scholarly journals A Guideline Tool for Ongoing Product Evaluation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Author(s):  
Fouad Abdulameer Salman ◽  
Aziz Bin Deraman ◽  
Masita Binti Abdul Jalil

As consumer demand for user friendly software increases, usability evaluation is crucial to develop software systems which are easy to learn and use. However, implementation of usability evaluation is challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) due to factors such as lack of technical expertise, knowledge and experience of methods and standards. This results in neglect, or poorly executed evaluations of projects, resulting in software that disappoints and frustrates clients. To overcome this loss of competitiveness, we propose here a visual incorporation tool derived from ISO standards that would assist software development teams in SMEs in understanding and implementing usability evaluations. It shows fundamental Usability Engineering (UE) and Software Engineering (SE) activities and artifacts relevant to the usability evaluation and software development process, with potential incorporation points being highlighted. Dependencies and relationships are shown by links between activities and artifacts. Additionally, convergent artifacts of both disciplines were identified and shown. Evaluation of the proposed tool was based on the questionnaire results of software development practitioners from SMEs.

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Farzaneh Tavakoli ◽  
Taghi Javdani Gandomani

Team productivity is one of the issues that always been considered in the software development teams. In software development process, as a team-oriented process, team productivity is a serious issue in software competitive industry that always gets high attention. Several studies have been conducted on various aspects of team productivity, but because of role of employed methodologies, providing a unified model in this regard is not possible. This article is specifically aimed to focus on team productivity in XP methodology and provide a productivity model dedicated for this method. The proposed model is developed based on the most influential features affecting team productivity. This model evaluated and gained enough acceptance. The article also shows the most effective XP practices that positively impact team productivity in XP projects.


Author(s):  
Andy Williamson ◽  
David M. Kennedy ◽  
Carmel McNaught ◽  
Ruth DeSouza

Developing educational software requires a complex environment and a range of specialised skills. The ideas that lie behind successful software are drawn from a broad pool of talent and, as mobility increases, ideas are disseminated through informal and new work practices into a wider community. This paper addresses how participants in the development process can receive appropriate acknowledgement for their contribution, even after leaving a project. It will identify team dependencies and highlight three channels for dissemination (publication, portfolio and product). Eight common myths relating to intellectual capital and intellectual property in relation to educational software development are explored. Finally, practices that can be applied to the software development process to ensure that all team members receive appropriate recognition for their contribution to the product are identified. In particular, emphasis is placed on the need for strong project management practices and the up front articulation of expectations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2.28) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freddy Paz ◽  
Freddy A. Paz ◽  
José Antonio Pow-Sang ◽  
César Collazos

Heuristic evaluation is one of the most used techniques to evaluate the level of usability of a software product. In this research, we performed a comprehensive analysis of the recent studies which report the use of this method in the context of a software development process. The purpose was to identify the specific way in which each author performs this usability evaluation method, in order to propose a formal protocol. After an indeed examination of these studies, we have determined there are several differences in the way this technique is conducted according to the literature. There is no agreement about the number of inspectors that should participate, the usability principles that should be used, the profile of the specialists who must be part of the assessment team, or the evaluation process that should be followed. This work highlights the available settings and a detailed procedure to perform a heuristic evaluation in the domain of software products.  


Author(s):  
Rory O’Connor ◽  
Shuib Basri

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.


Author(s):  
Jan Gogoll ◽  
Niina Zuber ◽  
Severin Kacianka ◽  
Timo Greger ◽  
Alexander Pretschner ◽  
...  

AbstractSoftware systems play an ever more important role in our lives and software engineers and their companies find themselves in a position where they are held responsible for ethical issues that may arise. In this paper, we try to disentangle ethical considerations that can be performed at the level of the software engineer from those that belong in the wider domain of business ethics. The handling of ethical problems that fall into the responsibility of the engineer has traditionally been addressed by the publication of Codes of Ethics and Conduct. We argue that these Codes are barely able to provide normative orientation in software development. The main contribution of this paper is, thus, to analyze the normative features of Codes of Ethics in software engineering and to explicate how their value-based approach might prevent their usefulness from a normative perspective. Codes of Conduct cannot replace ethical deliberation because they do not and cannot offer guidance because of their underdetermined nature. This lack of orientation, we argue, triggers reactive behavior such as “cherry-picking,” “risk of indifference,” “ex-post orientation,” and the “desire to rely on gut feeling.” In the light of this, we propose to implement ethical deliberation within software development teams as a way out.


Author(s):  
Anas AL-Badareen

    Abstract— Since the idea of software reuse appeared in 1968, software reuse has become a software engineering discipline. Software reuse is one of the main techniques used to enhance the productivity of software development, which it helps reducing the time, effort, and cost of developing software systems, and enhances the quality of software products. However, software reuse requires understanding, modifying, adapting and testing processes in order to be performed correctly and efficiently. This study aims to analyze and discuss the process of software reuse, identify its elements, sources and usages. The alternatives of acquiring and using software assets either normal or reusable assets are discussed. As a result of this study, four main methods are proposed in order to use the concept of reuse in the software development process. These methods are proposed based on the source of software assets regardless the types of software assets and their usages.


Author(s):  
Francisco J. Duarte ◽  
João M. Fernandes ◽  
Ricardo J. Machado

Several organizations are nowadays not particularly comfortable with their internal structuring based on a hierarchical arrangement (sub-divided in departments), where collaborators with a limited view of the overall organization perform their activities. Those organizations recognize the need to move to a model where multi-skilled teams run horizontal business processes that cross the organization, and impact suppliers and clients. To develop software systems for any organization, the development process must always be appropriate and controlled. Additionally for organizations who want to migrate to a horizontal business processes view, it is required to model the organizational platform where the organizational processes will run. This necessity is also true when the organization under consideration is a software house. In this chapter, a proposal of a generic framework for process-oriented software houses is presented. The way of managing the process model and the instantiation of their processes with the Rational Unified Process (RUP) disciplines, whenever they are available, or with other kind of processes is recommended as a way to control and define the software development process. To illustrate the usefulness of the proposal, it is presented how the generic reference framework was executed in a real project called “Premium Wage” and shown, in some detail, the created artifacts (which include several UML models) during the development phases following the RUP disciplines, especially the artifacts produced for business modeling.


Author(s):  
Swathine.K , Et. al.

Software traceability is a crucial component of various exact software development process and it is needed for various component certification and approval process in security system. With the tremendous growth of system, traceability is considered as a recent research topic. The traceability is a software development process that is indefinable. Various manufacturers struggle in predicting the appropriate traceability degree for their needs and produce the appropriate set of traceability links. The effort, cost, and discipline have to be maintained with tracking links with the faster development of software systems that are extremely higher. Also, it produces various advantages in practical realization; as it can be either ad-hoc or not properly defined traceability process, produces poor training or lack of effectual tool support. Moreover, the traceability process has to be determined as it can diminish the development effort and to enhance the development process. Generally, traceability research is based on empirical investigations for exploring newer investigational queries or to compute newer tracing methods. Here, this work concentrates on traceability, functional requirements, link establishment. It shows a better trade-off among the prevailing approaches.


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