Measuring Software Process: A Systematic Mapping Study

Context: Measurement is essential to reach predictable performance and high capability processes. It provides support for better understanding, evaluation, management, and control of the development process and project, as well as the resulting product. It also enables organizations to improve and predict its process’s performance, which places organizations in better positions to make appropriate decisions. Objective: This study aims to understand the measurement of the software development process, to identify studies, create a classification scheme based on the identified studies, and then to map such studies into the scheme to answer the research questions. Method: Systematic mapping is the selected research methodology for this study. Results: A total of 462 studies are included and classified into four topics with respect to their focus and into three groups based on the publishing date. Five abstractions and 64 attributes were identified, 25 methods/models and 17 contexts were distinguished. Conclusion: capability and performance were the most measured process attributes, while effort and performance were the most measured project attributes. Goal Question Metric and Capability Maturity Model Integration were the main methods and models used in the studies, whereas agile/lean development and small/medium-size enterprise were the most frequently identified research contexts.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2- RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Using CMMN Model for Software System Project Simulation

Software systems (SS) project failure has been a recurring problem for decades. One of the project success factors is the appropriately chosen project management methodology and its adaption to the project type, company, and employees. Although some methods have been proposed to address this problem, the number of failed projects shows that the problem is still relevant. Therefore, a new and more efficient solution is needed. This paper proposes a new approach for choosing and adopting a project management methodology to a particular context (i.e., the project type, company, and its employee, etc.). It is based on dynamic CMMN (case management model and notation) SS project management process modelling and simulation. The proposed approach is evaluated with an industry case study. The obtained results showed that the proposed approach is implementable and can be used for SS project simulation

Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) Approach to Game Development Methodology

This thesis investigates existing game development methodologies, through the process of researching game and system development models. The results indicate that these methodologies are engineered to solve specific problems, and most are suitable only for specific game genres. Different approaches to building games have been proposed in recent years. However, most of these methodologies focus on the design and implementation phase. This research aims to enhance game development methodologies by proposing a novel game development methodology, with the ability to function in generic game genres, thereby guiding game developers and designers from the start of the game development phase to the end of the implementation and testing phase. On a positive note, aligning development practice with universal standards makes it far easier to incorporate extra team members at short notice. This increased the confidence when working in the same environment as super developers. In the gaming industry, most game development proceeds directly from game design to the implementation phase, and the researcher observes that this is the only industry in which this occurs. It is a consequence of the game industry’s failure to integrate with modern development techniques. The ultimate aim of this research to apply a new game development methodology using most game elements to enhance success. This development model will align with different game genres, and resolve the gap between industry and research area, so that game developers can focus on the important business of creating games. The primary aim of Agent Oriented Agile Base (AOAB) game development methodology is to present game development techniques in sequential steps to facilitate game creation and close the gap in the existing game development methodologies. Agent technology is used in complex domains such as e-commerce, health, manufacturing, games, etc. In this thesis we are interested in the game domain, which comprises a unique set of characteristics such as automata, collaboration etc. Our AOAB will be based on a predictive approach after adaptation of MaSE methodology, and an adaptive approach using Agile methodology. To ensure proof of concept, AOAB game development methodology will be evaluated against industry principles, providing an industry case study to create a driving test game, which was the problem motivating this research. Furthermore, we conducted two workshops to introduce our methodology to both academic and industry participants. Finally, we prepared an academic experiment to use AOAB in the academic sector. We have analyzed the feedbacks and comments and concluded the strengths and weakness of the AOAB methodology. The research achievements are summarized and proposals for future work outlined

An Exploratory Survey of Phase-wise Project Cost Estimation Techniques

This article explores a number of existing project cost estimation techniques to investigate how the estimation can be done in a more accurate and effective manner. The survey looks into various estimation models that utilize many theoretical techniques such as statistics, fuzzy logic, case-based reasoning, analogies, and neural networks. As the essence of conventional estimation inaccuracy lies in life cycle cost drivers that are unsuitable to be applied across the project life cycle, this study introduces a phase-wise estimation technique that posits some overhead and latency costs. Performance evaluation methods of the underlying phase-wise principle are also presented. Contributions of this phase-wise approach will improve the estimation accuracy owing to less latency cost and increase the project visibility which in turn helps the project managers better scrutinize and administer project activities

