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Managing Increasing User Needs Complexity Within the ITA Army Agile Framework
Abstract
The innovations introduced in the Italian Army in Software (SW) Development Methodologies in the context of the “ITA ARMY AGILE” (IAA) initiative require attentive and tailored governance with regard to the growth of the enterprise complexity and the future requirements related to the development of Command and Control systems. Starting from a limited approach centered on a single Integrated Development Team (IDT), an unprecedented growth of the product is being experienced due essentially to the fact that the customer has been “educated” and is now capable of stating its needs. Consequently, in the positive environment created and witnessed by the change of mentality, a brief description of the issues, chiefly but not solely linked to the scarcity of resources, time management, and procedures complexity, will be provided in order to take the whole Land Command and Control Evolution (LC2EVO) under the expected control.
... The project lasted 18 months, produced several releases with a string reduction of development costs [8] Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility iAgile requires excellent technical capabilities [14] Simplicity-the art of maximizing the amount of work not done-is essential ...
... The quality of the final system is high and is still being used [17] At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly Projects based on iAgile used systematically retrospectives [14] 3 ...
Tools are of paramount importance in automating software engineering tasks; although the Agile Manifesto prefers “individuals and their interactions over processes and tools”, some agile development activities make no exception and can be automated effectively and successfully. In process frameworks like Scrum or similar ones some activities are in fact quite structured and need specific tool support. Hence, it is interesting to study the combination of specific agile practices with OSS tools. In this paper we introduce the Compositional Agile System (CAS), an environment created to support iAgile and automate some of its tasks using OSS tools. iAgile is a Scrum-like model designed to develop critical systems in the military domain .
... It developed mission-specific services called Functional Area Services (FAS). At an organizational level, they deployed a kind of Scrum of Scrums development method [19,85], where one or more Agile teams were committed to developing one FAS. This tailored Scrum approach was designed to have Sprints of five weeks, four for the development and one for security certifications. ...
Organizations are increasingly adopting Agile frameworks for their internal software development. Cost reduction, rapid deployment, requirements and mental model alignment are typical reasons for an Agile transformation. This article presents an in-depth field study of a large-scale Agile transformation in a mission-critical environment, where stakeholders’ commitment was a critical success factor. The goal of such a transformation was to implement mission-oriented features, reducing costs and time to operate in critical scenarios. The project lasted several years and involved over 40 professionals. We report how a hierarchical and plan-driven organization exploited Agile methods to develop a Command & Control (C2) system. Accordingly, we first abstract our experience, inducing a success model of general use for other comparable organizations by performing a post-mortem study. The goal of the inductive research process was to identify critical success factors and their relations. Finally, we validated and generalized our model through Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modelling, surveying 200 software engineers involved in similar projects. We conclude the article with data-driven recommendations concerning the management of Agile projects.
... To address the problem described above, we hypothesized that agile development can be an adequate approach for developing software in the defense sector even for mission critical applications. To this end, it is worth recalling how some of the tenets of agile can be structured in the production of software for defense [3] [4] [12] [21], in particular with respect to the following aspects: ...
... To address the problem described above, we hypothesized that agile development can be an adequate approach for developing software in the defense sector even for mission critical applications. Besides, some of the tenets of agile can be structured in the production of software for defense (Cotugno 2015;, in particular with respect to the following aspects: ...
Agile methods are now a mainstream production process and their proponents are no longer considered hackers or cowboy coders. Still, in embedded and safety critical domains there is somehow the expectation that the approach be "more" plan-based; at least, many of the current normatives seem to lean toward such approach. A definite change in attitude has emerged with the latest DoD standards in the United States; in Italy, this change has been introduced through a new initiative taken at the 4th Logistic Division of the General Staffs of the Italian Army.
This paper discusses the vital role of the Design Authority (DA) within large Military Scrum of Scrum multi-team-based programs, in assuring that systems would support a military operation according to organizational and administrative procedures. It is a matter of fact that multiple teams and progressive technology can create a thwarting environment leading to implementation fatigue; finding balance between agility versus standardization or functionality versus intuitiveness often leads to discussions among the stakeholders. The DA manages these problems and maximizes opportunities, taking the responsibility for ensuring a solution that meets goals, needs, and specifications during the entire Agile process. A discrete DA will act in coordination with the teams sprint-by-sprint, defining and communicating portfolio vision, technical strategies, architecture standards, and design methodologies. DA maintains an end-to-end view with a mission-focused perspective, ensuring the delivery of business value and providing timely and useful information to team members and stakeholders; absence of a DA yields uncertainty among project participants on their tasks and roles.
