Case Study on Non-Functional Requirement Change Impact Traceability for Agile Software Development

Currently, it is crucial to develop a complex software on time. Agile software development methodologies provide methods to develop a system in term of time and cost-saving but it has been criticized for software quality management. In this paper, a case study is used to find out the need of NFR change impact traceability approach in most of Agile software methodology. This case study was conducted in an undergraduate course that trained the students on how to develop software using Agile process model.This case study has been conducted for 4 months in an undergraduate-level course, Application Development. The samples of this case study are among Year 3 undergraduate students. The case study shows the lack of traceability techniques in the existing Agile process model (SFDD- Secured Feature Driven Development) that result to non-awareness of NFR change impact during development. Based on the case study mentioned the main objective of the case study conducted in survey is to empirically test the theoretical constructs and the hypothesized relationships of the research issues that concern on the lack of change impact management towards NFR in Agile Software Methodology.  TANC (Traceability for Agile Non-Functional Requirement Change Impact) model offered techniques in tracing change impact during the agile development process. Therefore, the result of the case study, a traceability process model needs to design in order to tackle the NFR change impact issues in Agile software development

The Impact of an Agile Methodology on Software Development Costs

With the emergence of the Internet, software development has become an integral part of almost every facet of business today. Because consumers have a surmounting demand for immediacy and convenience, companies are pressured to add web-based services to their product offerings. Therefore, an increasing number of resources are being allocated to the development of profitable software to meet customer needs. Because companies desire to maximize their profits, an efficient allocation of these resources is necessary to minimize costs. This can be achieved by implementing a process model that best converts their resources to quality products. Agile software development is a relatively new framework aimed at reducing risk and production costs. It is based on iterative development and continuous feedback from all stakeholders throughout the development cycle. The switch to an agile process model from a traditional waterfall process model can reduce the risk associated with producing a large-scale software application by decreasing lead times and increasing team morale and productivity. My literature review and initial findings suggest that firms across industries can benefit from incorporating some degree of agility in their development process

Success of Agile Environment in Complex Projects

This paper discusses the impact of agile methodology in complex and modular interrelated projects based on the authors’ practical experience and observations. With the advancement of Web technologies and complex computer systems, business applications are able to transcend boundaries in order to fully meet business requirements and comply with the legislation, policies and procedures. The success of software development as well as software deployment of these complex applications is dependent upon the employed methodology and project management. This is so because employed methodology plays an important position in capturing and modeling of business requirements and project management helps to ensure delivery. Agile methods are rapidly becoming popular in the software development industry. This paper examines this crucial role of agile methodology in a software development and deployment environment

Defining a distributed agile methodology for an open source scenario

In this paper we propose and describe an agile methodology for distributed development (MADD - Methodology for Agile Distributed Development). In particular, it's illustrated a set of best practices to apply in a distributed and agile context, chosen on the base of their impact software quality and team interoperation. Beyond the proposed methodology, we show the results of a survey that we submitted to various contributors of Open Source projects. The survey has been of support to the definition of the MADD, helping to more understand and estimate if, how and how much agile practices and values are already present in the OS world, that today represents one of the most emblematic examples of distributed development. The MADD methodology will be adopted on a software development project at the University of Cagliari (Italy), by a group of students that will work like an Open Source community

A dashboard-based approach for efficient requirements change management

Requirements gathering and documentation are important first steps for a successful software engineering project. The documented requirements act as a guideline for design and development of software products. Requirements also represent customer expectations for the end product. Since these documented requirements serve important purposes for many stakeholders, managing requirement changes effectively plays a major role in the overall success of any project. Changes in requirements are very common in software engineering and can occur during any phase of software development lifecycle (SDLC). Though the impact of requirement changes differs depending on the SDLC phase in which it occurred, there is almost always a setback that happens in terms of the project timeline. This scenario is common in projects that follow both Agile/Scrum methodology and ones that follow the more traditional Waterfall model. In this report, I will first present two case studies of how requirement changes impacted the timelines of two projects (one following Agile/Scrum methodology and another following Waterfall methodology). In the second part of this report, I will propose and design a user-friendly dashboard, which could be used to speed up the delays caused by changing requirements.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Case study on non-functional requirement change impact traceability for agile software development

Currently, it is crucial to develop a complex software on time. Agile software development methodologies provide methods to develop a system in term of time and cost-saving but it has been criticized for software quality management. In this paper, a case study is used to find out the need of NFR change impact traceability approach in most of Agile software methodology. This case study was conducted in an undergraduate course that trained the students on how to develop software using Agile process model. This case study has been conducted for 4 months in an undergraduate-level course, Application Development. The samples of this case study are among Year 3 undergraduate students. The case study shows the lack of traceability techniques in the existing Agile process model (SFDD-Secured Feature Driven Development) that result to non-awareness of NFR change impact during development. Based on the case study mentioned the main objective of the case study conducted in survey is to empirically test the theoretical constructs and the hypothesized relationships of the research issues that concern on the lack of change impact management towards NFR in Agile Software Methodology. TANC (Traceability for Agile Non-Functional Requirement Change Impact) model offered techniques in tracing change impact during the agile development process. Therefore, the result of the case study, a traceability process model needs to design in order to tackle the NFR change impact issues in Agile software development

