Increasing the impact of usability work in software development

Many software development companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, still need to be more aware of and understand Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) values, methods, techniques, and concepts. Recent studies have shown that companies are demanding internal self-assessment of HCI practices within the software development industry. However, only a few models are available for assessing HCI practices, and they lack sufficient validation to be widely applicable. The models are mainly based on staged assessments by experts, but continuous representation models are more suitable for self-assessment. To bridge these gaps, we have developed a new process model, HCI Reflect—a self-assessment method, and structurally assessed it as a model encompassing four dimensions for self-assessing HCI practices in software development companies: human-centeredness, process and infrastructure, usability performance, and usability impact. In this article, we present the model’s theoretical foundation and the results from an international assessment study of the first version of the model, where 118 software development professionals evaluated the model’s four dimensions. The results demonstrated the significance of these dimensions, and based on this, we present a revised version. The development and assessment are the first steps towards the validation of the model, and we plan to test the underlying questionnaire for usability next. The model, when validated, would be helpful for self-assessing HCI practices in software development companies to foster knowledge and understanding of HCI practices in development teams. ACM CCS: Human-centered computing— > Human computer interaction (HCI)— > HCI design and evaluation methods.

The paper focuses on enhancing the current or modern software development practices in Information Technology (IT) organizations. The research paper aims to address the gap between various hybrid software development approaches and existing practices that contribute to software development practices. The methodology adopted here is to obtain data from software professionals and understand how the current practices in the software development industry have contributed to the productivity of the employees and the IT organization, which has been done with the help of a survey questionnaire and by analyzing existing research articles and papers on the software development practices. This research is a conceptual model focused on a modern hybrid approach for software development, rather than focusing on a single software development approach, which can help IT organization increase productivity and deliver business value beyond customer expectations. The cost to build and time to market a software product or a software service can reduce by integrating the required software development practices. Today, staying relevant in the competitive market can be made easier by choosing the best available software development practices, frameworks, and models to fit an organization’s value and knowledge system. The conceptual model aims to reduce the gap between various hybrid software development approaches and existing practices contributing to software development. The paper concludes by discussing the benefits of the hybrid software development approach and urge IT organizations to adopt it as per their software development requirements and customer requirements.

Design management systems have been developed and researched for traditional product and service industries. For interaction design little research has been performed on design management. The objective of this paper is to describe aspects of and provisions for industrial interaction design that influence approaches to design management within system and software development. We discuss whether there are specific conditions for design management of interaction design within the software and system development industries. The research is based on three short case studies from industrial software development. We identify some of these specific conditions; the difference between a usage and a product perspective, the design tools and practices, and the modularized and distributed processes. These issues point towards challenges facing design management within the software and system development context, as well as the need for interaction design to clarify its position as a strategic resource in software companies. The conclusions point towards the need for continued research on strategic possibilities and alternatives to organize and manage design work in software and system development.

This paper analyzes how organizational culture is intertwined with usability work in software (SW) development organizations. Usability is an important quality characteristic of software products and systems. However, the development of usability is challenging in SW development. Organizational culture has been argued to affect usability work in SW development organizations, thus, this paper takes a culture-oriented approach in the analysis of usability work in two SW development organizations operating in the product development context. First, based on a literature review, a definition of usability work is offered. An interpretive view of organizational culture, acknowledging its recent critique, is then introduced and utilized in the empirical analysis. The empirical results suggest that differences exists in how usability work is modified and interpreted in the organizations with divergent cultural contexts, those advocating different motives and practices for usability work. Finally, the importance of understanding the cultural context into which usability work is introduced is emphasized, and it is argued that culturally compatible strategies to usability work should be adopted.

An analysis of factors affecting software reliability

Problem statement: A study was conducted to investigate the current state of software development practice in Malaysia with regard to Component Oriented Software Development (COSD). The objectives of the study were to identify its potential application in Malaysia and to determine research areas that can be explored further to promote its application. Approach: Information required for the study was obtained through a survey, questionnaires were distributed to the software developers who are working at various software development companies in Malaysia. Software developers were generally divided into two categories; component users and non-component users. Information on current practices in software development, current practices of the component users, problems faced by the component users in applying COSD and reasons that hinder the non-component users from applying COSD was sought. Results: Results showed that current practice of software development in Malaysia is inclined towards software reuse, which is in line with the aim of COSD. Even though the component users face problems in applying COSD, they still believe that COSD is a better approach to develop software and majority of them will continue to apply COSD. The non-component users also believe that COSD is a better approach to develop software and majority of them will apply COSD in their future software development projects. Conclusion: Study concluded that the potential of COSD application amongst the software developers in Malaysia is high. List of COSD research areas formulated from the study can serve as a basis for the researchers to pursue research in this area that will further increase the potential.

This paper describes the results of a single-case case study, exploring the role of user experience (UX) work in agile software development. The case study company is a large multinational telecommunication company undergoing a lean transformation process. In this case, lean transformation includes the adoption of agile software development practices. Transformation to agile practices had taken place one year prior to the analysis. The analysis is based on documentation analysis and semi-structured interviews of seven software development professionals. The results show that there were difficulties integrating UX design and software engineering work in an agile and iterative manner. The transition process succeeded in shifting UX and related documentation to a central planning role. The roles of the UX designers in the teams were still under re-definition. There was also a clear need to establish new ways of collaboration between UX professionals and software designers.

We empirically examine the relationship between software design modularity and software quality in open source software (OSS) development projects. Conventional wisdom suggests that degree of software modularity affects software quality. An analysis of 203 software releases in 46 OSS projects hosted on SourceForge.net lends support for a more complex relationship between software modularity and software quality than conventional wisdom suggests. We find that software modularity is associated with reduced software complexity, an increased number of static software bugs, and a mixed relationship with the percentage of bugs closed. We do not find empirical evidence supporting any relationship between modularity and other measures of customer satisfaction. In addition to empirically testing the relationship between modularity and quality, we introduce new measures of software modularity and software quality. Implications are developed for the theory of modularity and the practice of software development.

Software development is one of the work practices in a company’s startup, academics, and industries. Agile is a software development methodology that is currently quite popular. Agile development practices existing methodologies include Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), Domain-Driven Design (DDD), and Model-Driven Development (MDD). Each software development practice is unique as it could hinder or contribute greatly to the creation of said software. Agile is a consideration for developers when selecting appropriate development practices due to the breadth of available practices. Thus, this study identifies the characteristics and effectiveness of Agile methods. Our opinion is that this study can help software developers to better understand the challenges of each agile practices and implement them to create better optimized softwares.

Object-oriented software metrics are important in software engineering field for measurement of the software quality, size estimation, complexity and effort. Object oriented software development is the most popular and best practice in software development. Object oriented software metrics can be used for measuring extend of object orientedness of a program. These quantities are important information indicators, that can be helpful for a software developer in take decisions for designing good software. It is proven that the software metrics provide quantitative information about the structure of the code, which can be used to determine the reliability of software. The design of the software is highly recommended to be object oriented in the software development environment. Software metrics specific to programs that have object oriented design can be used to measure the quality of the software like inheritance, assessing the effects of coupling, the complexity of the code, size aspects, etc, of the software developed in such an environment. Software measurement is a way for assessing the quality of software. Many attributes can define quality of a software, internal (size, complexity) as well as external (reliability)[14]. Often internal attributes are contributing factors to external attributes. Reliability as a term means the degree to which a component, product or system executes specified functions for a specific period of time under specified conditions. Software reliability is the software being trustworthy of the specifications. The aim of the work is to model the relationship between reliability of object oriented software to the object oriented design metrics and predict reliability of software.

Quality assurance tasks of software products typically take place throughout the entire software development life-cycle. Frequently, paper-based inspections methods are used to review software development documents (e.g. requirements specifications, design documents, test plans). Nevertheless, even though the quality of these documents has a major impact on the quality of the developed software product, they are often not as rigorously reviewed as source code. This paper presents a tool-based approach that facilitates the software inspection process in order to determine defects of generally accepted documentation best practices in software development documents. Moreover, we present results of a conducted empirical study and show how this tool-based approach helps to facilitate inspection tasks and to support gathering information on the quality of the inspected documents.

Science and technology studies (STS) is a discipline concerned with examining how social and technological worlds shape each other. In this paper, we argue that STS can be used to study the work of software development as a complex, interacting system of people, organizations, culture, practices, and technology, or in STS terms, an assemblage. We illustrate the application of these ideas to the work of software development, where STS theory directs us towards examining at human-human relations, human-machine relations, and machine-machine relations. We conclude by discussing some of the challenges of applying STS in empirical software engineering.

Agile development processes and especially Scrum are changing the state of the practice in software development. Many companies in the classical IT sector have adopted them to successfully tackle various challenges from the rapidly changing environments and increasingly complex software systems. Companies developing software for embedded or cyber-physical systems, however, are still hesitant to adopt such processes. Despite successful applications of Scrum and other agile methods for cyber-physical systems, there is still no complete process that maps their specific challenges to practices in Scrum. We propose to fill this gap by treating all design artefacts in such a development in the same way: In software development, the final design is already the product, in hardware and mechanics it is the starting point of production. We sketch the Scrum extension Scrum CPS by showing how Scrum could be used to develop all design artefacts for a cyber physical system. Hardware and mechanical parts that might not be available yet are simulated. With this approach, we can directly and iteratively build the final software and produce detailed models for the hardware and mechanics production in parallel. We plan to further detail Scrum CPS and apply it first in a series of student projects to gather more experience before testing it in an industrial case study.

Software developers' work is much more interesting and multifarious in practice than formal definitions of software development processes imply. Rational models of work are often representations of processes defined as they should be performed, rather than portrayals of what people actually do in practice. These models offer a simplified picture of the phenomena involved, and are frequently confused with how the work is carried out in reality, or they are advocated as the ideal way to accomplish the work. A longitudinal ethnographic study (45 days of fieldwork over 20 months) of a group of professional software developers revealed the importance of including their observed practice, and the "infrastructure" that supports and shapes this practice, in an authentic account of their work. Moreover, this research revealed that software development work practice and the infrastructure used to produce software are inextricably entwined and mutually constitutive over time.

Starting from the experience gained in organizing TAPSOFT'85, the paper discusses the place of formal methods in software development. It distinguishes two notions of theory: the mathematical science of computation and the treatment of computing as a human activity. An adequate software theory needs to take both theoretical perspectives into account. Therefore, the paper explores the borderline of formalization and human activity in several directions: concerning the role and scope of formalized procedures, the relation between formal models and situated use, the process of learning in software development and the ways computer programs become effective in use. Fundamental assumptions underlying formal methods and their relation to emancipatory approaches such as participatory design are discussed. The paper closes with calling for a dialogical framework for further pursuing these questions.