Service Provision in a Software Technology Unit

Large software organizations establish software technology units for managing the methods and tools aimed at supporting their software engineers. This division between software development and new technologies for software development establishes specialized competencies, supports standardization across software projects and departments and provides dedicated resources for innovation. However, such software technology units are faced with complex diffusion projects that are difficult and challenging to manage and that in many cases lead to unsatisfactory results. This paper reports from attempts to improve diffusion practices within a technology unit in a large software organization. Two complementary roles for software technology units, i.e. technology supplier and service provider, are presented and used for interpreting the experiences. The research suggests that technology units in large software organizations can improve their diffusion practices by complementing the traditional role as a technology supplier with that of a service provider. The paper offers lessons on how software organizations can take steps in that direction.

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Differentiated Process Support for Large Software Projects

Designing Software-Intensive Systems ◽

10.4018/978-1-59904-699-0.ch001 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Alf Inge Wang ◽

Carl-Fredrik Sørensen

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

Software Projects ◽

Individual Group ◽

Development Organization ◽

Process Support ◽

Development Processes ◽

Large Software ◽

Organizational Levels ◽

Different Levels ◽

Project Level

This chapter presents a framework for differentiated process support in large software projects. Process support can be differentiated in different levels based on the size of the development organization and the need for coordination across different levels of the organization. We have defined four main perspectives: individual, group, team, and project level, where the framework consider essential issues when planning and executing the software development processes in organizations with different levels of management. Further, a guideline is provided that suggests what is required of process support in the various organizational levels.

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Differentiated Process Support for Large Software Projects

Software Applications ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-060-8.ch139 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 2359-2378

Author(s):

Alf Inge Wang ◽

Carl-Fredrik Sørensen

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

Software Projects ◽

Individual Group ◽

Development Organization ◽

Process Support ◽

Development Processes ◽

Large Software ◽

Organizational Levels ◽

Different Levels ◽

Project Level

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Using Agile Practice for Student Software Projects

Journal of Education and Vocational Research ◽

10.22610/jevr.v3i9.79 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 3 (9) ◽

pp. 280-290

Author(s):

Fernando Almeida

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

Software Projects ◽

Undergraduate Level ◽

Entry Level ◽

Software Engineers ◽

Software Development Methodologies ◽

Skill Improvement ◽

Agile Software ◽

Traditional Approaches ◽

First Contact

Agile methodology as a relatively new approach to software engineering is becoming more popular in both industry and academia. Learning agile software development methodologies will unquestionably increase the capabilities and competences of our students as entry-level software engineers. However, how agile methods and techniques should be taught at the undergraduate level in additional to traditional approaches is still being debated. This study was conducted on a studentprogramming project, with sample size of 23 students from the Informatics Engineering course. The Scrum methodology was adopted and 28 user stories and 4 sprints were created. The results indicate a significant impact on studentsâ€™ skill improvement and let them to have the first contact with real projects and clients. Besides that, the students agree that the adoption of the Scrum methodology helped them to improve the participation and collaboration. However, some issues were also detected in terms of communication and tasks planning. Therefore, we proposed some polities that could help and boost the software development process inside a classroom.

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APPLYING EXPERT JUDGMENT TO IMPROVE AN INDIVIDUAL'S ABILITY TO PREDICT SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering ◽

10.1142/s0218194012500118 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 22 (04) ◽

pp. 467-483 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

CUAUHTÉMOC LÓPEZ-MARTÍN ◽

ALAIN ABRAN

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

Software Process ◽

Development Effort ◽

Academic Environment ◽

Academic Institutions ◽

Graduate Courses ◽

Software Projects ◽

Personal Software Process ◽

Software Development Effort ◽

Effort Prediction

Expert-based effort prediction in software projects can be taught, beginning with the practices learned in an academic environment in courses designed to encourage them. However, the length of such courses is a major concern for both industry and academia. Industry has to work without its employees while they are taking such a course, and academic institutions find it hard to fit the course into an already tight schedule. In this research, the set of Personal Software Process (PSP) practices is reordered and the practices are distributed among fewer assignments, in an attempt to address these concerns. This study involved 148 practitioners taking graduate courses who developed 1,036 software course assignments. The hypothesis on which it is based is the following: When the activities in the original PSP set are reordered into fewer assignments, the result is expert-based effort prediction that is statistically significantly better.

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Batch-based agile program management approach for coordinating IT multi-project concurrent development

Concurrent Engineering ◽

10.1177/1063293x211015236 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1063293X2110152

Author(s):

Qing Yang ◽

Yingxin Bi ◽

Qinru Wang ◽

Tao Yao

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

New Technologies ◽

Program Management ◽

Agile Development ◽

Management Approach ◽

Development Projects ◽

Project Development ◽

Concurrent Development ◽

Communication And Coordination ◽

Development Practice

Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the arrival of agile development approaches. Many firms are facing a need to use these approaches to manage entities consisting of multiple projects (i.e. programs) simultaneously and efficiently. New technologies such as big data provide a huge power and rich demand for the IT application system of the commercial bank which has the characteristics of multiple sub-projects, strong inter-project correlation, and numerous project participating teams. Hence, taking the IT program management of a bank in China as a case, we explore the methods to solve the problems in multi-project concurrent development practice through integrating the ideas of program and batch management. First, to coordinate the multi-project development process, this paper presents the batch-based agile program management approach that synthesizes concurrent engineering with agile methods. And we compare the application of batch management between software development projects and manufacturing process. Further, we analyze the concurrent multi-project development practice in the batch-based agile program management, including the overlapping between stages, individual project’s activities, and multiple projects based on common resources and environment to stimulate the knowledge transfer. Third, to facilitate the communication and coordination of batch-based program management, we present the double-level responsibility organizational structure of batch management.

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