A mapping study on documentation in Continuous Software Development

Context: With an increase in Agile, Lean, and DevOps software methodologies over the last years (collectively referred to as Continuous Software Development (CSD)), we have observed that documentation is often poor. Objective: This work aims at collecting studies on documentation challenges, documentation practices, and tools that can support documentation in CSD. Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted to identify and analyze research on documentation in CSD, covering publications between 2001 and 2019. Results: A total of 63 studies were selected. We found 40 studies related to documentation practices and challenges, and 23 studies related to tools used in CSD. The challenges include: informal documentation is hard to understand, documentation is considered as waste, productivity is measured by working software only, documentation is out-of-sync with the software and there is a short-term focus. The practices include: non-written and informal communication, the usage of development artifacts for documentation, and the use of architecture frameworks. We also made an inventory of numerous tools that can be used for documentation purposes in CSD. Overall, we recommend the usage of executable documentation, modern tools and technologies to retrieve information and transform it into documentation, and the practice of minimal documentation upfront combined with detailed design for knowledge transfer afterwards. Conclusion: It is of paramount importance to increase the quantity and quality of documentation in CSD. While this remains challenging, practitioners will benefit from applying the identified practices and tools in order to mitigate the stated challenges

TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF AGILE ISD LEADERSHIP

Leadership influences the success of any project, including agile information systems development (ISD) projects. In fact, agile ISD projects are nowadays the ISD method of choice in practice irrespectively of the size of the project - either small or large projects. There, leadership is crucial because it transcends and influences other factors, such as team motivation and commitment. However, knowledge of agile ISD leadership is limited as research in this area is rare. This study aims to reveal how leadership manifests in an agile ISD project, specifically in the setting of large-scale projects. To investigate leadership in an agile ISD project, we conducted a qualitative case study and interviewed 12 agile ISD practitioners from three teams. Preliminary results show that personal attributes, attitudes, and behaviors of the leader are important for agile ISD leadership to be effective. Based on those characteristics, we develop a theoretical framework about leadership for agile ISD projects. Keywords: Leadership, Agile, Large-scale ISD, Case study

Requirements Engineering that Balances Agility of Teams and System-level Information Needs at Scale

Context: Motivated by their success in software development, large-scale systems development companies are increasingly adopting agile methods and their practices. Such companies need to accommodate different development cycles of hardware and software and are usually subject to regulation and safety concerns. Also, for such companies, requirements engineering is an essential activity that involves upfront and detailed analysis which can be at odds with agile development methods. Objective: The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the challenges and solution candidates of performing effective requirements engineering in an agile environment, based on empirical evidence. Illustrated with studies on safety and system-level information needs, we explore RE challenges and solutions in large-scale agile development, both in general and from the teams’ perspectives. Method: To meet our aim, we performed a secondary study and a series of empirical studies based on case studies. We collected qualitative data using interviews, focus groups and workshops to derive challenges and potential solutions from industry. Findings: Our findings show that there are numerous challenges of conducting requirements engineering in agile development especially where systems development is concerned. The challenges discovered sprout from an integration problem of working with agile methods while relying on established plan-driven processes for the overall system. We highlight the communication challenge of crossing the boundary of agile methods and system-level (or plan-driven) development, which also proves the coexistence of both methods. Conclusions: Our results highlight the painful areas of requirements engineering in agile development and propose solutions that can be explored further. This thesis contributes to future research, by establishing a holistic map of challenges and candidate solutions that can be further developed to make RE more efficient within agile environments

Requirements Engineering Challenges of Supporting Agile Teams in System Development

Context: Agile methods have attracted many companies due to their reported benefits of short time-to-market and improved quality outputs. In the systems development context, additional constraints apply e.g. as a result of scale or parallel development of hardware and software. Traditionally, stage-gate processes with a focus on up-front requirements analysis are common in large- scale systems engineering. These processes clash with the companies’ desire to become more agile.Objective: The aim of this thesis is to discover challenges that new requirements engineering approaches should address to enable agile system devel- opment at scale (RE4Agile). With a focus on value and building system understanding, we explore these challenges from the perspective of the agile development teams.Method: To meet our aim, we conducted a series of empirical studies based on case studies, and a secondary review to explore the problem domain while deriving challenges and potential solutions from industry and literature respectively.Findings: Our findings show that there are numerous challenges of conducting requirements engineering in agile development especially where systems development is concerned. These challenges relate to user value and overall system understanding. However, there are some cross-cutting concerns, e.g safety- critical development, that have generated much interest both from practitioners and academicians at large.Conclusions: The challenges discovered sprout from an integration problem of working with agile methods while using the already existing processes as well. However, solution candidates exist and our future research aims to validate some of the solution candidates in the view of deriving new RE approaches. This thesis contributes to such future research, by establishing a holistic map of challenges that allows to assess whether a given solution is beneficial in the larger context or whether it over-optimizes only one area

