Showing papers on "User story published in 2017"

Extracting conceptual models from user stories with Visual Narrator

Abstract: Extracting conceptual models from natural language requirements can help identify dependencies, redundancies, and conflicts between requirements via a holistic and easy-to-understand view that is generated from lengthy textual specifications Unfortunately, existing approaches never gained traction in practice, because they either require substantial human involvement or they deliver too low accuracy In this paper, we propose an automated approach called Visual Narrator based on natural language processing that extracts conceptual models from user story requirements We choose this notation because of its popularity among (agile) practitioners and its focus on the essential components of a requirement: Who? What? Why? Coupled with a careful selection and tuning of heuristics, we show how Visual Narrator enables generating conceptual models from user stories with high accuracy Visual Narrator is part of the holistic Grimm method for user story collaboration that ranges from elicitation to the interactive visualization and analysis of requirements

Detecting user story information in developer-client conversations to generate extractive summaries

Abstract: User stories are descriptions of functionality that a software user needs They play an important role in determining which software requirements and bug fixes should be handled and in what order Developers elicit user stories through meetings with customers But user story elicitation is complex, and involves many passes to accommodate shifting and unclear customer needs The result is that developers must take detailed notes during meetings or risk missing important information Ideally, developers would be freed of the need to take notes themselves, and instead speak naturally with their customers This paper is a step towards that ideal We present a technique for automatically extracting information relevant to user stories from recorded conversations between customers and developers We perform a qualitative study to demonstrate that user story information exists in these conversations in a sufficient quantity to extract automatically From this, we found that roughly 102% of these conversations contained user story information Then, we test our technique in a quantitative study to determine the degree to which our technique can extract user story information In our experiment, our process obtained about 708% precision and 183% recall on the information

Non-functional Requirements Documentation in Agile Software Development: Challenges and Solution Proposal

Abstract: Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are determinant for the success of software projects. However,they are characterized as hard to define, and in agile software development(ASD), are often given less priority and usually not documented. In this paper, we present the findings of the documentation practices and challenges of NFRs in companies utilizing ASD and propose guidelines for enhancing NFRs documentation in ASD. We interviewed practitioners from four companies and identified that epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria,Definition of Done(DoD), product and sprint backlogs are used for documenting NFRS. Please refer to the manuscript for the full abstract.

Comparing requirements decomposition within the Scrum, Scrum with Kanban, XP, and banana development processes

Abstract: Context: Eliciting requirements from customers is a complex task. In Agile processes, the customer talks directly with the development team and often reports requirements in an unstructured way. The requirements elicitation process is up to the developers, who split it into user stories by means of different techniques. Objective: We aim to compare the requirements decomposition process of an unstructured process and three Agile processes, namely XP, Scrum, and Scrum with Kanban. Method: We conducted a multiple case study with a replication design, based on the project idea of an entrepreneur, a designer with no experience in software development. Four teams developed the project independently, using four different development processes. The requirements were elicited by the teams from the entrepreneur, who acted as product owner and was available to talk with the four groups during the project. Results: The teams decomposed the requirements using different techniques, based on the selected development process. Conclusion: Scrum with Kanban and XP resulted in the most effective processes from different points of view. Unexpectedly, decomposition techniques commonly adopted in traditional processes are still used in Agile processes, which may reduce project agility and performance. Therefore, we believe that decomposition techniques need to be addressed to a greater extent, both from the practitioners’ and the research points of view.

