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

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.

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

The Key Factors of Evaluating Agile Approaches: A Systematic Literature Review

Currently, Agile Methods (AMs) are extensively being used in projects of various sizes and in different environments, thus surpassing their primary intended scope. For instance, they have been executed in distributed and non-distributed projects. In addition, AMs have been implemented in different project fields, such as engineering, medicine, banking, and manufacturing. Consequently, different Agile approaches have been proposed and integrated with other approaches in order to support the increased demand for diverse project environments. In this direction, various authors have examined the process of developing those approaches; however, the focus on explaining evaluation phases is scarce and scattered. Therefore, this study aims to review pertinent literature to identify the key factors and methodologies used to evaluate the proposed approaches in the Agile domain. The systematic literature review (SLR) methodology was adopted to identify, evaluate, and interpret all existing studies relevant to the research objective. SLR provides in-depth and more thorough results than an ordinary literature review. Forty-eight studies were selected and analyzed. The results show that applicability, effectiveness, and efficiency are the three most frequently examined evaluation factors, whereas case studies and surveys are the most frequently used research methods in evaluation studies. Factors identified in this review provide the evidence and the opportunity to design instruments or assessment forms that meet the needs of those researchers who are planning to evaluate their proposed Agile approaches

Current practices of dynamic-structural testing in programming assessments

Automatic Programming Assessment (or APA) has been known as an important method to automatically mark and grade students’ programming exercises.It has been gaining a lot of attention from many researchers either to emphasize on the aspect of static analysis or dynamic testing (functional and structural testing).To date, not many recent studies attempted to focus on the context of structural testing even though, it is key in the software testing industry.Hence it becomes one of the most critical aspects of testing to be considered.Besides that, current literatures also lack information on APA’s detailed practices. Thus, we conducted a preliminary study to investigate the test adequacy criteria that have been commonly employed in the current practices of programming assessments which are applicable only to dynamic-structural testing.Specifically, this refers to testing that needs a program execution and focuses on the logic coverage of the tested program. In this paper, we reveal the means of conducting the preliminary study and its analysis and findings.From the findings, it has been discovered that most educators are commonly adopting the identified structural code coverage in programming assessments and even have a great leaning towards allowing those criteria to be considered in implementing AP

Automated Test Cases and Test Data Generation for Dynamic Structural Testing in Automatic Programming Assessment Using MC/DC

Automatic Programming Assessment (or APA) is known as a method to assist educators in executing automated assessment and grading on students’ programming exercises and assignments. Having to execute dynamic testing in APA, providing an adequate set of test data via a systematic process of test data generation is necessarily essential. Though researches respecting to software testing have proposed various significant methods to realize automated test data generation, it occurs that recent studies of APA rarely utilized these methods. Merely some of the limited studies appeared to resolve this circumstance, yet the focus on realizing test set and test data covering more thorough dynamic-structural testing are still deficient. Thus, we propose a method that utilizes MC/DC coverage criteria to support more thorough automated test data generation for dynamic-structural testing in APA (or is called DyStruc-TDG). In this paper, we reveal the means of deriving and generating test cases and test data for the DyStruc-TDG method and its verification concerning the reliability criteria (or called positive testing) of test data adequacy in programming assessments. This method offers a significant impact on assisting educators dealing with introductory programming courses to derive and generate test cases and test data via APA regardless of having knowledge of designing test cases mainly to execute structural testing. As regards to this, it can effectively reduce the educators’ workload as the process of manual assessments is typically prone to errors and promoting inconsistency in marking and grading

Improving The Progress Monitoring Task Of Agile Kanban Method: An Enhanced Theoretical Framework And Its Implication

Several studies claimed that software project management (SPM) failed in realizing software projects due to inadequate progress monitoring. Indeed, the successful implementation of software projects relies entirely on effective monitoring approaches. Recently, the adoption of Agile Kanban method in SPM is continuously on the rise despite its shortcoming in its progress monitoring task. Therefore, this paper aims to enhance the theoretical framework for improving the progress monitoring task of Agile Kanban method and highlight its implication on SPM domain. To achieve this aim, an exploratory research design was employed to identify the problem, review the related literature, and to develop the enhanced framework. The findings confirm the highly need of improving the monitoring task of Agile Kanban method, which would assist project managers to effectively monitor the development process of software projects. Accordingly, the results of literature have been utilized to construct an enhanced theoretical framework, thus delivering software products on time within budget could be achieved. Practically, it is hoped that the framework can provide a guideline for developing models focus on improving the progress monitoring task

Automating the process of measuring complexity of Java programming assignment

Programming is a complex intellectual activity and a core skill for first year IT students. Several researches have shown that most students often write programs without considering the quality of the program. Due to this matter, an automatic assessment system has become one of the most important tools to evaluate and grade programming assignment including judgments of the quality of programming solutions.Besides considering the correctness of the output program, the automatic assessment system also focuses on the complexity factor in ensuring the consistency and accuracy of the hand-marking programming assignments and improve the quality of students’ programming solution.This study is proposed as an effort to assist lecturers of the Introductory Java Programming course in evaluating and grading program assignments by considering the complexity factor.Besides selected traditional software metrics such Lines Of Code and Cyclomatic Complexity, several object-oriented metrics are adopted to measure the program complexity namely, Respond For a Class (RFC), Number of properties (SIZE2), Number of classes (NCL), Operation Complexity (OpCom), Operation Argument Complexity (OAC) and Attributes Complexity (AC). Specific score and weight will be given for each selected metric as a measurement of the program complexity.The summary of report that contains a complexity analysis and complexity mark awarded to the student will be generated automatically using a developed prototype.Thus, this approach will be implemented to provide a tool in order to improve the process of evaluating the Introductory of Java programming assignment for the Faculty of Information Technology

Identification of criteria affecting software project monitoring task of Agile Kanban method

Currently, software development organizations (SDOs) attempt to deliver their software products quickly, within the prescribed period, and with the highest quality and lowest cost, yet this is proven a big challenge for them. Agile Kanban method recently is gaining increasing attention and popularity, due to its numerous advantages that make it performs better than other methods in terms of managing software projects. Beside of that, it has a board that used to visualize the workflow and monitor the project progress. However, various studies have shown that this method has significant challenges that negatively impact the scheduling of the development process. Consequently, late delivery of software projects may occur, thus the rate of projects’ failures will be increased. This paper aims to identify the challenges and criteria that affect the progress monitoring task of Agile Kanban method using a narrative review method, whereby this review method is adopted to identify and summarize what has been previously published, avoid duplications, and seek new study areas which are not yet addressed. Finally, the findings of this study would be used to develop an improved software project monitoring task model of Agile Kanban method. That model would be capable to keep projects progress as it is planned, and thus leading to successful delivering for software projects according to its specifications, time, and budget