Subhas C. Misra

Identifying some important success factors in adopting agile software development practices

Agile software development (ASD) is an emerging approach in software engineering, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of lightweight methods, and share a common set of values of software development. In this paper, we advance the state-of-the-art of the research in this area by conducting a survey-based ex-post-facto study for identifying factors from the perspective of the ASD practitioners that will influence the success of projects that adopt ASD practices. In this paper, we describe a hypothetical success factors framework we developed to address our research question, the hypotheses we conjectured, the research methodology, the data analysis techniques we used to validate the hypotheses, and the results we obtained from data analysis. The study was conducted using an unprecedentedly large-scale survey-based methodology, consisting of respondents who practice ASD and who had experience practicing plan-driven software development in the past. The study indicates that nine of the 14 hypothesized factors have statistically significant relationship with Success. The important success factors that were found are: customer satisfaction, customer collaboration, customer commitment, decision time, corporate culture, control, personal characteristics, societal culture, and training and learning.

Modeling Design/Coding Factors That Drive Maintainability of Software Systems

It is cost-effective for software practitioners to monitor and control quality of software systems from the early phases of development. Assessing and modeling the effects of design and coding factors on software system maintainability can help provide heuristics to human designers and programmers to reduce maintenance costs and improve quality. This paper presents a study based on intuitive and experimental analyses that use a suite of twenty design/code measures to obtain indications of their effect on maintainability. This paper lists several important contributions of the work, one of which is the investigation of an unprecedentedly large number of systems (fifty) in a single study. The previous related studies on the other hand, have investigated 2–8 systems. The results reported in this paper using experimental procedures are unique, many of which have not been empirically established in the previous literatures, and are interesting because they are not normally intuitively obvious in most cases. The study also serves to empirically validate those results that seem to be intuitive. The results of the study indicate a number of promising effects of design and coding factors on system maintainability. The use of the results from the relatively early phases of software development could significantly help practitioners to improve the quality of systems and thus optimize maintenance costs.

Identifying some critical changes required in adopting agile practices in traditional software development projects

Purpose – Agile software development (ASD) is currently an emerging approach in software engineering for improving quality, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. Owing to the attractive claims of successes of the ASD approach, many traditional projects, which used to practice plan‐driven software development, are gradually transitioning into ASD‐based development. This paper seeks to report the results from a survey‐based ex‐post‐facto study aimed at determining the relative importance, if any, of the changes traditional plan‐driven software development projects have to undergo to adopt ASD practices.Design/methodology/approach – The study was conducted using a web‐based survey with ASD practitioners who had experience of practicing plan‐driven software development in the past. ASD practitioners from a wide range of industrial sectors participated in the study. Similarly, the study ...

An intelligent RFID-enabled authentication scheme for healthcare applications in vehicular mobile cloud

Recently, vehicular cloud computing (VCC) has emerged as the one of the fast growing technologies with an aim to provide uninterrupted services to the moving clients even on-the-fly. One of the services provided by VCC is the mobile healthcare in which patient can be provided diagonosis from anywhere during their mobility. This paper proposes an intelligent RFID-enabled authentication scheme for healthcare applications in VCC environment. In the proposed scheme, a Petri Nets-based authentication model is used for authentication of tags, and readers. Both server, and tag authentications are protected by strong elliptical curve cryptography (ECC)-based key generation mechanism. The proposed scheme is found to be secure with respect to mutual authentication of servers and tags, replay attack, tracking attack, users anonymity, eavesdropping, and cloning with forward secrecy. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, it is evaluated with respect to the overhead generated, computation complexity, and % service delivery, where its performance is found better than the case where it is not applied.

