Shuib Basri

Understanding the Perception of Very Small Software Companies towards the Adoption of Process Standards

This paper is concerned with understanding the issues that affect the adoption of software process standards by Very Small Entities (VSEs), their needs from process standards and their willingness to engage with the new ISO/IEC 29110 standard in particular. In order to achieve this goal, a series of industry data collection studies were undertaken with a collection of VSEs. A twin track approach of a qualitative data collection (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative data collection (questionnaire) were undertaken. Data analysis was being completed separately and the final results were merged, using the coding mechanisms of grounded theory. This paper serves as a roadmap for both researchers wishing to understand the issues of process standards adoption by very small companies and also for the software process standards community.

Exploring Managerial Commitment towards SPI in Small and Very Small Enterprises

This paper compares and contrasts the results of two similar studies into the software process practices in Irish Small and Very Small Enterprises. The first study contains rich findings in relation to the role and influence of managerial experience and style, with particular respect to the company founder and software development managers in small to medium seized enterprises (SMEs), whilst the second study contains extensive findings in relation to people and management involvement / commitment and SPI goal planning in very small enterprises (VSEs). By combining these results of these two studies of Irish SMEs/VSEs we can develop a rich picture of managerial commitment towards SPI and in particular explore the similarities between Small and Very Small Enterprises.

Organizational commitment towards software process improvement an irish software vses case study

This paper presents a study of the software development processes of very small software companies, with a focus on the companys Software Process Improvement (SPI) activities. SPI has gained an increasing importance in software engineering domain. However, recent studies show that the obligation and commitment towards SPI especially in small companies is weak and not always taken seriously. This situation is often related to insufficient availability of resources either in term of financial, human and time in this type of companies. Accordingly, this paper explores the current situation in very small companies and gauges their acceptance levels towards SPI actions and the underlying reasons behind this. In this research we carried out a survey which contains open and close ended questions in a series of very small software development companies in Ireland. A quantitative analysis that use a statistical analysis, and qualitative analysis that adopt the qualitative content analysis method have been followed throughout this study. The results indicate that the SPI initiatives in very small software development companies are done on a small scale manner, informally and indirectly. In addition, the results also indicate that commitment and involvement of people in these organizations towards SPI is high.

The Effect of Team Dynamics on Software Development Process Improvement

This article identifies the effect of team dynamics in the context of software development teams and its impact on software process improvement SPI activities in very small companies, in order to understand the relationship between these two variables. Most software development work is done by teams of software engineers working together in a collaborative manner to execute a software development process. Although there is much literature examining software process and how to improve it, less attention has been paid to the issues of team-working and specifically the impact of team dynamics on the software development process. Team dynamics is the term used to define how people work and interact together in teams. Teamwork is more effective with the existence of positive team dynamic, as it encourages a better working environment with satisfied, fulfilled employees who will in turn be more productive. This paper presents the results of a research study of team dynamics in very small software development companies and its impact on the software development process and software process improvement activities.

Conceptual model for measuring e-government service quality

Quality of e-service is an imperative aspect to the success of e-government. The concept of e-government service quality has rapidly emerged due to its importance and the need of understanding it in order to improve current and future e-government implementation. The research on e-government service quality is one of the current issues nowadays since the world moves toward advanced communication and information technology era. This paper presents a conceptual model for measuring e-government service quality as well as for determining the relationship between e-government service quality dimensions and user satisfaction and trust. For measuring quality of e-government service, eleven stream dimensions of this proposed model are identified from the review of state-of-the-art literature in this field. Eleven dimensions are including efficiency, system availability, privacy, fulfillment, interactivity, personalization, format, information, responsiveness, contact and process time. The outcome of this paper may create awareness among e-service managers to give more consideration to e-government service quality, and assist them to improve e-service performance and effectiveness.

A study of software development team dynamics in SPI

The software development team is a key factor in software projects, however, achieving and maintaining positive team dynamics in software development project especially when the software companies have fewer resources in term of people, money and time is a remarkable challenge. This paper explores the dynamics of software development teams (structure, process, communication, learning and sharing) and its impact on Software Process Improvement (SPI) in very small software organization, in order to understand the impact between these two variables. We undertook a series of interviews and focus groups with very small software companies and our results show that very small companies have a high level of team dynamics although their SPI initiatives are conducted on a small scale and in an informal and indirect manner. The results also indicated that this situation occurs due to the working and social relationship, willingness to share, having a good interpersonal skill and work closely each others.