Non-functional Requirements Documentation in Agile Software Development: Challenges and Solution Proposal

Abstract: Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are determinant for the success of software projects. However, they are characterized as hard to define, and in agile software development (ASD), are often given less priority and usually not documented. In this paper, we present the findings of the documentation practices and challenges of NFRs in companies utilizing ASD and propose guidelines for enhancing NFRs documentation in ASD. We interviewed practitioners from four companies and identified that epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, Definition of Done (DoD), product and sprint backlogs are used for documenting NFRs. Wikis, word documents, mockups and spreadsheets are also used for documenting NFRs. In smaller companies, NFRs are communicated through white board and flip chart discussions and developers’ tacit knowledge is prioritized over documentation. However, loss of traceability of NFRs, the difficulty in comprehending NFRs by new developers joining the team and limitations of documentation practices for NFRs are challenges in ASD. In this regard, we propose guidelines for documenting NFRs in ASD. The proposed guidelines consider the diversity of the NFRs to document and suggest different representation artefacts depending on the NFRs scope and level of detail. The representation artefacts suggested are among those currently used in ASD in order not to introduce new specific ones that might hamper actual adoption by practitioners.

Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification (I): An Application Case with the Rigorous RSL/Business-Level Language

Abstract: System requirements specification describes technical concerns of a system and is used throughout the project life-cycle. Requirements specification helps sharing the system vision among its stakeholders, as well facilitating the communication, project management and system development processes. For an effective communication, everyone communicates by means of a common language, and natural language provides the foundations for such language. Although natural language is the most common and preferred form of requirements representation, it also exhibits intrinsic characteristics that often present themselves as the root cause of many requirements quality problems, such as incorrectness, inconsistency, incompleteness and ambiguousness.This paper presents the RSL (short name for "Requirements Specification Language") which is a language to improve the production of requirements specifications in a more systematic, rigorous and consistent way. RSL includes constructs logically arranged into views according to the specific requirement engineering concerns they address. These constructs are defined as linguistic patterns and are represented textually by multiple linguistic styles. Due to space constraints, this paper focuses only on its business level constructs and views, namely on glossary terms, stakeholders, business goals, processes, events and flows. RSL can be used and applied by different types of users such as requirement engineers, business analysts, or domain experts. They can produce system requirements specifications with RSL at different level of detail, considering different writing styles and different types of requirements (e.g., business goals, system goals, functional requirements, quality requirements, constraints, user stories, and use cases). In addition, they can use other types of constructs (e.g., terms, stakeholders, actors, data entities) that, in spite of not being requirements, are important to complement and enrich the specification of such requirements. Based on a simple running example, we also show how RSL users (i.e., requirements engineers and business analysts) can produce requirements specifications in a more systematic and rigorous way.

How Do User Stories Inspire Design? A Study of Cultural Probes

Abstract: This paper reports an initial study using cultural probes to support design. Its aim was to provide designers and design students with ethnographic information not easily accessible via surveys, interviews, and user statistics. Our research applied the cultural probes method to domestic ironing practices. We communicated the narrative and pictorial data generated by this method to designers and asked them to interpret these data in terms of a new ironing board design. Finally, we conducted a content analysis to reveal how designers interpreted and used data from cultural probes to inform design ideas.

Understanding User Stories : Computational Linguistics in Agile Requirements Engineering

Abstract: Contemporary movies like The Social Network would lead you to believe that multi-billion software companies such as Facebook are built on individual genius. In reality, complex software is created by teams of software professionals that each have their own personality profile and expertise: from highly technical software engineers to business-minded salespeople and artistic user experience experts. The challenge? The entire team needs to talk about and agree on what piece of the software puzzle to create next. To facilitate and capture discussion on new software to be built, 50% of software companies have adopted a lightweight requirements approach called user stories. Despite this recent and substantial transition by industry, academic studies on user stories were few and far between at the start of Garm Lucassen’s PhD research. With this in mind, his research investigates the topic of user stories from the inside out. In the first three chapters, Garm Lucassen seeks to answer why user stories are popular and how to help practitioners in creating high-quality user stories. Prompted by the discovery that 56% of user stories made by practitioners include preventable errors and that guidelines for user stories quality significantly increase practitioner’s productivity and work deliverable quality, Garm proposes the Quality User Story framework and accompanying natural language processing tool Automatic Quality User Story Artisan (https://aqusa.nl/). By taking advantage of the concise and well-structured nature of high-quality user stories, AQUSA detects a subset of QUS’ quality defects with 92% recall and 77% precision. Thanks to this state-of-the-art accuracy, This accuracy has prompted software companies and universities in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal and the United States to adopt this new approach to user story quality in their day-to-day work and teaching. The next three chapters focus on how to help practitioners in fully achieving the title of the dissertation: “Understanding User Stories’”. The research shows that it is possible to take advantage of computational linguistics techniques to extract and visualize the most important concepts from a collection of user stories with up to 96% recall and precision. Initial application by practitioners has shown that the freely accessible Interactive Narrator tool (https://interactivenarrator.science.uu.nl/) supports quickly analyzing and discussing new software to be built.

