The effectiveness of an agile software methodology: empirical evidence on humanistic aspects / Mazni Omar

Agile methodology emerged in response to the recognition of the importance of humanistic aspects in software engineering (SE). However, there is lack of empirical evidence that supports its effectiveness in SE. The lack of empirical evidence demands more research in this field to generate more empirical data. Therefore, the first aim of this research is to investigate empirically the effect of agile methodology on the members of software development teams. To achieve this goal, a series of longitudinal empirical studies were carried out in both academic and industrial settings. For the academic setting, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) was chosen because participants are representative sample enrolled in a project-based course that requires them to develop an application in a team. Three replicated experiments and two case studies were carried out. To generalize findings, an empirical inquiry in the form of a case study was carried out in a computer centre in Malaysia. The case study focused on four software development teams working on different applications in an organization. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to triangulate and strengthen the empirical results. The humanistic aspect in SE that was addressed was the impact of an agile methodology on work-related wellbeing and positive affectivity of team members

Testing UML design model for web-based system

UML has been widely used as a modeling tool in software development. Software developed with UML has to be tested to assure its qua1ity and to prevent faults. Current practice in UML design evaluation consists of walkthrough and inspections. However, these techniques are too complex and tedious because the reviewer needs to track large amount of information. Furthermore, the lack of assessment of design quality, and deficiency in detecting and correcting design fault in the model can increase the total software development costs and time to market. This indicates that the need of testing and validating design model for web-based applications is high. Therefore, this study intends to justify whether the DCD criteria can be used to derive suitable test cases for web-based application UML design model

Extreme programming and its positive affect on software engineering teams

This paper presents an early empirical study on Extreme Programming (XP) practices employing Positive Affect metric.The study was conducted on university students doing development projects to gain an insight understanding of the effect of using agile practices on software engineering (SE) teams.The finding indicates that XP practices do have positive affectivity on the SE teams. This is to be expected because of the existence of the practices such as simple design,pair programming, continuous testing, continuous integration and frequent review (release) that command feedback.This finding helps to provide early empirical evidences on the impact of XP methodology on the positive affectivity of the developers

A Review on the Methods of Evaluating the New Approaches Proposed in the Agile Context

In the recent years, Agile is being one of the emerging technologies adopted by numerous organizations.  The Agile methods have not received a wide acceptance within the software development organizations (SDOs), but they are also being extensively employed in different fields and environments. Accordingly, new approaches have been proposed by researchers and practitioners based on the Agile context, however, there is scarce and – sometimes - absence of describing the evaluation process of these approaches. Therefore, this paper reports the findings of an extensive literature search on how the new proposed approaches are being evaluated. The narrative review methodology was employed to criticize and summarize a body of literature retrieved from various scientific sources. The results reveal that there are various methods used for evaluating the proposed Agile approaches. Nevertheless, this review focuses on explaining the five common methods, which are: (1) case study, (2) survey, (3) interview, (3) focus group, and (5) expert review. Thereafter, the authors discuss the key findings and highlight directions for future researches. This study tends to help researchers and practitioners to select the suitable evaluation methods when constructing new Agile approaches.

The evolution of Geography Markup Language (GML) compression model

This paper will discuss about the evolution of Geography Markup Language (compression model.GML is a type of XML files normally used to store spatial data from database.However due to the huge size processing and transferring this type of file will cost performance and storage issue. Throughout the years several GML file compression model has been developed to help in addressing this problem.Four GML file compression model which are GPress, Delta Sp Compression and Extrapolation Model, GMill, and GPress++ has been selected to be discussed in this paper.In addition a comparison and the enhancement done in each model will be discussed in here.From the assessment GPress++ compression model h significant file compression rate on synthetic dataset with 77.10% improvement on gzip compressor

