Flexible Global Software Development (GSD): Antecedents of Success in Requirements Analysis

Globalization of software development has resulted in a rapid shift away from the traditional collocated, on-site development model, to the offshoring model. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in offshoring even in early phases like requirements analysis. Additionally, the flexibility offered by the agile development approach makes it attractive for adaptation in globally distributed software work. A question of significance then is what impacts the success of offshoring earlier phases, like requirements analysis, in a flexible and globally distributed environment? This article incorporates the stance of control theory to posit a research model that examines antecedent factors such as requirements change, facilitation by vendor and client site-coordinators, control, and computer-mediated communication. The impact of these factors on success of requirements analysis projects in a “flexible” global setting is tested using two quasi-experiments involving students from Management Development Institute, India and Marquette University, USA. Results indicate that formal modes of control significantly influence project success during requirements analysis. Further, facilitation by both client and vendor site coordinators positively impacts requirements analysis success

RECONSIDERATION AND PROPOSAL OF DEVELOPMENT MODELS IN PROJECTS - “QUASI” DEVELOPMENT MODELS: QUASI-WATERFALL AND QUASI-AGILE

Diverse development models, including waterfall development, iterative development, and agile development, have been put forth and implemented across real-world contexts. When engaging in discussions on project management, the examination and exploration of development models assume paramount importance and are integral. This paper embarks upon an investigation and scrutiny of these development models, culminating in the proposition of "Quasi" Development Models: Quasi-Waterfall and Quasi-Agile.  Article visualizations

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

Iterations in software development processes: A comparison of agile and waterfall software development projects

Iteration is an essential element of software development processes. Software methodologies like agile and waterfall use the term ‘iteration’ in several different ways for improving either the quality or the functionality of the software. There are no studies, however, which have thoroughly analyzed and characterized these forms of iterations and their differences as they are enacted in organizations. In order to reveal these iterative forms we conducted a study of two mid-sized software development projects at a large global Fortune 100 corporation – one agile project and one waterfall project. Using advanced event sequence-analytic techniques based on detailed process data, our analysis reveals that agile and waterfall iterations differed in design and development phases due to different sources and types of iterations

The Systematic Discovery of Services in Early Stages of Agile Developments: A Systematic Literature Review

In recent years, agile methodologies have been consolidated and extended in organizations that develop software in Web environments. For this reason, the development methodology of these organizations will not only be related to Services, but also to the Web Engineering paradigm. These organizations are heading for incorporating software development methodologies whose paradigm can allow integration, naturally and in the earlier stages of Web applications develop with the services of the organization that described and published in the Services Portfolio. The aim of this study will be to analyze the current state of the art in the process of discovering services in early stages of agile software development with focus on those identified requirements that could be covered with the services included in the Service Portfolio. We have identified 20 relevant papers through conducting a double systematic literature review (SLR). It is concluded that no study has been found that can solve the entire process of discovering candidate services within an organization that cover the requirements of a new application developed with agile methodologies. At the same time, guidelines have been found to formalize the solution to this problem and fill in that gap of knowledge by proposing in a single process, the formalization of a requirement based on agile techniques, which can be managed against a Services PortfolioMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-R (POLOLAS

Some Long-Standing Quality Practices in Software Development

The desire to build quality software systems has been the focus of most software developers and researchers for decades. This has culminated in the design of practices that promote quality in the designed software. Originating from the inception of the traditional software development life cycle (SDLC), through to the object-oriented methods, Iterative development, and now the agile methods, these practices have persisted through different periods. Such practices play the same quality role regardless of the perspective of the software development process they are part of. In this paper we review three software development methods representative of the software development history, with the aim of i) identifying key quality practices, ii) identifying the quality role played by the practice in the method, and iii) noting those quality practices that have persisted through the software development history. The identified quality practices that have persisted throughout the history of the software development processes include prototyping, iterative development, incremental development, risk-driven development, phase planning, and phase retrospection. These results would be useful to method engineers who seek to design high-quality software development methods as these practices serve as candidates for inclusion in their development processes. Software development practitioners seeking to design quality software would also benefit from adopting these practices in developing their software.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

An overview of Agile Organizations, with a focus on Agile Leadership and Organizational Change.

Questo scritto offre una panoramica sulle organizzazioni Agili, analizzandone nel primo capitolo le caratteristiche chiave, la storia, e la sua diffusione attuale. Sono presentati i vantaggi e svantaggi di questo approccio, sempre più comune oggi giorno. Nel secondo capitolo l’attenzione è spostata su una delle figure principali di queste organizzazioni: l’Agile Leader. Se ne studiano le qualità principali, con particolare enfasi sulla consapevolezza del sé. Come nel primo capitolo, anche in questo caso è riportato lo stato attuale delle cose. A differenza del metodo Agile, in continua crescita, gli studi sulla diffusione e padronanza dell’Agile Leadership forniscono risultati non particolarmente brillanti. Nel corso del capitolo vari stili di leadership vengono toccati, e nell’ultimo paragrafo si espongono le due metodologie Agile più usate, ovverosia Scrum e Kanban. Il terzo capitolo si concentra sui passi necessari per portare a termine con successo una trasformazione Agile, evidenziando l’importanza della cultura aziendale e il ruolo chiave del dipartimento di Risorse Umane, nell’alimentarla e promovuerla. Alcuni modelli vengono discussi, sia in merito all’individuazione e classificazione della cultura aziendale, sia in merito al suo cambiamento, e agli ostacoli che sono soliti sorgere in risposta al cambio. Chiude questa Prova Finale un breve elenco di tecniche che incarnano la mentalità Agile, la cui adozione non richiede investimenti economici né cambiamenti strutturali. Si prestano quindi ad essere usate come il primo passo per diffondere il metodo Agile all’interno della propria impresa

Agile Research - Getting Beyond the Buzzword

Oh yeah, we\u27re an Agile shop, we gave up Waterfall years ago. - product owners, managers, or could be anyone else. You will seldom have a conversation with a product or software development team member without the agile buzzword thrown at you at the drop of a hat. It would not be an oversell to say that Agile software development has been adopted at a large scale across several big and small organizations. Clearly, Agile is an ideology that is working, which made me explore more on its applicability in research. As someone who has been in the Information Technology sector for more than a decade and a half, and a new entrant in the research community, I am inclined to uplift the best practices from my IT experience and evaluate implementing them in research. The idea is to assess the provocative metaphor of agile research and the different research philosophies around the concept. The aim is to explore Agile research methodology, its applicability and find the scenarios where it can add value and those where it may not