Fortalecimiento de la capacidad de desarrollo, adopción y mantenimiento de software del Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Advances in Human Factors in Training, Education, and Learning Sciences

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Research and Practical Issues of Enterprise Information Systems

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Product-Focused Software Process Improvement

Descripción:

Teaching Scrum is a complex task in an academic setting. However, it is even more complex when it is taught in an industrial setting. This paper presents our experiences in the implementation of two different Scrum training workshop for workers. We have evaluated and improved these workshops over the past two years. More than 450 trainees with little or no background on Scrum receive the workshop. Furthermore, we present the implementation of three educational devices that automate activities in the context of this workshop. The automation aims to liberate some operative charge from the trainer to allow them to focus on the learning points and explanations of the activities rather than keeping track of the results of the participants.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient ‪Intelligence UCAmI 2019‬

Descripción:

Context: It is common for a software project to incur technical debt (TD) during its development. It can impact several artifacts produced throughout the software development process. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out management actions to find a balance between the benefits of incurring it and the effects of its presence. However, so far, much of the attention has been given only to discussions relating TD to coding issues. This is a worrying scenario because other types of debt can also have impactful, or even worse, consequences on projects. Aims: This study elaborates on the need to consider other issues of the development process and not just the source-code when investigating the TD phenomenon. Method: We analyze responses from 653 practitioners concerning TD causes, effects, prevention, reasons for non-prevention, repayment, and reasons for non-repayment and investigate whether these TD management elements are related to coding or to other software development issues. Results: Coding issues are commonly related to the investigated elements but, indeed, they are only part of the big picture we draw. Issues related to the project planning and management, human factors, knowledge, quality, process, requirements, verification, validation, and test, design, architecture, TD management, and the organization are also common. Lastly, we present a hump diagram that, in combination with the detailed results, provides guidance on what to expect from the presence of TD and how to react to it considering several issues of software development. Conclusion: The results shed light on other concerns beyond code that the research community and practitioners need to be aware of.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: XX Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality

Descripción:

Together with many success stories, promises such as the increase in production speed and the improvement in stakeholders' collaboration have contributed to making agile a transformation in the software industry in which many companies want to take part. However, driven either by a natural and expected evolution or by contextual factors that challenge the adoption of agile methods as prescribed by their creator(s), software processes in practice mutate into hybrids over time. Are these still agile In this article, we investigate the question: what makes a software development method agile We present an empirical study grounded in a large-scale international survey that aims to identify software development methods and practices that improve or tame agility. Based on 556 data points, we analyze the perceived degree of agility in the implementation of standard project disciplines and its relation to used development methods and practices. Our findings suggest that only a small number of participants operate their projects in a purely traditional or agile manner (under 15%). That said, most project disciplines and most practices show a clear trend towards increasing degrees of agility. Compared to the methods used to develop software, the selection of practices has a stronger effect on the degree of agility of a given discipline. Finally, there are no methods or practices that explicitly guarantee or prevent agility. We conclude that agility cannot be defined solely at the process level. Additional factors need to be taken into account when trying to implement or improve agility in a software company. Finally, we discuss the field of software process-related research in the light of our findings and present a roadmap for future research.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Descripción:

Context: The technical debt (TD) metaphor helps to conceptualize the pending issues and trade-offs made during software development. Knowing TD causes can support in defining preventive actions and having information about effects aids in the prioritization of TD payment. Goal: To investigate the impact of the experience level on how practitioners perceive the most likely causes that lead to TD and the effects of TD that have the highest impacts on software projects. Method: We approach this topic by surveying 227 practitioners. Results: While experienced software developers focus on human factors as TD causes and external quality attributes as TD effects, low experienced developers seem to concentrate on technical issues as causes and internal quality issues and increased project effort as effects. Missing any of these types of causes could lead a team to miss the identification of important TD, or miss opportunities to preempt TD. On the other hand, missing important effects could hamper effective planning or erode the effectiveness of decisions about prioritizing TD items. Conclusion: Having software development teams composed of practitioners with a homogeneous experience level can erode the team's ability to effectively manage TD.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: 2021 IEEE/ACM 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)

Descripción:

Technical debt (TD) can be injected at any stage of software development, spreading across other phases and causing various problems. This article presents a model for conceptualizing TD causes, effects, payment practices, and reasons for payment avoidance, with a prioritization schema for technical and nontechnical roles.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: IEEE Software

Descripción:

Context: The presence of technical debt (TD) brings risks to software projects. Managers must continuously find a cost-benefit balance between the benefits of incurring in TD and the costs of its presence in a software project. Much attention has been given to TD related to coding issues, but other types of debt can also have impactful consequences on projects. Aims: This paper seeks to elaborate on the growing need to expand TD research to other areas of software development, by analyzing six elements related to TD management, namely: causes, effects, preventive practices, reasons for non-prevention, repayment practices, and reasons for non-repayment of TD. Method: We survey and analyze, quantitatively and qualitatively, the answers of 653 software industry practitioners on TD to investigate how the previously mentioned elements are related to coding and non-coding issues of the software development process. Results: Coding issues are commonly related to the investigated elements but, indeed, they are only part of the TD Management stage. Issues related to the project planning and management, human factors, knowledge, quality, process, requirements, verification, validation, and test, design, architecture, and the organization are also common sources of TD. We organize the results in a hump diagram and specialize it considering the point of view of practitioners that have used agile, hybrid, and traditional process models in their projects. Conclusion: The hump diagram, in combination with the detailed results, provides guidance on what to expect from the presence of TD and how to react to it considering several issues of software development. The results shed light on TD management of software elements, beyond source code related artifacts.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development

Descripción:

Context: Technical debt (TD) is a challenge for companies who develop software on which their critical operations depend. To properly manage TD, it is necessary to make it visible to the different stakeholders involved to support informed decisions. Objective: To validate a TD visualization approach based on hybrid Sankey diagrams that makes the TD visible by showing (a) technical and business aspects, and (b) the flow of value and TD impacts. This approach regards visualizations as boundary objects. Method: We performed a multi-case study in a large multi-industry state-owned company. The objective was to validate the effectiveness of such visualizations and to explore their possible uses in TD management. We first used a retrospective case study on a TD decision-making scenario and, later, visualization usage scenarios using focus groups to evaluate its usefulness. Results: The results suggest that the proposed approach: (a) provides a structured process for systematic TD visualization to help the decision-making process; (b) enables the communication at knowledge boundaries between stakeholders to make informed decisions; (c) uses flow representations that are important for assessing the impact in multiple functional areas; and (d) enables documentation and reuse. Conclusion: The study results suggest that TD decision-making events can benefit from using our TD visualizations based on hybrid Sankey diagrams as boundary objects to portray the impact of TD in business, services, and technical aspects.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering