Showing papers on "User story published in 2008"

Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams

Abstract: Mature eXtreme programming (XP) teams are highly collaborative and self-organising. In previous studies, we have observed that these teams rely on two apparently simple mechanisms of co-ordination and collaboration: story cards and the Wall. Story cards capture and embody the user stories which form the basis of implementation, while the Wall is a physical space used to organise and display the cards being implemented during the current development cycle (called an iteration). In this paper, we analyse the structure and use of story cards and the Wall in three mature XP teams, using a distributed cognition approach. The teams work in different commercial organisations developing different systems, yet we find significant similarities between their use of these two artefacts. Although simple, teams use the cards and the Wall in sophisticated ways to represent and communicate information that is vital to support their activities. We discuss the significance of the physical medium for the story cards and the Wall in an XP team and discuss the considerations that need to be taken into account for the design of technology to support the teams.

Measuring the User Experience of a Task Oriented Software

Abstract: In this paper a study on a web based tool is described that is used to keep track of attendance and work schedules by employees and managers in large companies. Ten users particpated in a think aloud test measuring the usability of a new version of the software and the user experience was measured before and after each user test. The user experience results show that the group of questions that measure the personal growth of the user got the lowest scores for this product, but pragmatic attributes, hedonic identification and attraction got much higher scores. It is not surprising that pragmatic issues get high scores for a task oriented software like this one, but it is an interesting result that the users value highly the attraction and hedonic identification. Author Keywords User experience, usability, think-aloud, user testing.

A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming

Abstract: From the Book: PrefaceThe principles of extreme programming have changed the way we think about software development.The Need to be Extreme Both business people and software developers often view traditional software development techniques as too slow. Business people view software as a competitive advantage, and a competitive advantage can never be realized too quickly. Software developers believe that their traditional software development processes create too much overhead in their quest to deliver this advantage as quickly as possible. The need to deliver software more quickly caused Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, and Ron Jeffries to explore the extremes of certain development practices. The first XP project, the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation system (code name C3), was, on one hand, constrained and, on the other, pushed to its limits. This practice was called "setting the dials to ten." The result was a breakthrough in the software development called XP. Beck was certainly the driving force behind taking this project, and the multitude of others that have followed, to the extreme, and he continues to evolve XP. His vision continues as he asks us to question the basic principles of software engineering. Naturally, many of these principles are being replaced with new and better ones. New principles, such as working with a real live customer instead of a specification, are quickly gaining acceptance in the software community. The idea of creating tests before the software is written is quickly becoming a vital part of every software development process. This book attempts to capture one point in the evolution of XP.We have examined the principles and have created what we believe to be effective practices. As a result, we believe that this short guide serves as a practical one from which to learn XP. We used some of the XP principles to write this book (adapted, of course, for book writing). For example, various things that one of our customers felt we needed to cover were written on index cards and scheduled into the iterations of the book. This book has been continuously integrated and refactored. Hopefully, you, another customer, will like the finished product. Follow Up To obtain the code from the appendix as well as other information about this book and XP in general, we invite you to visit Saorsa Development Inc.'s web site at http://www.saorsa.com

Tailoring Usability into Agile Software Development Projects

Abstract: Usability, user interface, and interaction design are among the group of vital, yet mostly overlooked, skills that all software developers require, yet few seem to have. This is just as true of agile developers as it is of traditional developers. This chapter examines both user experience (UEX) and agile software development (ASD) approaches, comparing and contrasting the underlying philosophies and practices of each. Using agile model-driven development (AMDD) as the foundation, it then describes strategies for tailoring UEX into agile methods. It is possible to address UEX concerns on agile projects, but it requires flexibility and a willingness to work together on the part of both UEX and ASD practitioners.

