José Augusto Fabri

Scrum solo: Software process for individual development

In Brazil there are several small software companies with only one developer (solo developer). In a survey conducted by Secretaria de Política de Informática of Ministério de Ciência e Tecnologia has been indicated that about 60% of market consolidated software companies started their activities with a single developer. The majority of these developers does not formally make use of a software process. At this point, this work aims to present a formal software process for solo developers - the Scrum Solo. Initially, the defined procedure was experienced in software development for the Laboratório de Inovação of Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. Afterwards, several students made use of Scrum Solo to elaborate their completion of course works. Nowadays, plenty software companies working with individual development benefit from the process described in this document.

Applying mindstorm in teaching and learning process and software project management

Some problems related to software process and project management improvement programs are detected during their implementation. Companies from the software projects segment have difficulty dealing with software Project management and quality models (CMMI, MPS-BR and PM-BOK) since the ways to implement the key areas of the process and the good practices inherent to Project management are interpreted with difficulty. This can be attested by the analysis of CMMI and CHAOS reports. In order to minimize the difficulties detected by the reports, the aim of this paper is to apply Mindstorms to the teaching and learning of software process and project management (key concepts used during process improvement and implementation). To validate the efficacy of the technique introduced in this paper, 8 experiments were carried out including university, high school courses and companies from the software production sector. Experimental results attest that the process of knowledge transfer in process and management using Mindstorms led to greater motivation, satisfaction and concepts consolidation.

Implementation of Software Residency at a graduation course

This paper presents the implementation of Software Residency at a graduation course focused in Software Development and Management in a Software Factory. Software Residency follows the same line of medical residency, at a medicine course. In this case, software residency has the objective to promote experience for students, inside a software development real environment, with well defined quality policies and with the goal to promote the dissemination of software quality, project management and production process concepts. In this course, the student actively participates on a software development project at a standard software factory (located in the university) or at some company previously selected by the university. We will present the qualitative and quantitative results of the experience we had conducting the graduation course focused in Software Development and Management in a Software Factory. The course was taken in 2008 and 2009 at a Brazilian public university. The objective of the course was to provide complementary knowledge to the students in the areas of Information Technology, Software Engineering and Project Management, focusing on software residency inside a software factory environment.

Awareness, collaboration and comunication's tools for distributed software development: A systematic mapping

Context: Increased competitiveness in the market, coupled with other factors such as the lack of skilled labor and cost reduction, makes the distributed software development a common practice in nowadays. Aims: With the complex scenario involving DSD environment (distributed software development), we aim to research tools to supporting this challenging environment. Method: We use a systematic mapping, in order to select primary studies and later refine the search, in order to show solutions and tools that support this scenario. Result: As a result, we found 20 tools divided into areas, which greatly facilitated the understanding and study, it will substantially succeed in DSD environments. Conclusion: We conclude that there are several tools for DSD scenario, and that are of high relevance in supporting collective awareness, collaboration, knowledge and communication.

The use of Comic Books in the Software requirements specification

Some of the greatest challenges for Software requirements elicitation are related with the identification of what is needed to be developed and with the understanding of the organization business rules. In this context, this paper aims to suggest the use of Comic Books in the process of requirements elicitation within a business model and evaluate the results of applying this technique. To reach this target, authors proposed a scenario simulation method using Comic Books. Two experiments were applied to validate the proposal outlined in this paper. The first involved 8 professionals from a software development company and the second involved 17 professionals. All those professionals developed a comic book in order to map a business process within their work environment. In the end of the experiment, those professionals have answered a questionnaire, analyzing the comic books which had been developed. The results have been assessed in a positive way, showing thereby that the use of comic books facilitates the details and requirements elicitation process.

Model for monitoring and control of software production in distributed projects

An increasing number of companies are distributing their software production processes around the world, for productivity gains, cost savings and quality improvements. Software engineers have recognized the great influence of this form of work and are looking for models to facilitate projects with distributed teams. In addition to the engineers also project managers have faced challenges at different levels in the development of distributed software (DDS). This work aims to propose a model to monitor and control projects in DDS, using as a basis the Toyotism and version control systems to assist the project manager. The method used to validate the proposed model was experimental, that simulated a real DDS environment, mobilizing 40 developers. For an initial application, the model showed positive results, as the generated artifacts as well as the interplay of the teams.

A Distributed Software Development Environment Dynamics Model

This article presents a model of the distributed software envelopment environment. This work used the multiple case studies for create this model. The dynamics and the properties discussed in this work help as guide framework for the network managers. For the stakeholders who are in the strategy of the network, this mapping constitutes the understanding and positioning of the network as a whole and for the sites, represents the group of relationships among them.

A process for distributed software evolution: a proprietary software case study

Proprietary enterprise software is commonly embedded in multinational organizations and therefore has multiple sources of global or local demand. This type of software is subject to constant evolutions motivated by improvements in the features or by changes in the legal and economic context of its environment. Problems arising from the demand for requirements are associated with the suitability of a particular local requirement to its global context, for example: tax rules are characteristic of a specific country while a business rule can achieve every global structure. In addition, software customization can be implemented by the software producer, external partners, programmers allocated within the customer company, and so on. The coordination of this scenario is considered critical for the productive sector company that uses proprietary enterprise software. If the software does not evolve, the company processes can be temporarily compromised, and the software becomes obsolete. We report a case study of a large proprietary ERP system in a multinational company located in Brazil that is among the three largest exporters in its market segment. As a contribution, we present the current structure of the distributed evolution process of the software in question and how the stakeholder coordination of this scenario occurs.

A scrum-based process to distributed projects in multidisciplinary teams: a case study

It is a usual practice for software companies to develop their products using Distributed Software Development (DSD). Moreover, many times the software companies work with multidisciplinary teams to satisfy their customer demands. These multidisciplinary teams are composed of IT professionals and professionals from multiple areas not related to software development or IT. There are several problems associated with communication and information dissemination that severely compromise the software product development. This work presents a case study of a company that uses DSD. The Scrum-based process shown in this work promotes a communication improvement between the client company functional areas.

Teaching crowdsourcing development in undergraduate courses a comparative study

The crowdsourcing (CS) is a software development practice that increases in the productive sector. This environment is supported by a platform which relates the crowd, the provider, the sponsor and the developer. Microtasks are executed by people, and these are joining in a large project. The teaching of crowdsourcing in undergraduate courses is minimal compared to the teaching of traditional Distributed Software Development (DSD). This paper shows the comparison among the teaching of DSD and the teaching of CS. We executed two experiments for verifying the differences among its. The results show these differences in the point of view of the teachers, students and content.