A Survey of DevOps in the South African Software Context

This study investigated DevOps practices and experiences in the South African software development context, along with associated perceptions of benefits and challenges. Survey data collected from a sample of 80 software development professionals showed that more frequent builds, earlier detection of bugs and reduced project lead times were the top three benefits, while getting DevOps capable members into a team, finding experienced professionals to support DevOps practice and changing deep-seated company culture to support DevOps were the top three challenges. DevOps practices are still emerging. Although 85% of respondents report continuous integration as a frequent practice, only 54% report using continuous deployment frequently. The biggest reported impacts of DevOps on software development culture were in making development team members aware of operational faults, responsible for quality assurance, and responsible for deployments. Realisation of benefits from DevOps depends largely on a culture change. Results are useful for guiding organisations considering DevOps adoption

Cyber physical systems implementation for asset management improvement: A framework for the transition

Libro en Open AccessThe transformation of the industry due to recent technologies introduction is an evolving process whose engines are competitiveness and sustainability, understood in its broadest sense (environmental, economic and social). This process is facing, due to the current state of scientific and technological development, a new challenge yet even more important: the transition from discrete technological solutions that respond to isolated problems, to a global conception where the assets, plant, processes and engineering systems are conceived, designed and operated as an integrated complex unit. This vision is evolving besides a set of concepts that are, in some way, to guide this development: Smart Factories, Cyber-Physical Systems, Factory of the Future or Industry 4.0, are examples. The full integration of the operation and maintenance (O&M) processes in the production systems is a key topic within this new paradigm. Not only that, this evolution necessarily results in the emergence of new processes and needs of O&M, i.e. also, the O&M will undergo a profound transformation. The transition from actual isolated production assets to such Industry 4.0 with CPS is far from easy. This document presents a proposal to develop such transition adapting one iteration of the Model of Maintenance Management (MMM) integrated into ISO 55000 to the complexity of incorporating “System of Systems” CPSs maintenance. It involves several stages: identification, prioritization, risk management, planning, scheduling, execution, control, and improvement supported by system engineering techniques and agile/concurrent project managemen

Hybrid Agile Approach: Efficiently Blending Traditional and Agile Methodologies

Agile development, in its simplest form, offers a lightweight framework for helping teams, given a constantly evolving functional and technical landscape, maintain a focus on the rapid delivery of business value. Traditional project management focuses more on distinct and predefined sequential phases. It assumes that once requirements are fixed there won’t be any changes or additions in future. In today’s world however this is not true and development teams have to incorporate changes at later stages to be competitive. This is where agile methodologies have an edge over traditional methods. Agile can handle more complex and highly adaptable projects. However, organizations focusing heavily on traditional methodologies like waterfall may find completely switching to agile potentially risky. Agile methods may have these major potential risks like agile methods are easy to misunderstand, highly visible information can be threat to financially sensitive projects. Therefore, many companies fear the adoption of Agile because an enterprise-wide adoption of the methodology will conflict with the traditional Waterfall process and create conflict. Hybrid Agile approach will help the organizations transition to agile efficiently. This paper will focus on the analyzing the successful combination of agile and traditional methodology

Hybrid Project Management Approach for Software Modernization

Software modernization or legacy modernization, refers to the conversion, rewriting or porting of a legacy system to a modern computer programming language, software libraries, protocols, or hardware platform. Legacy transformation aims to retain and extend the value of the legacy investment through migration to new platforms [1]. Currently, I am working as a Senior Business Analyst with Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of the largest insurance provider in the United States across the health sector. I am deployed to work on their initiative towards software modernization along the healthcare industry through their software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform – “The Healthcare Online Resources (THOR)”. This service is available to numerous providers in the healthcare vertical to leverage their current operations and comprises of multiple modules including but not limited to claim adjustments, preauthorization and group coverage status. With the ongoing centralization of resources and increased competition, most of the companies are focusing on software modernization by leveraging their current technologies and hardware platforms, to remain the trendsetters and viable in the marketplace. To enhance my efficacy and understanding of the business requirements, I would like to conduct my thesis research towards the topic of “Software Modernization”. I would be able to leverage my experience as Senior Business Analyst to understand and bridge the gap between business requirements and the supporting technology backup. Being working in a multinational company, with multiple cross-functional teams, I plan to include different research results through self-surfing and interaction with these team members. Additionally, I had like to conduct surveys across these cross-functional teams mainly business and technical teams to understand and document their challenges and experience. Therefore, I strongly feel that I would be able to justify the thesis and the corresponding research

