The adoption of agile software development methods in Jamaica

Research has demonstrated that most information systems projects fail due to people problems. Agile software development methods were introduced in an effort to resolve this problem. It relies on people and their creativity during system development rather than processes and the maturity of firms. Research has found that the adoption of agile methods in software development is becoming very popular. However, there is an appeal in the literature for more empirical studies on agile software development. This study examined the adoption and benefits of agile methods in Jamaican software development firms. The results showed that 53% of the firms surveyed are using agile methods, with SCRUM being the main method, and the top benefits being improved customer satisfaction, improved productivity of teams and speeding up the developmental process. The average uptake of agile methods in Jamaican firms would support the claim for a longitudinal study to track the adoption trend

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Statistical Software

We identify principles and practices for writing and publishing statistical software with maximum benefit to the scholarly community.

Use of an agile bridge in the development of assistive technology

Engaging with end users in the development of assistive technologies remains one of the major challenges for researchers and developers in the field of accessibility and HCI. Developing usable software systems for people with complex disabilities is problematic, software developers are wary of using user-centred design, one of the main methods by which usability can be improved, due to concerns about how best to work with adults with complex disabilities, in particular Severe Speech and Physical Impairments (SSPI) and how to involve them in research. This paper reports on how the adoption of an adapted agile approach involving the incorporation of a user advocate on the research team helped in meeting this challenge in one software project and offers suggestions for how this could be used by other development teams

Software is Scholarship

This Article provides the first systematic account and justification of software applications as works of scholarship. Software is scholarship to the extent that software functionality is derived from scholarly research, software is used as a means to develop scholarship, or software is used as a medium to communicate scholarly ideas. Software applications are superior to articles and books for communicating scholarly ideas because software is not limited by the constraints of traditional written works. Software can communicate using a wide variety of textual components, graphical elements, and programmable interactivity that significantly enhance the ability to communicate scholarly concepts, arguments, and findings. This Article identifies four methods for software applications to enhance scholarly communication: app-ified argumentation that provides theoretical clarity, interactive toolkits that create rich qualitative studies, data visualizations that persuade using data, and policy tech that improves the ability to enact social change. Interactive software applications can enhance research agendas in the humanities and social sciences by making traditional, prose scholarship more thorough, persuasive, and analytically precise. Due to recent innovations, developing software for scholarly purposes is accessible to those that work in the humanities. Platforms for developing software have grown so sophisticated that they no longer require creators to write code to develop powerful, data rich, and well-designed interactive applications. Scholars should accordingly use and develop software to better communicate their ideas. By providing a framework for developing software as works of scholarship, this Article contributes to the field of digital humanities. To better understand this Article’s concept of scholarly software, I apply my conceptualization of scholarly software to legal scholarship and legal technology and discuss three case studies: LegalTech toolkits, voice recognition for automated contract drafting, and court data visualizations. Law is a fertile ground for the development of scholarly software because the core of legal reasoning consists of a formalistic, computational structure that is well-expressed through programmable applications. This Article contributes to legal scholarship by identifying how it can be enhanced through the creation of software applications

Agile software development practices in Egypt SMEs : a grounded theory investigation

Agile information system development methods have been adopted by most software development organizations due to their proven benefits in terms of flexibility, reliability, and responsiveness. However, companies face significant challenges in adopting these approaches. Specifically, this research investigates challenges faced by software development companies in Egypt while transitioning to Agile. As little previous research is available targeting their concerns, we have conducted a grounded theory investigation. Key problem areas were found including lack of cadence in sprints planning, inadequate use of effort estimation and product quality issues. The developed grounded theory reflects on the key problem areas found with SMEs adopting agile practices and can be used by software development practitioners adopting agile methods in Egypt or similar developing countries as an outline for the common problem areas they are expected to find

Methods for enhancing the reproducibility of biomedical research findings using electronic health records.

BACKGROUND: The ability of external investigators to reproduce published scientific findings is critical for the evaluation and validation of biomedical research by the wider community. However, a substantial proportion of health research using electronic health records (EHR), data collected and generated during clinical care, is potentially not reproducible mainly due to the fact that the implementation details of most data preprocessing, cleaning, phenotyping and analysis approaches are not systematically made available or shared. With the complexity, volume and variety of electronic health record data sources made available for research steadily increasing, it is critical to ensure that scientific findings from EHR data are reproducible and replicable by researchers. Reporting guidelines, such as RECORD and STROBE, have set a solid foundation by recommending a series of items for researchers to include in their research outputs. Researchers however often lack the technical tools and methodological approaches to actuate such recommendations in an efficient and sustainable manner. RESULTS: In this paper, we review and propose a series of methods and tools utilized in adjunct scientific disciplines that can be used to enhance the reproducibility of research using electronic health records and enable researchers to report analytical approaches in a transparent manner. Specifically, we discuss the adoption of scientific software engineering principles and best-practices such as test-driven development, source code revision control systems, literate programming and the standardization and re-use of common data management and analytical approaches. CONCLUSION: The adoption of such approaches will enable scientists to systematically document and share EHR analytical workflows and increase the reproducibility of biomedical research using such complex data sources

Speak Clearly, If You Speak at All; Carve Every Word Before You Let It Fall: Problems of Ambiguous Terminology in eLearning System Development

This paper addresses issues associated with the development of eLearning software systems. The development of software systems in general is a highly complex process, and a number of methodologies and models have been developed to help address some of these complexities. Generally the first stage in most development processes is the gathering of requirements which involves elicitation from end-users. This process is made more complex by problems associated with ambiguous terminology. Types of ambiguous terminology include homonymous, polysemous and inaccurate terms. This range of ambiguous terminology can cause significant misunderstandings in the requirements gathering process, which in turn can lead to software systems that do not meet the requirements of the end-users. This research seeks to explore some of the more common terms that can be ambiguously interpreted in the development of eLearning systems, and suggests software engineering approaches to help alleviate the potentially erroneous outcomes of these ambiguities

Agile methodologies between software development and music production: an empirical study

Over the past 20 years agile methodologies revolutionized Information Technology, oering tremendous opportunities for the development of Software Engineering as an independent discipline. More specifically, agile methodologies contributed to enhancing the eectiveness and the speed of the production process as well as to improving the productivity and motivations of software developers organized in high performing teams. The agile philosophy can be and has been applied in dierent contexts and across several domains. This work analyses the relationship between Agile methodologies used by software engineers and the practices pursued by musicians in their daily lives. Our findings suggests that collaborative, strongly planned software development life cycle models (such as Waterfall, V-model, iterative, and Spiral) are not adequate models to describe the daily practices of musical composers. This is because their work requires a lot of flexibility, which such models intrinsically lack, because they are oriented to ensuring some form of monitorable progress. Interestingly, our findings also show that nine out of 12 Agile Principles are consciously or unconsciously followed by musicians in their practices. This suggests that there are some deep connections between these two prima facie dierent fields, which are both very creative. Even though our findings await replication, possibly with larger statistical samples, they contribute to open up a new strand of research in the fi