Using agile methods for the development of green and sustainable software: Success factors for GSD vendors

Abstract

Over the last decade, the use of agile methods has grown dramatically for software development.Agile methods guarantee to accelerate the delivery of remarkable software with increased user satisfaction and reduced cost. However, in recent years, due to the emergence of green software engineering, software developers are compelled to focus more on green and sustainable aspects of software. Green software engineering aims to design, develop, and use the software with confined energy and computing resources. Recently, software engineers in global software development have adapted agile methods for quick, interactive, and environment-friendly software development.In this study, we have identified 16 success factors, through systematic literature review (SLR) and applied contrived search criteria derived from the research questions; 80 relevant papers were identified and reviewed. Findings of the SLR study were then empirically validated through questionnaire survey in global software development industry, in which 106 experts from 25 different countries participated.The findings of our industrial survey are mostly in coherence with the SLR findings. However, there is a difference in ranks of the various success factors across the 2 data sets (SLR and industrial survey). KEYWORDSagile software development, empirical study, green and sustainable software, GSD vendor, success factors, systematic literature review (SLR) | INRODUCTIONAgile software development is an invigorating approach towards quick and interactive software development. It provides a conceptual framework for undertaking a software project that is colocated or globally distributed. Unlike traditional methods of software development, agile methods attempt to scale down the risks and maximize software productivity by developing software in short iterations. 1,2 These methods rely on team members' skills and informal communication rather than formal and hefty documentations. 3 Thus, agile methods pursue to avoid overwhelming processes, having little contribution in actual software development.Agile methods are strongly linked to the history of incremental and iterative development. The concept of agile methods were coined in 2001 4 by a group of agile software developers, interested in modern, simple incremental and iterative development methods, who constituted the Agile Alliance (http://www.agilealliance.org). The establishment of the Agile Alliance provided a base for the formal publications of the agile manifesto that contributed agile methods to software engineering domain. The agile manifesto brought an industry-led vision for a reflective change in software engineering paradigm. These methods focus on customer satisfaction through early and consistent delivery of quality software, promotion of sustainable development, simple and polymorphic design, flexibility towards change, and rich communication and collaborations among the agile team members and customers. 5,6 The agile manifesto represents a quite innovative work in cleaving and outspreading ...

Requirements for adopting software process lines

“…As an example, consider the four characteristics: A, B, C, and D, in descending order of frequencies with equal frequencies for B and C ( A > B = C > D ); based on the approach used, A is assigned the rank 1 and an average rank of 2.5 is assigned to characteristics B and C. Characteristic D has the next highest value and has therefore been given the rank of 4. This approach has already been used by other researchers for calculating rankings in similar research works Rashid and Khan, 2017 ). In order to specify the significance of the similarity between the ranks of characteristics in the SMS and the ranks in the questionnaire survey, specific descriptive statistics were used, as explained in Section 4.4 .…”

A Systematic Review on the Implementation of Agility in Sustainable Design Development

“…It has been shown that agility plays an important role in the development of sustainable design [20][21][22][23]. However, there is still much uncertainty surrounding the application of agility in sustainable design, including the processes involved and its potential benefits.…”

Agile practices for global software development vendors in the development of green and sustainable software

“…One of the components of the model is the identification of critical success factors (CSFs) and its related practices. We have identified the CSFs and have been published . In this paper, we have presented 36 agile practices identified through systematic literature review (SLR) and survey.…”

“…We have identified the CSFs and have been published. 48 In this paper, we have presented 36 agile practices identified through systematic literature review (SLR) and survey.…”