A Case Study in the Banking Sector: An Ontology for the Selection of Agile and Lean Software Development Methodologies

Abstract

Nowadays, the application of methodologies that allow to guide the process of development of Software in the companies has become a fundamental aspect to achieve the suitable management of the processes in the projects. In view of the diversity of existing methodologies, there is a growing interest in defining strategies that allow the selection and application of the correct methodology, which adjusts to the characteristics of the work teams and the software projects. The aim of this work is to develop an ontology for the selection of the methodology that, according to its principles, is most appropriate and beneficial for the development of software projects. The domain of ontology is limited to the Agile and Lean approaches, without defining for Agile the specific method that it applies, but it involves any method that is governed by the agile values and principles established in the Agile manifesto. Onto-logy is applied in two organizations in the banking sector, allowing recommendations to be inferred for the use of Agile methodology in both, which will make it possible to reduce the delivery time of software products, improve communication between project participants, and facilitate the engineering of requirements. On the other hand, the ontology suggests co-regulating characteristic aspects of the Lean practices in order to minimize costs, optimize processes in the software projects and improve the organizational culture.

OntoSuSD: Software engineering approaches integration ontology for sustainable software development

“…Software sustainability depends on different factors, including the processes used from development to deployment, and the processes used for the maintenance and disposal of a software product. 14,25,62 It is necessary to consider specific lean, agile, and green principles and indicators to make such sustainability-related processes controllable and deployable. Therefore, each of the OntoSuSD:Sustainability and OntoSuSD:Sustainability_Goals types could depends on different types OntoSuSD:Sustainability_Principle.…”

“…20 However, it is critical to emphasize on designing methods to ensure and tune them to be sustainable. 14,25 It is especially challenging because the methods are described for software development processes, which have largely been applied to more structured processes and implemented individually and are not supported when establishing sustainable processes. 25 Ontology is a data model, which represents knowledge in a domain as a set of concepts and their relationships semantically, formally, and explicitly to be understand and processed by machines as well as humans.…”

“…14,25 It is especially challenging because the methods are described for software development processes, which have largely been applied to more structured processes and implemented individually and are not supported when establishing sustainable processes. 25 Ontology is a data model, which represents knowledge in a domain as a set of concepts and their relationships semantically, formally, and explicitly to be understand and processed by machines as well as humans. 26 In relation to the study and adoption of lean, agile, and green approaches, software engineering taxonomies and ontologies are developed to represent the integration of elements from the specific domains such as the Capability Maturity Model for Development (CMMI-DEV) and ISO 9001 standards for Integration 27 and CMMI-DEV and ISO/IEC 15504.…”

“…36,37 Some taxonomies are defined at the analytical level of structures and ideas connected to agility. 25,38 However, some taxonomies are defined for identifying dependencies between agile software development projects and to facilitate collaboration and coordination • Designing and developing a comprehensive and expressive semantic data model (i.e., OntoSuSD ontology) consisting of semantically enriched classes (hereinafter concepts) and relationships (hereinafter properties), property restrictions and axioms to integrate, represent, and relate knowledge about elements, principles, values, practices, measurements, and so forth of agile, lean, and green SDAs for supporting sustainable software development processes.…”

“…The success of lean, agile, or green approaches could be deployed, determined in parts and how well a defined process is integrated and adjusted 20 . However, it is critical to emphasize on designing methods to ensure and tune them to be sustainable 14,25 . It is especially challenging because the methods are described for software development processes, which have largely been applied to more structured processes and implemented individually and are not supported when establishing sustainable processes 25 …”