Using scrum together with UML models: a collaborative university-industry R&D software project

Conducting research and development (R&D) software projects, in an environment where both industry and university collaborate, is challenging due to many factors. In fact, industrial companies and universities have generally different interests and objectives whenever they collaborate. For this reason, it is not easy to manage and negotiate the industrial companies’ interests, namely schedules and their expectations. Conducting such projects in an agile framework is expected to decrease these risks, since partners have the opportunity to frequently interact with the development team in short iterations and are constantly aware of the characteristics of the system under development. However, in this type of collaborative R&D projects, it is often advantageous to include some waterfall practices, like upfront requirements modeling using UML models, which are not commonly used in agile processes like Scrum, in order to better prepare the implementation phase of the project. This paper presents some lessons learned that result from experience of the authors in adopting some Scrum practices in a R&D project, like short iterations, backlogs, and product increments, and simultaneously using UML models, namely use cases and components.This research is sponsored by the Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2013 and by project in co–promotion nº 36265/2013 (Project HMIExcel - 2013-2015)

Improvement of project management practices: a car industry case study

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Industrial Engineering and ManagementThe present master dissertation project was developed on a competence center (MFT3 section) at Bosch Car Multimedia in Braga. It has as main objective the improvement of project management practices in order to enhance the performance of this particular section in the organization, translated into a set of four sub-objectives: 1) redefinition of an integrated project management process; 2) definition of a template for project planning supported with Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) tool; 3) customization of a software tool to support the project management process; and 4) development of a performance measurement system. Firstly, a literature review was performed in order to understand which project management improvements could be proposed to MFT3 section at Bosch Car Multimedia in Braga. Important subjects were studied, such as organizational project management, including project, program and portfolio management; project planning and WBS; tools to support project and portfolio management; and project management success through performance measurement systems. Secondly, having a better theoretical knowledge about project management approaches, some improvements were proposed to accomplish the project’s dissertation objectives. The software customized to support the project management process was the software Track&Release which integrates the WBS template and improves time tracking, the visualization of every activity with its respective status, planning, prioritization of work and communication as well as decreases unproductive time and misunderstandings through organization of all team work. The Track&Release also allows data extraction in order to have relevant information to create interesting performance measurement indicators graphics. These graphics were created through an EXCEL file developed to transform the data from Track&Release to well-established key performance indicators graphics. Besides some difficulties on this research, namely the totally new environment for the researcher and the lack of time of Bosch collaborators, the established objectives were fulfilled and there was a significant contribution to the improvement of project management practice to MFT3 section at Bosch Car Multimedia in Braga, which makes this master dissertation project a successful one.A presente dissertação de mestrado foi desenvolvida no Centro de Competências de montagem de PCBs (secção MFT3) da Bosch Car Multimedia em Braga. A fim de melhorar o desempenho e organização desta secção, foi proposto como principal objetivo a melhoria das práticas de gestão de projetos, subdividindo este em quatro objetivos mais específicos: 1) redefinição do processo de gestão de projetos integrado; 2) definição de um template de planeamento de projetos apoiado pela ferramenta Work Breakdown Structure (WBS); 3) customização de um software para suporte da gestão de projetos; e 4) desenvolvimento de um sistema de medição de desempenho. Inicialmente foi realizada uma revisão da literatura de modo a apurar quais as melhorias que poderiam ser propostas à secção MFT3 da Bosch Car Multimedia em Braga. Vários assuntos foram estudados, tais como, organização da gestão de projetos, incluindo gestão de projeto, programa e portefólio; planeamento de projetos e WBS; ferramentas de apoio à gestão de projetos e portefólio; e sucesso aplicado à gestão de projetos por meio de sistemas de medição de desempenho. Após um conhecimento teórico mais sólido, foram propostas algumas melhorias para alcançar os objetivos do projeto de dissertação. Deste modo, o software personalizado para suportar o processo de gestão de projetos foi o Track&Release que integra o WBS template e acrescenta melhorias a nível do controlo de tempo, visualização de todas as atividades com seu respetivo status, planeamento, priorização de trabalho e comunicação, assim como diminui o tempo improdutivo e equívocos através da organização de todo o trabalho da equipa. O Track&Release também permite a extração de dados a fim de ter informações relevantes para criar gráficos de medição de indicadores de desempenho. Estes gráficos são criados através de um ficheiro de EXCEL desenvolvido para transformar os dados do Track&Release nos gráficos predefinidos. Apesar das dificuldades encontradas, nomeadamente a pouca experiência do investigador e a falta de tempo dos colaboradores da Bosch, os objetivos estabelecidos foram cumpridos e houve uma contribuição significativa para a melhoria da prática de gestão de projetos para a seção MFT3 na Bosch Car Multimedia em Braga