Towards Agile Engineering of High-Integrity Systems

Abstract: We describe the results of a pilot study on the application of an agile process to building a high-integrity software system. The challenges in applying an agile process in this domain are outlined, and potential solutions for dealing with issues of communication, scalability, and system complexity are proposed. We report on the safety process, argumentation generated to support the process, and the technology and tools used to strengthen the agile process in terms of support for verification and validation.

The Pomodoro Technique for Sustainable Pace in Extreme Programming Teams

Abstract: One of the common challenges of an Extreme Programming (XP) team is to find strategies so to reinforce practices and increase velocity. Most practices have found at least one optimal strategy tested and approved practically by the community, while ‘sustainable pace’ is core tenet missing a clear strategy. The aim of the Pomodoro Technique (PT) is exactly to fill this gap. The PT is a timeboxing strategy originally meant for optimizing personal work and study and then applied to XP. The PT is widely applied by Italian Agile teams, but is still little known elsewhere. This paper examines how the PT is applied by them and how it integrates with XP.

Transitioning a Team to Agile Test Methods

Abstract: This experience report describes the challenges and initial steps taken to move a large development team from traditional waterfall test phases to agile test methods. In late 2007, our development team started the transition to incorporate agile practices of user stories, daily scrums and time-boxed iterations. This paper focuses on the changes in test strategies necessary to support agile.

The Product Owner Team

Abstract: BT has been using product owner teams to manage the details of "what should be built". These teams ownthe content and the breakdown of business scenarios(user story epics) into user stories for delivery teams and act as proxy customers to those delivery teams. This experience report examines a project, implementing an up to 24 Mbps service over the 21CN network, that was successful in applying the approach and concludes with some advice on how best to apply product owner teams.

An Analytical Survey of "On-Site Customer" Practice in Extreme Programming

Abstract: Extreme programming (XP) is one of the most frequently used methodologies in Agile Software Development. According to various reports it had a significant effect on the software projects that use XP. In this paper, one of the main practices of XP, called "on-site customer" is considered, in detail. Also, various important cases and problems related to its implementation are considered. In each case, according to reports and researches related to user involvement, suitable solutions for resolving the problems are offered. At the end of each case, having an appropriate alternative that uses "Product Management Team" is proposed.

User Modeling and User Profiling in Adaptive

Abstract: It is essential for user-adaptive systems to have information about the user. Without any user information an adaptive system is not able to adapt itself to the user's characteristics and preferences. The required information is stored and managed in form of user models. Thus, a user model represents the system's beliefs of the user. This work starts by giving the reader and overview of available and well-founded user modeling methods, standards and existing systems. This theoretical excursion into the field of adaptive user modeling systems allows us to come up with a new approach based on a service-oriented architecture. Service-oriented architecture with its main advantages of modularity and flexibility is and ideal candidate to implement as user modeling system as these are exactly the two main characteristics which we are looking for in such a systems. The technical part of this work compares several service-oriented frameworks and finally describes a service-oriented implementation of a user modeling system.

Enabling End Users to Proactively Tailor Underspecified, Human-Centric Business Processes: "Programming by Example" of Weakly-Structured Process Models

Abstract: Enterprises face the challenge of managing underspecified, human-centric business processes which are executed in distributed teams in a rather informal, ad-hoc manner. This gave hibernating CSCW and ad-hoc workflow research a new push recently. However, there is still the need to clearly perceive end users as the actual drivers of business processes and to enable them to proactively tailor these processes according to their expertise and problem solving strategies. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a prototype for end-user development of weakly-structured process models through email-integrated task management. The presented CTM (Collaborative Task Manager) prototype uses “programming by example” to leverage user experience with standard email and task management applications and to extend user skills towards the definition of reusable process structures. By closely correlating to the actual user work practices and software environment, the tool provides a “gentle slope of complexity” for process tailoring by end users.

