Agustín Yagüe

Agile User Stories Enriched with Usability

Usability is a critical quality factor. Therefore, like traditional software teams, agile teams have to address usability to properly catch their users experience. There exists an interesting debate in the agile and usability communities about how to achieve this integration. Our aim is to contribute to this debate by discussing the incorporation of particular usability recommendations into user stories, one of the most popular artifacts for communicating agile requirements. In this paper, we explore the implications of usability for both the structure of and the process for defining user stories. We discuss what changes the incorporation of particular usability issues may introduce in a user story. Although our findings require more empirical validation, we think that they are a good starting point for further research on this line.

Software Startups - A Research Agenda

Software startup companies develop innovative, software-intensive products within limited timeframes and with few resources, searching for sustainable and scalable business models. Software startup ...

Large-scale smart grids as system of systems

Smart Grids are advanced power networks that introduce intelligent management, control, and operation systems to address the new challenges generated by the growing energy demand and the appearance of renewal energies. In the literature, Smart Grids are presented as an exemplar SoS: systems composed of large heterogeneous and independent systems that leverage emergent behavior from their interaction. Smart Grids are currently scaling up the electricity service to millions of customers. These Smart Grids are known as Large-Scale Smart Grids. From the experience in several projects about Large-Scale Smart Grids, this paper defines Large-Scale Smart Grids as a SoS that integrate a set of SoS and conceptualizes the properties of this SoS. In addition, the paper defines the architectural framework for deploying the software architectures of Large-Scale Smart Grid SoS.

Identifying Potential Risks and Benefits of Using Cloud in Distributed Software Development

Cloud-based infrastructure has been increasingly adopted by the industry in distributed software development (DSD) environments. Its proponents claim that its several benefits include reduced cost, increased speed and greater productivity in software development. Empirical evaluations, however, are in the nascent stage of examining both the benefits and the risks of cloud-based infrastructure. The objective of this paper is to identify potential benefits and risks of using cloud in a DSD project conducted by teams based in Helsinki and Madrid. A cross-case qualitative analysis is performed based on focus groups conducted at the Helsinki and Madrid sites. Participants’ observations are used to supplement the analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that the main benefits of using cloud are rapid development, continuous integration, cost savings, code sharing, and faster ramp-up. The key risks determined by the project are dependencies, unavailability of access to the cloud, code commitment and integration, technical debt, and additional support costs. The results revealed that if such environments are not planned and set up carefully, the benefits of using cloud in DSD projects might be overshadowed by the risks associated with it.

Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies

Agile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies.

An analysis of techniques and methods for technical debt management: a reflection from the architecture perspective

Technical debt is a metaphor referring to the consequences of weak software development. Managing technical debt is necessary in order to keep it under control, and several techniques have been developed with the goal of accomplishing this. However, available techniques have grown disperse and managers lack guidance. This paper covers this gap by providing a systematic mapping of available techniques and methods for technical debt management, covering architectural debt, and identifying existing gaps that prevent to manage technical debt efficiently.

Change-Impact Driven Agile Architecting

Software architecture is a key factor to scale up Agile Software Development (ASD) in large software-intensive systems. Currently, software architectures are more often approached through mechanisms that enable to incrementally design and evolve software architectures (aka. agile architecting). Agile architecting should be a light-weight decision-making process, which could be achieved by providing knowledge to assist agile architects in reasoning about changes. This paper presents the novel solution of using change-impact knowledge as the main driver for agile architecting. The solution consists of a Change Impact Analysis technique and a set of models to assist agile architects in the change (decision-making) process by retrieving the change-impact architectural knowledge resulting from adding or changing features iteration after iteration. To validate our approach, we have put our solution into practice by running a project of a metering management system in electric power networks in an i-smart software factory.

A Generic Gateway for Testing Heterogeneous Components in Acceptance Testing Tools

Acceptance testing tools and Systems Under Test (SUT) require a gateway that will set up the communication link between them. Nevertheless, SUTs are often large systems composed of heterogeneous components that are executed in heterogeneous networks and platforms. Therefore, a non trivial communication problem between testing tools and these SUT heterogeneous components arises. A significant effort is invested in designing and implementing gateways for each specific component interface to cope with heterogeneity. This problem may be addressed through the use of middleware technologies that hide heterogeneity. However, this solution is too specific for each SUT domain. It may require a noteworthy effort to support the wide range of currently available interface standards that are provided by the different platforms and networks. An approach for testing heterogeneous components based on a generic gateway is presented in this paper. The generic gateway implements a service-oriented middleware named OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative). OSGi helps to solve the heterogeneity problem and reduces the impact of designing a gateway for each specific SUT domain. The solution has been validated using the acceptance testing tool TOPEN (Test and Operation ENvironment) in a home automation scenario.

Optimizing Agile Processes by Early Identification of Hidden Requirements

In recent years, Agile methodologies have increased their relevance in software development, through the application of different testing techniques like unit or acceptance testing. Tests play in agile methodologies a similar role that in waterfall process models: check conformance. Nevertheless the scenario is not the same The contribution of this paper is to explain how the process can be modified to do early identification of hidden requirements (HR) using testing techniques in agile methodologies, specifically using failed tests. The result is an optimized agile process where it may be possible to reach the desired level of functionality in less iterations, but with a similar level of quality. Furthermore it might be necessary to re-think process elements role, e.g. tests, in the Agile context not assuming waterfall definition and scope.

An exploratory study in communication in Agile Global Software Development

Global software development (GSD) is gaining ever more relevance. Although communication is key in the exchange of information between team members, multi-site software development has introduced additional obstacles (different time-zones and cultures, IT infrastructure, etc.) and delays into the act of communication, which is already problematic. Communication is even more critical in the case of Agile Global Software Development (AGSD) in which communication plays a primary role. This paper reports an exploratory study of the effects of tools supporting communication in AGSD. More precisely, this paper analyses the perception of team members about communication infrastructures in AGSD. The research question to which this study responds concerns how development teams perceive the communication infrastructure while developing products using agile methodologies. Most previous studies have dealt with communication support from a highly technological media tool perspective. In this research work, instead, observations were obtained from three perspectives: communication among team members, communication of the status of the development process, and communication of the status of the progress of the product under development. It has been possible to show that team members perceive advantages to using media tools that make them feel in practice that teams are co-located, such as smartboards supported by efficient video-tools, and combining media tools with centralized repository tools, with information from the process development and product characteristics, that allow distributed teams to effectively share information about the status of the project/process/product during the development process in order to overcome some of the still existing problems in communication in AGSD.