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 18th International Conference, XP 2017, Cologne, Germany, May 22-26, 2017, Proceedings

agile software development; lean development; scrum; project management; software developmen

Large-Scale Agile Frameworks: A Comparative Review

This study aims to identify and systematically compare the main large-scale agile frameworks that companies can adopt to manage the work of large-scale and distributed teams. Through this, companies can more consciously perform a better-informed decision on the choice of the framework that best fits the practices and challenges of their organizations. This work employs a qualitative approach supported by an exploratory analysis that identifies and explores the processes of migration to a large-scale agile. In the first phase, fifteen assessment criteria for scaling agile are discussed. In a second phase, these criteria are used to perform a comparative analysis of six large-scale agile frameworks (i.e., DAD, LeSS, Nexus, SAFe, Scrum at Scale, and Spotify). The findings reveal there isn't a dominant large-scale agile framework in all dimensions. However, it is possible to identify frameworks like Nexus and Spotify that target smaller teams and offer low technical complexity. These frameworks easily accommodate changes, while there are other frameworks like SAFe and DAD that offer high levels of scalability but require more demanding and deep efforts in changing work processes in an organization

Using a Dynamic Domain-Specific Modeling Language for the Model-Driven Development of Cross-Platform Mobile Applications

There has been a gradual but steady convergence of dynamic programming languages with modeling languages. One area that can benefit from this convergence is modeldriven development (MDD) especially in the domain of mobile application development. By using a dynamic language to construct a domain-specific modeling language (DSML), it is possible to create models that are executable, exhibit flexible type checking, and provide a smaller cognitive gap between business users, modelers and developers than more traditional model-driven approaches. Dynamic languages have found strong adoption by practitioners of Agile development processes. These processes often rely on developers to rapidly produce working code that meets business needs and to do so in an iterative and incremental way. Such methodologies tend to eschew “throwaway” artifacts and models as being wasteful except as a communication vehicle to produce executable code. These approaches are not readily supported with traditional heavyweight approaches to model-driven development such as the Object Management Group’s Model-Driven Architecture approach. This research asks whether it is possible for a domain-specific modeling language written in a dynamic programming language to define a cross-platform model that can produce native code and do so in a way that developer productivity and code quality are at least as effective as hand-written code produced using native tools. Using a prototype modeling tool, AXIOM (Agile eXecutable and Incremental Objectoriented Modeling), we examine this question through small- and mid-scale experiments and find that the AXIOM approach improved developer productivity by almost 400%, albeit only after some up-front investment. We also find that the generated code can be of equal if not better quality than the equivalent hand-written code. Finally, we find that there are significant challenges in the synthesis of a DSML that can be used to model applications across platforms as diverse as today’s mobile operating systems, which point to intriguing avenues of subsequent research

A Petri Nets Model for Blockchain Analysis

A Blockchain is a global shared infrastructure where cryptocurrency transactions among addresses are recorded, validated and made publicly available in a peer- to-peer network. To date the best known and important cryptocurrency is the bitcoin. In this paper we focus on this cryptocurrency and in particular on the modeling of the Bitcoin Blockchain by using the Petri Nets formalism. The proposed model allows us to quickly collect information about identities owning Bitcoin addresses and to recover measures and statistics on the Bitcoin network. By exploiting algebraic formalism, we reconstructed an Entities network associated to Blockchain transactions gathering together Bitcoin addresses into the single entity holding permits to manage Bitcoins held by those addresses. The model allows also to identify a set of behaviours typical of Bitcoin owners, like that of using an address only once, and to reconstruct chains for this behaviour together with the rate of firing. Our model is highly flexible and can easily be adapted to include different features of the Bitcoin crypto-currency system