Task 10: Research an Alternative Instructional Design Model

Under authority of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Center of Excellence (COE) Technical Training Human Performance (TTHP) Task 10 research team has prepared a comprehensive technical report and an executive summary for the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) concerning the instructional development (ID) of occupational education and training for Air Traffic (AT) controllers and Technical Operations (TO) technicians. Research included: • Front-end analysis of available FAA courses and government furnished information (GFI), including course-development documentation and associated guidance, policies, and regulations. • Structured and semi-structured data-gathering techniques in cooperation with Instructional Systems Specialists (ISS), ISS Managers, and Requirements personnel. • Informal observations of validation events for Air Traffic training. • Analysis of the relevant literature from academic, government, and industry domains. The executive summary describes the findings and observations of issues directly related to the ID process and potential solutions based on findings from this comparative analysis. The comprehensive report that follows includes these and additional observations and recommendations as well as the project overview, an introduction to best practice research, the research methodology, presentation and analysis of the results, and discussion of the findings and conclusions

The Impact of User Involvement on Information System Projects

Information systems (IS) development has been studied from many perspectives. Information systems are being viewed as a service as the economy shifts from being industrial-based to service-based. This shift is motivating the business user to become more involved with the development of the system. The once clear roles of user-as-specifier and IT professional-as-developer are blurring. This research addresses three objectives. First, we survey the actual business users themselves for their perception of activities and satisfaction with the completed system. Second, we analyze the separation of business requirements into two constructs representing the functional and presentation dimensions of these requirements to advance our understanding of user involvement on information system projects. Third, we explore the combinations of user characteristics and their activities that can improve IS project performance. A new comprehensive model is proposed to represent the business user as an active participant in system development. A survey instrument is developed from a widespread literature review of IS project performance, user involvement and project management. The instrument was tested to ensure its ease of completion and its comprehensibility. The revised instrument was sent to 3,419 U.S. business users in multiple industries from which 205 valid surveys were received. Structural Equation Modeling was used to validate the measurements and analyze the hypotheses and the overall model. The results confirm some previous findings and document new discoveries regarding the users, their activities and the impact on user satisfactio

The Impact of User Involvement on Information System Projects

Information systems (IS) development has been studied from many perspectives. Information systems are being viewed as a service as the economy shifts from being industrial-based to service-based. This shift is motivating the business user to become more involved with the development of the system. The once clear roles of user-as-specifier and IT professional-as-developer are blurring. This research addresses three objectives. First, we survey the actual business users themselves for their perception of activities and satisfaction with the completed system. Second, we analyze the separation of business requirements into two constructs representing the functional and presentation dimensions of these requirements to advance our understanding of user involvement on information system projects. Third, we explore the combinations of user characteristics and their activities that can improve IS project performance. A new comprehensive model is proposed to represent the business user as an active participant in system development. A survey instrument is developed from a widespread literature review of IS project performance, user involvement and project management. The instrument was tested to ensure its ease of completion and its comprehensibility. The revised instrument was sent to 3,419 U.S. business users in multiple industries from which 205 valid surveys were received. Structural Equation Modeling was used to validate the measurements and analyze the hypotheses and the overall model. The results confirm some previous findings and document new discoveries regarding the users, their activities and the impact on user satisfactio

The Impact of User Involvement on Information System Projects

Information systems (IS) development has been studied from many perspectives. Information systems are being viewed as a service as the economy shifts from being industrial-based to service-based. This shift is motivating the business user to become more involved with the development of the system. The once clear roles of user-as-specifier and IT professional-as-developer are blurring. This research addresses three objectives. First, we survey the actual business users themselves for their perception of activities and satisfaction with the completed system. Second, we analyze the separation of business requirements into two constructs representing the functional and presentation dimensions of these requirements to advance our understanding of user involvement on information system projects. Third, we explore the combinations of user characteristics and their activities that can improve IS project performance. A new comprehensive model is proposed to represent the business user as an active participant in system development. A survey instrument is developed from a widespread literature review of IS project performance, user involvement and project management. The instrument was tested to ensure its ease of completion and its comprehensibility. The revised instrument was sent to 3,419 U.S. business users in multiple industries from which 205 valid surveys were received. Structural Equation Modeling was used to validate the measurements and analyze the hypotheses and the overall model. The results confirm some previous findings and document new discoveries regarding the users, their activities and the impact on user satisfactio

FEED-FORWARD IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING WITH PARTICULAR FOCUS ON REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND SOFTWARE ARCHITECTING

This study is intended to determine the characteristics, impact and state of the practice of feed-forward in software engineering; in particular, in the fields of Requirements Engineering (RE) and Software Architecting (SA). Feed-forward is used in many domains such as systems engineering, neural networks, management and psychotherapy. However, in software engineering, especially in RE and SA, the concept of feed-forward is not well researched. For example, what are the characteristics of feed-forward information? What effect does feed-forward information have on architectural artefacts and software project aspects such as cost, quality, time, etc.? What is the current state of practice of feed-forward? A knowledge seeking empirical investigation including an industrial survey and an embedded case study with four projects as four units of analysis were carried out based on these questions. The overall findings ofthis study show that the most common types of information that are fed-forward consistently are requirements and architectural information. This information affects a multitude of aspects of a software project (such as time, cost and quality) and influences several architectural artefacts (such as tactics, patterns and decisions). The results also show that approximately 20% of software professionals have never, or rarely, practiced feed­ forward in their organizations. On the other hand, approximately 66% of software professionals practice feed-forward in their organization in varying levels (“sometimes”, “most of the time”, “always”). 64% of software professionals find feed-forward to be useful for their organization and 4% thought that feed-forward would not be useful, citing reasons such as information overload and lack of motivation. From a researcher’s perspective, determining the properties of feed-forward could provide ground work for doing further research on feed-forward such as: the practice of feed-forward in the other areas of software engineering and the comparison of feedback and feed-forward in software engineerin

