Hermano Perrelli de Moura

Elicitation of Communication Inherent Risks in Distributed Software Development

The lack of risk management, communication and understanding of the requirements are actually the main factors related to the low rate of success in software development, more specifically in distributed projects given the characteristics of this type of development. Considering distributed software projects, the main goal of this paper is to show communication inherent risks empirically identified in such type of project, and the strategies and recommendations adopted to mitigate them. For example, we found that to solve misunderstandings that may occur due to the cultural diversity and language we must encourage frequent communication. This frequent communication does not only increases the communication effectiveness, but also develops the cohesion among the distributed teams, resulting in an improvement of the informal communication and establishment of the confidence among members of the distributed team. These findings were obtained from an exploratory empirical qualitative research that collected interview data from project leaders and managers from several software projects from distinct companies. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the influence of communication process in DSD. It also contributes to the industrial practice so that they can use the results to improve the communication management, minimizing potential problems.

STATE OF THE ART OF AGILE GOVERNANCE: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Context: Agility at the business level requires Information Technology (IT) environment flexible and customizable, as well as effective and responsive governance in order to deliver value faster, better, and cheaper to the business. Objective: To understand better this context, our paper seeks to investigate how the domain of agile governance has evolved, as well as to derive implications for research and practice. Method: We conducted a systematic review about the state of art of the agile governance up to and including 2013. Our search strategy identified 1992 studies in 10 databases, of which 167 had the potential to answer our research questions. Results: We organized the studies into four major groups: software engineering, enterprise, manufacturing and multidisciplinary; classifying them into 16 emerging categories. As a result, the review provides a convergent definition for agile governance, six metaprinciples, and a map of findings organized by topic and classified by relevance and convergence. Conclusion: The found evidence lead us to believe that agile governance is a relatively new, wide and multidisciplinary area focused on organizational performance and competitiveness that needs to be more intensively studied. Finally, we made improvements and additions to the methodological approach for systematic reviews and qualitative studies.

Agile governance in Information and Communication Technologies: shifting paradigms

This paper presents the basis of the Agile Governance in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which is based on Agile Software Engineering Methodologies principles and values. Its development was done through a systematic review process, supported by Bibliometrics and Scientometrics methods and techniques, where the Critical Success Factors (CSF) of ICT Governance projects and the principles of the Agile Manifesto were analyzed. Next, through an inductive approach, focused on the convergence between the concepts involved, it was analyzed how agile principles could help to minimize the gap between ICT and business. Evidences of their occurrence were taken through a Conceptual Survey Research. As a result, the foundations and concepts of Agile Governance in ICT were defined and, finally, the development of a reference model was proposed as a future work.

An Approach Related to Uncertainty in Software Projects

A number of recent studies confirm that change continues to occur in project management in both the professional and research fields. Although project management has become a core business process for many firms at strategic and operational level it is no secret that many projects still fail, and one reason for this may be due to a lack of knowledge regarding project uncertainties. The goal of this article is to understand what gives rise to uncertainty, to recognize its symptoms and explore strategies for controlling it. This article offers a new classification to areas of uncertainty in software projects, and our aim is to assist project managers and staff to reduce uncertainty and thereby contribute to commercial project success.

Motivational Factors for Distributed Software Development Teams

Over the last decades it has been observed that many companies around the world have started to adopt Distributed Software Development (DSD) to create competitive advantages. Aiming to increase such advantages, many of these companies add some team motivation techniques to DSD. However, the motivation of DSD teams reveals some peculiarities that should be taken into account. This paper presents a literature review on motivational factors in distributed software development. More specifically, the goal was to identify and categorize key success factors in the motivation of distributed teams. We have identified eleven success factors. We categorized each factor according to a proposal integrating Maslows and Herzbergs motivational theories. The findings show that the factors that motivate distributed software teams are related to different levels of motivation. Despite the distinct levels each factor is associated, we concluded that even the factors related to higher motivational levels are dependent on the most elementary ones. These findings suggest that motivational factors have to be carefully considered when working with distributed teams.

The ABACO System - An Algebraic Based Action COmpiler

We show the main features of the ABACO system, a semantic directed compiler generator, that produces object-oriented compilers from action semantics descriptions of programming languages.

GAME: Governance for Agile Management of Enterprises: A Management Model for Agile Governance

Agility at the business and organizational levels presents a challenge for many enterprises. Business agility demands the ability to sense and respond to changes in competitive environments, whereas organizational agility demands the dexterity to sense broader market opportunities and respond with changes that are organization-wide. These challenges require an information and communication technologies (ICT or IT) environment flexible and customizable simultaneously with the coordination across multiple organization units, also demands effective and responsive governance in order to deliver faster, better, and cheaper value to the business. Driven by these challenges, the goals of the candidates PhD thesis is to conceive, define, and evaluate a management model for agile governance on global development environments. Preliminary insights suggest the models format should be a corporative game, applying constructs of gamification, fun theory and game theory, generating a practical approach to facilitate the implementation of a collaborative and adaptive culture, in order to establish relational integration mechanisms as well as a better understanding of how these arrangements can help the organizations to attain greater enterprise agility and support its overall strategy.

A Systematic Review of Uncertainties in Software Project Management

It is no secret that many projects fail, regardless of the business sector, software projects are notoriously disaster victims, not necessarily because of technological failure, but more often due to their uncertainties. The threats identified by uncertainty in day-to-day of a project are real and immediate and the stakes in a project are often high. This paper presents a systematic review about software project management uncertainties. It helps to identify the difficulties and the actions that can minimize the uncertainties effects in the projects and how managers and teams can prepare themselves for the challenges of their projects scenario, with the aim of contributing to the improvement of project management in organizations as well as contributing to project success.

A Systematic Tertiary Study of Communication in Distributed Software Development Projects

Distributed Software Development (DSD) is characterized by physical distance and/or different time-zones among those involved in the process of developing software[1]. This paper presents a systematic tertiary study about communication in distributed development that aimed to identify and to synthesize factors that influence the effectiveness of communication in such settings and its effects in the design of such projects.

Enterprise Architecture Analysis and Network Thinking: A Literature Review

Previous works in enterprise architecture (EA) literature has mostly dealt with EA principles, qualitative aspects like EA value and benefits, modeling efforts like Archimate, and methodologies for EA implementation like The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and others. Today, these are all common subjects in EA literature. In this paper, we are going in a complementary direction, aiming to contribute towards fostering a set of EA analysis methods based on network measures, considering the enterprise as a complex network. Thus, we present a central question: What is known about the application of network measures in order to analyze components and relationships in the EA context? To answer this question, we perform a broad literature review and create a state-of-the-art description of EA network analysis, applied measures and its main achievements. We also provide a research agenda for the field.