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

Agile user stories enriched with usability

Usability is a critical quality factor. Therefore, like traditional software teams, agile teams have to address usability to properly catch their users experience. There exists an interesting debate in the agile and usability communities about how to achieve this integration. Our aim is to contribute to this debate by discussing the incorporation of particular usability recommendations into user stories, one of the most popular artifacts for communicating agile requirements. In this paper, we explore the implications of usability for both the structure of and the process for defining user stories. We discuss what changes the incorporation of particular usability issues may introduce in a user story. Although our findings require more empirical validation, we think that they are a good starting point for further research on this line

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

Managing requirements in market-driven software project: Agile methods view

Vrijeme do plasiranja na tržište i nedovoljno početno saznanje o potrebama dva su značajna problema po kojima se organiziranje potreba kod projekata razvijanja softvera za tržište razlikuje od projekata za softver po narudžbi. Ti se problemi mogu riješiti primjenom agilnih metodologija razvoja softvera kad se radi o tržišno orijentiranom softveru budući da Agilne metode naglašavaju dinamički pristup organiziranju potreba usko povezan s iterativnim ciklusom isporuke. U ovom radu, dinamički pristup Agilnih metoda definiranju potreba koristi se za uspješnu implementaciju složenog tržišno orijentiranog softverskog projekta.Time-to-market and insufficient initial requirements are two significant challenges that make managing requirements for market-driven software projects different from custom-made software projects. These challenges can be resolved by using agile software development methodologies for market-driven software development as agile methods put emphasis on a dynamic approach for requirement engineering which works closely with an iterative release cycle. In this study, dynamic requirement engineering approach of Agile methods was used for the successful implementation of market-driven complex software project

A systematic mapping study on integration proposals of the personas technique in agile methodologies

Agile development processes are increasing their consideration of usability by integrating various user‐centered design techniques throughout development. One such technique is Personas, which proposes the creation of fictitious users with real preferences to drive application design. Since applying this technique conflicts with the time constraints of agile development, Personas has been adapted over the years. Our objective is to determine the adoption level and type of integration, as well as to propose improvements to the Personas technique for agile development. A systematic mapping study was performed, retrieving 28 articles grouped by agile methodology type. We found some common integration strategies regardless of the specific agile approach, along with some frequent problems, mainly related to Persona modelling and context representation. Based on these limitations, we propose an adaptation to the technique in order to reduce the creation time for a preliminary persona. The number of publications dealing with Personas and agile development is increasing, which reveals a growing interest in the application of this technique to develop usable agile softwareThis research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities research grant PGC2018-097265-B-I00, MASSIVE project (RTI2018-095255-B-I00) and by EIT-Health, grant number 19091 (POSITIVE project). This research was also supported by the Madrid Region R&D programme (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314

Broadening the Scope of Security Usability from the Individual to the Organizational : Participation and Interaction for Effective, Efficient, and Agile Authorization

Restrictions and permissions in information systems -- Authorization -- can cause problems for those interacting with the systems. Often, the problems materialize as an interference with the primary tasks, for example, when restrictions prevent the efficient completing of work and cause frustration. Conversely, the effectiveness can also be impacted when staff is forced to circumvent the measure to complete work -- typically sharing passwords among each other. This is the perspective of functional staff and the organization. There are further perspectives involved in the administration and development of the authorization measure. For instance, functional staff need to interact with policy makers who decide on the granting of additional permissions, and policy makers, in turn, interact with policy authors who actually implement changes. This thesis analyzes the diverse contexts in which authorization occurs, and systematically examines the problems that surround the different perspectives on authorization in organizational settings. Based on prior research and original research in secure agile development, eight principles to address the authorization problems are identified and explored through practical artifacts

Tuning an HCI Curriculum for Master Students to Address Interactive Critical Systems Aspects

International audienceThis paper presents the need for specific curricula in order to address the training of specialists in the area of Interactive Critical Systems. Indeed, while curricula are usually built in order to produce specialists in one discipline (e.g. computer science) dealing with systems or products requires training in multiple disciplines. The area of Interactive Critical Systems requires deep knowledge in computer science, dependability, Human-Computer Interaction and safety engineering. We report in this paper how these various disciplines have been integrated in a master program at Université Toulouse III, France and highlight the carrier paths followed by the graduated students and how these carriers are oriented towards aeronautics and space application domains