The Experts below are selected from a list of 105 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform

Pilar Rodriguez - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • data driven and tool supported elicitation of quality requirements in agile companies
    Software Quality Journal, 2020
    Co-Authors: Marc Oriol, Silverio Martinezfernandez, Woubshet Behutiye, Carles Farre, Rafal Kozik, Pertti Seppanen, Anna Maria Vollmer, Pilar Rodriguez
    Abstract:

    Quality requirements (QRs) are a key artifact needed to ensure the quality and success of a software system. Despite their importance, QRs rarely get the same degree of attention as their functional counterpart in agile software development (ASD) projects. Moreover, crucial information that can be obtained from software development repositories (e.g., JIRA, GitHub) is not fully exploited, or is even neglected, in QR elicitation activities. In this work, we present a data-driven tooled approach for the semi-automatic generation and documentation of QRs in the context of ASD. The approach is based on the declaration of thresholds over quality-related issues, whose violation triggers user-defined alerts. These alerts are used to browse a catalog of QR patterns that are presented to the ASD team by means of a dashboard that implements several analysis techniques. Once selected, the patterns generate the QRs, which are documented and stored in the Product Backlog. The full approach is implemented via a configurable platform. Over the course of 1 year, four companies differing in size and profile followed this approach and deployed the platform in their premises to semi-automatically generate QRs in several projects. We used standardized measurement instruments to elicit the perception of 22 practitioners regarding their use of the tool. The quantitative and qualitative analyses yielded positive results; i.e., the practitioners’ perception with regard to the tool’s understandability, reliability, usefulness, and relevance was positive. We conclude that the results show potential for future adoption of data-driven elicitation of QRs in agile companies and encourage other practitioners to use the presented tool and adopt it in their companies.

Cécile Péraire - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • The Product Backlog
    2019 IEEE ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2019
    Co-Authors: Todd Sedano, Paul Ralph, Cécile Péraire
    Abstract:

    Context: One of the most common artifacts in contemporary software projects is a Product Backlog comprising user stories, bugs, chores or other work items. However, little research has investigated how the Backlog is generated or the precise role it plays in a project. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to determine what is a Product Backlog, what is its role, and how does it emerge? Method: Following Constructivist Grounded Theory, we conducted a two-year, five-month participant-observation study of eight software development projects at Pivotal, a large, international software company. We interviewed 56 software engineers, Product designers, and Product managers.We conducted a survey of 27 Product designers. We alternated between analysis and theoretical sampling until achieving theoretical saturation. Results: We observed 13 practices and 6 obstacles related to Product Backlog generation. Limitations: Grounded Theory does not support statistical generalization. While the proposed theory of Product Backlogs appears widely applicable, organizations with different software development cultures may use different practices. Conclusion: The Product Backlog is simultaneously a model of work to be done and a boundary object that helps bridge the gap between the processes of generating user stories and realizing them in working code. It emerges from sensemaking (the team making sense of the project context) and coevolution (a cognitive process where the team simultaneously refines its understanding of the problematic context and fledgling solution concepts).

Claes Wohlin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • The effect of moving from a plan-driven to an incremental software development approach with agile practices
    Empirical Software Engineering, 2010
    Co-Authors: Kai Petersen, Claes Wohlin
    Abstract:

    So far, only few in-depth studies focused on the direct comparison of process models in general, and between plan-driven and incremental/agile approaches in particular. That is, it is not made explicit what the effect is of moving from one model to another model. Furthermore, there is limited evidence on advantages and issues encountered in agile software development, this is specifically true in the context of large-scale development. The objective of the paper is to investigate how the perception of bottlenecks, unnecessary work, and rework (from hereon referred to as issues) changes when migrating from a plan-driven to an incremental software development approach with agile practices (flexible Product Backlog, face-to-face interaction, and frequent integration), and how commonly perceived these practices are across different systems and development roles. The context in which the objective should be achieved is large-scale development with a market-driven focus. The selection of the context was based on the observation in related work that mostly small software development projects were investigated and that the investigation was focused on one agile model (eXtreme programming). A case study was conducted at a development site of Ericsson AB, located in Sweden in the end of 2007. In total 33 interviews were conducted in order to investigate the perceived change when migrating from plan-driven to incremental and agile software development, the interviews being the primary source of evidence. For triangulation purposes measurements collected by Ericsson were considered, the measurements relating to unnecessary work (amount of discarded requirements) and rework (data on testing efficiency and maintenance effort). Triangulation in this context means that the measurements were used to confirm the perceived changes with an additional data source. In total 64 issues were identified, 24 being of general nature and the remaining 40 being local and therefore unique to individual’s opinions or a specific system. The most common ones were documented and analyzed in detail. The commonality refers to how many persons in different roles and across the systems studied have mentioned the issues for each of the process models. The majority of the most common issues relates to plan-driven development. We also identified common issues remaining for agile after the migration, which were related to testing lead-time, test coverage, software release, and coordination overhead. Improvements were identified as many issues commonly raised for the plan-driven approach were not raised anymore for the incremental and agile approach. It is concluded that the recent introduction (start in 2005 with the study being conducted in the end of 2007) of incremental and agile practices brings added values in comparison to the plan-driven approach, which is evident from the absence of critical issues that are encountered in plan-driven development.

Silverio Martinezfernandez - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • data driven and tool supported elicitation of quality requirements in agile companies
    Software Quality Journal, 2020
    Co-Authors: Marc Oriol, Silverio Martinezfernandez, Woubshet Behutiye, Carles Farre, Rafal Kozik, Pertti Seppanen, Anna Maria Vollmer, Pilar Rodriguez
    Abstract:

    Quality requirements (QRs) are a key artifact needed to ensure the quality and success of a software system. Despite their importance, QRs rarely get the same degree of attention as their functional counterpart in agile software development (ASD) projects. Moreover, crucial information that can be obtained from software development repositories (e.g., JIRA, GitHub) is not fully exploited, or is even neglected, in QR elicitation activities. In this work, we present a data-driven tooled approach for the semi-automatic generation and documentation of QRs in the context of ASD. The approach is based on the declaration of thresholds over quality-related issues, whose violation triggers user-defined alerts. These alerts are used to browse a catalog of QR patterns that are presented to the ASD team by means of a dashboard that implements several analysis techniques. Once selected, the patterns generate the QRs, which are documented and stored in the Product Backlog. The full approach is implemented via a configurable platform. Over the course of 1 year, four companies differing in size and profile followed this approach and deployed the platform in their premises to semi-automatically generate QRs in several projects. We used standardized measurement instruments to elicit the perception of 22 practitioners regarding their use of the tool. The quantitative and qualitative analyses yielded positive results; i.e., the practitioners’ perception with regard to the tool’s understandability, reliability, usefulness, and relevance was positive. We conclude that the results show potential for future adoption of data-driven elicitation of QRs in agile companies and encourage other practitioners to use the presented tool and adopt it in their companies.

Todd Sedano - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • The Product Backlog
    2019 IEEE ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2019
    Co-Authors: Todd Sedano, Paul Ralph, Cécile Péraire
    Abstract:

    Context: One of the most common artifacts in contemporary software projects is a Product Backlog comprising user stories, bugs, chores or other work items. However, little research has investigated how the Backlog is generated or the precise role it plays in a project. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to determine what is a Product Backlog, what is its role, and how does it emerge? Method: Following Constructivist Grounded Theory, we conducted a two-year, five-month participant-observation study of eight software development projects at Pivotal, a large, international software company. We interviewed 56 software engineers, Product designers, and Product managers.We conducted a survey of 27 Product designers. We alternated between analysis and theoretical sampling until achieving theoretical saturation. Results: We observed 13 practices and 6 obstacles related to Product Backlog generation. Limitations: Grounded Theory does not support statistical generalization. While the proposed theory of Product Backlogs appears widely applicable, organizations with different software development cultures may use different practices. Conclusion: The Product Backlog is simultaneously a model of work to be done and a boundary object that helps bridge the gap between the processes of generating user stories and realizing them in working code. It emerges from sensemaking (the team making sense of the project context) and coevolution (a cognitive process where the team simultaneously refines its understanding of the problematic context and fledgling solution concepts).