scholarly journals The Case for Agile Methodologies against Traditional Ones in Financial Software Projects

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-141
Author(s):  
V. P. Munteanu ◽  
P. Dragos

Agile methodologies have emerged to challenge traditional ones and overcome their limitations. Increasingly, software development organizations are scaling agile practices in order to meet the requirements of the quickly changing and regularly developing business environment. The main objectives of this study are to investigate the main differences between the traditional project management methodologies and agile methodologies, as well as to identify some key advantages and challenges of applying agile development in a financial software environment. The findings clearly show that using Agile methodologies in a financial software development environment increases the efficiency and transparency of the development process, as well as the stakeholders’ satisfaction, but the project managers must know how to adapt different Agile frameworks to the given context of their organization.

Author(s):  
Izzat Alsmadi ◽  
Saqib Saeed

Typical traditional software development models are initially designed for company-style software project teams. They also assume a typical software project that has somewhat clear goals, scope, budget, and plan. Even Agile development models that are very flexible in considering previous project parameters assume somewhat stable team and project structures. However, in recent years, the authors have noticed expansion in software projects that are developed in a very illusive flexible team, scope, budget, and plan structures. Examples of such projects are those projects offered in open competition (also called crowd sourcing) structure for software developers to be part of. In typical open competition projects, initial, high level project ideas are submitted to the public through the Internet. The project initiators give their initial requirements, constraints, and conditions for successful products or submissions. Teams can be organized before or through the competition. Submission and evaluation of deliverables from teams are subjected to project initiator evaluation along with evaluation teams organized through the open competition host. This chapter investigates all traditional project characteristics. The authors elaborate on all those elements that should be modified to fit the open competition agile structure. They use several case studies to demonstrate management issues related to managing software projects in open competitions.


Author(s):  
Vinay Kukreja ◽  
Amitoj Singh

In the globalization of fast changing business and technology environment, it becomes very important to respond quickly to changing user requirements. Traditional methodologies are not appropriate for the projects where user requirements are not fixed. Agile methodologies have been developed to cope up with user changing requirements and emphasize more on working software and customer collaboration. Agile is an umbrella term and it is used for many software development methodologies which shares common characteristics. This chapter mainly focuses on the working methodology of agile development and the usage areas of industry where agile development is implemented. Agile software development is difficult in distributed environment as the team members are at distributed locations. This chapter discusses agile industry applicability enablers which are useful for agile software development in distributed environment.


Author(s):  
Torstein Nicolaysen ◽  
Richard Sassoon ◽  
Maria B. Line ◽  
Martin Gilje Jaatun

In this article, the authors contrast the results of a series of interviews with agile software development organizations with a case study of a distributed agile development effort, focusing on how information security is taken care of in an agile context. The interviews indicate that small and medium-sized agile software development organizations do not use any particular methodology to achieve security goals, even when their software is web-facing and potential targets of attack. This case study confirms that even in cases where security is an articulated requirement, and where security design is fed as input to the implementation team, there is no guarantee that the end result meets the security objectives. The authors contend that security must be built as an intrinsic software property and emphasize the need for security awareness throughout the whole software development lifecycle. This paper suggests two extensions to agile methodologies that may contribute to ensuring focus on security during the complete lifecycle.


Author(s):  
Marcos Ruano-Mayoral ◽  
Ricardo Colomo-Palacios ◽  
Ángel García-Crespo ◽  
Juan Miguel Gómez-Berbís

Despite the clear relevance of the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) market in world economics and the evident lack of success of software projects, organizations devote little effort to the development and maturity of the software project manager profession. This work analyzes the figure of project manager from the perspective of the Team Software Process (TSP), and it considers the required skills, attitudes and knowledge for a software development project. The basis for the study is the analysis of relevant references from the literature for their subsequent categorization into different competency concepts. The results of the analysis are compared with the contributions which the Guide to the SWEBOK® and the PMBOK® Guide models provide of the profiles of the project manager. The results indicate that the literature relating to the Team Software Process is focused on the definitions of skills and attitudes, and to a lesser extent on knowledge components. The lack of the definition of the components which comprise competency constitutes a challenge for software development organizations that use TSP, whose project managers should confront the task with full capacities, and without the help of established and recognized competencies. The current work attempts to establish the competencies for project managers identified in the literature, in the environment of the use of TSP for software development, using a study based on content analysis.


Author(s):  
Ricardo Colomo-Palacios ◽  
Israel González-Carrasco ◽  
José Luis López-Cuadrado ◽  
Ángel García-Crespo

Agile development is a crucial issue within software engineering because one of the goals of any project leader is to increase the speed and flexibility in the development of new commercial products. In this sense, project managers must find the best resource configuration for each of the work packages necessary for the management of software development processes in order to keep the team motivated and committed to the project and to improve productivity and quality. This paper presents ReSySTER, a hybrid recommender system based on fuzzy logic, rough set theory and semantic technologies, aimed at helping project leaders to manage software development projects. The proposed system provides a powerful tool for project managers supporting the development process in Scrum environments and helping to form the most suitable team for different work packages. The system has been evaluated in a real scenario of development with the Scrum framework obtaining promising results.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Ahimbisibwe ◽  
Urs Daellenbach ◽  
Robert Y. Cavana