Analysis of developer collaboration networks presents an opportunity for understanding and thus improving the software development process. Discovery of these networks, however, presents a challenge since the collaboration relationships are initially not known. In this work we apply an approach for discovering collaboration networks of open source developers from Version Control Systems (VCS). It computes similarities among developers based on common file changes, constructs the network of collaborating developers and applies filtering techniques to improve the readability of the visualized network. We use the approach in case studies of three different projects from open source (phpMyAdmin, Eclipse Data Tools Platform and Gnu Compiler Collection) to learn their organizational structure and patterns. Our results indicate that with little effort the approach is capable of revealing aspects of these projects that were previously not known or would require a lot of effort to discover manually via other means, such as reading project documentation and forums.
Collecting, understanding, and managing requirements is a critical aspect in all development methods. This is true for Agile Methods as well. In particular, several agile practices deal with requirements in order to implement them correctly and satisfy the needs of the customer. These practices focus on a continuous interaction with the customer to address the requirements evolution over time, prioritize them, and deliver the most valuable functionalities first. This chapter introduces Agile Methods as the implementation of the principles of the lean production in software development. Therefore, Agile Methods focus on continuous process improvement through the identification and the removal of waste, whatever does not add value for the customer.
This paper makes two contributions to software engineering research. First, we observe that uncertainty permeates software development but is rarely captured explicitly in software models. We remedy this situation by presenting the Uncertainty Principle in Software Engineering (UPSE), which states that uncertainty is inherent and inevitable in software development processes and products. We substantiate UPSE by providing examples of uncertainty in select software engineering domains. We present three common sources of uncertainty in software development, namely human participation, concurrency, and problem-domain uncertainties. We explore in detail uncertainty in software testing, including test planning, test enactment, error tracing, and quality estimation. Second, we present a technique for modeling uncertainty, called Bayesian belief networks, and justify its applicability to software systems. We apply the Bayesian approach to a simple network of software artifacts based on an elev...
Many software-related technologies, including software development methodologies, quality models, etc. have been developed due to the huge software needs of the Department of Defense (DoD) of the United States. Therefore, it is not surprising that the DoD is promoting open source software and agile approaches into the development processes of the defense contractors1. The quality of many open source product has been demonstrated to be comparable to the close source ones and in many cases even higher and the effectiveness of agile approaches has been demonstrated in many industrial settings. Moreover, the availability of the source code makes open source products attractive for obvious reasons (e.g., security, long term maintenance, etc.). Following this trend, also the Italian Army has started using open source software and promotes its usage into the development processes of its contractors, also promoting agile approaches in many contexts focusing on the SCRUM methodology. This paper provides an overview of the SCRUM development process adopted by the Italian Army for the development of software systems using open source technologies. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.
This newest book from Watts Humphrey is a hands-on introduction to basic disciplines of software engineering. Designed as a workbook companion to any introductory programming or software-engineering text, Humphrey provides here the practical means to integrate his highly regarded Personal Software Process (PSP) into college and university curricula. The book may also be adapted for use in industrial training or for self-improvement by practicing software engineers.Applying the book's exercises to their course assignments, students learn both to manage their time effectively and to monitor the quality of their work, good practices they will need to be successful in their future careers. The book is supported by its own electronic supplement, which includes spreadsheets for data entry and analysis. A complete instructor's package is also available.By mastering PSP techniques early in their studies, students can avoid--or overcome--the popular "hacker" ethic that leads to so many bad habits. Employers will appreciate new hires prepared to do competent professional work without, as now is common, expensive retraining and years of experience.
Method for Qualification and Selection of Open Source Software (QSOS)
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Adopting Agile methodology in mission critical software production
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Managing uncertainty in requirements: a survey in plan-based and agile companies, 11th IEEE international software metrics symposium
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Business readiness rating project
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Coalition information sharing and C2 & enterprise systems evolution @ Italian army, briefing given at the NATO ACT strategic command
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Interoperability and Supportability of Information Technology and National Security Systems
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