A rule-based model for software development team composition: Team leader role with personality types and gender classification

Abstract Context Recent studies have established the fact that the supply of handy and successful software has decreased to 6%. The past studies have also attributed this supply failure to software development team composition factor. To overcome this problem, it is also suggested in the past studies that the soft skills of team member must be considered along with the hard skills. Objective Keeping in view this problem, this study aimed to look for in-depth understanding of team-lead role with personality types of member. This study also included gender to see its diverting impact on personality types and job role, since past studies have also raised many issues pertinent to these two variables. Method This study used the experimented data to develop the rule-based model for software development team composition by keeping gender as major effecting variable with personality. There were three independent predictor variables: Team leader role, Personality types, and Gender; and one outcome dependent variable: team performance. Additionally, personality types of team members were measured by using Myers–Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI) instrument. This study divided the experiments into two stages. The first stage was descriptive examination of factual figures of data for model development. Whereas, the second stage was predictive experiments of data for developing the model. Results The findings revealed that each gender emerged compatible with different types of personality for the same role. For instance, descriptive analysis part of this research highlighted that feeling(F) personality males were appropriate for team leader role, on another hand, thinking(T) personality females were suitable for the team lead role. Conclusion The conclusion can be drawn with the claim that the personality types of software development team roles fluctuate by gender type. Besides, this study revealed and ensured that gender should be kept in the consideration when composing teams based on personality types.

Understanding the Role of Knowledge Management in Software Development: A Case Study in Very Small Companies

Software and systems engineering is distinct from other forms of engineering as it deals with an intangible product, where the progress in construction is not explicitly visible and team members often rely on the documentation of others to follow and review progress. Furthermore unlike traditional engineering disciplines, there is no single standardized unified process. The role of knowledge management in the software engineering literature is becoming more evident, as the software development activity is essentially a human knowledge intensive activity and is seen by many as a key factor. This paper discusses the role of software development knowledge management within software development process and specifically how software development knowledge is managed in software development in order to support software process improvement and the role of knowledge management in this. The authors present the results of a study of knowledge management process practices in very small software companies and discusses these under the major identified issues of: Communication; Learning and sharing; Documentation and Knowledge management process and commitment. The findings in this study give an insight towards knowledge management practices as they relate to software development process practices in very small companies and the important factors that must be considered to preserve knowledge and quality software.

Software Process Improvement Initiatives in Small and Medium Firms: A Systematic Review

Nowadays, software firms are playing very important roles in economies all over the world, and majority of these firms are Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The SMEs recognize that it is important to improve their development processes and activities in order to produce software with high quality and to be competitive in the software industry. However, several studies have shown that the SMEs used ad-hoc manner in their development processes and they suffer from lack of the knowledge and resources to do Software Process Improvement (SPI). In this paper, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is used to identify and discuss the SPI initiatives in SME software firms. The results of the systematic review showed that the majority of software process improvement initiatives in SME firms are carried out in America and Europe. Only in one Asian country, Hong Kong was the SPI initiative considered and CMM Fast-Track was the model developed. The developed model did not cover all the CMM levels, only levels 1 and 2 were considered. In conclusion, many Software Process Improvement initiatives have been proposed for SME software firms but they have shortcomings such as lack of generalizability and take a lot of time to gain the benefits/advantage of the SPI model after implementation.

Towards an Understanding of Software Development Process Knowledge in Very Small Companies

The influence of software team dynamics on well-organized software development knowledge process could prevent software development organizations from suffering from the knowledge atrophy problem. To explore this, we have studied several team dynamics factors that influence the Knowledge Management Processes (KMP) in Very Small Entities (VSEs) [1]. A survey was conducted in a variety of VSEs and through statistical and qualitative content analysis for the research data, results indicate that small teams, informal team process and structure have an important influence on the level of team dynamics in the software development process.