Bridging Best Traditional SWD Practices with XP to Improve the Quality of XP Projects

Abstract: Software quality is the main factor for the software reliability and software performance. Extreme programming strongly argues that it improves the quality of the software through feedback from iterative software development and by practicing pair programming and test driven development. Software quality is mainly depends on non-functional requirements. In most of cases non-functional requirements are not covered in the exploration phase. Especially in XP it is difficult to address non-functional requirements on the story cards. Our objective of this paper is knowledge based support to story cards to improve story cards and other XP practices by bridging them with the design of testability to improve non-functional user requirements, and predefined the factors for software testability on story cards with acceptance tests.

System and method for evaluating business compatibility

Abstract: A system and method for evaluating the business compatibility between potential business associates. In order to perform such a function, information is first collected from many different parties who are seeking a business match. The user inputs various information, including but not limited to the identity of the user or organization, the location of the user or organization, the type of business associate sought, character features of the business associate sought, size of the organization, duration of the business relationship sought, the user's qualifications, the user's investment in the organization, the estimated total capital required to launch the project, and the amount of capital contribution an individual intends to provide toward the project. The collected information is inserted into a database for future reference. Once a user has input the information, the user may use the system to find and rank user's that are the best match to the user based on the information input by the user. The system helps match a user with potential business associates by computing a business compatibility score.

Adapting stereotypes to handle dynamic user profiles in a pervasive system

Abstract: In developing ubiquitous or pervasive systems it is essential that the complexity of the underlying system is hidden from the user. To achieve this, the system needs to take many decisions on behalf of the user. This can only be done if the system knows what the user would prefer, i.e. it maintains a set of user preferences for each user. This is a laborious task for the user to perform manually and research is focussing on the use of machine learning to assist the user in creating and maintaining an acceptable set of preferences. This paper describes how stereotypes can be adapted for use in pervasive systems to help build up user preferences while maintaining user privacy through the use of virtual identities, and how these can be modified to match the changing preferences of the group of users who select this stereotype. The paper also introduces the notion of group identities and shows how the same approach can be used to handle these in the Daidalos pervasive system.

RDP Technique: Take a Different Look at XP for Adoption

Abstract: Although software projects can benefit from XP practices, all projects can't directly adopt it. Characteristics of some projects make it difficult to use XP directly, therefore, we need to tailor XP to the local conditions, contexts and the size of these projects. In this article we will describe why defining XP by its practices has problems and with the belief that XP's values make it agile, XP's practices do not define XP and XP is defined by its rules, we introduce a practical technique for tailoring XP. Proposed technique benefits from RDP (rule-description-practice) cards for identifying a set of suitable practices for a specific project: organizing "YourXP" software development process.

The Utilization of User Sessions in Testing

Abstract: Software testing cost is rising with the complexity of modern applications' user interfaces, frameworks, and technologies. However, testing stays an import software engineering stage that insures the quality of the developed software and eventually reduces the overall cost. This paper proposed utilizing user sessions for test case generation and execution. User sessions can be gathered from the application in production environments and represent user stories or scenarios. Rather than rerunning user sessions for test automation, as in record/replay tools, this research takes the track of abstracting requirements from those sessions to make them independent of the scripting language or the tool that created them. The suggested approach abstracts user sessions to make them more independent and reusable. This approach is expected to improve the utilization of user sessions from being copied and reused in the same original format, which makes it complex to edit and inflexible, to a format that can be used and utilized in different applications and platforms.

User Intent to Support Proactivity in a Pervasive S ystem

Abstract: In a pervasive system it is essential to understa nd the intent of the user in order to predict his/her futu re behaviour. This in turn will help to minimise the user's admin istrative overheads and assist the user to achieve his/her go als. The aim of this paper is to present some aspects of how user i ntent may be handled. It focuses on the architecture supporting the proactive features of the Persist pervasive platform. A forma l definition of the task discovery problem in user intent is provid ed. The use of the discovered task model to predict the user's nex t intended task/action is introduced including the way in whic h user context can assist in the prediction of the user's intended task/action. 12 In a pervasive environment with ubiquitous access t o services, networks and devices it is essential that mechanism s are in place to mitigate the user's resource management responsi bilities and aid the user in daily tasks. Such mechanisms shoul d be based on high level knowledge of the user's preferences and intentions, and the resulting user behaviour. Without such kno wledge it is difficult for a pervasive system to identify accura tely what actions will help rather than hinder the user. The Daidalos project developed a pervasive system which included a personalisation and preference management subsystem (including learning) which implicitly gat hered and managed a set of preferences for the user by monito ring user behaviour and extracting preferences from the monit ored user behaviour history. This pervasive system was succe ssfully demonstrated in December 2008. The personalisation subsystem allowed the system to personalise the user's enviro nment in an unobtrusive and beneficial way (based on previous u ser behaviour). However, this personalisation mechanis m was solely based on current context and therefore its a bility to predict future actions was limited. For example, if the us er always turns on the heat when they return home, preferences cann ot trigger such an action on behalf of the user until the user is in the home context. The Persist project is an FP7 EU project which star ted in April 2008. It aims to create a rather different form of pervasive system but in doing so it will extend and adapt som e of the developments of the Daidalos system. In particular, it will complement the personalisation and preference management system with a user intent system. The aim of the u ser intent system is to discover and manage a model of the use r's behaviour in the form of tasks and actions. An act ion can be any interaction between user and a service while a task is a sequence of actions. Whereas a user preference specifies on e action to

Efficient Management of User Interests for Personalized Communication Services

Abstract: Nowadays, there is a lot of interest in context- aware services, especially those services taking into account user interests. An important example is the automated filtering of the overwhelming amount of information available to the user. There is a clear need for the automated capturing of user interests without explicit user interaction. In this paper we present a set of algorithms for the management of user interests. This information is used for updating a tree structure, with added weight values, representing user interests. To illustrate the approach taken, we detail the use case of an instant messaging communication service which updates the user profiles and searches for content matching the topic of the ongoing conversation and the specific interests of the user. The retrieved content is recommended to the user, who is then able to provide feedback by selecting the content he prefers. The gain of the detailed approach is illustrated by means of simulation results, taking real-time constraints into account.

Integrating an expert user in the Design Process: How to make out surgeon needs during new surgical instruments Design Case study

Abstract: Numerous design methods exist concerning user integration in the design process, but there is no focus or special attention on users type. The main importance of user in "user-depended design" is to provide the better understanding of user and user's needs. Moreover, the integration procedure of the user in design may change from one type to another depending on product type. In this paper we will focus on a type we call "expert user", and will try to observe this expert user in design process, in order to understand and analyze his/her needs, behavior, and interaction. As a case, the collaboration of two surgeons in a new surgical instrument design is studied, using scenario based approach. Some points are exploited and the eventual influences on the design are discussed.