Relationships between selected software measures and latent bug-density: guidelines for improving quality

It is cost-effective for software practitioners to monitor and control the quality of software from the early phases of development. To address this issue, a study aimed at investigating relationships between fifteen predictive design/code measures and bug-density was undertaken. Thirty projects having varied characteristics were chosen. An experimental analysis was performed. It was discovered that most of the metrics considered in the study have strong relationship with bug-density. On the other hand, few metrics do not demonstrate any remarkable relationship. The study provides invaluable lessons that should facilitate software engineers to administer quality from the early phases of development. Some of the major contributions of the work are: investigation of a large number of software projects, consideration of a large number of predictive software measures in one study, comparison of the results of these measures on a common platform, and lessons learned for controlling quality from early stages of software development.

A strategic modeling technique for information security risk assessment

Purpose – This paper seeks to present a conceptual modeling approach, which is new in the domain of information systems security risk assessment.Design/methodology/approach – The approach is helpful for performing means‐end analysis, thereby uncovering the structural origin of security risks in information systems, and how the root‐causes of such risks can be controlled from the early stages of the projects.Findings – Though some attempts have previously been made to model security risk assessment in information systems using conventional modeling techniques such as data flow diagrams and UML, the previous works have analyzed and modeled the same just by addressing “what” a process is like. However, they do not address “why” the process is the way it is.Originality/value – The approach addresses the limitation of the existing security risk assessment models by exploring the strategic dependencies between the actors of a system and analyzing the motivations, intents and rationales behind the different enti...

E-Government Implementation Perspective: Setting Objective and Strategy

Though many countries are still just beginning to grasp the potential uses and impacts of Electronic-government EG, advances in technologies and their applications continue. Observing the proliferation of EG, countries are increasingly turning to the Internet to market their EG system to gain a competitive advantage. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of such online government systems largely depends on the mission of implementing EG. For successful adoption and implementation of EG, it is essential that a country first identify an explicit objective and a specific strategy. We have examined implementation strategies of EG of seven diverse countries whose objectives and mission for implementing EG differ significantly. However, they have the following strategies in common: i extensive application of information and communication technology ICT in the public sector; ii overall reformation of the public sector; iii development of a better quality service structure; and iv more cohesive integration of citizens with government.

The Organizational Changes Required and the Challenges Involved in Adopting Agile Methodologies in Traditional Software Development Organizations

Agile software development methodologies have recently gained widespread popularity. The Agile Manifesto states valuing individuals, and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following apian by M. Fowler (2005). Different organizations are transforming their traditional software development practices into agile ones. There have been several disparate anecdotal evidences in support of the changes required and the challenges involved. In this paper, we provide a consolidated picture of the important changes required and the challenges involved in such transformation projects. We also provide a conceptual framework that would help managers for focusing on the important changes required and the challenges involved in agile software development projects.

Goal-oriented or scenario-based requirements engineering technique - what should a practitioner select?

Requirements engineering (RE) techniques are the methods used by the requirements analysts to develop systems according to the needs of the customers and users. We have at first attempted to present a brief review of each of the goal-oriented, and scenario-based techniques, and the research efforts carried out in the line of two of these two leading techniques. We have also done a thorough comparative study of the characteristics of these techniques based on the information available in the existing research literatures. Valuable information embodied in the comparison table could be of immense value to the analysts for choosing an appropriate technique for their project. We have concluded this article with suggestions regarding what technique an analyst should select

Modelling strategic actor relationships for risk management in organizations undergoing business process reengineering due to information systems adoption

Purpose – Because of the competitive economy, organizations today seek to rationalize, innovate and adapt to changing environments and circumstances as part of business process reengineering (BPR) efforts. Irrespective of the process reengineering program selected and the technique used to model it, BPR brings with it the issues of organizational and process changes. Thus, BPR initiatives involve risk taking. Effective management of risks and their prediction and estimation should help in minimizing failures from BPR efforts. Risk management is non‐trivial due to the large uncertainty involved with business success with BPR efforts. Though some attempt has been made to model risk management in enterprise information systems using conventional conceptual modelling techniques, the previous works have analyzed and modeled the same just by addressing “what” a process is like, but do not address “why” the process is the way it is.Design/methodology/approach – The approach presents a new technique for analyzing...