Purpose Aligning the project management methodology (PMM) to a particular project is considered to be essential for project success. Many outsourced software projects fail to deliver on time, budget or do not give value to the client due to inappropriate choice of a PMM. Despite the increasing range of available choices, project managers frequently fail to seriously consider their alternatives. They tend to narrowly tailor project categorization systems and categorization criterion is often not logically linked with project objectives. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a contingency fit model comparing the differences between critical success factors (CSFs) for outsourced software development projects in the current context of traditional plan-based and agile methodologies. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical model and 54 hypotheses were developed from a literature review. An online Qualtrics survey was used to collect data to test the proposed model. The survey was administered to a large sample of senior software project managers and practitioners who were involved in international outsourced software development projects across the globe with 984 valid responses. Findings Results indicate that various CSFs differ significantly across agile and traditional plan-based methodologies, and in different ways for various project success measures. Research limitations/implications This study is cross-sectional in nature and data for all variables were obtained from the same sources, meaning that common method bias remains a potential threat. Further refinement of the instrument using different sources of data for variables and future replication using longitudinal approach is highly recommended. Practical implications Practical implications of these results suggest project managers should tailor PMMs according to various organizational, team, customer and project factors to reduce project failure rates. Originality/value Unlike previous studies this paper develops and empirically validates a contingency fit model comparing the differences between CSFs for outsourced software development projects in the context of PMMs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107-129
Author(s):  
A. Alzayed ◽  

Requirements engineering (RE), the process of defining the requirements of a system, is critical to the successful implementation of software projects. Although many studies have been globally conducted on the different facets of RE in software engineering, studies explicitly focusing on the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been scarce. GCC-specific RE research studies are needed because of the unique cultural characteristics and common work ethics in GCC countries. Besides, the investigation of the state of RE practices in the countries of the GCC is crucial as the globalization of software development becomes imminent. This study compares the state of RE practices within the six countries of the GCC, namely, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, using six RE factors. To understand commonalities and differences in the RE practices and methods, 163 software practitioners in GCC countries are surveyed in this study. The results show that the RE practices are relatively similar among the six countries, with subtle differences. Initiating software-related projects with unclear requirements and undefined project scopes are the two major limitations of the RE practices among the survey participants. The results of this study contribute to providing project managers and system analysts, who are working globally and within the GCC countries, with valuable decision-making tools to help them consider the identified RE techniques, methods, and challenges and their related risks early in their software development projects


Information ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 314
Author(s):  
Jimmy Molina Ríos ◽  
Nieves Pedreira-Souto

The current inclusion of agile methodologies in web-oriented projects has been considered on a large-scale by software developers. However, the benefits and limitations go beyond the comforts that project managers delimit when choosing them. Selecting a methodology involves more than only the associated processes or some documentation. Based on the above, we could define as the main concerns the approach with which we identify the methodology, the needs of the company, the size, and qualities of the project, and especially the characteristics of agile development that they possess. However, there are several difficulties in selecting the most appropriate methodology due to the features in common; Will it be suitable for my project? What challenges will be presented in the process? Will my team understand each stage? Will I be able to deliver software that satisfies the client? Project managers create these questions, which seem manageable but have huge effects. This paper presents a systematic literature review based on the analysis of the approaches of six web development methodologies. The aim of the study is to analyze the approaches presented by relevant methodologies, identifying their common agile characteristics and managing to contrast both its benefits and limitations during a project. As a result, we could itemize five common features, which are presented within the processes; (1) flexibility, (2) constant communication of the workgroup, (3) use of UML, (4) the inclusion of the end-user and (5) some documentation.


Author(s):  
Nancy A. Bonner ◽  
Nisha Kulangara ◽  
Sridhar Nerur ◽  
James. T. C. Teng

There is little doubt that agile software development (ASD) methods have gained widespread acceptance in industry. Despite the attention these methods have received, there is little empirical affirmation of the benefits that accrue to those who use agile methodologies. Grounded in the conceptual foundations of innovation diffusion and agile philosophy of development, the authors' study validates a model to assess the perceived advantage of an iterative approach to software development. Consistent with their predictions, the results suggest that evolutionary development - the cornerstone of agile development – is perceived to be less complex and more compatible with the work habits of developers. Further, the findings support the hitherto unsubstantiated claim that iterative development yields benefits to software developers. However, process flexibility, yet another important characteristic of agile development, had no significant impact on complexity, compatibility, and relative advantage. The implications of the study for academics and practitioners, and directions for future research are discussed.


2022 ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
Kamalendu Pal

Agile software development methodologies are attracting attention from academics and practitioners for planning and managing software projects. The eXtreme Programming (XP) challenges conformist wisdom regarding software system development processes and practices as agile methodologies. To work efficiently in the current software development practice, characterized by requirements fuzziness, XP moves away from document-centric operations into people-centric management. In the XP-based software project, the customers play an essential role, having multiple responsibilities such as driving the project, gathering requirements (‘user stories'), and exercising quality control (or acceptance testing). Besides, the customers must liaise with external project stakeholders (e.g., funding authorities, end-users) while maintaining the development team's trust and the wider business. The success of such software project management practices relies on the quality result of each stage of development obtained through rigorous testing. This chapter describes three characteristics of XP project management: customer role, software testing feedback, and learning.


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