Sebastian Barney

Software quality trade-offs: A systematic map

Background: Software quality is complex with over investment, under investment and the interplay between aspects often being overlooked as many researchers aim to advance individual aspects of software quality. Aim: This paper aims to provide a consolidated overview the literature that addresses trade-offs between aspects of software product quality. Method: A systematic literature map is employed to provide an overview of software quality trade-off literature in general. Specific analysis is also done of empirical literature addressing the topic. Results: The results show a wide range of solution proposals being considered. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence to adequately evaluate and compare these proposals. Further a very large vocabulary has been found to describe software quality. Conclusion: Greater empirical research is required to sufficiently evaluate and compare the wide range of solution proposals. This will allow researchers to focus on the proposals showing greater signs of success and better support industrial practitioners.

Software Product Quality: Ensuring a Common Goal

Software qualities are in many cases tacit and hard to measure. Thus, there is a potential risk that they get lower priority than deadlines, cost and functionality. Yet software qualities impact customers, profits and even developer efficiency. This paper presents a method to evaluate the priority of software qualities in an industrial context. The method is applied in a case study, where the ISO 9126 model for software quality is combined with Theory-W to create a process for evaluating the alignment between success-critical stakeholder groups in the area of software product quality. The results of an exploratory case study using this tool is then presented and discussed. It is shown that the method provides valuable information about software qualities.

Using portfolio theory to support requirements selection decisions

Selecting requirements for a release of software is a difficult undertaking as people have trouble comparing requirements of different types and have natural biases towards short-terms gains over longer-term sustainability. Portfolio theory is proposed as a solution to this problem, as it provides a method for balancing investment options to maximize the likelihood of a given return. This approach is explored generally and through an example. The results suggest portfolio theory can be applied for this purpose. Applying portfolio theory to determine the amount of development time that should be spent on different types of requirements shows the most potential, especially when data on expected risks and returns is limited.

Creating Software Product Value in China

China has become a formidable player and continues to experience strong growth in a dynamic global market for software development. This highly competitive environment makes maximizing the creation of software product value both difficult and important. When looking at a software product, different stakeholder groups-purchasers, users, software managers, and developers-have different notions of value. This study examines the stakeholder perspectives and criteria used to select and prioritize software release requirements in three groups of software development companies: Chinese companies with a domestic market, Chinese companies with an international market, and Western companies operating in China. The results are similar for all three groups, except for after-sales support, which was a significantly greater concern for Chinese companies with an international market.

Improving Students With Rubric-Based Self-Assessment and Oral Feedback

Rubrics and oral feedback are approaches to help students improve performance and meet learning outcomes. However, their effect on the actual improvement achieved is inconclusive. This paper evaluates the effect of rubrics and oral feedback on student learning outcomes. An experiment was conducted in a software engineering course on requirements engineering, using the two approaches in course assignments. Both approaches led to statistically significant improvements, though no material improvement (i.e., a change by more than one grade) was achieved. The rubrics led to a significant decrease in the number of complaints and questions regarding grades.

When Product Managers Gamble with Requirements: Attitudes to Value and Risk

[Context and motivation] Finding a balance between commercial (customer specific, market pull and external quality requirements) and internal quality requirements is a recognized challenge in market driven software product development (MDSPD). In order to address this challenge it is important to understand the preferences and biases influencing decision makers selecting requirements for software releases. [Question/problem] Prospect theory has been successfully applied to many disciplines. Applying it to MDSPD suggests decision makers will avoid risk when selecting between commercial requirements, take risk with internal quality requirements, and prefer commercial requirements over internal quality requirements in order to maximize their perceived value. This paper seeks to investigate this claim. [Principal ideas/results] This paper presents an experiment investigating whether the biases proposed by prospect theory can be seen operating in MDSPD requirements engineering (RE). The results indicate risk avoidance when dealing commercial requirements, while greater risk is taken when dealing with internal quality requirements. [Contribution] As this is the first paper to use prospect theory to explain requirements selection decisions, it presents opportunity to educate people in the biases they bring to the RE process, and facilitate the creation of strategies for balancing the different requirements types.

Offshore Insourcing: A Case Study on Software Quality Alignment

Background: Software quality issues are commonly reported when off shoring software development. Value-based software engineering addresses this by ensuring key stakeholders have a common understanding of quality. Aim: This work seeks to understand the levels of alignment between key stakeholders on aspects of software quality for two products developed as part of an offshore in sourcing arrangement. The study further aims to explain the levels of alignment identified. Method: Representatives of key stakeholder groups for both products ranked aspects of software quality. The results were discussed with the groups to gain a deeper understanding. Results: Low levels of alignment were found between the groups studied. This is associated with insufficiently defined quality requirements, a culture that does not question management and conflicting temporal reflections on the products quality. Conclusion: The work emphasizes the need for greater support to align success-critical stakeholder groups in their understanding of quality when off shoring software development.

Balancing software product investments

The long-term sustainability of a software product depends on more than developing features. Priorities are placed on aspects that support the development of software, like software product quality (eg. ISO 9126), project constraints — time and cost, and even the development of intellectual capital (IC). A greater focus on any one aspect takes priority from another, but as each aspects delivers a different type of value managers have trouble comparing and balancing these aspects. This paper presents a method to help determine the balance between key priorities in the software development process. The method is applied to a new case study, that also combines with results from previous studies. The results show it is possible to compare features, quality, time, cost and IC in a comprehensive way, with the case study showing that participants perceive a change from a shorter-term product perspective to a longer-term organisation beneficial to the business.

Software quality across borders: Three case studies on company internal alignment

Context: Software quality issues are commonly reported when offshoring software development. Value-based software engineering addresses this by ensuring key stakeholders have a common understanding of quality. Objective: This work seeks to understand the levels of alignment between key stakeholder groups within a company on the priority given to aspects of software quality developed as part of an offshoring relationship. Furthermore, the study aims to identify factors impacting the levels of alignment identified. Method: Three case studies were conducted, with representatives of key stakeholder groups ranking aspects of software quality in a hierarchical cumulative exercise. The results are analysed using Spearman rank correlation coefficients and inertia. The results were discussed with the groups to gain a deeper understanding of the issues impacting alignment. Results: Various levels of alignment were found between the various groups. The reasons for misalignment were found to include cultural factors, control of quality in the development process, short-term versus long-term orientations, understanding of cost-benefits of quality improvements, communication and coordination. Conclusions: The factors that negatively affect alignment can vary greatly between different cases. The work emphasises the need for greater support to align company internal success-critical stakeholder groups in their understanding of quality when offshoring software development.

The Relative Importance of Aspects of Intellectual Capital for Software Companies

Intellectual capital (IC) is both the key input and tool used in the development of software today. It covers the value provided to an organisation by the employees, the processes and products that support the organisation, and the knowledge held in the relationships between the organisation and external parties - covering human capital, structural capital, and relationship capital respectively. This paper presents a method that seeks to understand the level of alignment between the different success-critical stakeholders in the importance of different aspects of intellectual capital. The method is applied in a case study and provides a number of interesting insights, with the authors concluding that the groups do not necessarily need to be aligned as each groups has a different informational role within the organisation to fulfill.