Offshore Challenges Affecting Requirement Phase

There are four key challenges in offshore software development such as:

• Trust
• Socio-cultural
• Communication and Coordination
• Knowledge Transfer

In the presentation below we have shown how these challenges effect the requirement phase of software development.

References:

Alnuem, Mohammed Abdullah, Arshad Ahmad, and Hashim Khan (2012). "Requirements Understanding: A Challenge in Global Software Development, Industrial Surveys in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." In 2012 IEEE 36th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference, pp. 297-306. IEEE, 2012).

Berenbach, B. (2006). Impact of organizational structure on distributed requirements engineering processes: lessons learned. In Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Global software development for the practitioner (GSD '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15-19. 

Bhat, J.M., Gupta, M., Murthy, S.N. (2006). Overcoming Requirements Engineering Challenges: Lessons from Offshore Outsourcing. IEEE Softw. 23, 5 (September 2006), 38-44. 

Bird, C., Nagappan, N., Devanbu, P., Gall, H., and Murphy, B. (2009). Does distributed development affect software quality? An empirical case study of Windows Vista. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE '09). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 518-528. 

Damian, Daniela E., and Didar Zowghi (2003). "RE challenges in multi-site software development organisations." Requirements engineering8, no. 3 (2003): 149-160.

Herbsleb, James D., Audris Mockus, Thomas A. Finholt, and Rebecca E. Grinter (2001). "An empirical study of global software development: distance and speed." In Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on software engineering, pp. 81-90. IEEE Computer Society, 2001.

Niazi, M., El-Attar, M., Usma, M., and Ikram, N. (2012). GlobReq: A framework for improving requirements engineering in global software development projects: Preliminary results. In proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Evaluation & Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2012). (May 14-15, 2012) 166-170.

Sengupta, B., Chandra, S., and Sinha, V. (2006). A research agenda for distributed software development. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering (2006). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 731-740. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1134285.1134402. 

How to decide on a research topic for your PhD?

This video will give you an overview of 3 key steps that will guide you on deciding your PhD topic.

Tips for Preparing for PhD Viva

Well.. now since I have been through that hell and seen a lot of my fellow researcher go through it, I can share things that helped make that process painless and actually an experience that I ended up really enjoying.   

So here are some tips that I would  recommend anyone who is preparing for their viva should consider:

• Look up recent publications of your external supervisor and think of ways how you can link it with your work so that the examiner knows that you have done the background work which is expected from a PhD researcher.

• Prepare the basic questions that are always asked in a viva, my university had a template of the frequently asked questions, so I'm assuming most universities have one too and if you don't have one, just ping me, I'll share the document given to me by my university with you.

• Read your complete thesis again a week before going into the viva and make sure if you have identified a typo or error you make a list of them and take it with you in the exam so that you can inform the examiner that you have already noted that mistake and intended to fix it in the final version.

• An important tip given to me by my supervisor was to again search for new articles that might have been published once you have finalised your results and make sure to prepare a valid argument on how they may or may not effect your main contribution. 

• Lastly, its always good to have one or two articles published before your viva and if you haven't been able to publish, at least make sure you have sent a paper to be published before your viva so that you can say that your paper is currently under review and will be published soon. 

If you have any more questions let me and I'm looking forward to answering them. 

Tips on how to clear PhD Proposal Defence

I went through my PhD proposal defence this February so I would like to share things that worked for me:

i) Your supervisor should be happy with your work.
ii) Do not go into an exam until your supervisor says you are ready.
iii) Question all your work. Why do you think your work is finished?
iv) Your hypothesis should be clear. You must have a reason for why you think that your solution is correct.
v) Be confident and smile, trust me it helps a lot.
vi) If you are wrong, accept your mistake and convince your examiners that you will fix it.


Conclusion: Your supervisor is happy you will pass else you are in trouble. Good luck

Passed PhD First Year Exam

I know I have been away from the blog for sometime but now I am back. Good news is that I have passed my first year of PhD bad news is that their is still a long road ahead before I complete my PhD.

Currently I have been working on the ethical agreement that I need before I can actually start interviewing companies and collect data for my research.

I am waiting for the University's approval and in the mean time I am working on a document that will explain why I will be asking a specific question in my interviews and how will it help my research.

Hopefully by my next post I will have completed that document and share with you the details of it once I have handed it over to my supervisor.

Next Stages of My PhD

The next stages of my research will be as follows:

1. Arrange initial meetings with a group of software companies to identify, which companies fall under my research criteria.
2. Formal meeting dates will be set with the team. 
3. Semi-Structured interviews will be conducted in order to gather data. 
4. On the data collected qualitative research analysis will be applied in order to analyse the findings from the interview. 
5. Based on the findings I will work on developing a new methodology, which will contribute in solving issues of offshore software development. 
6. In order to verify and validated my methodology I will hold reflective workshops and apply replication logic

Agile Methods and offshoring

Many companies use different agile methodologies for different purposes. The table below shows the use of different methodologies:

References:

•  Berczuk, S., Back to basics: The role of agile principles in success with an distributed scrum team. Proceedings of AGILE, 2007, pp. 382-388 

•  Holmstrom, H., Conchúir, E. Ó., Agerfalk, J., & Fitzgerald, B. (2006). Global software development challenges: A case study on temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distance. In Global Software Engineering, 2006. ICGSE'06. International Conference), 3-11.

• Jensen, B. and Zilmer, A. Cross-continent development using Scrum and XP. Proceedings of XP. Springer Berlin, 2003, pp. 146-153

•  Kircher, M., Jain, P., Corsaro, A. and Levine, D. Distributed Extreme Programming. Proceedings of the International Con- ference on eXtreme Programmingand Flexible Processes in  Software Engineering, Sardinia, Italy, May 20 - 23,2001.

•  Smits, H. and Pshigoda, G. Implementing scrum in a distributed software development organization. Proceedings of AGILE 2007, pp. 371-375.