6,185 research outputs found
State of agile contracting in the software industry and the public sector, results of a systematic mapping of the literature
Context: Agile approaches are the answer to the rigid framework for traditional software development. These focus on creating products based on communication and continuous collaboration between the client and supplier, which are detailed characteristics in documents; it is also true that the contractual agreements for such approaches continue to be structured according to the restrictions of the traditional development of software products. Meticulous specifications and restrictions such as time, cost and scope are just some of the fixed conditions of the contractual agreement. In this sense, traditional contracts do not respond adequately to agile software development and, for this reason, agile contracts emerge as a framework of agreement that stipulates the conditions that are clearly necessary to allow development under these approaches. Methodology: a systematic mapping of the literature is presented that aims to show a current panorama of agile contracting for software development and its application in different sectors of the economy with an emphasis on the public sector. Results: The results obtained show few examples of the application of agile contracts, especially in the public sector; suggesting research opportunities and the generation of proposals in this context. Conclusions: It has been concluded that the contracting methods used by public institutions can be an obstacle to agile approaches. In addition, this document presents recommendations for adjusting contracts that seek to facilitate developments approached from the perspective of agile approaches in the public sector
Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review
Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out.
We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED
Automating decisions for inter-enterprise collaboration management
Proceeding volume: 283/2008The current trend towards networked business forces enterprises to enter federated, loosely-coupled business networks, since much of the competition takes place between networks and value nets. The Pilarcos E2B interoperability middleware supports trend by providing services such as business service discovery and selection, interoperability management, eContracting and reputation-based trust management. Although these services automate the interoperability knowledge management and interoperability. testing, and may help in routine decisions, an essential element of the architecture involves oil expert system that automates or supports decisions oil joining collaborations, acting in them, or leaving them. The expert system focuses oil a single enterprise needs. This paper focuses on the ways of governing the automation level in the expert system in a way suitable for autonomous enterprises to control their participation in agile collaborations.Peer reviewe
Towards the realisation of an integratated decision support environment for organisational decision making
Traditional decision support systems are based on the paradigm of a single decision maker working at a stand‐alone computer or terminal who has a specific decision to make with a specific goal in mind. Organizational decision support systems aim to support decision makers at all levels of an organization (from executive, middle management managers to operators), who have a variety of decisions to make, with different priorities, often in a distributed and dynamic environment. Such systems need to be designed and developed with extra functionality to meet the challenges such as collaborative working. This paper proposes an Integrated Decision Support Environment (IDSE) for organizational decision making. The IDSE distinguishes itself from traditional decision support systems in that it can flexibly configure and re‐configure its functions to support various decision applications. IDSE is an open software platform which allows its users to define their own decision processes and choose their own exiting decision tools to be integrated into the platform. The IDSE is designed and developed based on distributed client/server networking, with a multi‐tier integration framework for consistent information exchange and sharing, seamless process co‐ordination and synchronisation, and quick access to packaged and legacy systems. The prototype of the IDSE demonstrates good performance in agile response to fast changing decision situations
Utilising mindfulness to analyse Agile Global Software Development
As Information Systems Development (ISD) organisations face increasing market demands, ISD strategies such as Agile development and Global Systems Development (GSD) have been employed to help address these demands. With anecdotal evidence pointing to substantially successful implementations, organisations are beginning to embrace the combination of these seemingly orthogonal strategies with beneficial results. However, with the two areas of research still maturing, the bulk of research is made up of anecdotal studies. Utilising mindfulness, a theoretical concept for understanding how organisations can achieve flexibility and reliability, this paper explores how to effectively integrate Agile and GSD methodologies. Incorporating a longitudinal case study, an operationalised mindfulness instrument is applied and triangulated with qualitative data. The findings depict an in-depth analysis of a GSD organisation and provide key contributions for practitioners. Furthermore, theoretical contributions of the paper include: (i) a comprehensive definition of mindfulness that incorporates shared understanding as a key component, and (ii) the development of relationships between the individual mindfulness components
