Agile on a large scale

Agile is sometimes seen as an approach that’s best suited to small project and small teams. Julian M. Bass FBCS shows how, through methods and practice, Agile can work equally well on global scale projects too

Towards guidelines for building a business case and gathering evidence of software reference architectures in industry

Background: Software reference architectures are becoming widely adopted by organizations that need to support the design and maintenance of software applications of a shared domain. For organizations that plan to adopt this architecture-centric approach, it becomes fundamental to know the return on investment and to understand how software reference architectures are designed, maintained, and used. Unfortunately, there is little evidence-based support to help organizations with these challenges. Methods: We have conducted action research in an industry-academia collaboration between the GESSI research group and everis, a multinational IT consulting firm based in Spain. Results: The results from such collaboration are being packaged in order to create guidelines that could be used in similar contexts as the one of everis. The main result of this paper is the construction of empirically-grounded guidelines that support organizations to decide on the adoption of software reference architectures and to gather evidence to improve RA-related practices. Conclusions: The created guidelines could be used by other organizations outside of our industry-academia collaboration. With this goal in mind, we describe the guidelines in detail for their use.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Reference Architecture for Data-Driven and Adaptive Internet-Delivered Psychological Treatment Systems: Software Architecture Development and Validation Study

Background: Internet-delivered psychological treatment (IDPT) systems are software applications that offer psychological treatments via the internet. Such IDPT systems have become one of the most commonly practiced and widely researched forms of psychotherapy. Evidence shows that psychological treatments delivered by IDPT systems can be an effective way of treating mental health morbidities. However, current IDPT systems have high dropout rates and low user adherence. The primary reason is that the current IDPT systems are not flexible, adaptable, and personalized as they follow a fixed tunnel-based treatment architecture. A fixed tunnel-based architecture follows predefined, sequential treatment content for every patient, irrespective of their context, preferences, and needs. Moreover, current IDPT systems have poor interoperability, making it difficult to reuse and share treatment materials. There is a lack of development and documentation standards, conceptual frameworks, and established (clinical) guidelines for such IDPT systems. As a result, several ad hoc forms of IDPT models exist. Consequently, developers and researchers have tended to reinvent new versions of IDPT systems, making them more complex and less interoperable. Objective: This study aimed to design, develop, and evaluate a reference architecture (RA) for adaptive systems that can facilitate the design and development of adaptive, interoperable, and reusable IDPT systems. Methods: This study was conducted in collaboration with a large interdisciplinary project entitled INTROMAT (Introducing Mental Health through Adaptive Technology), which brings together information and communications technology researchers, information and communications technology industries, health researchers, patients, clinicians, and patients’ next of kin to reach its vision. First, we investigated previous studies and state-of-the-art works based on the project’s problem domain and goals. On the basis of the findings from these investigations, we identified 2 primary gaps in current IDPT systems: lack of adaptiveness and limited interoperability. Second, we used model-driven engineering and Domain-Driven Design techniques to design, develop, and validate the RA for building adaptive, interoperable, and reusable IDPT systems to address these gaps. Third, based on the proposed RA, we implemented a prototype as the open-source software. Finally, we evaluated the RA and open-source implementation using empirical (case study) and nonempirical approaches (software architecture analysis method, expert evaluation, and software quality attributes). Results: This paper outlines an RA that supports flexible user modeling and the adaptive delivery of treatments. To evaluate the proposed RA, we developed an open-source software based on the proposed RA. The open-source framework aims to improve development productivity, facilitate interoperability, increase reusability, and expedite communication with domain experts. Conclusions: Our results showed that the proposed RA is flexible and capable of adapting interventions based on patients’ needs, preferences, and context. Furthermore, developers and researchers can extend the proposed RA to various health care interventions.publishedVersio

Benefits and drawbacks of software reference architectures: A case study

Context: Software Reference Architectures (SRAs) play a fundamental role for organizations whose business greatly depends on the efficient development and maintenance of complex software applications. However, little is known about the real value and risks associated with SRAs in industrial practice. Objective: To investigate the current industrial practice of SRAs in a single company from the perspective of different stakeholders. Method An exploratory case study that investigates the benefits and drawbacks perceived by relevant stakeholders in nine SRAs designed by a multinational software consulting company. Results: The study shows the perceptions of different stakeholders regarding the benefits and drawbacks of SRAs (e.g., both SRA designers and users agree that they benefit from reduced development costs; on the contrary, only application builders strongly highlighted the extra learning curve as a drawback associated with mastering SRAs). Furthermore, some of the SRA benefits and drawbacks commonly highlighted in the literature were remarkably not mentioned as a benefit of SRAs (e.g., the use of best practices). Likewise, other aspects arose that are not usually discussed in the literature, such as higher time-to-market for applications when their dependencies on the SRA are managed inappropriately. Conclusions: This study aims to help practitioners and researchers to better understand real SRAs projects and the contexts where these benefits and drawbacks appeared, as well as some SRA improvement strategies. This would contribute to strengthening the evidence regarding SRAs and support practitioners in making better informed decisions about the expected SRA benefits and drawbacks. Furthermore, we make available the instruments used in this study and the anonymized data gathered to motivate others to provide similar evidence to help mature SRA research and practice.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Information filtering in high velocity text streams using limited memory - An event-driven approach to text stream analysis

This dissertation is concerned with the processing of high velocity text streams using event processing means. It comprises a scientific approach for combining the area of information filtering and event processing. In order to be able to process text streams within event driven means, an event reference model was developed that allows for the conversion of unstructured or semi-structured text streams into discrete event types on which event processing engines can operate. Additionally, a set of essential reference processes in the domain of information filtering and text stream analysis were described using event-driven concepts. In a second step, a reference architecture was designed that described essential architectural components required for the design of information ltering and text stream analysis systems in an event-driven manner. Further to this, a set of architectural patterns for building event driven text analysis systems was derived that support the design and implementation of such systems. Subsequently, a prototype was built using the theoretic foundations. This system was initially used to study the effect of sliding window sizes on the properties of dynamic sub-corpora. It could be shown that small sliding window based corpora are similar to larger sliding windows and thus can be used as a resource-saving alternative. Next, a study of several linguistic aspects of text streams was undertaken that showed that event stream summary statistics can provide interesting insights into the characteristics of high velocity text streams. Finally, four essential information filtering and text stream analysis components were studied, viz. filter policies, term weighting, thresholds and query expansion. These were studied using three temporal search profile types and were evaluated using standard information retrieval performance measures. The goal was to study the efficiency of traditional as well as new algorithms within the given context of high velocity text stream data, in order to provide advise which methods work best. The results of this dissertation are intended to provide software architects and developers with valuable information for the design and implementation of event-driven text stream analysis systems

Benefits and drawbacks of reference architectures

Reference architectures (RA) have been studied to create a consistent notion of what constitutes them as well as their benefits and drawbacks. However, few empirical studies have been conducted to provide evidence that support the claims made. To increase this evidence, this paper investigates the actual industrial practice of using RAs. The study consists of a survey with 28 stakeholders from everis, a multinational consulting company based in Spain. We report the findings and contextualize them with previous research.Peer Reviewe