Complementing Measurements and Real Options Concepts to Support Inter-iteration Decision-Making in Agile Projects

Agile software projects are characterized by iterative and incremental development, accommodation of changes and active customer participation. The process is driven by creating business value for the client, assuming that the client (i) is aware of it, and (ii) is capable to estimate the business value, associated with the separate features of the system to be implemented. This paper is focused on the complementary use of measurement techniques and concepts of real-option-analysis to assist clients in assessing and comparing alternative sets of requirements. Our overall objective is to provide systematic support to clients for the decision-making process on what to implement in each iteration. The design of our approach is justified by using empirical data, published earlier by other authors

Synergistically Employing User Stories and Use Cases in the Practice and Teaching of Systems Analysis and Design

Over the past three decades, user stories and use cases have become increasingly dominant systems analysis and design (SA&D) requirements techniques. Both support articulating functional requirements for software projects, although they evolved within different software development approaches—user stories from agile development and use cases from traditional software engineering—and they differ significantly in terms of their grammar, syntax, and the level of detail they can capture. As such, user stories and use cases are neither synonyms nor mutually exclusive alternatives. Rather, they can and should be complementary in the systems requirements process. Unfortunately, this mix of similarities and differences—coupled with a lack of formal standards for either—make understanding and synergistically employing user stories with use cases confusing and challenging for practitioners and students alike. To address this, this paper first provides a descriptive overview of the evolution of user stories, use cases, and their interrelationship. Second, it fills a gap in the literature by providing a prescriptive, detailed approach to employing user stories and use cases together. This prescriptive approach is illustrated via a comprehensive tutorial example, providing practitioners with actionable skills and SA&D teachers and students with a new pedagogical tool

Agile Testing: Improving the Process : Case Descom

The thesis was assigned by Descom, a marketing and technology company based in Jyväskylä. The aim of the thesis was to research the current state of testing inside the organization, and to improve on the existing processes and practices. The thesis was carried out as a design research (applied action research), because the focus was improving already existing processes inside a company. The theory base contains a wide range of subjects from agile development models, the testing process, and process improvement models to agile testing. Without a solid base of multiple aspects it would have been impossible to understand how the testing works as a process and how it could have been improved. As Descom uses agile development it was necessary to follow the same principles throughout the writing of the thesis and on results. As a result information was provided for the company about the current state of testing procedures at Descom and how to improve the testing and processes in the future. The documentation already existing for testing such as the test plan and test report were updated. New documents such as a process improvement plan based on Critical Testing Processes, test strategy and testing policy were also created. Figures of the testing process, and the processes for all test types in use were created to be used as a visual aid for understanding the testing as whole at Descom.Opinnäytetyön toimeksianto tuli Descomilta, joka on Jyväskylästä lähtöisin oleva markkinointi ja teknologia yritys. Työn tavoitteena oli tutkia testauksen tilaa organisaatiossa ja kehittää olemassa olevia prosesseja ja käytäntöjä. Tutkimusmenetelmäksi valikoitui kehittämistutkimus, koska painotus oli olemassa olevien prosessien kehityksessä yrityksen sisällä. Teoriapohjassa käsiteltiin monia aiheita ketterästä sovelluskehityksestä, testausprosessista ja prosessi kehityksestä aina ketterään testaukseen asti. Ilman kattavaa pohjaa monille osa-alueille, olisi ollut mahdotonta ymmärtää miten testaus toimii prosessina ja miten sitä pystyy kehittämään. Descom toimii ketterän sovelluskehityksen mukaisesti projekteissaan, joten oli tärkeää seurata samoja ketteriä periaatteita läpi opinnäytetyön kirjoittamisen ja tuloksissa. Tuloksena saatiin tietoa yritykselle, siitä miten testaus on toiminut Descomilla ja kuinka testausta ja prosesseja tulisi kehittää tulevaisuudessa. Myös aiemmin olemassa olleet testausdokumentit päivitettiin. Uusina dokumentteina laadittiin suunnitelma prosessikehitykseen, joka perustui Critical Testing Processes –malliin, testausstrategia ja testauspolitiikka. Prosessikuvaus tehtiin kaavioita käyttäen, joilla kuvattiin prosessi kokonaisuutena sekä käytettävät testaustasot

A systematic mapping study on integration proposals of the personas technique in agile methodologies