A design framework for agile virtual enterprise collaboration
The market in which engineering companies must operate is increasingly turbulent and unpredictable, largely due to the global nature of the engineering industry in the 21st century. This turbulent environment is further exacerbated by the increasing focus on customisation for individual consumers, rather than the mass manufacturing market of the past. In order to thrive in this turbulent environment companies are increasingly focussing on their core competences, and building strategic alliances with complementary partner companies to satisfy the overall needs of an individual project. This is true of the design as well as manufacturing stages of product development. The increasing levels of collaboration and the requirement for companies to be agile in their response to unexpected events are the background to this research. Specifically, this research addressed the ability of collaborating groups of companies to respond to unexpected events during the design stages of product development. The hypothesis was that through the specific implementation of a novel collection of tools and techniques the agility of collaborative design projects can be increased. A multi-method approach was adopted for the research, beginning with an industrial survey identifying those tools and techniques from the literature which are linked to an increased level of agility. These results form the basis for the definition of the Agile Design Framework which takes the form of a series of implementation steps carried out by a collaborative design team to put in place tools and techniques for increasing their responsiveness to unexpected events. The second stage of the research tested the Agile Design Framework in a controlled laboratory environment with both an experimental and control group undertaking the same collaborative design project. Unexpected events were introduced and the responses of both groups are analysed. The experiment group using the Agile Design Framework had a Key Agility Index score of 0.04 compared with a score of 0.13 for the control group. A low score on the Key Agility Index indicates a higher level of agility while high scores tending to 1 have a lower agility level. The results supported further calibration of the Agile Design Framework for the final stage of the research which was an implementation of the framework in industry for a real-life collaborative design project. This industrial implementation showed an improvement in the agility of the collaborative design project using the Agile Design Framework, improving the Key Agility Index from 0.54 to 0.43.The research makes three novel contributions to knowledge in this field. The first is the Agile Design Framework which is a set of tools and techniques with a specific implementation process, which has been shown to increase agility for collaborative design projects. Secondly, a four-level classification scheme for unexpected events will be presented which allows categorisation of unexpected events into Trivial, Minor, Major and fatal, based on specific criteria. Finally, through the use of easily obtainable data the Key Agility Index is validated as a meaningful quantitative metric for the measurement of agility at the project or departmental level
Applying autonomy to distributed satellite systems: Trends, challenges, and future prospects
While monolithic satellite missions still pose significant advantages in terms of accuracy and
operations, novel distributed architectures are promising improved flexibility, responsiveness,
and adaptability to structural and functional changes. Large satellite swarms, opportunistic satellite
networks or heterogeneous constellations hybridizing small-spacecraft nodes with highperformance
satellites are becoming feasible and advantageous alternatives requiring the adoption
of new operation paradigms that enhance their autonomy. While autonomy is a notion that
is gaining acceptance in monolithic satellite missions, it can also be deemed an integral characteristic
in Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS). In this context, this paper focuses on the motivations
for system-level autonomy in DSS and justifies its need as an enabler of system qualities. Autonomy
is also presented as a necessary feature to bring new distributed Earth observation functions
(which require coordination and collaboration mechanisms) and to allow for novel structural
functions (e.g., opportunistic coalitions, exchange of resources, or in-orbit data services). Mission
Planning and Scheduling (MPS) frameworks are then presented as a key component to implement
autonomous operations in satellite missions. An exhaustive knowledge classification explores the
design aspects of MPS for DSS, and conceptually groups them into: components and organizational
paradigms; problem modeling and representation; optimization techniques and metaheuristics;
execution and runtime characteristics and the notions of tasks, resources, and constraints.
This paper concludes by proposing future strands of work devoted to study the trade-offs of
autonomy in large-scale, highly dynamic and heterogeneous networks through frameworks that
consider some of the limitations of small spacecraft technologies.Postprint (author's final draft
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