Developing Indie Games With Agile

Agile software development has ushered in major improvements to the development of software in the 21st century. Video game development is a form of development that is unique from other types of software engineering, as it can involve work from artists, musicians, voice actors, and others. This paper explores the question whether agile software development as Scrum is an effective tool for creating video games. Ultimately, it can be seen that agile is a very important asset to game developers

ORGANIC SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY FOR AGILE DEVELOPMENT

This project examines the efforts and results of United States Strategic Command’s (USSTRATCOM) Targeting Process Improvement Working Group (TPIWG) as a case study. The TPIWG conducted an evaluation of USSTRATCOM J52/J2T Joint Targeting Division's current target maintenance processes and identified areas of improvements. After identification of areas requiring improvement, the TPIWG conceived the idea for and began design and development of an automated change detection software program for target maintenance.Methodology includes an analysis of what processes were identified for improvement and how change was implemented, how well software development processes were implemented and adhered to, analysis of the process to secure funding support from the U.S. Air Force and subsequent contracting for full time support of the software. This case study documents challenges, innovative ideas, risks taken and faced by the TPIWG during the course of process analysis, software development and implementation phases. Documentation of challenges to sustainment funding from a cost, schedule, and performance perspective. Exploration of pros and cons to having the completed work then contracted to a secondary party, not part of the TPIWG. Identification of future challenges contractors may face in the sustainment or future improvements of the software. Lastly, this case study tries to determine what the overall improvement and benefit is for the warfighter.Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Promoting Digital Innovation for Sustainability in the Public Sector

Digital technologies and their uptake in society have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in history. However, research into how the public sector uses digital innovation has been slow to develop. Government has an essential role to play in sustainability by setting and enforcing policies around subjects such as pollution and carbon taxes, making digital innovation in government critical for digital sustainability. Further, the public sector’s values and priorities differ from those of the private sector, which confounds simple comparisons in areas such as digital ways of working and efficiency drivers. This paper draws on the public management literature and uses an exploratory and interpretive field study of a leading digital government. The research identifies six barriers to digital innovation within the New South Wales government, a world-leader in digital integration. The barriers are: varying digital maturity, non-digital mindset, slow mobilization, service-based silos, premature solutioning, and failure to align investment in digital innovation with broader government priorities. The paper identifies initiatives enabling world-class digital innovation and driving effective change. These enablers are structural service integration, ecosystem engagement, technology modernization, customer-centric strategies and processes, and agility in management. This paper finds that digital capability gaps and core rigidities interact requiring a comprehensive approach to realize the significant benefits offered to citizens and the environment

Data Migration from Legacy Systems to Modern Database

Many businesses which use mainframe systems are unreliable these days and are facing the problem of data inconsistency and inaccuracy. Moreover the costs incurred in maintaining these systems keeps on increasing. As the competitors are migrating over to the new technologies and tools available in the market, it is necessary for these businesses to migrate to new environment which is efficient, consistent and reliable to stay in the market and the technologies used in the current environment have become obsolete or no longer serve the business purpose. This report summarizes the various methodologies, procedures and techniques involved in successfully migrating the data to modern systems. The practical work carried out for the capstone project is the development/building of application for data migration that is tailor-made for the client and their specific needs. In the process of data migration, we profile the existing data which helps in determining the structure and completeness of the data, in turn results in improved data quality. This report also contains data analysis that are carried on basis of profiled data and transforming the data accordingly to meet the new business needs. Agile software development life cycle is followed in the application building process as it uses iterative and incremental approach, bridging the gap between business owners and application developers as the end users are involved in each iterative phase. This report concludes with results that are obtained from successful data migration from the perspective of business needs and recommendations that could be implemented in the process of scaling of applicatio

Sensemaking Practices in the Everyday Work of AI/ML Software Engineering

This paper considers sensemaking as it relates to everyday software engineering (SE) work practices and draws on a multi-year ethnographic study of SE projects at a large, global technology company building digital services infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Our findings highlight the breadth of sensemaking practices in AI/ML projects, noting developers' efforts to make sense of AI/ML environments (e.g., algorithms/methods and libraries), of AI/ML model ecosystems (e.g., pre-trained models and "upstream"models), and of business-AI relations (e.g., how the AI/ML service relates to the domain context and business problem at hand). This paper builds on recent scholarship drawing attention to the integral role of sensemaking in everyday SE practices by empirically investigating how and in what ways AI/ML projects present software teams with emergent sensemaking requirements and opportunities