A Modeling Language for Agile Requirements Engineering

Agile methodologies have an impact on how organizations carry out Requirements Engineering (RE). In this context, organizations use different kind of agile techniques like artifacts, meetings, methods or roles, but there is a lack of specific guidelines for agile RE. The aim of this paper is to present a modeling language for supporting organizational aspects of agile RE. It allows the visualization of agile RE concepts and their relationships, which can be used to define guidelines for a specific organization, project or domain. The modeling language for agile RE is used in projects in industry and our experiences reveal that it supports organizations in detecting problems and visualizing internal conflicts during the agile requirements phase, among other benefits

Managing usability evaluation practices in agile development environments

Usability evaluation is a core usability activity that minimizes risks and improves product quality. The returns from usability evaluation are undeniable. Neglecting such evaluation at the development stage negatively affects software usability. In this paper, the authors develop a software management tool used to incorporate usability evaluation activities into the agile environment. Using this tool, agile development teams can manage a continuous evaluation process, tightly coupled with the development process, allowing them to develop high quality software products with adequate level of usability. The tool was evaluated through verification, followed by the validation on satisfaction. The evaluation results show that the tool increased software development practitioner satisfaction and is practical for supporting usability work in software projects.

The importance of integrating Thinking Design, User Experience and Agile methodologies to increase profitability

Since every company wants to make a big profit, it is necessary for every company to focus on the customer and his requirements. This paper discusses the advantages of the methodologies Design Thinking, User Experience Design and Agile and based on other research shows that their connection is important in practice because it leads to greater creativity, innovation and profitability. Various researches and considerations (from scientific papers) on the integration of design thinking, User experience and agile development are presented, and conclusions are made as to why it is good to use combined methods. The author of the paper created a picture, which is a key contribution of the paper, which shows the key features of each of the methodologies where a cross-section shows the importance of using all three methodologies together. Through the cross-section it can be seen that in practice all three methodologies focus on meeting the needs of product users (customers) because companies aim to keep customers satisfied because in this way they would provide a profit. User Experience focuses on making products usable and useful, desirable and affordable to customers (users). Design Thinking methodology offers the possibility of aligning the goal of a highly innovative project with maximum utility for users

Systematic mapping study of usability in post-implementation on agile software development

Abstract. Need for new software information systems is increasing year by year and information software systems have become present in everyday life of people. As the number of systems has increased so has the need of these systems to be usable and work properly. This thesis used systematic mapping study method to get overview of the current state of usability in agile software development. In the study, initially 269 papers were retrieved from SCOPUS and after exclusion of irrelevant papers 92 papers were selected to the study of which 75 papers got through inclusion criteria to the final stage of the study. In this thesis a look to current state of usability in agile software development is presented. Study suggested that usability usage in agile environment is still trying to find its place but there is research being done constantly to make it more prevalent in the field. From those agile software development projects, that had included the usage of some sort of usability method to development, too few included usability throughout the whole development cycle.Tiivistelmä. Tarve uusille tietojärjestelmille on kasvanut vuosi vuodelta suuremmaksi. Tietojärjestelmistä on tullut osa meidän jokapäiväistä elämäämme. Samalla, kun tietojärjestelmien määrä on kasvanut, on kasvanut myös tarve tehdä niistä entistä käytettävämpiä ja toimivia. Tässä tutkielmassa on käytetty systemaattista tutkimuskirjallisuuden kartoitus menetelmää, jonka avulla on hankittu yleiskuva tämän hetkisestä käytettävyyden tilasta ketterässä ohjelmistokehityksessä. Tutkimukseen otettiin alun perin 269 julkaisua, jotka haettiin SCOPUS tietokannasta. Tulosten seulonnan jälkeen 92 julkaisun todettiin liittyvän olennaisesti aiheeseen. Näistä 92 julkaisusta tutkimuksen viimeiseen vaiheeseen hyväksyttiin 75 julkaisua. Tässä tutkielmassa annetaan yleiskuva käytettävyydestä ketterässä ohjelmistokehityksessä tämän hetken kirjallisuuden perusteella. Tutkimuksessa todettiin, että käytettävyyden käyttö ketterässä ohjelmistokehityksessä yrittää vielä löytää omaa paikkaansa, mutta tutkimuksessa tapahtuu jatkuvaa kehitystä, jotta käytettävyys saataisiin selkeäksi myös ketterässä ohjelmistokehityksessä. Niissä projekteissa, joissa ketterää ohjelmistokehitystä harjoitettiin ja käytettävyys oli otettu huomioon, liian harva sisällytti käytettävyyden menetelmiä tukemaan kehitystä läpi koko ohjelmiston kehityskaaren

Una revisión sistemática de usabilidad en metodologías ágiles

En los últimos años, se han aplicado técnicas de evaluación de usabilidad en el desarrollo de software. En las metodologías ágiles, éstas técnicas se están considerando, puesto que siempre han propuesto mejorar la calidad del producto. El objetivo de este trabajo de tesis es sintetizar el conocimiento existente referente a los métodos de evaluación de usabilidad que se han aplicado en las metodologías a través de la realización de una revisión sistemática. La estrategia de búsqueda identificó un total de 307 artículos, de los cuales se seleccionaron 32. Los resultados muestran que las técnicas de usabilidad utilizadas con mayor frecuencia son el prototipado rápido (40%), la indagación individual (37%), las pruebas formales de usabilidad (25%) y las evaluaciones heurísticas (18%). Los resultados obtenidos han permitido conocer el estado actual de las técnicas de evaluación de usabilidad en metodologías ágiles, esto contribuye a identificar lagunas de investigación, información que pueda ayudar a otros profesionales interesados en el tema de investigación.Tesi

Usability Improvement Through A/B Testing and Refactoring

Usability evaluation is an essential task in web application development. There have been several attempts to integrate user-centered design with agile methods, but it is hard to synchronize their practices. User testing is very valuable to learn from feedback of actual use, but it remains expensive to find and solve usability problems. Furthermore, the high cost of usability evaluation forces small/medium-sized companies to trust the first solution applied, without actually testing the success of the solution or considering a possible regression in usability, as could be highlighted by an iterative testing method. In this article we advocate for a usability improvement cycle oriented by user feedback, and compatible with an agile development process. We propose an iterative method supported by a toolkit that allows usability experts to design user tests, run them remotely, analyze results, and assess alternative solutions to usability problems similarly to A/B testing. Each solution is created by applying client-side web refactorings, i.e., changes to the web pages in the client which are meant to improve usability. The main benefit of our approach is that it reduces the overall cost of user testing and particularly, A/B testing, by applying refactorings to create alternative solutions without modifying the application’s server code. By making it affordable for usability experts to apply the method in parallel with the development cycle, we aim to encourage them to incorporate user feedback and try different ideas to discover the best performing solution in terms of the metrics of interest.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad