10 research outputs found

    Getting from research to practice in M4D

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    In this paper we argue that, if technical M4D research is going to contribute positively to development, the activities of specialized, highly paid ‘researchers’ must be combined with skilled contributions from many other actors. In particular, there is a critical need to develop the capacity available in development organizations, community based organizations, and in local economies, to innovate and to adapt technologies to support their objectives. This suggests that the methods that we adopt in research and in design should be open to local appropriation and contribute to capacity building, and that education programmes are needed in developing countries to support the broader processes of innovation. We describe the Mobile Innovation & Enterprise partnership, which is working to develop the innovation capacity available in Uganda.</p

    Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study

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    In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi

    Requirements Engineering Challenges in Large-Scale Agile System Development

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    Agile methods have proven their value to accelerate delivery of high quality software products and services to customers. End-users have become used to regular updates that fix bugs and provide new features and for software products, short time-to-market has become an important business driver. In order to remain competitive, more and more companies imple- ment agile methods and their practices also for software-intense, large products, such as cars, telecommunication infrastructure, and embedded systems. Development of such system usually relies on plan-driven, stage-gate processes and is subject to safety and regulative concerns. Consequently, requirements engineering involves upfront and detailed analysis, which can be at odds with agile (software) development. In this paper, we present results from a multiple case study with two car manufacturers, a telecommunications company, and a technology company that are on the journey to introduce organization wide continuous integration and continuous delivery to customers. Based on 20 qualitative interviews, 5 focus groups, and 2 cross-company workshops, we discuss possible scopes of agile methods within system development, the consequences this has on the role of requirements, and the challenges that arise from the interplay of requirements engineering and agile methods in large-scale system development. These relate in particular to communicating and managing knowledge about a) customer value and b) the system under development. We argue that better alignment of a holistic requirements model with agile development practices promises rich gains in development speed, flexibility, and overall quality of software and systems

    Hybrid software and systems development in practice: Perspectives from Sweden and Uganda

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    Many organizations are adapting the use of hybrid software development approaches by combining traditional methods with flexible agile practices. This paper presents the initial results from the survey on the use of hybrid software and systems approaches. The results are from twenty one respondents from Sweden and Uganda. Our results show that the iterative model is the most widely used process model in both Sweden and Uganda. However, the traditional process models are also used in combination with the more agile models like Scrum. From the results, we also show that the large sized companies face the biggest problems during implementation of agility since they have to adhere to standards and control measures
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