| 1. |
- Alahyari, Hiva, 1979, et al.
(författare)
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A study of value in agile software development organizations
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier BV. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 125, s. 271-288
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Agile manifesto focuses on the delivery of valuable software. In Lean, the principles emphasise value, where every activity that does not add value is seen as waste. Despite the strong focus on value, and that the primary critical success factor for software intensive product development lies in the value domain, no empirical study has investigated specifically what value is. This paper presents an empirical study that investigates how value is interpreted and prioritised, and how value is assured and measured. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 23 participants from 14 agile software development organisations. The contribution of this study is fourfold. First, it examines how value is perceived amongst agile software development organisations. Second, it compares the perceptions and priorities of the perceived values by domains and roles. Third, it includes an examination of what practices are used to achieve value in industry, and what hinders the achievement of value. Fourth, it characterises what measurements are used to assure, and evaluate value-creation activities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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| 2. |
- Berntsson Svensson, Richard, et al.
(författare)
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Prioritization of quality requirements : State of practice in eleven companies
- 2011
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Ingår i: 2011 IEEE 19th International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE 2011; Trento; 29 August 2011 through 2 September 2011. - Trento : IEEE. - 9781457709234 ; , s. 69-78, s. 69-78
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Requirements prioritization is recognized as an important but challenging activity in software product development. For a product to be successful, it is crucial to find the right balance among competing quality requirements. Although literature offers many methods for requirements prioritization, the research on prioritization of quality requirements is limited. This study identifies how quality requirements are prioritized in practice at 11 successful companies developing software intensive systems. We found that ad-hoc prioritization and priority grouping of requirements are the dominant methods for prioritizing quality requirements. The results also show that it is common to use customer input as criteria for prioritization but absence of any criteria was also common. The results suggests that quality requirements by default have a lower priority than functional requirements, and that they only get attention in the prioritizing process if decision-makers are dedicated to invest specific time and resources on QR prioritization. The results of this study may help future research on quality requirements to focus investigations on industry-relevant issues.
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| 3. |
- Pernstål, Joakim, et al.
(författare)
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Communication Problems in Software Development : A Model and Its Industrial Application
- 2019
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Ingår i: International journal of software engineering and knowledge engineering. - : World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd. - 0218-1940. ; 29:10, s. 1497-1538
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Attaining effective communication within and across organizational units is among the most critical challenges for success in software development organizations. This paper presents a novel model, supporting analysis of problems in inter-departmental communication events. The model was developed and designed based on industrial needs emphasizing flexibility, applicability and scalability. The model covers central communication aspects in order to provide a useful approximation of communication problems rather than in-depth modeling on message-by message basis. Other event-specific information, such as costs, can then be attached to enrich analysis and understanding. To exemplify and evaluate the model and collect feedback from industry, it was applied to 16 events at a Swedish automotive manufacturer where communication between two departments had broken down during development of software-intensive systems. The evaluation showed that the model helped structure and conduct systematic data collection and analysis of dysfunctional communication patterns. We found that insufficient understanding of the matters being communicated was prevalent, but also more specifically, requirements were insufficiently balanced, detailed and specified over the full system development cycle. Besides, the long-term cost for the company was analyzed in depth for each event, yielding a total estimated cost for the analyzed communication events of 11.2MUS$. © 2019 World Scientific Publishing Company.
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| 4. |
- Ivarsson, Martin, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Tool support for disseminating and improving development practices
- 2012
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Ingår i: Software Quality Journal. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1573-1367 .- 0963-9314. ; 20:1, s. 173-199
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Knowledge management in software engineering and software process improvement activities pose challenges as initiatives are deployed. Most existing approaches are either too expensive to deploy or do not take an organization's specific needs into consideration. There is thus a need for scalable improvement approaches that leverage knowledge already residing in the organizations. This paper presents tool support for an Experience Factory approach for disseminating and improving practices used in an organization. Experiences from using practices in development projects are captured in postmortems and provide iteratively improved decision support for identifying what practices work well and what needs improvement. An initial evaluation of using the tool for organizational improvement has been performed utilizing both academia and industry. The results from the evaluation indicate that organizational characteristics influence how practices and experiences can be used. Experiences collected in postmortems are estimated to have little effect on improvements to practices used throughout the organization. However, in organizations where different practices are used in different parts of the organization, making practices available together with experiences from use, as well as having context information, can influence decisions on what practices to use in projects.
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| 5. |
- Ouriques, Raquel, et al.
(författare)
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The role of knowledge-based resources in Agile Software Development contexts
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 197
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The software value chain is knowledge-based since it is highly dependant on people. Consequently, a lack of practice in managing knowledge as a resource may jeopardise its application in software development. Knowledge-Based Resources (KBRs) relate to employees’ intangible knowledge that is deemed to be valuable to a company's competitive advantage. In this study, we apply a grounded theory approach to examine the role of KBRs in Agile Software Development (ASD). To this aim, we collected data from 18 practitioners from five companies. We develop the Knowledge-Push theory, which explains how KBRs boost the need for change in ASD. Our results show that the practitioners who participated in the study utilise, as primary strategies, task planning, resource management, and social collaboration. These strategies are implemented through the team environment and settings and incorporate an ability to codify and transmit knowledge. However, this process of codification is non-systematic, which consequently introduces inefficiency in the domain of knowledge resource utilisation, resulting in potential knowledge waste. This inefficiency can generate negative implications for software development, including meaningless searches in databases, frustration because of recurrent problems, the unnecessary redesign of solutions, and a lack of awareness of knowledge sources. © 2022 The Authors
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| 6. |
- Ouriques, Raquel, et al.
(författare)
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Thinking strategically about knowledge management in agile software development
- 2018
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Ingår i: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). - Cham : Springer Verlag. - 0302-9743 .- 1611-3349. - 9783030036720 ; 11271 LNCS, s. 389-395
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agile methodologies gave teams more autonomy regarding planning tasks and executing them. As a result, coordination gets more flexible, but much relevant knowledge remains undocumented and inside teams’ borders, due to informal communication and reduced development documentation. Since knowledge plays an essential role in software development, it is important to have effective knowledge management (KM) practices that contribute to a better knowledge resource allocation. Several KM practices have been reported in empirical studies in Agile Software Development (ASD). However, these practices are not evaluated regarding its effectiveness or how do they affect product quality. Besides, the studies do not demonstrate connections between the KM practices in the project level and the strategic level. The lack of connection between these levels can result in deviations from the company’s corporate strategy, wasted resources and irrelevant knowledge acquisition. This paper discusses how the strategic management can contribute to an integrated approach to KM in ASD; considering the organizational structure and the corporate strategy. Based on this discussion, we propose research areas that may help with planning KM strategies that can have their effectiveness measured and contribute to product quality. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018.
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| 7. |
- Papatheocharous, Efi, et al.
(författare)
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The GRADE taxonomy for supporting decision-making of asset selection in software-intensive system development
- 2018
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Ingår i: Information and Software Technology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0950-5849 .- 1873-6025. ; 100, s. 1-17
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context: The development of software-intensive systems includes many decisions involving various stakeholders with often conflicting interests and viewpoints. Objective: Decisions are rarely systematically documented and sporadically explored. This limits the opportunity for learning and improving on important decisions made in the development of software-intensive systems. Method: In this work, we enable support for the systematic documentation of decisions, improve their traceability and contribute to potentially improved decision-making in strategic, tactical and operational contexts. Results: We constructed a taxonomy for documentation supporting decision-making, called GRADE. GRADE was developed in a research project that required composition of a common dedicated language to make feasible the identification of new opportunities for better decision support and evaluation of multiple decision alternatives. The use of the taxonomy has been validated through thirty three decision cases from industry. Conclusion: This paper occupies this important yet greatly unexplored research gap by developing the GRADE taxonomy that serves as a common vocabulary to describe and classify decision-making with respect to architectural assets.