A Reference Method for User Story Requirements in Agile Systems Development

Abstract: User story literature nearly exclusively studies how to create, prioritise, or ensure the quality of a user story. Little is known about other activities and artefacts involved preceding or following these activities in systems development. Consequentially, software teams seeking to leverage user stories’ full potential do not know how to incorporate user stories into all aspects of their software development process. This paper constructs a reference method by examining and consolidating the user story life-cycle obtained in a multi-case study research project. Practitioners can take inspiration from this method to learn the improvements possible with user stories.

Cluster‐based test cases prioritization and selection technique for agile regression testing

Abstract: Regression testing repeatedly executes test cases of previous builds to validate that the original features are not affected with any new changes. In recent years, regression testing has seen a remarkable progress with the increasing popularity of agile methods, which stress the central role of regression testing in maintaining software quality. The optimum case for regression testing in agile context is to run regression set at the end of each sprint and release, which requires a lot of cost and time. In this paper, we present an automated agile regression testing approach on both the sprints and release levels. The proposed approach addresses both weighted sprint test cases prioritization technique, which prioritizes test cases based on several parameters having real practical weight for testers, and Cluster-based Release Test cases Selection technique that clusters user stories based on the similarity of covered modules to solve the scalability issue. Test cases are then selected based on issues logged for failed test cases using text mining techniques. The proposed approach achieves enhancement for both the prioritization and selection of test cases for agile regression testing. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Enhancing Requirements Engineering in Agile Methodologies by Agent-Oriented Goal Models: Two Empirical Case Studies

Abstract: The use of agile methods in software engineering is a standard practice and user stories are established artefacts used for breaking complex system requirements into smaller subsets. However, user stories do not suffice for understanding the big picture of system requirements. While there are methods that try to solve this problem, they lack visual tool support and are too heavy for smaller projects. We have earlier proposed a novel agile agent-oriented modelling (AAOM) method for filling this gap. The AAOM method comprises a visual approach to requirements engineering in agile projects that is based on goal models originating in agent-oriented modelling and connects goals intuitively to user stories. The purpose of the study reported in this article was evaluating the AAOM method for requirements engineering in two real-life case studies. The qualitative evaluation explores the applicability of AAOM for requirements engineering in agile software development processes.

Agile co-development for clinical adoption and adaptation of innovative technologies

Abstract: Even the most innovative healthcare technologies provide patient benefits only when adopted by clinicians and/or patients in actual practice. Yet realizing optimal positive impact from a new technology for the widest range of individuals who would benefit remains elusive. In software and new product development, iterative rapid-cycle “agile” methods more rapidly provide value, mitigate failure risks, and adapt to customer feedback. Co-development between builders and customers is a key agile principle. But how does one accomplish co-development with busy clinicians? In this paper, we discuss four practical agile co-development practices found helpful clinically: (1) User stories for lightweight requirements; (2) Time-boxed development for collaborative design and prompt course correction; (3) Automated acceptance test driven development, with clinician-vetted specifications; and (4) Monitoring of clinician interactions after release, for rapid-cycle product adaptation and evolution. In the coming wave of innovation in healthcare apps ushered in by open APIs to EHRs, learning rapidly what new product features work well for clinicians and patients will become even more crucial.

An approach based on design practices to specify requirements in agile projects

Abstract: The agile manifesto highlights a frequent communication with the customer to detail his/her needs and to validate the software requirements through frequent software deliveries So, the agile methods treat the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) differently from the traditional development methods User stories are one of the most widely used approaches to specify requirements in agile projects However, empirical studies in the industry point out that user stories are targeted to customers, only cover simple functional requirements visible to the users, and do not address system and non-functional requirements that are also required for coding, testing, and maintaining We propose an approach to specify requirements based on design practices targeted to the developer We conducted an industrial case study during eight months to evaluate the proposed approach The initial findings indicate that the SRS is closer to what will be implemented, and it meets the developers' expectations

Improving User Story Practice with the Grimm Method: A Multiple Case Study in the Software Industry

Abstract: Context and motivation: Previous research shows that a considerable amount of real-world user stories contain easily preventable syntactic defects that violate desired qualities of good requirements. However, we still do not know the effect of user stories’ intrinsic quality on practitioners’ work. Question/Problem: We study the effects of introducing the Grimm Method’s Quality User Story framework and the AQUSA tool on the productivity and work deliverable quality of 30 practitioners from 3 companies over a period of 2 months. Principal ideas/results: Our multiple case study delivered mixed findings. Despite an improvement in the intrinsic user story quality, practitioners did not perceive such a change. They explained, however, there was more constructive user story conversation in the post-treatment period leading to less unnecessary rework. Conversely, project management metrics did not result in statistically significant changes in the number of comments, issues, defects, velocity, and rework. Contribution: Introducing our treatment has a mildly positive effect but a larger scale investigation is crucial to decisively assess the impact on work practice. Also, our case study protocol serves as an example for evaluating RE research in practice.

A Scenario-Based Approach for Checking Consistency in User Interface Design Artifacts

Abstract: Keeping the consistency of requirements in different artifacts along the development process is a cumbersome activity, especially if it is done manually. Previous studies have investigated the use of User Stories to write testable requirements in order to automate the assessment of a given set of development artifacts. This paper expands the research in this field describing a scenario-based approach for checking consistency in User Interface (UI) design artifacts, modeling business and user requirements. A case study is presented as a proof of concept showing how our approach could be used to ensure the consistency of both business and task models, besides UI prototypes and scenarios. Preliminary testing results have shown that our approach is able to identify even fine-grained inconsistencies in the mentioned artifacts, allowing establishing a reliable compatibility among different UI design artifacts.

Improving Scrum User Stories and Product Backlog Using Work System Snapshots

Abstract: Lack of domain knowledge is often considered a reason for improper elicitation and specification of requirements of a software system. The work system method helps analysts understand the business situation to be supported by the software system. This research investigates the effects of preparing a work system snapshot, a key artifact of the work system method, on the quality of initial requirements specifications represented within the Scrum methodology. Those specifications take the form of a product backlog, a set of user stories to be addressed). The findings from a controlled experiment conducted with 165 students in a software engineering course indicate that the preparation of work system snapshot results in a significant reduction in invalid user stories and increase in valid user stories in the product backlog.

Agile software development: Positive and negative user stories

Abstract: User stories play an important role in extreme programming. Extreme programming is one of the popular processes from agile software development. Agile software development is an emerging method of software development, as compared to traditional approach. The success of software development is based on user stories satisfaction. As requirement engineering is the first phase in software development approach, user stories are written from customer requirements. This paper discusses about writing user stories by different ways which it may be treated positively or negatively and how it impact on requirement verification. User stories examples written in this paper are through experience gained from attendance monitoring project. In this paper first we have given brief idea about user stories with examples, and then we have described positive and negative user stories followed by conclusion and future work.

