A Review on Integration of Usability and Agile Methods in Software Development Practice

Abstract

-Agile and usability integration is a multidisciplinary research area that comes across the interest of many researchers. Many approaches have been proposed in many research papers with a view to provide better integration. In this paper, we provide an insight into some of the integration approaches that were investigated. Based on the review of some related literature we found that scrum and Extreme programming are the major agile methods adopted. Also communication between teams still needs an improvement. We recommend further studies on on-going projects and the ways to improve communication between teams in different geographical areas.

Keywords

• -Agile
• usability
• software development
• software practices

INTRODUCTION

In the recent years, software development industries witnessed the emergence of many methodologies aimed to address the shortcomings of traditional software life cycle. Agile method [1] is one of these methodologies that come across the interest of many researchers and practitioners. It was regarded as the most popular methodologies especially for small and medium software development companies [2]. This is because agile method can deliver software within short time with less cost.

To avoid end users frustration with the developed software, usability issues must not be ignored by software developers and must be integrated with agile methods. [3] Stated that usability focuses on how the customers or endusers would use the software. Mostly in practice, end users can quickly identify software usage problems. Many research papers attempt to integrate agile methods with usability.

Our research paper aims to provide an insight into how agile methods and usability integrate. Other sections of the paper are organized as follows: I Introduction, II review of related literature, III Agile and usability integration, IV Discussion and V Conclusion and Future works, VI Copyright.

II.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES

Agile software development focuses on interaction and incremental development where requirements and solutions develop through collaboration. agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change as well as encourage acts of leadership at every level from the individual contributor to senior management.

B. Usability Methods

1) Usability Inspection

Usability inspection [8], [9] was the most widely usability approach used apart from testing. For many years now, usability approaches practices comprise heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, formal usability inspections, and the pluralistic usability walkthrough. These were the most important usability inspection approaches [ 10 ] used by usability professionals. Cost-effectives is the factors that consider which approach to used. For example, Heuristic evaluation uses certain guidelines to examine usability problems is more cost effective than others

2) Usability Testing

Usability testing [ 11 ], [ 12 ] carried out by testing teams with a view to determine the performance of the software. Task coverage guides the testing teams to identify areas that need improvements. In agile software development project, users would be allowed to use the system and the usability expert [ 13 ] will look at whether the system satisfied users need.

3)

Usability Inquiry

Usability inquiry comprises field observation, focus group, interviews and questionnaires. Usability professionals use field observation to observe the users and their work places with a view to determine how the users use the system to accomplish their tasks within a time frame. They can also interview users using questionnaires to obtain information [ 14 ] , [ 15 ] on the areas that need modifications.

III.

AGILE AND USABILITY INTEGRATION

Many researchers in the fields of software development and human computer interaction [5], [ 16 ],[ 17 ] have in the recent time try to marriage their work by integrating usability[ 18 ], [ 19 ] with agile methods. This is mostly because of their interest satisfying customers or end users. For instance, [ 20 ], [ 21 ] provided detailed analysis on usercentered agile software development. The analysis focused mainly on certain principles found based on the review of different related literature [ 22 ], [ 23 ]. They suggest further investigation of their empirically.

[ 24 ] Identify the tensions between usability and agile methods. Even though the research is in preliminary stage, it identifies common approach of agile methods and usability engineering by so many literatures. There is need for the research to provide additional quantitative information to be more convincing.

Agile methods considered usability as implicitly rather than explicitly. This is because of their focused on communication and customer satisfaction. Adopting usability in agile methods explicitly can provide more benefits to software development companies’ especially small and medium ones. Agile methods maintain constant customers’ involvement in stages of software development processes [ 25 ] as such early customers’ satisfaction would result.

The relationship between the practices of agile software development and usability engineering [8] [ 26 ] using structured approaches to software engineering where usability engineering has been integrated into an agile software development method. The research need to be further improving to include best practice

In [ 27 ], a case study was provided on how agile methods integrate with usability in a large software projects. Three different companies involved in the IT projects under investigation, thus provide the opportunity for developers and usability experts to interacts and communicate to users. At the end of the project analysis, they discovered five different tactics which have immensely contributed towards the integration of agile method with usability. These tactics cannot be suitable for a large IT project with many scrum teams as such it is good to have tactics with wider coverage. Also, even though it is a large IT pension project, the companies involve are relatively small not even medium considering the number of employees involved. They further recommend an investigation into how different teams can communicate in different geographical areas with a view to integrate agile methods with usability. On the other hand, their analysis was based on already completed IT project. Further analysis need to be on project that is undergoing instead of relying on case study.

[ 28 ] Considers the integration of agile methods and usability with the emphasis on ongoing project rather than relying on case study. Combining tools and process are the best way of achieving integration in three organizations considered for their studies. They collected the data at the work place. Participants’ were selected from scrum teams which basically based in United Kingdom. Also based on their observation they discovered that acceptable behavior and mutual awareness are the keys to integrations.

