Search results

1 – 10 of 144
Article
Publication date: 3 April 2017

Chaehan So

This paper aims to present a conceptual framework of how software teams can leverage the implicit information of implemented acceptance tests to cater to the needs of decision…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present a conceptual framework of how software teams can leverage the implicit information of implemented acceptance tests to cater to the needs of decision makers. The research questions on this framework were how business stakeholders can receive project status information in an intuitive way and how this framework can guarantee the traceability of tests to requirements.

Design/methodology/approach

The conceptual framework delineates the design of an acceptance test framework in three aspects: how the requirements model reflects the evolving states of requirement maturity over a project, how the acceptance test model becomes synchronized with the requirements model without a traceability matrix and how the acceptance test model communicates business value to the decision makers.

Findings

In an industrial case study, the presented framework yielded the positive effects of intuitive understanding by business stakeholders, high test coverage of requirements and distinctly reduced manual quality assurance (QA) work by automated testing for browsers and mobile devices.

Practical implications

The presented framework can help to convince business stakeholders to approve the budget for building a testing framework because it delivers them value as a status reporting tool.

Originality/value

This paper is the first to describe a step-by-step approach to solving a critical problem that IT departments frequently face. The solution consists in a new way of transforming the perception of a technical framework into a reporting tool for business information by intuitive design. The idea of mapping hierarchically corresponding abstraction layers can be transferred to other engineering domains.

Details

Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1726-0531

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 May 2018

Joey F. George, Kevin Scheibe, Anthony M. Townsend and Brian Mennecke

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which newly agile organizations followed 2001’s Agile Manifesto, especially in terms of the 12 principles of the agile approach, as…

2315

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which newly agile organizations followed 2001’s Agile Manifesto, especially in terms of the 12 principles of the agile approach, as included in the Manifesto.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted in-depth case studies of groups in three large business organizations that had recently adopted agile. Two researchers spent one day at each site, attending daily standups and conducting interviews with managers, developers and customers.

Findings

Across the three organizations, developers were faithful to two agile principles: the primacy of delivering valuable software continually and regular reflections on the process with an eye toward improvement. The developers were uniformly unfaithful to the principle that requires face-to-face communication. Each organization varied in their adherence to the remaining nine principles. Obstacles to faithful adoption included the experience of the organization with agile, the extent to which the industry was regulated and the extent to which developers and customers were physically dispersed.

Originality/value

While past research on agile development is extensive, this paper examines perspectives on the method and its adoption through the lens of the original Agile Manifesto and its 12 principles. The principles were grouped into three broader categories – software delivery, people and process – to provide additional insights and to sharpen the analysis.

Details

Journal of Systems and Information Technology, vol. 20 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1328-7265

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 June 2020

Annika Steiber, Sverker Alänge, Swapan Ghosh and Dulce Goncalves

The digitization process has increased the pressure on large firms to transform. However, current frameworks on digital transformation are not well explaining what factors…

4589

Abstract

Purpose

The digitization process has increased the pressure on large firms to transform. However, current frameworks on digital transformation are not well explaining what factors contribute to, or hinder, a firm's digital transformation. Innovation diffusion theories could complement existing frameworks, and for this reason, the purpose of this paper is to expand the existing body of knowledge on what contributes to, or hinders, an industrial firm's digital transformation by applying a validated framework based on innovation diffusion theories on two pioneer cases: General Electric and Siemens EHR/Health Services.

Design/methodology/approach

The framework used in this paper is based on several years' empirical studies and iterative literature reviews on innovation diffusion theories. Further, each use case is based on literature reviews and unique empirical data, collected by the authors of this paper as a result of taking active part of respective company's multi-years transformation.

Findings

Common drivers of, and clear inhibitors to the two firms' transformation, were identified. The innovation diffusion framework was found to work very well in identifying those factors.

Research limitations/implications

The implications are that researchers better can analyze/explain a digital transformation of a firm, and business managers can better plan or improve their firms' transformation processes.

Originality/value

The theoretical contributions of this paper are two: first, complement existing frameworks with a validated framework for innovation diffusion; second, provide an extension of our body of knowledge on factors that contributes to, or hinders, industrial firm's digital transformation.

Details

European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 24 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-1060

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 September 2021

Leandro Antonelli, Guy Camilleri, Diego Torres and Pascale Zarate

This article proposes a strategy to make the testing step easier, generating user acceptance tests (UATs) in an automatic way from requirements artifacts.

Abstract

Purpose

This article proposes a strategy to make the testing step easier, generating user acceptance tests (UATs) in an automatic way from requirements artifacts.

Design/methodology/approach

This strategy is based on two modeling frameworks: scenarios and task/method paradigm. Scenarios are a requirement artifact used to describe business processes and requirements, and task/method paradigm is a modeling paradigm coming from the artificial intelligence field. The proposed strategy is composed of four steps. In the first step, scenarios are described through a semantic wiki website. Then scenarios are automatically translated into a task/method model (step two). In the third step, the task/method model obtained in step two is executed in order to produce and store all possible achievements of tasks and thus scenarios. The stored achievements are saved in a data structure called execution tree (ET). Finally, from this ET (step four), the UATs are generated.

Findings

The feasibility of this strategy is shown through a case study coming from the agriculture production systems field.

Originality/value

Generally, test design approaches deal with a small number of variables describing one specific situation where a decision table or workflow is used to design tests. The proposed approach can deal with many variables because the authors rely on scenarios that can be composed in order to obtain a tree with all the testing paths that can arise from their description.

Article
Publication date: 8 October 2019

Yan Watequlis Syaifudin, Nobuo Funabiki, Minoru Kuribayashi and Wen-Chung Kao

With rapid increase of Android devices and application systems, there is a strong demand for Android application programmers. A lot of schools are offering Android programming…

Abstract

Purpose

With rapid increase of Android devices and application systems, there is a strong demand for Android application programmers. A lot of schools are offering Android programming courses to meet this demand. However, Android programming can be different from the conventional one because it needs interactive functions through interfaces with users, which makes the study more difficult. This paper aims to propose an Android Programming Learning Assistance System, namely, APLAS, to assist the Java-based Android programming study and education.

Design/methodology/approach

By adopting the test-driven development method, APLAS is designed to achieve independent learning without the presence of teachers. Using JUnit and Robolectric, the answers from the students are automatically marked in APLAS. To cover extensive materials in Android programming, APLAS offers four stages where each stage involves several topics.

Findings

To evaluate the effectiveness of APLAS, we implemented the Unit Converter assignment that covers the first two topics, namely, Basic user interface in the first stage and basic activity in the second stage. Through solving the assignment, it is expected to learn basic application development. Forty novice students of an IT department in Indonesia were asked to solve both topics separately.

Originality/value

The results show that APLAS is useful and helpful for the self-study of Android programming, as they could complete codes with good execution performances.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 16 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 April 2010

Subhas Chandra Misra, Vinod Kumar and Uma Kumar

Agile software development (ASD) is currently an emerging approach in software engineering for improving quality, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who…

4627

Abstract

Purpose

Agile software development (ASD) is currently an emerging approach in software engineering for improving quality, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. Owing to the attractive claims of successes of the ASD approach, many traditional projects, which used to practice plan‐driven software development, are gradually transitioning into ASD‐based development. This paper seeks to report the results from a survey‐based ex‐post‐facto study aimed at determining the relative importance, if any, of the changes traditional plan‐driven software development projects have to undergo to adopt ASD practices.

Design/methodology/approach

The study was conducted using a web‐based survey with ASD practitioners who had experience of practicing plan‐driven software development in the past. ASD practitioners from a wide range of industrial sectors participated in the study. Similarly, the study is not restricted to any specific organisation/project size, culture, or nationality – the respondents were widely geographically distributed across continents.

Findings

The study received 241 responses, of which 165 were usable. The study did not reveal any substantial difference in importance of the four classes of changes hypothesised – changes in culture, changes in management style, changes in knowledge management strategy and changes in development processes. The authors believe that this is an important finding because it is indicative of not isolating one class of changes from another in practical transition exercises. However, another noteworthy observation was that transitioning from heavily process‐centric to short, iterative, test‐driven, and people‐centric development was considered by the largest percentage (roughly 77 per cent) of respondents to be very important. The open‐ended questions in the study also revealed three additional classes of changes: changes in personal characteristics, changes in customer attitude, and changes in knowledge and education of stakeholders.

Originality/value

In this work an attempt was made to gain an understanding of the relative importance of the different critical changes that would be helpful to a project manager who is involved in the transition from traditional plan‐driven software development practices to agile software development practices.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 April 2012

Claus A. Usener, Tim A. Majchrzak and Herbert Kuchen

To overcome the high manual effort of assessments for teaching personnel, e‐assessment systems are used to assess students using information systems (IS). The purpose of this…

Abstract

Purpose

To overcome the high manual effort of assessments for teaching personnel, e‐assessment systems are used to assess students using information systems (IS). The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension of EASy, a system for e‐assessment of exercises that require higher‐order cognitive skills. The latest module allows assessing programming exercises in conjunction with particular test‐drivendevelopment and back‐to‐back testing.

Design/methodology/approach

EASy was developed following a design science research approach. To prove the effectiveness of the approach, the authors discuss findings from a survey that was conducted with almost 200 students from a programming lecture and present quantitative and qualitative findings.

Findings

Most students reflected positively on using EASy. EASy proves to be a versatile tool and the extension meets the authors' aims. Several details require further investigation, most notably usability and the support of tutors.