Estimating user story points using document fingerprints

Abstract: In Scrum process, there are several techniques for estimating user story points such as planning poker, expert judgment and analogy. The effort estimation might be performed by the inexperienced team members who are unfamiliar with the particular business domain involved. To improve the estimation performance, the historical data of the similar user story points from the previous successful projects are considered useful and guiding as the analogous estimation. In this paper, we exploit an alternative searching technique, called the document fingerprints, to retrieve the similar issues from the public repository of project management assets, called JIRA. We also use MMRE and Benchmarking class to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of our searching algorithm. The results show that the document fingerprints technique works reasonably well, especially for the user stories regarding the existing business domain.

On the Benefits/Limitations of Agile Software Development: An Interview Study with Brazilian Companies

Abstract: Context: For more than 15 years, Agile Software Development (ASD) has been used to improve software development, process, and quality. However, there are scenarios where the effectiveness of these methods and practices has not been rigorously evaluated.Objective: Understand the benefits and limitations related to these methods and practices in a particular context: two software companies based on Pernambuco's Technology Park, Brazil.Method: In this paper, we conducted 22 semi-structured interviews to understand the benefits and limitations of ASD in an industrial context. The data were extracted using open coding and analyzed through qualitative techniques.Results: Our preliminary analysis identified a core of 28 benefits and 20 limitations with the usage of ASD. As for benefits, we found that facilitates project monitoring and tracking as well as the interaction and collaboration. As for limitations, we found that it difficulty working with user stories and to work with large teams.Conclusion: This study serves as a practical guide for software companies interested in adopting and improving the use of ASD.

Analysis of Planning Poker Factors between University and Enterprise

Abstract: The experience of professionals in software development companies is a major factor to estimate a User Story (US). Professionals have a different vision of problems because they have many years working on various projects. There are many variables to take into account while planning a US, so, students with little experience have problems to provide an accurate estimation due to the lack of an experts vision. It is necessary to identify student problems to help them to make a better decision. The objective of this study is to determine the engineering students view in estimating US through Planning Poker. We compared opinions from Scrum experts and students through the following factors: experience, time, effort, priority, and US's value. Results indicated similar opinions on most factors; however, the time factor had high contrast in opinions. Identifying these aspects and providing solutions or suggestions can be useful for students to join the software industry better prepared in regard of the estimation of USs.

Towards Requirements Communication and Documentation Guidelines for Agile Teams

Abstract: We gained detailed empirical knowledge about rolespecific information needs that have to be satisfied in requirements documents in traditional software development processes. Motivated by the widespread use of agile development and existing challenges in industry regarding agile requirements engineering our current research aims at investigating whether agile teams could also benefit from results of our previous research. To support typical agile development characteristics like extensive collaboration and communication, we envision the elaboration of communication and documentation guidelines based on empirical data about information needs. As a first step, we compared the scope and content of RE artifacts produced in agile activities (e.g. user stories) to previously investigated traditional RE artifacts. This analysis shows that artifacts resulting from agile activities cover key requirements information, but the level of detail is often less than in traditional RE artifacts. In order to better understand possible implications, we conducted interviews and a survey with agile team members. Initial results reveal that, for example, less detailed documentation leads to problems like product inconsistencies in agile settings. Moreover, we gained first insights into the relevance of RE-related agile artifacts for activities like architecture design, user interface design and testing.

A Method of Setting the Order of User Story Development of an Agile-Waterfall Hybrid Method by Focusing on Common Objects

Abstract: In developing enterprise information systems, it has been common to adopt a waterfall (WF)-type development method due to its adaptability to large-scale projects, high reliability, high efficiency in production, high estimation accuracy, and the like. Meanwhile, in recent years, the agile-type development method that repeats small releases is spreading as business environments change more intensely. For this reason, the development of a hybrid (HY)-type method that combines WF-type and agile-type development has attracted attention. Therefore, in this research, we report the result of examining the method that promotes rational development by considering the trade-off between cost reduction by simultaneous development of common objects as the overall optimality (the advantage of WF method) and early realization of value as local optimality (an advantage of agile method). For this purpose, we propose a method that achieves early realization of value and low cost by managing the relation between user stories and common objects in a matrix. Subsequently, we apply the proposed method to the basic design of a library information system and offer the results. In conclusion, we report cases where cost increases can be suppressed by delaying the value realization to some extent.