Agile development processes are increasing their consideration of usability by integrating various user‐centered design techniques throughout development. One such technique is Personas, which proposes the creation of fictitious users with real preferences to drive application design. Since applying this technique conflicts with the time constraints of agile development, Personas has been adapted over the years. Our objective is to determine the adoption level and type of integration, as well as to propose improvements to the Personas technique for agile development. A systematic mapping study was performed, retrieving 28 articles grouped by agile methodology type. We found some common integration strategies regardless of the specific agile approach, along with some frequent problems, mainly related to Persona modelling and context representation. Based on these limitations, we propose an adaptation to the technique in order to reduce the creation time for a preliminary persona. The number of publications dealing with Personas and agile development is increasing, which reveals a growing interest in the application of this technique to develop usable agile softwareThis research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities research grant PGC2018-097265-B-I00, MASSIVE project (RTI2018-095255-B-I00) and by EIT-Health, grant number 19091 (POSITIVE project). This research was also supported by the Madrid Region R&D programme (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314

Management of quality requirements in agile and rapid software development: A systematic mapping study

Context: Quality requirements (QRs) describe the desired quality of software, and they play an important role in the success of software projects. In agile software development (ASD), QRs are often ill-defined and not well addressed due to the focus on quickly delivering functionality. Rapid software development (RSD) approaches (e.g., continuous delivery and continuous deployment), which shorten delivery times, are more prone to neglect QRs. Despite the significance of QRs in both ASD and RSD, there is limited synthesized knowledge on their management in those approaches. Objective: This study aims to synthesize state-of-the-art knowledge about QR management in ASD and RSD, focusing on three aspects: bibliometric, strategies, and challenges. Research method: Using a systematic mapping study with a snowballing search strategy, we identified and structured the literature on QR management in ASD and RSD. Results: We found 156 primary studies: 106 are empirical studies, 16 are experience reports, and 34 are theoretical studies. Security and performance were the most commonly reported QR types. We identified various QR management strategies: 74 practices, 43 methods, 13 models, 12 frameworks, 11 advices, 10 tools, and 7 guidelines. Additionally, we identified 18 categories and 4 non-recurring challenges of managing QRs. The limited ability of ASD to handle QRs, time constraints due to short iteration cycles, limitations regarding the testing of QRs and neglect of QRs were the top categories of challenges. Conclusion: Management of QRs is significant in ASD and is becoming important in RSD. This study identified research gaps, such as the need for more tools and guidelines, lightweight QR management strategies that fit short iteration cycles, investigations of the link between QRs challenges and technical debt, and extension of empirical validation of existing strategies to a wider context. It also synthesizes QR management strategies and challenges, which may be useful for practitioners.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2021, which was held virtually during June 14-18, 2021. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a unique forum where agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends.  XP conferences provide an informal environment to learn and trigger discussions and welcome both people new to agile and seasoned agile practitioners. This year’s conference was held with the theme “Agile Turns Twenty While the World Goes Online”. The 11 full and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile practices; process assessment; large-scale agile; and short contributions

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 18th International Conference, XP 2017, Cologne, Germany, May 22-26, 2017, Proceedings

agile software development; lean development; scrum; project management; software developmen

Ubiquitous Electronic Medical Record (EMR) for Developing Countries

Around the globe, Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) has been evolved either by governments or healthcare providers. The utilization of these technologies has resulted in the improvement of healthcare services all over the world. This evolution has been characterized by availability, reliability, serviceability to patients, and has been enhanced with increased cost and time efficiency. As such, new systems and terms have been established. Electronic Medical Record (EMR), which can also be used interchangeably with Electronic Health Record (EHR) is considered to be the main transformation in healthcare information technologies. EMR has been aimed to reduce and eliminate existing paper based approaches. Many countries have adopted the use of EMR systems all over the world. However, these systems differ from country to country even though they serve the same purpose. The differentiation of implementing the EMR system often leads to incompatibility, which complicates cooperation between healthcare providers, and also compromises the efficient use and analysis of data that can be gathered from different locations or systems. This thesis highlights and addresses the implementation of EMR on cloud-based systems to enable improvements in HIT. In particular, the scope of this research focuses on the use of EMR or EHR in Saudi Arabia, and establishes clinical information transaction standards that can be easily adopted by the different EMR application architectures available. Furthermore, the implementation of a cloud-based system is proposed for standard EMR to be used by both public and private healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia. The advantage that cloud technologies facilitate is the availability of data regardless of the patient, clinician, or physician’s location. Similarly, these technologies enable a linkage and utilization of the Health Information Exchange (HIE) by healthcare researchers and providers to invest in data through online and offline cooperation. Support for the standardization of the EMR system on cloud-based technology will minimize or at best prevent human’s errors, repetition or duplication of records, and reduce cost of operation and time