Earlier empirical studies have demonstrated the interest that agile methods have generated in the software industry. Currently, lean approaches are increasingly adopted for complementing agile methods in software processes. With the goal of providing up-to-day results that can be used by organizations implementing or planning to implement agile and/or lean methods, we have conducted a study on the current stage of agile and lean adoption and usage in the software industry. For this purpose, we conducted an extensive survey among Finnish software practitioners in 2011, using the membership registry of The Finnish Information Processing Association (FIPA) as a sampling frame. 408 responses were collected from 200 software intensive organizations in the study. The survey included questions for identifying the rate of agile and lean usage in software organizations as well as the implementation of specific methods and practices, goals in adopting agile and lean, reasons for not applying these methods and effects of the agile and lean usage. The results of the survey reveal that a majority of respondents' organizational units are using agile and/or lean methods (58%). Furthermore, lean appears as a new player, being used by 24% of respondents, mainly in combination with agile (21%). The reasons and benefits for using agile and lean methods appeared to correspond in most parts to the findings of the earlier research. Generally, the experiences of using agile and lean methods seem to be rather positive, although challenges, such as obtaining management support and limitations for scaling agile in distributed settings, were also identified.

/pdf/survey-on-agile-and-lean-usage-in-finnish-software-industry-3egkfby3r5.pdf

Survey on agile and lean usage in finnish software industry

The immense increase in multimedia-on-demand traffic that refers to audio, video, and images, has drastically shifted the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) from scalar to Multimedia Internet of Things (M-IoT). IoT devices are constrained in terms of energy, computing, size, and storage memory. Delay-sensitive and bandwidth-hungry multimedia applications over constrained IoT networks require revision of IoT architecture for M-IoT. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of M-IoT with an emphasis on architecture, protocols, and applications. This article starts by providing a horizontal overview of the IoT. Then, we discuss the issues considering the characteristics of multimedia and provide a summary of related M-IoT architectures. Various multimedia applications supported by IoT are surveyed, and numerous use cases related to road traffic management, security, industry, and health are illustrated to show how different M-IoT applications are revolutionizing human life. We explore the importance of Quality-of-Experience (QoE) and Quality-of-Service (QoS) for multimedia transmission over IoT. Moreover, we explore the limitations of IoT for multimedia computing and present the relationship between the M-IoT and emerging technologies including event processing, feature extraction, cloud computing, Fog/Edge computing and Software-Defined-Networks (SDNs). We also present the need for better routing and Physical-Medium Access Control (PHY-MAC) protocols for M-IoT. Finally, we present a detailed discussion on the open research issues and several potential research areas related to emerging multimedia communication in IoT.

/pdf/multimedia-internet-of-things-a-comprehensive-survey-2fjhk0x8a8.pdf

Multimedia Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Survey

Primavera's development team is a model for others looking to adopt agile processes. Learn how to deliver high-quality software while improving your team's quality of life.

Primavera gets agile : A successful transition to agile development : Adapting agility

A critical examination of recent industrial surveys on agile method usage

Agile systems development (SD) is described as a cooperative game of invention and communication, in which teams are characterized by relying heavily on informal communication mechanisms such as face-to-face conversations. Our current state of knowledge about the actual communication process in agile SD projects is fragmented because of the lack of an integrative lens across different studies. On the basis of the Unified Model of SD Success, we provide an integrated view on the role of communication in agile SD by conducting a structured, systematic literature review. Our data collection process resulted in 333 relevant papers on agile SD and communication. We find that despite its acknowledged importance, our knowledge on communication and agile SD is limited and research is scattered, inconclusive, as well as contradictory. In consequence, we present several research gaps that deserve future research attention. Specifically, we call for research that opens up the communication process and empirically validates the implications for communication frequency and quality triggered by agile SD.

/pdf/the-role-of-communication-in-agile-systems-development-4x4h0qirq7.pdf

The Role of Communication in Agile Systems Development

Agile Methods are a set of software practices that can help to produce products faster and at the same time deliver what customers want. Despite the benefits that Agile methods can deliver, however, we found few studies from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Malaysia. As a result, less empirical evidence can be obtained in the country making its implementation harder. To use a new method, experience from other practitioners is critical, which describes what is important, what is possible and what is not possible concerning Agile. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the issues faced by early adopters in Malaysia where Agile methods are still relatively new. The initial study involves 13 participants including project managers, CEOs, founders and software developers from seven organisations. Our study has shown that social and human aspects are important when using Agile methods. While technical aspects have always been considered to exist in software development, we found these factors to be less important when using Agile methods. The results obtained can serve as guidelines to practitioners in the country and the neighbouring regions.

/pdf/empirical-investigation-on-agile-methods-usage-issues-3zi6sjh2mn.pdf

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Agile methods are an established process for developing software nowadays. There is, however, less evidence on their usage among software practitioners in Malaysia. While the methods have become mainstream in other regions, that is not the case in this country. This paper empirically investigates the perceptions of Agile methods usage from seven organisations involving 14 software practitioners in Malaysia. Our participants are using Scrum and have a maximum of five years experience. We categorised our findings in terms of awareness, introduction, and challenges they are facing, together with the suggested and practiced solution from them. Interestingly, a change in mind set when practicing Agile was identified to be helpful in reducing the challenges. Lastly we present the practices in Agile they perceived to deliver the most benefits. We found that the use of Agile is still emerging in the country, and awareness is still lacking especially within the government sector. Although several challenges have been encountered when introducing Agile in their organisations, the benefits of Agile are reported to be in Agile practices such as: the involvement from all parties from the beginning, daily stand-up meeting, iterative and incremental, applying burn down chart, sprint and continuous integration. We aim to provide awareness and knowledge about Agile methods to the practitioners in the country and the nearby region. This paper can serve as a reference to the early adopters who intend to use Agile methods in the future.

/pdf/emergence-of-agile-methods-perceptions-from-software-1kg9diibmj.pdf

Emergence of Agile Methods: Perceptions from Software Practitioners in Malaysia

This paper focuses on identifying the important aspects of Agile adoption from software practitioners in Malaysia. We analyse 27 Agile adoption variables from a survey of early Agile users in Malaysia. Factor analysis is conducted to identify the clusters of the variables (or items) and how they are inter-related to produce factors. Most of the respondents are from software organisations in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, in which most of the companies are located in Malaysia. The clusters of variables resulting from this analysis can serve as a reference to the practitioners planning to adopt the methodology. The top factors identified from this study are shown in terms of (i) developer involvement and organisation-related aspects, (ii) cultural and people related aspects and (iii) customer collaboration and the need for professional skills when using Agile methods. In addition, factor analysis discovered that practitioners disagreed about the importance of the technical aspects of Agile. While we believe that these findings are particularly important from the Malaysian perspective, however, they also help add to the body of evidence in the field of software engineering and software process particularly in terms of Agile methods adoption. Moreover, the study also can help adopters from the nearby geographical regions to understand and see the suitability of Agile methods for their organisations.

/pdf/factor-analysis-investigating-important-aspects-for-agile-1a6trdz9ie.pdf

Factor Analysis: Investigating Important Aspects for Agile Adoption in Malaysia

Transmission over wireless channel is challenging. As such, different application required different signal processing approach of radio system. So, a highly reconfigurable radio system is on great demand as the traditional fixed and embedded radio system are not viable to cater the needs for frequently change requirements of wireless communication. A software defined radio or better known as an SDR, is a software-based radio platform that offers flexibility to deliver the highly reconfigurable system requirements. This approach allows a different type of communication system requirements such as standard, protocol, or signal processing method, to be deployed by using the same set of hardware and software such as USRP and GNU Radio respectively. For researchers, this approach has opened the door to extend their studies in simulation domain into experimental domain. However, the realization of SDR concept is inherently limited by the analog components of the hardware being used. Despite that, the implementation of SDR is still new yet progressing, thus, this paper intends to provide an insight about its viability as a high re-configurable platform for communication system. This paper presents the SDR-based transceiver of common digital modulation system by means of GNU Radio and USRP.

SDR-Based Transceiver of Digital Communication System Using USRP and GNU Radio

Water supplied to residential areas is prone to contaminants due to pipe residues and silt, and therefore resulted in cloudiness, unfavorable taste, and odor in water. Turbidity, a measure of water cloudiness, is one of the important factors for assessing water quality. This paper proposes a low-cost turbidity system based on a light detection unit to measure the cloudiness in water. The automated system uses Intel Galileo 2 as the microprocessor and a server for a web-based monitoring system. The turbidity detection unit consists of a Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) and a Light Emitting Diode (LED) inside a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe. Turbidity readings were recorded for two different positionings; 90° and 180° between the detector (LDR) and the incident light (LED). Once the turbidity level reached a threshold level, the system will trigger the filtration process to clean the water. The voltage output captured from the designed system versus total suspended solid (TSS) in sample water is graphed and analyzed in two different conditions; in total darkness and in the present of ambient light. This paper also discusses and compares the results from the above-mentioned conditions when the system is submerged in still and flowing water. It was found that the trends of the plotted graph decline when the total suspended solid increased for both 90° and 180° detector turbidimeter in all conditions which imitate the trends of a commercial turbidimeter. By taking the consideration of the above findings, the design can be recommended for a low-cost real-time web-based monitoring system of the water quality in an IOT environment.

/pdf/web-based-water-turbidity-monitoring-and-automated-54s7qyhgdy.pdf

Ani Liza Asnawi

Papers

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Emergence of Agile Methods: Perceptions from Software Practitioners in Malaysia

Factor Analysis: Investigating Important Aspects for Agile Adoption in Malaysia

SDR-Based Transceiver of Digital Communication System Using USRP and GNU Radio

Web based Water Turbidity Monitoring and Automated Filtration System: IoT Application in Water Management