An entrepreneurial narrative media-model framework to knowledge building and open co-design for smart cities

Abstract: Addressing wicked design problems which require eclectic methodologies, it is important to investigate how to create better links between theory and practice and therefore develop greater appreciation for disciplinary concepts and methodologies; develop deeper understanding of design, design thinking, object-orientation and agile methodology and how these can complement each other in systems design and development. This study situates learning within the IEEE Smart Cities context, and Garud et. al's entrepreneurial narrative framework scoped within Gaynor's 21st century skillsets for technology, engineering management and society. The focus is on the systems and human factors aspects of computing, scaffolded by the SDLC, design thinking's empathy/agile methodology's user stories to improve understanding of information systems, and development of opportunities.

A User Story Quality Measurement Model for Reducing Agile Software Development Risk

Abstract: In Mobile communications age, the IT environment and IT technology update rapidly. The requirements change is the software project must face challenge. Able to overcome the impact of requirements change, software development risks can be effectively reduced. Agile software development uses the Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) process and focuses on the workable software and client communication. Agile software development is a very suitable development method for handling the requirements change in software development process. In agile development, user stories are the important documents for the client communication and criteria of acceptance test. However, the agile development doesn’t pay attention to the formal requirements analysis and artifacts tracability to cause the potential risks of software change management. In this paper, analyzing and collecting the critical quality factors of user stories, and proposes the User Story Quality Measurement (USQM) model. Applied USQM model, the requirements quality of agile development can be enhanced and risks of requirement changes can be reduced.

Optimization of the Inception Deck Technique for Eliciting Requirements in SCRUM Through Business Process Models

Abstract: Some techniques such as Inception Deck are used in software elicitation phase of the agile methodologies to unify the vision of all the stakeholders. This vision is stored in artifacts such as user stories. However, these artifacts are written in natural language and may, therefore, be ambiguous. Regarding SCRUM, the primary artifact is the product backlog, which in turn contains user stories. This paper describes how software development process with SCRUM can be improved by replacing the user stories with business process models to solve the ambiguity issue.

Estimating User Stories’ Complexity and Importance in Scrum with Bayesian Networks

Abstract: Planning Poker is a light-weight technique for estimating the size of user stories, in face-to-face interaction and discussions. Planning Poker is generally used with Scrum. Planning Poker has a lot of benefits, however, this method is not entirely efficient because the result is always based on the observation of an expert. This paper proposes a new model to estimate the complexity and importance of user stories based on Planning Poker in the context of Scrum. The goal of this work is to facilitate the decision-making of newbie developers when they estimate user stories’ parameters. Hence, the decision of each member would be clearer to understand than when the complexity is taken as a whole. We use a Bayesian Network to co-relate factors to have accurate in the estimation. The Bayesian Network gives the complexity of a user story, according to the Fibonacci scale used in Planning Poker.

Crowdfunding website design with lean product process framework

Abstract: The most dominant problem experienced by sub-sector of creative economy in Indonesia is funding. Crowdfunding is a new way to get funding through internet. Based on observations, almost all of the world's reward-based crowdfunding is intended for creative industry campaigns, so reward-based crowdfunding is believed to help the development of creative industry in Indonesia. The purpose of this research is to get the design of reward-based crowdfunding website that suits user needs in Indonesia. The Lean Product Process approach, which is the development of Lean Startup, is used to get the appropriate website design. There are six stages in the Lean Product Process framework with different methods in each stage. The methods used in this study were Persona, Kano Model, Product Value Proposition, User Stories, User Experience Design Framework, and Usability Testing. This study conducted two iterations. In the first iteration, website design of clickable mockup was obtained, while in the second iteration web site design of interactive prototype was obtained.