled out during a one-off signoff process. Based on an exploratory qualitative field study at a multinational SaaS provider in Denmark, we show that UATs often address the wrong problem in that positive user acceptance may actually indicate a negative user experience. Hence, SaaS providers should be careful not to rest on what we term disengaged user acceptance. Instead, we outline an approach that purposefully queries users for ambivalent emotions that evoke constructive criticism, in order to facilitate a discourse that favors the continuous innovation of a SaaS system. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our approach for the study of user engagement in testing SaaS applications