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

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

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

An Agile Implementation within a Medical Device Software Organisation

Three surveys conducted over a 6 year period revealed that medical device software organisations have difficulties in the area of requirements management, namely accommodating changes in requirements. Medical device software is traditionally developed in accordance with a plan driven software development lifecycle (SDLC). These SDLCs are rigid and inflexible to changes once the requirements management stage has been completed. Agile methods are gaining momentum in non-regulated industries but as of yet, the adoption of these methods in regulated industries such as the medical device software domain remains low. This study presents an implementation of agile methods within a medical device software development organisation based in Ireland. This implementation involved integrating agile practices with a traditional plan driven SDLC. Upon completing this implementation within a medical device software development project, the organisation identified cost savings and a reduction in the rework required when introducing a change in requirements