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| 8. |
- Unterkalmsteiner, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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A Taxonomy for Requirements Engineering and Software Test Alignment
- 2014
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Ingår i: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. - : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 1049-331X .- 1557-7392. ; 23:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Requirements Engineering and Software Testing are mature areas and have seen a lot of research. Nevertheless, their interactions have been sparsely explored beyond the concept of traceability. To fill this gap, we propose a definition of requirements engineering and software test (REST) alignment, a taxonomy that characterizes the methods linking the respective areas, and a process to assess alignment. The taxonomy can support researchers to identify new opportunities for investigation, as well as practitioners to compare alignment methods and evaluate alignment, or lack thereof. We constructed the REST taxonomy by analyzing alignment methods published in literature, iteratively validating the emerging dimensions. The resulting concept of an information dyad characterizes the exchange of information required for any alignment to take place. We demonstrate use of the taxonomy by applying it on five in-depth cases and illustrate angles of analysis on a set of thirteen alignment methods. In addition, we developed an assessment framework (REST-bench), applied it in an industrial assessment, and showed that it, with a low effort, can identify opportunities to improve REST alignment. Although we expect that the taxonomy can be further refined, we believe that the information dyad is a valid and useful construct to understand alignment. BORS F, 2009, P 1 INT C ADV SYST T, P123
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| 9. |
- Wohlin, Claes, et al.
(författare)
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Towards evidence-based decision-making for identification and usage of assets in composite software : A research roadmap
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Software. - : John Wiley and Sons Ltd. - 2047-7473 .- 2047-7481. ; 33:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Software engineering is decision intensive. Evidence-based software engineering is suggested for decision-making concerning the use of methods and technologies when developing software. Software development often includes the reuse of software assets, for example, open-source components. Which components to use have implications on the quality of the software (e.g., maintainability). Thus, research is needed to support decision-making for composite software. This paper presents a roadmap for research required to support evidence-based decision-making for choosing and integrating assets in composite software systems. The roadmap is developed as an output from a 5-year project in the area, including researchers from three different organizations. The roadmap is developed in an iterative process and is based on (1) systematic literature reviews of the area; (2) investigations of the state of practice, including a case survey and a survey; and (3) development and evaluation of solutions for asset identification and selection. The research activities resulted in identifying 11 areas in need of research. The areas are grouped into two categories: areas enabling evidence-based decision-making and those related to supporting the decision-making. The roadmap outlines research needs in these 11 areas. The research challenges and research directions presented in this roadmap are key areas for further research to support evidence-based decision-making for composite software. © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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| 10. |
- Afzal, Wasif, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic programming for cross-release fault count predictions in large and complex software projects
- 2010
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Ingår i: Evolutionary Computation and Optimization Algorithms in Software Engineering. - : IGI Global, Hershey, USA. - 9781615208098
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Software fault prediction can play an important role in ensuring software quality through efficient resource allocation. This could, in turn, reduce the potentially high consequential costs due to faults. Predicting faults might be even more important with the emergence of short-timed and multiple software releases aimed at quick delivery of functionality. Previous research in software fault prediction has indicated that there is a need i) to improve the validity of results by having comparisons among number of data sets from a variety of software, ii) to use appropriate model evaluation measures and iii) to use statistical testing procedures. Moreover, cross-release prediction of faults has not yet achieved sufficient attention in the literature. In an attempt to address these concerns, this paper compares the quantitative and qualitative attributes of 7 traditional and machine-learning techniques for modeling the cross-release prediction of fault count data. The comparison is done using extensive data sets gathered from a total of 7 multi-release open-source and industrial software projects. These software projects together have several years of development and are from diverse application areas, ranging from a web browser to a robotic controller software. Our quantitative analysis suggests that genetic programming (GP) tends to have better consistency in terms of goodness of fit and accuracy across majority of data sets. It also has comparatively less model bias. Qualitatively, ease of configuration and complexity are less strong points for GP even though it shows generality and gives transparent models. Artificial neural networks did not perform as well as expected while linear regression gave average predictions in terms of goodness of fit and accuracy. Support vector machine regression and traditional software reliability growth models performed below average on most of the quantitative evaluation criteria while remained on average for most of the qualitative measures.
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