Using Agile Practice for Student Software Projects

Agile methodology as a relatively new approach to software engineering is becoming more popular in both industry and academia. Learning agile software development methodologies will unquestionably increase the capabilities and competences of our students as entry-level software engineers. However, how agile methods and techniques should be taught at the undergraduate level in additional to traditional approaches is still being debated. This study was conducted on a studentprogramming project, with sample size of 23 students from the Informatics Engineering course. The Scrum methodology was adopted and 28 user stories and 4 sprints were created. The results indicate a significant impact on students’ skill improvement and let them to have the first contact with real projects and clients. Besides that, the students agree that the adoption of the Scrum methodology helped them to improve the participation and collaboration. However, some issues were also detected in terms of communication and tasks planning. Therefore, we proposed some polities that could help and boost the software development process inside a classroom

The Impact of Customer Collaboration on Agile Product Development Success in Technology Startups Within the Pacific Northwest

While agile software development is being adopted in more organizations recently, many products using the methodology are still failing in the market due to inadequate customer collaboration despite the purported benefits. Within start-ups, where speed and early market penetration can be the death or success of a company, understanding if using agile software development including adequate customer collaboration makes a significant difference is important. A study which investigates the impact of including customer collaboration in the agile product development process could uncover whether or not a product is successful within technology focused start-up’s in the Pacific Northwest. This research could allow technology focused start-ups to learn how to emulate success and avoid pitfalls using agile software development to create better, more transformative products for the world. The research question is: how does the inclusion of customer collaboration in the agile product development process by product owners impact the overall success of the product within Pacific Northwest technology start-up companies? This concept paper includes information on the nature of the study, the significance, relationship to cognate, a literature review beginning, and a significant amount of research related to the hypothesis

An algorithmic-based software change effort prediction model using change impact analysis for software development

Software changes are inevitable due to the dynamic nature of the software development project itself. Some software development projects practice their own customised methodology but mostly adopt two kinds of methodologies; Traditional and Agile. Traditional methodology emphasizes on detailed planning, comprehensive documentation and extensive design that resulted a low rate of changes acceptance. In contrast, Agile methodology gives high priority on accepting changes at any point of time throughout the development process as compared to the Traditional methodology. Among the primary factor that has direct impact on the effectiveness of the change acceptance decision is the accuracy of the change effort prediction. There are two current models that have been widely used to estimate change effort which are algorithmic and non-algorithmic models. The algorithmic model is known for its formal and structural way of estimation and best suited for Traditional methodology. While non-algorithmic model is widely adopted for Agile methodology of software projects due to its easiness and requiring less work in term of effort predictability. The main issue is that none of the existing change effort prediction models is proven to suits for both, Traditional and Agile methodology. Additionally, there is as yet no clear evidence of the most accurate change effort prediction model for software development phase. One of the method to overcome these challenges is the inclusion of change impact analysis in the estimation process. The aim of the research is to overcome the challenges of change effort prediction for software development phase: inconsistent states of software artifacts, repeatability using algorithmic approach and applicability for both Traditional and Agile methodologies. This research proposed an algorithmic change effort prediction model that used change impact analysis method to improve the accuracy of the effort estimation. The proposed model used a current selected change impact analysis method for software development phase which is the SDP-CIAF (Software Development Phase-Change Impact Analysis Framework). A software prototype was also developed to support the implementation of the model. The proposed model was evaluated through an extensive experimental validation using case scenarios of six real Traditional and Agile methodologies software projects. A comparative study was also conducted for further validation and verification of the proposed model. The analysis result showed an accuracy improvement of 13.44% average mean difference for change effort prediction over the current selected change effort prediction model. The evaluation results also confirmed the applicability for both Traditional and Agile methodologies

Agile Beeswax: Mobile App Development Process and Empirical Study in Real Environment

Mobile application development is a highly competitive environment; agile methodologies can enable teams to provide value faster, with higher quality and predictability, and a better attitude to deal with the continuous changes that will arise in the mobile context application (App), and the positive impact of that on sustainable development through continuous progress. App development is different from other types of software. For this reason, our objective is to present a new agilebased methodology for app development that we call Agile Beeswax. Agile Beeswax is conceived after identifying the mobile development process’s issues and challenges, and unique requirements. Agile Beeswax is an incremental, iterative development process composed of two main iterative loops (sprints), the incremental design loop and the incremental development loop, and one bridge connecting these two sprints. Agile Beeswax is structured in six phases, idea and strategy, user experience design, user interface design, design to development, handoff and technical decisions, development, and deployment and monitoring. One of its main strengths is that it has been created with academic and business perspectives to bring these two communities closer. To achieve this purpose, our research methodology comprises four main phases: Phase 1: Extensive literature review of mobile development methodologies, Phase 2: Interviews with mobile application developers working in small to medium software companies, Phase 3: Survey to extract valuable knowledge about mobile development (which was carefully designed based on the results of the first and the second phases), and Phase 4: Proposal of a new methodology for the agile development of mobile applications. With the aim of integrating both perspectives, the survey was answered by a sample of 35 experts, including academics and developers. Interesting results have been collected and discussed in this paper (on issues such as the development process, the tools used during this process, and the general issues and challenges they encountered), laying the foundations of the methodology Agile Beeswax proposed to develop mobile apps. Our results and the proposed methodology are intended to serve as support for mobile application developers.Spanish Government European Commission RTI2018-096986-B-C3