51,687 research outputs found
Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study
In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is
developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality
and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems
have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that
include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which
the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential
speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the
non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop
safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage.
In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this
paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method
approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product
development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a
systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development
through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution
candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced
Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi
Boundary Objects and their Use in Agile Systems Engineering
Agile methods are increasingly introduced in automotive companies in the
attempt to become more efficient and flexible in the system development. The
adoption of agile practices influences communication between stakeholders, but
also makes companies rethink the management of artifacts and documentation like
requirements, safety compliance documents, and architecture models.
Practitioners aim to reduce irrelevant documentation, but face a lack of
guidance to determine what artifacts are needed and how they should be managed.
This paper presents artifacts, challenges, guidelines, and practices for the
continuous management of systems engineering artifacts in automotive based on a
theoretical and empirical understanding of the topic. In collaboration with 53
practitioners from six automotive companies, we conducted a design-science
study involving interviews, a questionnaire, focus groups, and practical data
analysis of a systems engineering tool. The guidelines suggest the distinction
between artifacts that are shared among different actors in a company (boundary
objects) and those that are used within a team (locally relevant artifacts). We
propose an analysis approach to identify boundary objects and three practices
to manage systems engineering artifacts in industry
Pengaruh Agile Work Practice Terhadap Safety Compliance dan Emotional Fatigue Melalui Job Demand Pada Wartawan Indonesia: The Influence of Agile Work Practice on Safety Compliance and Emotional Fatigue Through Job Demand in Indonesian Journalists
The purpose of this study were to identifify the influence of agile work practices both directly and indirectly on job demand, emotional fatigue and safety compliance for Indonesian television journalists after two years of being hit by the co-19 pandemic in 2019-2021. In this study, the method used to analyze and determine the level of significance and interrelationships between variables is to use the Structural Equation Modeling Partial Least Squares (SEM PLS) analysis tool. The results of a study of 218 journalists spread across almost all parts of Indonesia show that agile work practices have a negative effect both directly and indirectly on job demand and emotional fatigue. Job demand has a negative effect on safety compliance. The results and implications of this study have been discussed and assessed as having an empirical influence on both theory and practice on television mass media companies in Indonesia.
Keywords: agile work practices, emotional fatigue, job demands, safety compliance, structural equation modelin
The challenges to the safety process when using Agile development models
Safety related systems are traditionally developed using traditional models like the V-model. Agile development models are now increasingly used, and the experiences with these models makes
it tempting to also use Agile models when developing safety related systems. To do this, Agile development models need include a safety process that also are as agile as possible. However, introducing safety activities into an agile environment reintroduces limitations from traditional de-velopment. The challenge is to reduce these limitations, so that the benefits of Agile development can be utilized also when developing safety related systems, and still maintain the expected level of
safety. The current thesis identifies and investigates some of the challenges to the safety process from IEC 61508 when using an Agile development process. The thesis starts by giving an overview
of traditional development, Agile development and the safety process, before examining literature concerning Agile models used for developing safety related systems. To simplify the discussion, the safety process is grouped into three areas: safety analysis, safety assessment, and safety validation.
Agile development is also divided into three groups: the incremental part, the iterative part, and main Agile practices not covered by the two first discussions.
The discussion starts with examining all the incremental implications to each of the safety pro-cess groups. Then the iterative implications are discussed, and finally the implications of the re-maining practices are considered. The discussion is summarized by giving a suggestion for a more agile safety process, based on the Scrum model
Remote and agile improvement of industrial control and safety systems processes
Digitalization and remote operations introduce new possibilities for continuous and agile improvements of products in operation by exploiting inherent possibilities in software which is easily changeable and deployable. This approach is driven by data analysis, customer expectations and the possibility of frequent deployment over the air of improved software. Adding functionality into software, combined with connectivity to products, opens possibilities for manufacturers and operators, enabling new features and new operational models. This has also become relevant for regulated environments like industrial control and safety systems used in critical infrastructures. Adapted agile processes like SafeScrum and DevOps may be used to achieve continuous improvement. They enable speed and a continuum between development, maintenance and operation. For instance, experience and data from operation on new cybersecurity threats, must be fed back to the maintenance process to be resolved fast. Hence, the DevOps concept, which is imperative in non-safety domains, is now highly relevant in regulated environments as well. The speed of this process is vital where in particular cybersecurity threats must be resolved fast to avoid safety threats. The Agile Safety Case is an enabler of ensuring structured proof of compliance of safety performance for the involved stakeholders. This paper proposes a solution for a safety case which may be applied for continuous product improvements during operation considering safety as well as security. The solution involves the relevant stakeholders and results in a shift in responsibilities.publishedVersio
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
Keeping Continuous Deliveries Safe
Allowing swift release cycles, Continuous Delivery has become popular in
application software development and is starting to be applied in
safety-critical domains such as the automotive industry. These domains require
thorough analysis regarding safety constraints, which can be achieved by formal
verification and the execution of safety tests resulting from a safety analysis
on the product. With continuous delivery in place, such tests need to be
executed with every build to ensure the latest software still fulfills all
safety requirements. Even more though, the safety analysis has to be updated
with every change to ensure the safety test suite is still up-to-date. We thus
propose that a safety analysis should be treated no differently from other
deliverables such as source-code and dependencies, formulate guidelines on how
to achieve this and advert areas where future research is needed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Psychological Safety and Norm Clarity in Software Engineering Teams
In the software engineering industry today, companies primarily conduct their
work in teams. To increase organizational productivity, it is thus crucial to
know the factors that affect team effectiveness. Two team-related concepts that
have gained prominence lately are psychological safety and team norms. Still,
few studies exist that explore these in a software engineering context.
Therefore, with the aim of extending the knowledge of these concepts, we
examined if psychological safety and team norm clarity associate positively
with software developers' self-assessed team performance and job satisfaction,
two important elements of effectiveness.
We collected industry survey data from practitioners (N = 217) in 38
development teams working for five different organizations. The result of
multiple linear regression analyses indicates that both psychological safety
and team norm clarity predict team members' self-assessed performance and job
satisfaction. The findings also suggest that clarity of norms is a stronger
(30\% and 71\% stronger, respectively) predictor than psychological safety.
This research highlights the need to examine, in more detail, the
relationship between social norms and software development. The findings of
this study could serve as an empirical baseline for such, future work.Comment: Submitted to CHASE'201
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