Involving External Stakeholders in Project Courses

Problem: The involvement of external stakeholders in capstone projects and project courses is desirable due to its potential positive effects on the students. Capstone projects particularly profit from the inclusion of an industrial partner to make the project relevant and help students acquire professional skills. In addition, an increasing push towards education that is aligned with industry and incorporates industrial partners can be observed. However, the involvement of external stakeholders in teaching moments can create friction and could, in the worst case, lead to frustration of all involved parties. Contribution: We developed a model that allows analysing the involvement of external stakeholders in university courses both in a retrospective fashion, to gain insights from past course instances, and in a constructive fashion, to plan the involvement of external stakeholders. Key Concepts: The conceptual model and the accompanying guideline guide the teachers in their analysis of stakeholder involvement. The model is comprised of several activities (define, execute, and evaluate the collaboration). The guideline provides questions that the teachers should answer for each of these activities. In the constructive use, the model allows teachers to define an action plan based on an analysis of potential stakeholders and the pedagogical objectives. In the retrospective use, the model allows teachers to identify issues that appeared during the project and their underlying causes. Drawing from ideas of the reflective practitioner, the model contains an emphasis on reflection and interpretation of the observations made by the teacher and other groups involved in the courses. Key Lessons: Applying the model retrospectively to a total of eight courses shows that it is possible to reveal hitherto implicit risks and assumptions and to gain a better insight into the interaction...Comment: Abstract shortened since arxiv.org limits length of abstracts. See paper/pdf for full abstract. Paper is forthcoming, accepted August 2017. Arxiv version 2 corrects misspelled author nam

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

Business Intelligence systems development in hospitals using an Agile Project Management approach

"Measure to manage" is a widely used expression to demonstrate that good governance must necessarily go through obtaining good data and information. These will allow managers to know the past and the momentum of the business and also to predict, estimate and take the best-informed decisions. The greater the complexity of the business, the greater this need. Healthcare units, specifically hospitals, are organizations that, due to their function and diversity of areas, are considered one of the most complex. In this context, projects for the development of business intelligence solutions, with huge impact and scope, undergo the need for continuous improvement and incremental evolution. Agile methods, by their nature and principles, are suitable to fulfil this need. The purpose of this dissertation is to support future research towards better models with agile tools to develop business intelligence system in hospitals and, manly, to understand how can Agile methodology improve a Business Intelligence System Implementation. This will be done mainly through bibliographical research on the covered topics, namely, Hospitals, Business Intelligence, Agile and Project Management. The expect results will be some clear practical guidelines, that any IT Project Manager could use for an efficient Business Intelligence System implementation using an Agile methodology. This will be done with the presentation of two use cases, from implementations in two hospitals in Portugal, where the Agile proposed model could be used to improve the outcomes of the projects. For that a deep analysis of the various phases of Business Intelligence development was carried out on the basis of information obtained in the literature and on the basis of information obtained in the practical development of Business Intelligence implementation projects. In the end it can be seen that the application of Agile can bring enormous benefits to the development of this kind of project, as, in addition to the advantages listed and widely known about Agile, it can help intensively to bring together and involve all the stakeholders of a project in a common goal of success and effectiveness

An Empirical Study on Decision making for Quality Requirements

[Context] Quality requirements are important for product success yet often handled poorly. The problems with scope decision lead to delayed handling and an unbalanced scope. [Objective] This study characterizes the scope decision process to understand influencing factors and properties affecting the scope decision of quality requirements. [Method] We studied one company's scope decision process over a period of five years. We analyzed the decisions artifacts and interviewed experienced engineers involved in the scope decision process. [Results] Features addressing quality aspects explicitly are a minor part (4.41%) of all features handled. The phase of the product line seems to influence the prevalence and acceptance rate of quality features. Lastly, relying on external stakeholders and upfront analysis seems to lead to long lead-times and an insufficient quality requirements scope. [Conclusions] There is a need to make quality mode explicit in the scope decision process. We propose a scope decision process at a strategic level and a tactical level. The former to address long-term planning and the latter to cater for a speedy process. Furthermore, we believe it is key to balance the stakeholder input with feedback from usage and market in a more direct way than through a long plan-driven process

A review and future direction of agile, business intelligence, analytics and data science