Does the Customer Know Best? The Results of a Survey on E-Commerce Development

Abstract: Introduction Since the 1960's it has been generally acknowledged that user participation in the Information Systems (IS) development process increases the likelihood of project success (Barki & Hartwick, 1994; Foster & Franz, 1999). Put another way, lack of communication between users and developers has been a common theme in the well-documented reasons for failures in IS implementations (Bussen & Myers, 1997). User involvement is likely to result in increased user satisfaction (Garceau, Jancura, & Kneiss, 1993), and the perceived usefulness of the application (Foster & Franz, 1999; Franz & Robey, 1986; McKeen, Guimaraes, & Wetherbe, 1994). Foster and Franz (1999) emphasise the need for user involvement, most importantly in the early stages of development, concluding, "managers should actively seek user involvement in systems development activities" (p.345). The portfolio of applications being developed today has changed with the emergence of the E-Commerce (EC) business paradigm. Organisations are capitalising on the potential of new technologies such as the Internet, Intranets and the World Wide Web to improve communications and transaction efficiency, reduce operation costs and increase market share. This paradigm shift in business has been supported by applications with a different focus. While organizations continue to implement IS for internal use and to integrate with known business partners, the focus of this paper is business-to-customer (B2C) applications that are available for universal use. The literature to date regarding user participation in IS development has not differentiated between applications designed for traditional environments or for B2C. In comparing the two domains, Fraternali (1999) states: "Applications for the Internet in such domains as electronic commerce, digital libraries and distance learning are characterized by an unprecedented mix of features that makes them radically different from previous applications of information technology" (p. 227). However the underlying process for developing applications is addressed by Yourdon (2000), who questions whether e-business/Internet projects are really that different by suggesting "E-business projects face the same demands pressures and risks as any other kind of IT development project, but to a greater degree". This added pressure comes from not only squeezed timeframes for delivery, but also from the necessity to change accompanying business processes. He suggests also that "the e-business phenomenon is much more fundamental because it creates a much more intimate connection with customers, vendors and suppliers". One feature of B2C systems that differentiates them from traditional MIS applications is the identity of the "user". Traditional systems are developed for a clearly defined set of known users either in-house or business partners. The development may be undertaken in-house or by external parties, but either way, the user communities are clearly identifiable. They are often championing the project and possibly funding it from their budget. Likewise off-the-shelf packages allow organisations to see what they are getting before software purchase. Customisation of the package to meet the organisations needs can then precede implementation. Again the known, distinguishable in-house user community is able to be involved in decisions regarding the adoption and adaptation of the product. In the global business environment of today, a B2C application is inviting the consideration of the world at large. Rather than serving a known user group, B2C sites may target the world at large. Potential users are diverse in all respects, ethnically, culturally as well as geographically. They are also diverse in their computing skills as noted by Fraternali (1999), "Universal access by individuals with limited or no skills in the use of computer applications introduces the need of new man-machine interfaces capable of capturing the customer's attention and facilitating access to information" (p. …

Toward Empowering Extreme Programming from an Architectural Viewpoint

Abstract: The XP method is one of the noticeable approaches among agile software development methodologies. Besides its valuable features and capabilities there is a lack and that is about how to control the quality of the system and the effects of quality attributes on each other. In the last decade, software quality requirements have been especially addressed by software architecture. Since software architecture knowledge has grown and matured in recent years, many of agile methods, like XP, have not considered the importance of architecture in their development process. This paper introduces two practices (Continuous Architectural Refactoring andReal Architecture Qualification) in order to empower XP’s development process toward improving system’s architecture. The main characteristic of proposed solution is that it is derived from values and practices of XP so as to keep its agility intact.

Understanding Use Cases: Harnessing the Power of Narratives to Comprehend Application Domains

Abstract: We investigate how stories can be used in system analysis and design to better understand the application domains The research question we explore is: How can we employ narratives as a complement to use cases to improve our understanding of application domains? To examine this question, we study the effects—ie, recall and problem solving—of supplementing a use case with a user story We focus on two features of stories that can facilitate comprehension, concrete thematic content and causal explanatory information

Design and Implementation of Universal Management System Based on Roles and Scopes

Abstract: User management system is an important part in Web application system and a large-scale software system. In the existed user management system, a role, which is a set of authorities, does not involve scope. It is a conception in a one-dimensional space. A conception of two-dimensional role is given, which is in a two-dimensional space. A role is a binary set composed of authorities and scopes. A universal user management model based on user roles is constructed. Design and implementation of a universal user management system is achieved. It can satisfy requirements of modern Web application systems and large scale software systems in multiply levels and spaces towards user privilege.

International user research in product development cycle

Abstract: As an increasing number of software products enter the global market, the popularity of international user research is on the rise. Though the concept of studying international users to inform global designs is clear-cut, the actual practice is not. There are many open questions and challenges present, such as, in what stages of the development cycle and using what methods should international research be done? How might different language interfaces be studied? In this SIG, we will review actual case studies focused on international user research, and discuss best practices for conducting international user research to maximize global usability and ROI.