Alexandre Vasconcelos

Extracting and evolving code in product lines with aspect-oriented programming

For some organizations, the proactive approach to product lines may be inadequate due to prohibitively high investment and risks. As an alternative, the extractive and the reactive approaches are incremental, offering moderate costs and risks, and therefore sometimes may be more appropriate. However, combining these two approaches demands a more detailed process at the implementation level. This paper presents a method and a tool for extracting a product line and evolving it, relying on a strategy that uses refactorings expressed in terms of simpler programming laws. The approach is evaluated with a case study in the domain of games for mobile devices, where variations are handled with aspect-oriented constructs.

Agile Software Development and CMMI: What We Do Not Know about Dancing with Elephants

In this paper we discuss how the merging of Agile Methodologies and Software Quality Models in same process today is ignoring many important aspects of both approaches. The inconsideration of these points results in a rigid integration of Agile and Quality Models that limits the full potential of their synergies. Ignoring such important items however does not necessarily means that they are not being utilized in the process, it normally indicates their utilization in an ad-hoc way. To explore this topic, we collected qualitative and quantitative data from literature and two Brazilian companies which work with agile and XP.

Using Function Points in Agile Projects

Agile development has become increasingly common in the organizational software development environment. This paper examines whether function points would be compatible with story points on agile projects. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether function points are a relevant measure of velocity. Although any unit of measure can be used, this paper contrasts theoretical concepts about Story Points (SP) and function points (FP) as units for measuring size. It was also realized a statistical correlation between FP and SP using 2191 stories and 18 iterations in a Brazilian public agency. The conclusion drawn from this study was that function points, in that particular case, could be related with the initial value of the Story Points found after the planning poker.

Assessing agile methods: an empirical study

Agile software processes emerged to address the issue of building software on time and within the planned budget. To adopt an agile process, it is imperative to analyze and evaluate its effectiveness in supporting high quality software development while complying with stringent time constraints. In this paper we describe an agile method for Web-based application development (XWebProcess) and an experiment conducted with a group of forty senior undergraduate students to assess the quality/speed effectiveness of the proposed method vis-à-vis the effectiveness of Extreme Programming (XP). The results have shown that the process proposed is equally agile when compared to XP, moreover, surveys conducted as part of the experiment pointed out that XWebProcess is more suitable to Web development in dimensions such as requirements gathering, user interface and navigation design, and software testing, therefore leading to better quality software.

Towards a CMMI-Compliant Goal-Oriented Software Process through Model-Driven Development

The i* framework is a Goal-Oriented Requirement Engineering (GORE) approach that is widely applied at academic level. However, its application to industrial scenarios is limited. For the application of i* in concrete software development process, an alternative is to transform the defined requirements models into initial input models to be used by Model-Driven Development (MDD) approaches. However, this does not assure that the resultant development process will be sound enough to motivate real development companies to adopt this GORE solution. To tackle this issue, we propose the alignment of GORE and MDD solutions with software process maturity models, which are strongly adopted and applied by industry. In particular, we have considered an approach that integrates the i* framework into an industrially-applied MDD solution to obtain a development process (that goes from requirements to the final software code), which is compliant with the CMMI-DEV maturity model.

Towards CMMI-compliant Business Process-Driven Requirements Engineering

Modeling of business processes has been both recommended by academia and adopted by industry for elicitation of system requirements. Software process maturity models are also relevant in industry, and compliance with them is a major concern for many organizations. Therefore, business process-driven requirements engineering approaches should aim to comply with those maturity models, and how the approaches comply or not should be determined. However, no work has addressed these issues properly. This paper proposes a compliance analysis, based on a maturity model, of business process-based requirements engineering approaches as a first step to tackle these issues. This type of analysis allows practitioners to know if a specific approach meets their needs, and researchers to identify room for improvement in approaches in order to try to increase their industrial acceptance. As an example, the compliance of an existing approach with the requirements development process area of CMMI-DEV is analyzed. The analysis has allowed us to determine the characteristics of the approach that meet CMMI-DEV, and to identify improvement opportunities so that the approach fulfills further industry needs. Furthermore, the results of the analysis apply to other approaches.

Towards a Model about Quality of Software Requirements Specification in Agile Projects

The quality of Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) is important to gain a competitive advantage in the software industry. Although the use of agile methods has grown in recent years, empirical studies conducted in industry identified several problems related to SRS in the context of agile projects. The goal of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of the quality of SRS in Agile Software Development (ASD) and build an explanatory model about it. We use a mixed method research strategy for creating a rich description of the factors that affect the quality of SRS in ASD. First, we conducted a systematic mapping study, then we performed a cross-case analysis of two software organizations: one small private organization and a large public organization. We built an initial model from this analysis. The findings were that SRS in agile projects should be directed to the development team, so it should be close to what will be implemented. The fragmentation of the description of the requirements in various artifacts and excessive detail were considered factors that compromise the quality of the SRS.

Software Process Improvement in Agile Software Development A Systematic Literature Review

It is recognized the relevance and importance that software process improvement (SPI) and agile development have gained in the field of software engineering. Both are approaches that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a software development organization and to enhance software products. This paper aims to identify and characterize SPI in agile environments through a systematic literature review, including 423 papers published between2001 and March/2013. The selected papers were classified according to SPI aspects. Distinct approaches to Agile SPI were identified, the most common is to adapt traditional approaches of SPI in agile environments, but there are novel approaches such as improving people behavior or even improving practices being innovative in SPI consideration. Conducting SPI initiatives in agile environments is quite different from the traditional one, becoming necessary to adapt existing SPI approaches or creating new methods. The main discussion about agile SPI is: what the role of SPI in a context with people and interactions are more valued than process and tools?

The Impact of Human Factors on Agile Projects

This research aims to provide more evidences about the impact of human factors in agile software projects. In this light we have conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to investigate which human factors impact agile projects and conducted a survey in software companies in order to verify their perceptions. Considering the SLR, we found 48 resulting studies where most cited human factors were: Communication (23 papers), Collaboration (6 papers) and Trust (8 papers). The survey was answered for 186 companies that consider communication the most important factor. So we conclude that Communication, Trust and Collaboration are important factors in projects using agile methods but others factors need to be more investigated due the perception of its value to the industry.

The Confidence of Agile Assessment Methods in the Context of Software Process Improvement

with the advent of CMMI in the late 1990s, software companies tried to use a kind of score to rank themselves in the market. Being a CMMI level five company for a long time represented the epitome of highly qualified company. This phenomenon is also emerging in the agile software development with the emergence of methods such as Nokia or comparative test agility. This paper presents an analysis of how these methods are placed in the context of agile software development and its contribution to the improvement of software process in the same context from a case study developed in real companies.