An agile business process and practice meta-model

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Agile Project Dynamics: A System Dynamics Investigation of Agile Software Development Methods

While Agile software development has many advocates, acceptance in the government and defense sectors has been limited. To address questions of meanings to the term “Agile,” we examine a range of Agile methods practiced and develop a framework of seven characteristics, which we call the Agile Genome. We gain insight into the dynamics of how Agile development compares to classic “waterfall” approaches by constructing a System Dynamics model for software projects. The Agile Project Dynamics (APD) model captures each of the Agile genes as a separate component of the model and allows experimentation with combinations of practices and management policies. Experimentation with the APD model is used to explore how different genes work in combination with one another to produce both positive and negative effects. The extensible design of the APD model provides the basis for further study of Agile methods and management practices

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

KNOWLEDGE MODELING OF AGILE PROCESSES IN HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

Requirements on healthcare software products are becoming more and more complicated and software systems of today are characterized by increasing complexity and size. Therefore, software systems can no longer be developed feasibly without the processes supported by appropriate methods. We propose a method for configuration and modification of agile processes behind healthcare products development based on gathered knowledge and formal modeling. Our approach allows to support and optimize the processes with formal methods of modeling and machinelearning based simulations

Enhancing the test and evaluation process: implementing agile development, test automation, and model-based systems engineering concepts

2020 Fall.Includes bibliographical references.With the growing complexity of modern systems, traditional testing methods are falling short. Test documentation suites used to verify the software for these types of large, complex systems can become bloated and unclear, leading to extremely long execution times and confusing, unmanageable test procedures. Additionally, the complexity of these systems can prevent the rapid understanding of complicated system concepts and behaviors, which is a necessary part of keeping up with the demands of modern testing efforts. Opportunities for optimization and innovation exist within the Test and Evaluation (T&E) domain, evidenced by the emergence of automated testing frameworks and iterative testing methodologies. Further opportunities lie with the directed expansion and application of related concepts such as Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). This dissertation documents the development and implementation of three methods of enhancing the T&E field when applied to a real-world project. First, the development methodology of the system was transitioned from Waterfall to Agile, providing a more responsive approach when creating new features. Second, the Test Automation Framework (TAF) was developed, enabling the automatic execution of test procedures. Third, a method of test documentation using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) was created, adopting concepts from MBSE to standardize the planning and analysis of test procedures. This dissertation provides the results of applying the three concepts to the development process of an airborne Electronic Warfare Management System (EWMS), which interfaces with onboard and offboard aircraft systems to receive and process the threat environment, providing the pilot or crew with a response solution for the protection of the aircraft. This system is representative of a traditional, long-term aerospace project that has been constantly upgraded over its lifetime. Over a two-year period, this new process produced a number of qualitative and quantitative results, including improving the quality and organization of the test documentation suite, reducing the minimum time to execute the test procedures, enabling the earlier identification of defects, and increasing the overall quality of the system under test. The application of these concepts generated many lessons learned, which are also provided. Transitioning a project's development methodology, modernizing the test approach, and introducing a new system of test documentation may provide significant benefits to the development of a system, but these types of process changes must be weighed against the needs of the project. This dissertation provides details of the effort to improve the effectiveness of the T&E process on an example project, as a framework for possible implementation on similar systems

AGILE DEVELOPMENT – SCRUM ADOPTED IN PRACTICE BUT NOT IN PRINCIPLE

The move to agile software development methodologies has generated great enthusiasm. The emphasis on team-oriented development and reliance on people rather than predefined processes is transforming software development into a socio-technical process. Through the lens of a real-world project we examined the difficulties experienced when an IS development project shifted from a structured waterfall approach for upfront requirements gathering to a Scrum agile approach for the development activities. We specifically look at the agile values and principles of ‘people, working software, end-user involvement and responding to change’. Although the transition was successful in practice, in principle the project failed. The empirical case study evidences the characteristics involved and we put forward critical factors of the preparation of the environment (i.e. adequate Scrum training), effective communications (i.e. consensus on a standard working context and sufficient time for testing), optimal team structure (i.e. personalities) and effective team leadership to inform future development practice