Improving Requirements Identification for Internet Development Project

[This paper was presented at Dundalk Institute of Technology's Creative Media Research Colloquium 2008 in April, 2008]

Abstract
Internet applications are increasingly used in everyday business and life. However, despite their obvious potential, the successful management of large-scale internet projects using traditional project management practices has proved problematic, as demonstrated by the Irish government’s eGovernment initiative. Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reported that out of 161 projects, less than half were fully delivered, 44 partially delivered, 23 abandoned, and moreover cost were 20% higher and duration was 25% more than initial estimations.

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Tool Support for the XP Game

[This paper was presented at EdTech Conference 2008 at Dundalk Institute of Technology in May, 2008]

Abstract

Engaging and motivating students is always a challenge particularly when teaching subjects that do not have a high practical content. The XP Game is a simple and interactive set of activities that simulates the eXtreme Programming (XP) development process. However, the activities used are not computing specific and the game requires a substantial group of people to realize the intended benefits. This paper reports on the development of prototype tool support for the XP Game with the expectation that it could be used with undergraduate Computing students.

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Combining Interaction Design and Agile Methods for Improved Project Management in Internet Development

[This paper was presented at EuroSPI 2008 Doctorial Symposium at Dublin University College in September, 2008]

Abstract
Internet applications are increasingly used in everyday business and life. However, despite their obvious potential, the successful management of large-scale internet projects using traditional software project management practices has proved problematic, as demonstrated by the Irish government’s eGovernment initiative. To address these weaknesses Agile Methods (AMs) for software development consider customer commitment and short development cycles as guiding principles. The intention is that close collaboration allows input from people who will actually use the final system and that the short cycles allows this feedback to influence development, thus facilitating project management. However, various difficulties have been reported with these approaches, particularly the customer role. Essentially, there are few guidelines on the implementation of the customer role to suggest how interaction with developers should occur. The research problem is to propose a systematic way of analyzing user groups and their expectations to enhance existing project management approaches within AMs, particularly for the development of internet projects.

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Combining Interaction Design and Agile Methods for Better Project Management

[This paper was presented at IADIS International Conference at Barcelona in February, 2009]

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of internet-based information systems there are many examples of failure in the development of such projects. Traditional approaches to software development have been identified as contributing factor to the statistics with many reports calling for the appropriate use of the recently emerging Agile Methods (AMs). However, despite their popularity and apparent success problems have been reported in their use. One, that is particularly relevant to internet development, is that AMs typically ignore consideration of the user experience before development begins which ultimately results in a less desirable system. AMs advocate little upfront investigation, instead emphasizing ongoing customer collaboration throughout the life of the project to supply any information required about users. The suggestion here is that aspects of Interaction Design (ID) can be conducted in an agile manner before an agile project commences and that this can be linked to that ongoing development. This paper presents such a process, combining ID and Scrum, the agile project management method. Also, a case study of its use is presented providing encouraging results.

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