Rule based ETL (RETL) approach for GEO spatial data warehouse

This paper presents the use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for integrating multi source heterogeneous geospatial data in order to facilitate geospatial data warehouse. In this study, Real Based ETL (RETL) concept is adapted in order to extract, transform and load data from a variety of heterogeneous data sources. ETL will transform data to schematic format and loading data into the Geo spatial data warehouse.By using a rule-based technique, the distribution of parallel ETL pipeline will enhance and perform more efficient in large scale of data and overcome data bottleneck and performance overhead. This can ease the disaster management and enables planners to monitor disaster emergency response in an efficient manner

Monitoring task performance using value stream mapping (VSM) technique

Monitoring task performance is crucial in team work in order to ensure equal participation of all team members.However, it may be difficult to implement due to team dynamism.One of the approaches that can be adopted when monitoring group work relies on measuring efficiency of each task performed by the team members.Thus, this paper aims to demonstrate application of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) technique in monitoring team performance in terms of group efficiency.VSM is a technique used to visualize process flow and improve process effectiveness.When applying VSM, the process commences with task prioritization, which is followed by transforming the tasks into a process flow chart, and culminates with analyzing the report using VSM.Empirical evidence indicates that, applied in this manner, the VSM technique provides a view of the team members’ efficiency in educational tasks.Thus, the outcome yielded can help students improve their performance in the next assignment.It also helps educators evaluate the level of difficulty of individual assignments and prepare intervention plans to improve their teaching methods

An Improved Software Project Monitoring Task Model of Agile Kanban Method: A Practitioners’ Perspective

Monitoring software project development is essential to ensure that the project progress is according to budget, schedule, and quality expectations. Currently, Agile Methods (AMs) have received wide recognition within the software engineering (SE) field due to their flexibility and effectiveness. One of the AMs methods used in managing software project development is Kanban method. This method is gaining attention due to its ability to enhance understanding, visibility, and controlling the project workflow. Thus, this paper aims to discuss the initial result of the proposed model for improving the software project monitoring task of the Agile Kanban method (i-KAM). To achieve this aim, the expert review method was used to ensure that suitable components and associated criteria have been included in i-KAM. In this study, six domain experts, which are software practitioners, have been identified based on predefined characteristics. The proposed model was verified based on five dimensions, which are understandability, relevance, feasibility, organization, and comprehensiveness. The experts’ opinions and comments were obtained and subsequently quantified by using descriptive analysis. Findings revealed that this study has fulfilled its objective and has acquired constructive suggestions from the practitioners’ perspective. Future work will continue to enhance i-KAM according to the recommendations and remarks from the experts. A focus group and case study methods could be conducted in order to validate the revised i-KAM. Besides, a prototype will be developed and then implemented within a real software development setting

Automated tool to assess pair programming program quality

This paper aims to present an automated tool that has been developed to assess pair programming program quality.The tool known as Java Quality Measurement Tool or JaQMeT is used to assess specifically Java program quality.There are two program quality factors that can be assessed which are correctness and complexity. Pair programming program will be graded using JaQMeT. Then the results will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of pair programming.JaQMeT is only at its initial stage.It is an initial effort to facilitate the lecturers to reduce workload on grading programming assignment and specifically to assess pair programming program quality.Although JaQMeT has its several limitation but it is hoped that JaQMeT can be extended by using web-based technology and capable to check others program quality

Towards an Improved Software Project Monitoring Task Model of Agile Kanban Method

Agile Kanban method recently is gaining increasing attention and popularity in software development organizations (SDOs). This method has numerous advantages that make it performs better than other Agile methods in terms of managing software projects. However, different studies revealed that this method has significant challenges that negatively impact the scheduling of the development process. Therefore, late delivery of software projects may occur, thus the rate of projects failures will be increased. In response, this paper aims to explicate the current challenges in progress monitoring task of Agile Kanban method. Accordingly, the results gave insights to bridge that gap by developing an improved software project monitoring task model of Agile Kanban method. To do so, we identified the components and criteria that affect software project monitoring task, and then an initial model has proposed. The initial model consists of three main components, which are (1) extending progress tracking, (2) generating optimum WIP limits, and (3) visualizing useful insights for workflow. Further research can be focused on developing and evaluating the proposed model through discussion with the knowledge and domain experts