Agile methodologies were introduced in 2001. Since this time, practitioners have applied Agile methodologies to many delivery disciplines. This article explores the application of Agile methodologies and principles to business intelligence delivery and how Agile has changed with the evolution of business intelligence. Business intelligence has evolved because the amount of data generated through the internet and smart devices has grown exponentially altering how organizations and individuals use information. The practice of business intelligence delivery with an Agile methodology has matured; however, business intelligence has evolved altering the use of Agile principles and practices. The Big Data phenomenon, the volume, variety, and velocity of data, has impacted business intelligence and the use of information. New trends such as fast analytics and data science have emerged as part of business intelligence. This paper addresses how Agile principles and practices have evolved with business intelligence, as well as its challenges and future directions

Requirements volatility in multicultural situational contexts

Requirements volatility refers to additions, deletions, and modifications of requirements during the system development life cycle. Different approaches in software development, including Agile and DevOps, have addressed requirements volatility by increasing user participation throughout the whole development process. In this paper, we analyse requirements volatility from a situational context angle with the aim to increase understanding of the role of culture and cultural diversity in a multicultural requirements elicitation process. Research on the situational context in Requirements Engineering (RE) is rather limited, despite the recognized importance of RE and requirements elicitation for improving the quality of the final system and software product. This paper builds on an extensive literature review demonstrating the importance of raising awareness and understanding of the role of culture and cultural diversity for requirements volatility, as one of the most significant situational factors in the requirements elicitation process, with the aim to improve the whole systems development process as well as the resulting products and services. The paper concludes with the presentation of the Requirements Cultural Volatility Framework which aims to reveal potential conflicts that may occur in requirements elicitation on a multiplicity of cultural dimensions, The framework proposes actions to be taken in order to address the conflicts and point out expected benefits on each dimension

A Meta Analysis of Critical Success Factors for Computer Technology Projects

Project managers are continually in pursuit of a magic formula that will deliver a successful project. Companies arc interested in formulas for project success because billions of dollars arc wasted each year, in U.S.A. Information Technology projects alone. through poorly managed or failed projects. Failing projects arc not only bad for the individual project team members, but a failed project\u27s impacts emanate outward to cause companies to decline or die. In addition, the targeted customers who receive inferior products, late products, or no products at all (due to project failures) are significantly impacted as well. Because failed computer technology projects arc not isolated to the U.S.A., ultimately the entire world economy would be benefited by the identification of reliable critical success factors. This study investigates, through a meta analysis of current research and literature, the existence of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) that influence the ability to deliver successful projects. Twenty-nine literature sources, from three different categories of literature (Researchers, Orgarizations, and Experts) were used as input to the analysis. The results obtained from the analysis yielded seventeen CSFs which contribute to the success of a project. Project management Clear goals and objectives Project team competence Requirements management User & stakeholder involvement Senior management support Organization change management Architecture and design 360 degree communication Quality management Iterative & incremental development Product development life cycle Interdepartmental cooperation Expectation management Individual and team attitudes Risk management Vendor managemen

Developing Socially-Constructed Quality Metrics in Agile: A Multi-Faceted Perspective

This research proposes development of socially-constructed metrics for quality assessment and improvement in Agile Software Development (ASD) projects. The first phase of our research includes an extensive literature review, which indicates that traditional (outcome-focused) metrics that evaluate quality are not directly transferable to adaptive, ASD projects. We then conduct semi-structured interviews confirming the necessity of considering people and process aspects for quality considerations in agile. We propose three dimensions for composite metrics in ASD, namely, (1) evidence (2) expectation and (3) critical evaluation. This combines quantitative and qualitative information drawn from people, process, and outcome-related factors. The proposed model allows ASD teams to concurrently conduct quality assessment and improvement during their projects, producing innovative metrics, adhering to the core principles of the agile manifesto. In our next research stage, this reference model will be tested and validated in practice

A Modeling Language for Agile Requirements Engineering

Agile methodologies have an impact on how organizations carry out Requirements Engineering (RE). In this context, organizations use different kind of agile techniques like artifacts, meetings, methods or roles, but there is a lack of specific guidelines for agile RE. The aim of this paper is to present a modeling language for supporting organizational aspects of agile RE. It allows the visualization of agile RE concepts and their relationships, which can be used to define guidelines for a specific organization, project or domain. The modeling language for agile RE is used in projects in industry and our experiences reveal that it supports organizations in detecting problems and visualizing internal conflicts during the agile requirements phase, among other benefits