Measures related to social and human factors that influence productivity in software development teams

Software companies need to measure their productivity. Measures are useful indicators to evaluate processes, projects, products, and people who are part of software development teams. The results of these measurements are used to make decisions, manage projects, and improve software development and project management processes. This research is based on selecting a set of measures related to social and human factors (SHF) that influence productivity in software development teams and therefore in project management. This research was performed in three steps. In the first step, there was performed a tertiary literature review aimed to identify measures related to productivity. Then, the identified measures were submitted for its evaluation to project management experts and finally, the measures selected by the experts were mapped to the SHF. A set of 13 measures was identified and defined as a key input for designing improvement strategies. The measures have been compared to SHF to evaluate the development team\u27s performance from a more human context and to establish indicators in productivity improvement strategies of software projects. Although the number of productivity measures related to SHF is limited, it was possible to identify the measures used in both traditional and agile contexts

QPLAN: Decision support for evaluating planning quality in software development projects

Decisions about whether or not to approve a project plan for execution are critical. A decision to continue with a bad plan may lead to a failed project, whereas requesting unnecessary additional planning for an already high-quality plan may be counterproductive. However, these decisions can be influenced by psychological biases, such as the endowment effect, optimism bias and ambiguity effect, which are enhanced when uncertainty is substantial and information incomplete. As a result, a non-biased model for evaluating the quality of project planning is important to improve planning approval decisions and resource allocation. This paper introduces a novel artifact (QPLAN) that evaluates and improves planning quality, and a case study to demonstrate its effectiveness within a business environment

Human Factors in Agile Software Development

Through our four years experiments on students' Scrum based agile software development (ASD) process, we have gained deep understanding into the human factors of agile methodology. We designed an agile project management tool - the HASE collaboration development platform to support more than 400 students self-organized into 80 teams to practice ASD. In this thesis, Based on our experiments, simulations and analysis, we contributed a series of solutions and insights in this researches, including 1) a Goal Net based method to enhance goal and requirement management for ASD process, 2) a novel Simple Multi-Agent Real-Time (SMART) approach to enhance intelligent task allocation for ASD process, 3) a Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) based method to enhance emotion and morale management for ASD process, 4) the first large scale in-depth empirical insights on human factors in ASD process which have not yet been well studied by existing research, and 5) the first to identify ASD process as a human-computation system that exploit human efforts to perform tasks that computers are not good at solving. On the other hand, computers can assist human decision making in the ASD process.Comment: Book Draf

Evaluation of e-Government information systems Agility: a Method and Case study

Development of e-government evaluation frameworks began around 2000s. Most of the developed approaches are technologically driven in which they focus on the “E” rather than the “Government”. Moreover, they tend to evaluate tangible measures (such as costs, benefits, etc.) and neglects important intangible measures (such as agility, sustainability, etc.). The state of the art tells that the evaluation of agility within e-government has been proved to be important but complex. However, the importance is due to the increasing need for governments to justify investments, assess impacts and monitor progress in the ever-changing environment. On the other side, the complexity comes with the concept’s multi-disciplinary, the inherited difficulty when quantifying its –intangible dimensions, and developing appropriate evaluative parameters and metrics. Based on that, our paper addresses all these considerations through a practical method for agility evaluation. This method is originally applied to a real case study of e-Algeria project as part of the review of 10 years since its launch in 2013. The objective is to evaluate the agility of TAWASSOL framework that is designed to be one-stop-shop for government services. As far as results of valuation showed low degrees of agility -in both FO (Front Office) side and BO (Back office) side, improvements are recommended for the government heads to improve the overall agility of the framework