Paper accepted 1st International Workshop on Quality Requirements in Agile Projects (QuaRAP 2018)

How Practitioners Manage Quality Requirements in Rapid Software Development: A Survey

Lidia López, Jari Partanen, Pilar Rodríguez, Silverio Martínez-Fernández

Abstract. Software quality is an essential competitive factor for the success of software companies today. Increasing software quality levels of software products and services requires an adequate integration of quality requirements (QRs) in the software life-cycle, which is still scarcely supported in current rapid software development (RSD) approaches. One of the goals of the Q-Rapids (Quality-aware Rapid Software Development) approach is to provide tool support to decision-makers for QRs management in RSD. As an initial step, we conducted a survey to explore how software development organizations using RSD manage QRs in their development process. The survey focuses on: (a) how data is gathered for assessing quality, (b) how QRs are managed, and (c) the considered QRs in their products. We received 30 answers, from these answers we can conclude that most of the companies gather data both automatically and manually for monitoring quality; QRs are managed together with functional requirements, sometimes or very often functionality gets priority over quality; and, the most reported QRs are reliability, performance, and security.

If you have experience developing in agile/rapid developments, you can help us answering the survey or helping us in its dissemination:

http://www.essi.upc.edu/~e-survey/index.php?sid=38773&lang=en

Co-located to 26th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2018).

Paper accepted at the 1st International Workshop on Managing Quality in Agile and Rapid Software Development Processes

Agile Quality Requirements Management Best Practices Portfolio: A Situational Method Engineering Approach 

Lidia López, Woubshet Behutiye, Pertti Karhapää, Jolita Ralyté, Xavier Franch and Markku Oivo

Abstract.  Management of Quality Requirements (QRs) is determinant for the success of software projects. However, this management is currently under-considered in software projects and in particular, in agile methods. Although agile processes are focused on the functional aspects of the software, some agile practices can be beneficial for the management of QRs. For example, the collaboration and interaction of people can help in the QR elicitation by reducing vagueness of requirements through communication. In this paper, we present the initial find-ings of our research investigating what industrial practices, from the agile methods, can be used for better management of QRs in agile software development. We use Situational Method Engineering to identify, complement and classify a portfolio of best practices for QR management in agile environments. In this regard, we present the methodological approach that we are applying for the defini-tion of these guidelines and the requirements that will lead us to compile a portfo-lio of agile QR management best practices. The proposed requirements correspond to the whole software life cycle starting in the elicitation and finalizing in the deployment phases.

Co-located to the 18th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2017).