Research limitations/implications

E‐assessment is a field that requires much future research to enable commercial‐scale systems for assessment of higher‐order cognitive skills. The authors' research is currently limited in the number of exercise types the system supports.

Practical implications

EASy is a research tool despite being used in actual lectures. It is not yet a general e‐assessment solution.

Originality/value

While EASy is a research prototype, its usage in lectures demonstrates the practicability of using e‐assessment. EASy currently is one of the few systems with advanced capabilities. The paper strongly contributes to the knowledge base on building e‐assessment systems; thus, it is relevant both for practitioners seeking to establish e‐assessment and to researchers trying to understand the future needs towards comparable systems.

Details

Interactive Technology and Smart Education, vol. 9 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-5659

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 July 2020

Sanju Tiwari and Ajith Abraham

Health-care ontologies and their terminologies play a vital role in knowledge representation and data integration for health information. In health-care systems, Internet of…

Abstract

Purpose

Health-care ontologies and their terminologies play a vital role in knowledge representation and data integration for health information. In health-care systems, Internet of Technology (IoT) technologies provide data exchange among various entities and ontologies offer a formal description to present the knowledge of health-care domains. These ontologies are advised to assure the quality of their adoption and applicability in the real world.

Design/methodology/approach

Ontology assessment is an integral part of ontology construction and maintenance. It is always performed to identify inconsistencies and modeling errors by the experts during the ontology development. A smart health-care ontology (SHCO) has been designed to deal with health-care information and IoT devices. In this paper, an integrated approach has been proposed to assess the SHCO on different assessment tools such as Themis, Test-Driven Development (TDD)onto, Protégé and OOPs! Several test cases are framed to assess the ontology on these tools, in this research, Themis and TDDonto tools provide the verification for the test cases while Protégé and OOPs! provides validation of modeled knowledge in the ontology.

Findings

As of the best knowledge, no other study has been presented earlier to conduct the integrated assessment on different tools. All test cases are successfully analyzed on these tools and results are drawn and compared with other ontologies.

Originality/value

The developed ontology is analyzed on different verification and validation tools to assure the quality of ontologies.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 16 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 24 June 2020

Ivonei Freitas da Silva

This paper aims to describe the students’ experience in adopting design thinking (DT) and extreme programming (XP) throughout a course of technology innovation workshop in a…

1565

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to describe the students’ experience in adopting design thinking (DT) and extreme programming (XP) throughout a course of technology innovation workshop in a master of business administration (MBA) degree program.

Design/methodology/approach

This study analyzes data (performed process and achieved results) from the students’ reports and the instructor’s observations about three courses held in 2016, 2017 and 2018. In each course, there were students conducting activities to understand, develop, and validate the market, customer, user and prototype.

Findings

This paper identifies that the processes of DT and XP promote active and collaborative learning relationships. The adopted activities along with a mix of different backgrounds from the students can promote good insights to understand the user problem and build a technological solution with incremental innovation.

Research limitations/implications

This paper describes only a unique view from the instructor’s knowledge; therefore, others might present different scenarios and results.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the characterization of DT and XP activities when teaching technological innovation in a MBA.

Details

Innovation & Management Review, vol. 17 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2515-8961

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 March 2011

Jan Terje Karlsen, Line Hagman and Thomas Pedersen

The focus of this paper is on knowledge transfer. The purpose is to investigate intra‐project knowledge‐transfer practice in information systems development (ISD) firms applying a…

2025

Abstract

Purpose

The focus of this paper is on knowledge transfer. The purpose is to investigate intra‐project knowledge‐transfer practice in information systems development (ISD) firms applying a Scrum methodology.

Design/methodology/approach

Case study of ISD projects and empirical data obtained using in‐depth interviews following a semi‐structured approach were employed.

Findings

One of the main findings showed that Scrum team members believed in the usefulness of knowledge transfer. The study observed extensive personal exchange of knowledge through, for example, meetings and networks, including dialog with the client. The mechanisms observed in creating knowledge transfer were: lean and dynamic documentation, cross‐functional teams, client consultation and feedback, intra‐project meetings, application of project tools and techniques, and management of changes.

Research limitations/implications

Future research should investigate other organizations and countries, so that these findings may be generalized.

Practical implications

The study observed extensive personal exchange of knowledge which can be described as people track of knowledge management. This observation coincides with the view that information systems and tools only play a subordinate role in knowledge management widely held by many contributors to the people track of knowledge management. Others argue that the dominance of tacit knowledge in projects is a key challenge. This involves a particular concern for organizational culture and leadership style and has implications for how a project should be structured and managed.

Originality/value

Knowledge transfer in ISD projects is studied in this research paper.

Details

Journal of Systems and Information Technology, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1328-7265

Keywords

1 – 10 of 144