Enterprise Experience into the Integration of Human-Centered Design and Kanban

he integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Agile Software Development (ASD) promises the development of competitive products comprising a good User Experience (UX). This study has investigated the integration of HCD and Kanban with the aim to gain industrial experiences in a real world context. A case study showed that requirements flow into the development process in a structured manner by adding a design board. To this end, the transparency concerning recurring requirements increased. We contribute to the body of knowledge of software development by providing practical insights into Human-Centered Agile Development (HCAD). On one hand, it is shown that the integration of HCD and Kanban leads to a product with a good UX and makes the development process more human-centered. On the other hand, we conclude that a cross-functional collaboration speeds up product development.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Identifying Agile Requirements Engineering Patterns in Industry

Agile Software Development (ASD) is gaining in popularity in today´s business world. Industry is adopting agile methodologies both to accelerate value delivery and to enhance the ability to deal with changing requirements. However, ASD has a great impact on how Requirements Engineering (RE) is carried out in agile environments. The integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) plays an important role due to the focus on user and stakeholder involvement. To this end, we aim to introduce agile RE patterns as main objective of this paper. On the one hand, we will describe our pattern mining process based on empirical research in literature and industry. On the other hand, we will discuss our results and provide two examples of agile RE patterns. In sum, the pattern mining process identifies 41 agile RE patterns. The accumulated knowledge will be shared by means of a web application.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

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

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

Software Development with Scrum: A Bibliometric Analysis and Profile

Introduction of the Scrum approach into software engineering has changed the way software is being developed. The Scrum approach emphasizes the active end-user involvement, embracing of change, and /iterative delivery of products. Our study showed that Scrum has different variants or is used in combination with different methods. Some tools not normally used in the conventional software approaches, like gamification, content analysis and grounded theory are also employed. However, Scrum like other software development approach focuses on improvement of software process, software quality, business value, performance, usability and efficiency and at the same time to reduce cost, risk and uncertainty. Contrary to some conventional approaches it also strives to boost soft factors like agility, trust, motivation, responsibility and transparency. The bibliometric synthetic scoping study revealed seven main research themes concerned with the Scrum research

Service : the new focus in international manufacturing and trade

Major breakthroughs in communications technologies in the 1980s made it possible to monitor all phases of moving a product from raw material sourcing through processing to delivery to the customer. Close monitoring revealed major inefficiencies in the traditional set-up of materials acquisition, production, and distribution - especially large inventory holdings. At the same time, patterns of customer demand began to shift more rapidly, partly because of better communications networks. The need to reduce costs and become responsive to volatile changes in customer preferences forced businesses to substantially restructure their corporate practices. With domestic factor costs rising, manufacturers outsourced intermediate production to foreign enterprises in countries with lower wages. Merchants also sought cheaper supply sources - developments that held promise for developing countries. Many developing countries have been unable to take advantage of structural changes in world manufacturing and trade because they have been unable to deliver the quality of production, fast turnaround, and reliability of delivery manufacturing businesses need to keep up with changing market demand. A new management approach - logistics management - is needed to cut business costs and to be more responsive to rapidly changing markets. Logistics management orchestrates materials acquisition, production, and marketing to reduce inventories to a minimum. Effective logistics management enables many organizations to conduct their business with less than a week's worth of supplies. Such a radical change requires major corporate restructuring and the development of strategic alliances with service providers. Outsourcing of production is projected to continue growing, and the search for less costly supply sources will continue. Developing countries can capitalize on those trends - but only if they substantially improve their infrastructure, liberalize their regulations, and begin to apply modern logistics management techniques. If they do not, their outlook is not promising.Transport and Trade Logistics,Common Carriers Industry,Business in Development,Business Environment,Environmental Economics&Policies

Development of a modeling algorithm to predict lean implementation success

”Lean has become a common term and goal in organizations throughout the world. The approach of eliminating waste and continuous improvement may seem simple on the surface but can be more complex when it comes to implementation. Some firms implement lean with great success, getting complete organizational buy-in and realizing the efficiencies foundational to lean. Other organizations struggle to implement lean. Never able to get the buy-in or traction needed to really institute the sort of cultural change that is often needed to implement change. It would be beneficial to have a tool that organizations could use to assess their ability to implement lean, the degree to which they have implemented lean, and what specific areas they should focus on to improve their readiness or implementation level. This research investigates and proposes two methods for assessing lean implementation. The first is utilizing standard statistical regression. A regression model was developed that can be used to assess the implementation of lean within an organization. The second method is based in artificial intelligence. It utilizes an unsupervised learning algorithm to develop a training set corresponding to low, medium, and high implementation. This training set could then be used along with a supervised learning algorithm to dynamically monitor an organizations readiness or implementation level and make recommendations on areas to focus on to improve implementation success”--Abstract, page iv

A framework for modeling and improving agile requirements engineering.

Context. Companies adopt hybrid development models consisting of an integration of agile methodologies and Human-Centered Design (HCD) with the aim to increase value delivery as well as to reduce time to market. This has an impact on how Requirements Engineering (RE) is carried out in an agile environment. To this end, people apply different kind of agile techniques like artifacts, meetings, methods, and roles. In this context, companies often struggle with improving their value chain in a systematic manner, since guidelines for choosing an appropriate set of agile techniques are missing. Objective. The vision of this PhD thesis is to build a framework for modeling agile RE. Organizations benefit from implementing this framework by increasing their value delivery (organization external) and improving the collaboration (organizational intern). Method. We followed an inductive research approach, where we used the learnings from several studies to create the framework. In the beginning, we carried out a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to analyze the state of the art of agile RE with focus on user and stakeholder involvement. Subsequent, we created the agile RE metamodel, which evolved iteratively along the consecutively studies. Based on the metamodel, we defined an profile that can be used to create domain specific models according to the organizational environment. Moreover, we conducted a Delphi study in order to identify the most important problems industry has to face today in terms of agile RE. The results were used as input for a systematic pattern mining process, which was utilized in order to create agile RE patterns. Results. The framework for modeling agile RE consists of three main components: i) agile RE metamodel, which can be used to analyze the organizational environment in terms of value delivery ii) catalogue of agile RE problems, which allows to detect recurring problems in terms of agile RE iii) catalogue of agile RE patterns, which allows to solve the detected problems. The agile RE metamodel comes with a profile, which can be used to deviate domain specific models. In addition, we created tool support for the framework by means of a web application (agileRE.org), which allows us to share the knowledge and best practices for agile RE. Furthermore, we proved how the framework can be applied in industry by means of case studies in Germany and in Spain. Conclusion. The framework for modeling agile RE empowers companies to improve their organizational environments in terms of value delivery and collaboration. Companies can use the framework for improving their value chain in a systematic manner. In particular, it gives guidance for choosing appropriate agile techniques, which fit to the changing needs of the organizational environment. In addition, we can state that the framework is applicable on an international level.Contexto. Con el objetivo de incrementar la potencialidad de sus desarrollos y de reducir el tiempo de puesta en el mercado, las empresas adoptan modelos de desarrollo híbridos que integran metodologías ágiles y diseño centrado en el usuario (DCU). El tratamiento de los requisitos de software en entornos ágiles es algo que impacta de manera directa en la consecución de estos objetivos. Por ello, los equipos aplican diferentes técnicas de tratamiento de requisitos como los artefactos, reuniones, métodos de trabajos grupales o el tratamiento efectivo de roles. Sin embargo, las empresas a menudo se encuentran con dificultades para elegir las mejores técnicas a aplicar en su contexto y hay una carencia de guías de soporte. Objetivo. La visión de esta tesis doctoral es construir un framework para trabajar de manera efectiva con requisitos ágiles. La idea esencial es que las organizaciones y empresas puedan usar el framework para mejorar tanto su cadena de valor (visión externa) como para mejorar sus procesos de desarrollo (visión interna). Método. Para el desarrollo del trabajo se ha usado una metodología de investigación inductiva, usando diferentes métodos de trabajo. Inicialmente, se ha llevado a cabo un estudio sistemático de la literatura (SLR) que nos permite evaluar el estado del arte en el tratamiento de requisitos ágiles pero centrado en cómo se trabaja con la involucración de los diferentes stakeholders en el proceso. Hemos continuado aplicando la ingeniería guiada por modelos desarrollando un metamodelo para trabajar con los requisitos ágiles y un profile que permite definir un lenguaje específico de dominio para el uso del metamodelo en entornos concretos. Este trabajo se ha enriquecido con la aplicación de un estudio usando Delphi para identificar los problemas más importantes que la industria se encuentra a la hora de trabajar con ingeniería de requisitos en entornos agiles. Finalmente, con los resultados hemos conseguido desarrollar un conjunto de patrones para la creación de requisitos ágiles. Resultados. El framework para modelar requisitos ágiles tiene tres componentes principales: i) Metamodelo para trabajar con requisitos ágiles que servirá para analizar el entorno de la organización. ii) un catálogo de posibles problemas que se encuentran en entornos agiles y iii) un catálogo de patrones de requisitos ágiles que resuelven los problemas detectados. El metamodelo para el trabajo con requisitos ágiles viene acompañado de un lenguaje específico de dominio, basado en un perfil. Y, además, se ha creado una aplicación web (agileRE.org) que ayuda a poner en común el conocimiento. Por último, el framework ha sido aplicado con éxito en entornos empresariales españoles y alemanes. Conclusión. El framework para modelar requisitos ágiles ayuda a las compañías a mejorar sus entornos organizaciones in términos de costes de desarrollo y aspectos colaborativos. Las empresas pueden usar el framework para mejorar su cadena de valor de una manera sistemática. En particular, da una guía para elegir técnicas apropiadas en el tratamiento de requisitos ágiles, pudiendo adaptarse al a realidad del entorno concreto de trabajo