Agile Practices: An Assessment of Perception of Value of Professionals on the Quality Criteria in Performance of Projects

Mariana de Azevedo Santos, Paulo Henrique de Souza Bermejo, Marcelo Silva de Oliveira, Adriano Olímpio Tonelli

.

DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2011.412082                

Abstract

Deliver high quality software in accordance with deadlines has become a major challenge for the software industry and more organizations adopt agile practices as a mean to achieve quality in their products. This paper analyzes, through a survey, the perception of software professionals, working in different fronts of the development process, the relationship between the use of agile practices and quality of software products. The result shows agile practices that can contribute to quality in three aspects: bigger involvement of the staff, agile management of the requirements proposed and code developed.

Keywords

Agile Methodologies, Agile Practices, Perception of Value, factor Analysis, Software Engineering

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	O. Salo and P. Abrahamsson, “Agile Methods in European Embedded Software Development Organizations: A Survey Study of Extreme Programming and Scrum,” IET Software, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2008, pp. 58-64. doi:10.1049/iet-sen:20070038
[2]	Beck, et al., “Agile Manifesto,” 2001. http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
[3]	L. Cao and B. Ramesh, “Agile Software Development: Ad Hoc Practices or Sound Principles?” IT Professional, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2007, pp. 41-47. doi:10.1109/MITP.2007.27
[4]	T. Dyba and T. Dingsoyr, “Empirical Studies of Agile Software Development: A Systematic Review,” Informatics, Software Technology, Vol. 50, No. 9-10, 2008, pp. 833-859.
[5]	C. Mann and F. Maurer, “A Case Study on the Impact of Scrum on Overtime and Customer Satisfaction,” Agile Development Conference, IEEE Computer Society, Washington DC, 2005, pp. 70-79
[6]	S. Nerur, R. Mahapatra and G. Mangalara, “Challenges of Migrating to Agile Methodologies,” Communication of the ACM, Vol. 48, No. 5, 2005, pp. 72-78. doi:10.1145/1060710.1060712
[7]	P. Abrahamsson, K. Conboy and X. Wang, “‘Lots Done, More to Do’: The Current State of Agile Systems Development Research,” European Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2009, pp. 281-284. doi:10.1057/ejis.2009.27
[8]	H. Svensson and M. Host, “Views from an Organization on How Agile Development Affects Its Collaboration with a Software Development Team,” Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3547, 2005, pp. 48-501. doi:10.1007/11497455_38
[9]	A. Sillitti, M. Ceschi, B. Russo and G. Succi, “Managing Uncertainty in Requirements: A Survey in Documentation-Driven and Agile Companies,” Proceedings of the 11th International Software Metrics Symposium, Como, 1 September 2005, p. 17. doi:10.1109/METRICS.2005.29
[10]	T. Chow and D.-B. Cao, “A Survey Study of Critical Success Factors in Agile Software Projects,” The Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 81, No. 6, 2008, pp. 961-971. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2007.08.020
[11]	G. Lee and W. Xia, “Toward Agile an Integrated Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative Field Data on Software Development Agility,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 34 No. 1, 2010, pp. 87-114.
[12]	A. Ahmed, S. Ahmad, Dr. N. Ehsan, E. Mirza and S. Z. Sarwar, “Agile Software Development: Impact on Productivity and Quality,” Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE ICMIT, Singapore, 2-5 June 2010, pp. 287-291.
[13]	D. Rombach, “The Dilemma of Software Development,” Quality Connection, 2002.
[14]	A. Sampaio, A. Vasconcelos, R. Pedro and F. Sampaio, “Assessing Agile Methods: An Empirical Study,” Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2004, pp. 22-41. doi:10.1007/BF03192357
[15]	P. Abrahamsson, O. Salo, J. Ronkainen and J. Warsta, “Agile Software Development Methods Review and Analysis,” VIT Publications, Finlandia, 2002.
[16]	A. Cockburn, “Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game,” 2nd Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, 2006.
[17]	R. Charette, “Fair Fight? Agile Versus Heavy Methodologies,” Agile Methodologies, the Great Debate, Cutter Consortium, Arlington, 2001.
[18]	L. Cao, K. Mohan, P. Xu and B. Ramesh, “A Framework for Adapting Agile Development Methodologies,” European Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 18, 2009, pp. 332-343. doi:10.1057/ejis.2009.26
[19]	J. Shore and S. Warden, “The Art of Agile Development,” O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, 2007.
[20]	P. Agerfalk and B. Fitzgerald, “Flexible and Distributed Software Processes: Old Petunias in New Bowls?” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 49, No. 10, 2006, pp. 27-34.
[21]	A. Koscianski and M. S. Soares, “Qualidade de Software: Aprenda as Metodologias e Técnicas Mais Modernas Para o Desenvolvimento de Software,” 2nd Edition, Novatec Editora, S?o Paulo, 2007.
[22]	K. Beck, “Extreme Programming Explained,” Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, 1999.
[23]	K. Beck and M. Fowler, “Planning Extreme Programming,” Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, 2000.
[24]	K. Schwaber and M. Beedle, “Agile Software Development with Scrum,” Prentice Hall, Sao Paulo, 2002.
[25]	J. Highsmith, “Agile Software Development Ecosystems,” Addison-Wesley Pearson Education, Boston, 2002.
[26]	S. R. Palmer and J. M. Felsing, “A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development (the Coad Series),” Prentice Hall PTR, S?o Paulo, 2002.
[27]	J. Stapleton, “DSDM Dynamic Systems Development Method,” Addison-Wesley, Harlow, 1997.
[28]	A. Cockburn, “Agile Software Development,” Addison-Wesley, Reading, 2002.
[29]	K. Beck, “Test Driven Development: By Example,” Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, 2002.
[30]	Pmbok Guide, “Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide),” 4th Edition, Newtown Square, 2008.
[31]	C. F. Kemerer, M. C. Paulk, “The Impact of Design and Code Reviews on Software Quality: An Empirical Study Based on PSP Data,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2009, pp. 534-550. doi:10.1109/TSE.2009.27.
[32]	P. Kotler, “Administracao de Marketing,” 10th Edition, Prentice Hall, Sao Paulo, 2000, p. 764.
[33]	K. Schwaber, “Agile Project Management with Scrum,” Microsoft Press, Redmond, 2004.
[34]	S. Biffl, A. Aurum, B. Boehm, H. Erdogmus and P. Grunbacher, “Value-Based Software Engineering,” Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2006, p. 388. doi:10.1007/3-540-29263-2
[35]	M. Huo, J. Verner, L. Zhu and M. Babar, “Software Quality and Agile Methods,” Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference, IEEE Computer Society, Hong Kong, 2004, pp. 520.
[36]	J. F. Hair, B. Black, B. Babin, R. E. Anderson and R. L. Tatham, “Análise Multivariada de Dados,” 6th Edition, Bookman, Porto Alegre, 2009, p. 688.
[37]	R. A. Johnson and D. W. Wichern, “Applied Multivariate Statistical Analysis,” 6th Edition, Prentice Hall, Sao Paulo, 2007, p. 800.
[38]	S. A. Mingoti, “Análise de Dados Através de Métodos de Estatística Multivariada: Uma Abordagem Aplicada,” Editora UFMG, Belo Horizonte, 2005.
[39]	N. K. Malhotra, “Pesquisa de Marketing: Uma Orientacao Aplicada,” Editora Bookman, Porto Alegre, 2001.
[40]	J. Maroco, “Análise Estatística com a Utilizacao do SPSS,” 3rd Edition, Silabo, Lisboa, 2007, p. 822.