Pádraig O'Leary

Agile software product lines: a systematic mapping study

Background: Software product lines and Agile methods have been an effective solution for dealing with the growing complexity of software and handling competitive needs of software organizations. They also share common goals, such as improving productivity, reducing time‐to‐market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. There has been growing interest in whether the integration of Agile and SPL could provide further benefits and solve many of the outstanding issues surrounding software development. Objective: This study investigates the state‐of‐the‐art in Agile SPL approaches, while identifying gaps in current research and synthesizing available evidence. It also provides a basis for a deeper understanding of the issues involved in the integration of Agile and SPL. Method: A mapping study was undertaken to analyze the relation between Agile and SPL methods. A set of four research questions were defined in which the 32 primary studies were evaluated. Results: This study provides insights into the integration of Agile and SPL approaches, it identifies the current gaps in the research, synthesize the available evidence and propose specific Agile methods and practices for integration in SPL. Conclusions: In general, few studies describe the underlying Agile principles being adopted by proposed Agile SPL solutions. The most common Agile practices proposed by the studies came from the XP and Scrum methods, particularly in the pro‐active SPL strategy. We identify certain Agile methods that are being overlooked by the Agile SPL community, and propose specific SPL practices areas suitable for adoption of Agile practices. Copyright

An agile process model for product derivation in software product line engineering

Software product lines (SPL) and Agile practices have emerged as new paradigms for developing software. Both approaches share common goals; such as improving productivity, reducing time to market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. These common goals provide the motivation for this research. We believe that integrating Agile practices into SPL can bring a balance between agility and formalism. However, there has been a little research on such integration. We have been researching the potential of integrating Agile approaches in one of the key SPL process areas, product derivation (PD). In this paper, we present an outline of our Agile process model for PD that was developed through industry‐based case study research. Copyright

Making Software Engineering Research Relevant

Practitioners perceive research on global software engineering as useful, yet they rarely read academic articles on the topic. Instead, they look to books, blogs, colleagues, forums, and their own experiences for solutions. Making research more relevant to practice requires a new mindset.

The Practitioner's Perspective on Clinical Pathway Support Systems

Context. Clinical pathway support system can ease the clinician burden by prompting appropriate actions at different stages of a patient consultation. However, while the attitudes of clinicians towards the use of these systems are overwhelmingly positive, system designers still encounter significant challenges to their use in the clinical enviroment. Aims. To explore the role of support systems in healthcare and whether the concept of decision support for clinical pathways is valid. Method. We conducted nineteen evaluations, interviews and questionnaires, with patient-facing healthcare professionals on the use of support systems in a clinical setting. Results. The results highlighted the perceived benefits and weaknesses of support systems. These results are presented as a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. Conclusions. While the logic of support systems in healthcare is evident, in the reality of clinical practice, other factors influence the success of these systems. This has significant implications for the acceptability and the relevance of support systems. The successful implementation and judicious use of these systems will need to develop an understanding of practitioner concerns.

The Pro-PD Process Model for Product Derivation within software product lines

Background: The derivation of products from a software product line is a time consuming and expensive activity. Despite recognition that an effective process could alleviate many of the difficulties associated with product derivation, existing approaches have different scope, emphasise different aspects of the derivation process and are frequently too specialised to serve as a general solution. Objective: To define a systematic process that will provide a structured approach to the derivation of products from a software product line, based on a set of tasks, roles and artefacts. Method: Through a series of research stages using sources in industry and academia, this research has developed a Process Model for Product Derivation (Pro-PD). We document the evidence for the construction of Pro-PD and the design decisions taken. We evaluate Pro-PD through comparison with prominent existing approaches and standards. Results: This research presents a Process Model for Product Derivation (Pro-PD). Pro-PD describes the tasks, roles and work artefacts used to derive products from a software product line. Conclusion: In response to a need for methodological support, we developed Pro-PD (Process Model for Product Derivation). Pro-PD was iteratively developed and evaluated through four research stages. Our research is a first step toward an evidence-based methodology for product derivation and a starting point for the definition of a product derivation approach.

Software product line scoping and requirements engineering in a small and medium-sized enterprise: An industrial case study

HighlightsWe described a detailed qualitative study on software product line scoping and requirements engineering.We examine weaknesses regarding the iterativeness, adaptability, and communication.Agile methods can mitigate the iterativeness, adaptability, and communication weaknesses. Software product line (SPL) engineering has been applied in several domains, especially in large-scale software development. Given the benefits experienced and reported, SPL engineering has increasingly garnered interest from small to medium-sized companies. It is possible to find a wide range of studies reporting on the challenges of running a SPL project in large companies. However, very little reports exist that consider the situation for small to medium-sized enterprises and these studies try develop universal truths for SPL without lessons learned from empirical evidence need to be contextualized. This study is a step towards bridging this gap in contextual evidence by characterizing the weaknesses discovered in the scoping (SC) and requirements (RE) disciplines of SPL. Moreover, in this study we conducted a case study in a small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to justify the use of agile methods when introducing the SPL SC and RE disciplines through the characterization of their bottlenecks. The results of the characterization indicated that ineffective communication and collaboration, long iteration cycles, and the absence of adaptability and flexibility can increase the effort and reduce motivation during project development. These issues can be mitigated by agile methods.

A Resource Flow Approach to Modelling Care Pathways

Attempts to extend process management to support pathways in the health domain have not been as successful as workflow management for routine business processes. In part this is due to the dynamic nature of knowledge-intensive work such as care pathways: the actions performed change continuously in response to the knowledge developed by those actions. Also, care pathways involve significant informal communications between those involved in caring for the patient and between these carers and the patient / patient family which are difficult to capture. We propose using an approach to supporting care pathways that embraces these difficulties. Rather than attempting to capture every nuance of individual activities, we seek to facilitate communication and coordination among knowledge workers to disseminate knowledge and pathway expertise throughout the organization.

Modelling Care Pathways in a Connected Health Setting

Connected Health involves the use of ICT to improve healthcare quality and outcomes. In a connected heath environment, stakeholders can struggle to make best use of this information coming from a variety of sources. Given this, we are investigating the challenge of how to use available information to make informed decisions about the care pathway which the patient should follow to ensure that prevention and treatment services are efficient and effective. In this paper, we outline our research into care pathway and information modelling in a Connected Health setting. The research is currently underway, and follows a series of stages using sources in industry and academia. In this paper, we present an overview of the project work packages including an explanation on how the different stages of the research form a continuum in which the developed models will be continually adjusted. We describe how empirical evidence will be used in the development of the models through following an evolutionary multi-method research approach.

The importance of documentation, design and reuse in risk management for SPL

Software Product Lines (SPL) is a methodology focusing on systematic software reuse, multiple benefits have been reported as a result of this type of software development. However, establishing a SPL is not a simple task. It is a challenging activity raising many challenges for engineering and management. This research aims to manage the risks during SPL development to provide traceability among them. For this, it is important that the risks are documented and there is a common design related to them. As solution, we identified the strengths and weakness in SPL development and the importance in designing of communication for risk documentation.

Clinical Pathway Support System

Different clinicians may do the same work in different ways, depending on their preferences and level of expertise. The nature and amount of clinical support required also varies with the knowledge level of the clinician: novice clinicians may require guidance at each and every stage of the process, while experienced clinicians like to have a free hand and need guidance only when in doubt. We describe a descriptive support system, where guidance is provided only when asked, rather than actively prescribing a list of actions at every stage of the clinical process. The system infers the state of the clinical pathway for a patient by examining the state of information in the Electronic Record that is created or modified during the patient treatment process, therefore, the clinician does not have to notify the system of every action he does while treating a patient, but the system can keep track of patient treatment so that appropriate guidance can be provided when needed.