Implicit thinking knowledge injection framework for Agile requirements engineering

Agile has become commonly used as a software development methodology and its success depends on face-to-face communication of software developers and the faster software product delivery. Implicit thinking knowledge has considered as a very significant for organization self-learning. The main goal of paying attention to managing the implicit thinking knowledge is to retrieve valuable information of how the software is developed. However, requirements documentation is a challenging task for Agile software engineers. The current Agile requirements documentation does not incorporate the implicit thinking knowledge with the values it intends to achieve in the software project. This research addresses this issue and introduce a framework assists to inject the implicit thinking knowledge in Agile requirements engineering. An experiment used a survey questionnaire and case study of real project implemented for the framework evaluation. The results show that the framework enables software engineers to share and document their implicit thinking knowledge during Agile requirements documentation

A Vision of DevOps Requirements Change Management Standardization

DevOps (development and operations) aims to shorten the software development process and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. To get the potential gains of DevOps, the software development industry considering global software development (GSD) environment to hire skilled human resources and round-the-clock working hours. However, due to the lack of frequent communication and coordination in GSD, the planning and managing of the requirements change process becomes a challenging task. As in DevOps, requirements are not only shaped by development feedback but also by the operations team. This means requirements affect development, development affects operations and operations affect requirements. However, DevOps in GSD still faces many challenges in terms of requirement management. The purpose of this research project is to develop a DevOps requirement change management and implementation maturity model (DevOps-RCMIMM) that could assist the GSD organizations in modifying and improving their requirement management process in the DevOps process. The development of DevOps-RCMIMM will be based on the existing DevOps and RCM literature, industrial empirical study, and understanding of factors that could impact the implementation of the DevOps requirement change management process in the domain of GSD. This vision study presents the initial results of a systematic literature review that will contribute to the development of maturity levels of the proposed DevOps-RCMIMM

Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects. Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. Method: The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. Results: The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. Conclusion: It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Exploring the benefits of combining DevOps and agile

The combined adoption of Agile and DevOps enables organizations to cope with the increasing complexity of managing customer requirements and requests. It fosters the emergence of a more collaborative and Agile framework to replace the waterfall models applied to software development flow and the separation of development teams from operations. This study aims to explore the benefits of the combined adoption of both models. A qualitative methodology is adopted by including twelve case studies from international software engineering companies. Thematic analysis is employed in identifying the benefits of the combined adoption of both paradigms. The findings reveal the existence of twelve benefits, highlighting the automation of processes, improved communication between teams, and reduction in time to market through process integration and shorter software delivery cycles. Although they address different goals and challenges, the Agile and DevOps paradigms when properly combined and aligned can offer relevant benefits to organizations. The novelty of this study lies in the systematization of the benefits of the combined adoption of Agile and DevOps considering multiple perspectives of the software engineering business environment.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Understanding requirements dependency in requirements prioritization: a systematic literature review

Requirement prioritization (RP) is a crucial task in managing requirements as it determines the order of implementation and, thus, the delivery of a software system. Improper RP may cause software project failures due to over budget and schedule as well as a low-quality product. Several factors influence RP. One of which is requirements dependency. Handling inappropriate handling of requirements dependencies can lead to software development failures. If a requirement that serves as a prerequisite for other requirements is given low priority, it affects the overall project completion time. Despite its importance, little is known about requirements dependency in RP, particularly its impacts, types, and techniques. This study, therefore, aims to understand the phenomenon by analyzing the existing literature. It addresses three objectives, namely, to investigate the impacts of requirements dependency on RP, to identify different types of requirements dependency, and to discover the techniques used for requirements dependency problems in RP. To fulfill the objectives, this study adopts the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method. Applying the SLR protocol, this study selected forty primary articles, which comprise 58% journal papers, 32% conference proceedings, and 10% book sections. The results of data synthesis indicate that requirements dependency has significant impacts on RP, and there are a number of requirements dependency types as well as techniques for addressing requirements dependency problems in RP. This research discovered various techniques employed, including the use of Graphs for RD visualization, Machine Learning for handling large-scale RP, decision making for multi-criteria handling, and optimization techniques utilizing evolutionary algorithms. The study also reveals that the existing techniques have encountered serious limitations in terms of scalability, time consumption, interdependencies of requirements, and limited types of requirement dependencies

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

Historical roots of Agile methods: where did “Agile thinking” come from?

The appearance of Agile methods has been the most noticeable change to software process thinking in the last fifteen years [16], but in fact many of the “Agile ideas” have been around since 70’s or even before. Many studies and reviews have been conducted about Agile methods which ascribe their emergence as a reaction against traditional methods. In this paper, we argue that although Agile methods are new as a whole, they have strong roots in the history of software engineering. In addition to the iterative and incremental approaches that have been in use since 1957 [21], people who criticised the traditional methods suggested alternative approaches which were actually Agile ideas such as the response to change, customer involvement, and working software over documentation. The authors of this paper believe that education about the history of Agile thinking will help to develop better understanding as well as promoting the use of Agile methods. We therefore present and discuss the reasons behind the development and introduction of Agile methods, as a reaction to traditional methods, as a result of people's experience, and in particular focusing on reusing ideas from histor

Adaptive development and maintenance of user-centric software systems

A software system cannot be developed without considering the various facets of its environment. Stakeholders – including the users that play a central role – have their needs, expectations, and perceptions of a system. Organisational and technical aspects of the environment are constantly changing. The ability to adapt a software system and its requirements to its environment throughout its full lifecycle is of paramount importance in a constantly changing environment. The continuous involvement of users is as important as the constant evaluation of the system and the observation of evolving environments. We present a methodology for adaptive software systems development and maintenance. We draw upon a diverse range of accepted methods including participatory design, software architecture, and evolutionary design. Our focus is on user-centred software systems