On the real world practice of Behaviour Driven Development

Surveys of industry practice over the last decade suggest that Behaviour Driven Development is a popular Agile practice. For example, 19% of respondents to the 14th State of Agile annual survey reported using BDD, placing it in the top 13 practices reported. As well as potential benefits, the adoption of BDD necessarily involves an additional cost of writing and maintaining Gherkin features and scenarios, and (if used for acceptance testing,) the associated step functions. Yet there is a lack of published literature exploring how BDD is used in practice and the challenges experienced by real world software development efforts. This gap is significant because without understanding current real world practice, it is hard to identify opportunities to address and mitigate challenges. In order to address this research gap concerning the challenges of using BDD, this thesis reports on a research project which explored: (a) the challenges of applying agile and undertaking requirements engineering in a real world context; (b) the challenges of applying BDD specifically and (c) the application of BDD in open-source projects to understand challenges in this different context. For this purpose, we progressively conducted two case studies, two series of interviews, four iterations of action research, and an empirical study. The first case study was conducted in an avionics company to discover the challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety critical project environment. Since requirements management was found to be one of the biggest challenges during the case study, we decided to investigate BDD because of its reputation for requirements management. The second case study was conducted in the company with an aim to discover the challenges of using BDD in real life. The case study was complemented with an empirical study of the practice of BDD in open source projects, taking a study sample from the GitHub open source collaboration site. As a result of this Ph.D research, we were able to discover: (i) challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety-critical organisation, (ii) current state of BDD in practice, (iii) technical limitations of Gherkin (i.e., the language for writing requirements in BDD), (iv) challenges of using BDD in a real project, (v) bad smells in the Gherkin specifications of open source projects on GitHub. We also presented a brief comparison between the theoretical description of BDD and BDD in practice. This research, therefore, presents the results of lessons learned from BDD in practice, and serves as a guide for software practitioners planning on using BDD in their projects

Application of PLS-SEM for small-scale survey: an empirical example of SMEs

Recent developments in Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) have been claimed to add some sophistication onto quantitative research methods' usage in terms of their research versatility, efficiency and practicality in a range of disciplines including Information Systems, Marketing, and People Management research. Although covariance based SEM (CB-SEM) is most prominent, application of partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is an attractive alternative. This paper examines and applies the characteristics of PLS-SEM onto SMEs to see whether the efficiency, practicality and versatility assumptions, as claimed, do actually contribute to SMEs' business entrepreneurship in practice. The research question is therefore 'Do the embedded PLS-SEM assumptions of research versatility, practicality and efficiency actually translate into practical reality in SMEs operating in an emerging economy context?' We used a quantitative method data analysis technique as a precursor to help us identify the types of challenges faced by SMEs at both the micro and macro levels of analysis. Primary survey data from 212 Bangladeshi SMEs located at various geographic districts provide the study's population. We assess the application of the technique as a research methodological tool and its limitations provided the basis for us to develop and validate a partial least square based structural equation model (PLS-SEM) as part of a small scale survey-based research on SMEs. These methodological insights then led to a successful framing of SMEs in a model that contributes to a process of identifying which types of challenges are more critical for SMEs' growth. Our results show that for SMEs to be competitive, the business and research benefits of our modelling and methodological technique should be given foreseeable attention by both academics and business practitioners. This methodological perspective is yet to gain researchers and professional practitioners' attention from SMEs' business perspective. By applying the statistical PLS technique to Business and Management Studies research we are contributing to a deeper understanding and knowledge creation in examining the assumptions, the design and application of a sophisticated research tool for the development of People Management, Business and SME theory and practice with a focus on an emerging economy