Value and decision making assumptions [ 29 ] are the key areas that would help to integrate agile usability in practice. Their studies were also carried out in a live (on-going) IT projects that use scrum agile method. The conclusion that was drawn from the study indicates processes and techniques would not be the only alternative for usability and agile integration as such other alternatives must also be investigated. They suggest further investigation in area of contextual information.

[ 30 ] Also used case study to proposed how extreme programming (XP) can be integrated with usability. To solve geographical distance problem, they discovered that phone calls, video-conferencing [ 31 ] and by e-mails will be a good source. They also proposed additional approach to tackle the integration using five different instruments.

There is difficulty in integrating agile method with user experience [ 32 ] based on the analysis of interview result conducted in a telecommunication company. Their finding suggest that the roles of user experience professionals must be taking into consideration so as effective communication with developers. In addition to that, communications between teams in different geographical areas also serve as a setback. Their research paper also specifically focuses on case study.

Tiago Silva [ 33 ] conducted a field study to determine how the proposed framework would help in integrating agile with usability through theory and practices. They focused on on-going project to observed and interview professionals. At the end of their investigation, they found that there are no collaboration software developers and usability experts though participates requirement meetings. The requirement meetings help them to understand some of the system functionality. In their suggestions, further studies need to be carried out in different companies with some projects that are undergoing.

IV.

DISCUSSION

In [ 34 ], their study relied on case study obtained from the reviewed of previous researches. The papers mostly focused on small/medium/ large companies adopting either scrum or extreme programming (XP) in their analysis. Their study was based on experience reports obtained from these companies. Also, research into the integration of agile and usability are limited. Therefore additional researches need to be carried out to identify more areas that need to be integrated. [ 29 ] Studies were based on uncompleted project in medium software development companies. They conducted on two scrum teams and usability team. It was observed that both agile and usability teams focused on customers. Also the study only considered scrum teams which in practice cannot be possible to generalize the results. [ 32 ] Explores agile and usability practice of software developments in large telecommunication company. The studies were based on completed project that carried out by scrum teams with emphasis customer focused. Issues of either to go centralization or decentralization for usability remained unsolved in this study and therefore difficult to generalize the findings. Integrating extreme programming (XP) with usability within projects [ 32 ] creates value in software development practices. The study focused on few development team members that adopt extreme programming (XP) approach. Usability approach was based on heuristic and cognitive walkthrough methods of usability inspection. [3] Also adopt a case study approach to study the integration of agile and usability. In their study, they found that scrum and XP are the major agile methods used. It was also found that usability inspection and inquiry play a major role in the integration. Both agile and usability focused on communication between development teams though the study is in preliminary stage. In [ 27 ] case study approach was adopted where usability and agile have been integrated in large company. The project also adopts scrum agile and usability inquiry methods with clear collaboration between them. The results of the investigation cannot be generalized because fewer individuals were involved. Also [ 20 ] investigate the integration in completed project that uses both scrum and usability inquiry.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

In this paper, we provide an insight into agile and usability integration in software development practices. The major idea behind our paper is to provide the current and future direction of such integration. We review some related literature and the extensive comparisons demonstrate that it is still an open research area.

However, it is also showed that most of the studies depended on case study. The communication between teams in different geographical areas still needs to be addressed. From Table 1, we can see that most of the relationships were in the area of communications. The further work considers both case study and on-going projects. It will also see how to improve communication of team members in different geographical areas.

This paper presented review limited research papers on agile and user-centered. Thus, further research will consider more in-depth review on the topic.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the faculty of management science staffs, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi for advice and guidance towards making this research paper.

Approaches

Project study Agile method

Usability method Size of the company Large Large Small Large Small Large Small Large/medium/small

Scrum/XP Small/medium

Inquiry & inspection Inquiry Heuristic & Cognitive Walkthrough Inquiry Usability inquiry (interview) Low-Fidelity Prototyping Inquiry Authors 1. Kurosu M. (2011) 2. Parsons, et al. (2007) 3. Sohaib, et al. (2010) 4. Jennifer et al. (2012) 5. Zahid et al. (2012) 6. Adeola et al. (2014) 7. Brhel, et al. (2015) 8. Zahid H. et al. (2009) 9. Fox et al. (2008)

Case study Case study Case study On-going Case study Case study Case study On-going Case study / On-going Agile & usability relationship? Customer Focused User involvements communication Teams, process & tools arrangement Teams communication Collaboration Teams communication Teams communication

preliminary results Collaboration

Limitations Generalization Limited research Preliminary study Generalization No clear collaborations between teams Generalization Based on completed projects need broader empirical basis generalization

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