Using a Dynamic Domain-Specific Modeling Language for the Model-Driven Development of Cross-Platform Mobile Applications

There has been a gradual but steady convergence of dynamic programming languages with modeling languages. One area that can benefit from this convergence is modeldriven development (MDD) especially in the domain of mobile application development. By using a dynamic language to construct a domain-specific modeling language (DSML), it is possible to create models that are executable, exhibit flexible type checking, and provide a smaller cognitive gap between business users, modelers and developers than more traditional model-driven approaches. Dynamic languages have found strong adoption by practitioners of Agile development processes. These processes often rely on developers to rapidly produce working code that meets business needs and to do so in an iterative and incremental way. Such methodologies tend to eschew “throwaway” artifacts and models as being wasteful except as a communication vehicle to produce executable code. These approaches are not readily supported with traditional heavyweight approaches to model-driven development such as the Object Management Group’s Model-Driven Architecture approach. This research asks whether it is possible for a domain-specific modeling language written in a dynamic programming language to define a cross-platform model that can produce native code and do so in a way that developer productivity and code quality are at least as effective as hand-written code produced using native tools. Using a prototype modeling tool, AXIOM (Agile eXecutable and Incremental Objectoriented Modeling), we examine this question through small- and mid-scale experiments and find that the AXIOM approach improved developer productivity by almost 400%, albeit only after some up-front investment. We also find that the generated code can be of equal if not better quality than the equivalent hand-written code. Finally, we find that there are significant challenges in the synthesis of a DSML that can be used to model applications across platforms as diverse as today’s mobile operating systems, which point to intriguing avenues of subsequent research

Verkkosovellusten jatkuva kehitys ja julkaisuautomaatio

Software development methods have evolved towards more agile practices for getting changes implemented more quickly. While the new features are finished faster, the release processes are also made more automated to get the changes in production environment reliably, repeatably and rapid. This thesis examines the practices used for continuous software development and web application release automation. The main objective is to find out and implement a way for making changes agilely and getting them tested and released in several environments effortlessly. After the research, different tools are sought for, compared and suitable tools are selected. Lean software development is chosen as the working practice for the development. GitHub enterprise is used for version control, JetBrains TeamCity for continuous integration and Octopus Deploy for deployment automation. SonarQube is used for static code analysis and UseTrace for automated functionality testing. The lean development practice is found well fit for real world use. The deployment pipeline is also well operational, founding issues early and deployments are enabled steady, effortless and fast. Some issues with code analysis are found due to the decisions in the application implementation. UseTrace tests have occasionally some false positives in the failing test results but overall they worked as expected.Sovelluskehitysmenetelmät ovat kehittyneet ketterämmiksi, jotta muutokset saataisiin toteutettua nopeammin. Kun uudet ominaisuudet valmistuvat nopeammin, myös julkaisuprosesseista tehdään automatisoidumpia, jotta muutokset saadaan tuotantoon luotettavasti, toistettavasti ja nopeasti. Tässä työssä tutkitaan menetelmiä, joita käytetään jatkuvaan sovelluskehitykseen ja verkkosovellusten julkaisuautomaatioon. Pääasiallisena tavoitteena on selvittää ja toteuttaa tapa, jolla muutoksia voidaan tehdä ketterästi ja julkaista testattuina moniin ympäristöihin pienellä vaivalla. Tutkimuksen jälkeen etsitään erilaisia työkaluja, joita vertaillaan keskenään ja soveltuvat työkalut valitaan. Lean-malli valitaan sovelluskehityksessä käytettäväksi tavaksi. GitHub enterprise:a käytetään versionhallintaan, JetBrains TeamCity:ä jatkuvaan integraatioon ja Octopus Deploy:ta jatkuvaan toimittamiseen. SonarQube:a käytetään staattiseen koodianalyysiin ja UseTrace:a automaattiseen funktionaalisuustestaamiseen. Lean-sovelluskehitysmalli todetaan hyvin toimivaksi todellisessa käytössä. Julkaisuputki on myös hyvin toimiva, löytäen ongelmat ajoissa ja mahdollistaen julkaisut luotettavasti, vaivattomasti ja nopeasti. Koodianalyysin osalta joitain ongelmia ilmenee sovellustoteutukseen liittyvistä päätöksistä johtuen. UseTrace-automaattitestit tuottavat satunnaisesti virheellisiä ongelmia testituloksissa, mutta yleisesti ottaen ne toimivat odotetusti