Abstract:Context: In recent years, companies have undergone a renewal of management strategies while searching for space in the market. The involvement of these companies in developing innovative software projects as a form of differentiation in products and services is common. Innovative projects are uncertain by nature, since the behaviour and evolution of the market and technological development may not be predicted. There is a natural relation between software projects that have an innovation degree and uncertainties. Objective: The aim of this paper is to discuss some aspects related to uncertainty management to understand the recommendations that positively influence project management in the face of uncertainties and the method of using the knowledge acquired during this study to provide strategic orientations that can be used by the industry to improve organizations' performance and their projects. Method: This study was built on evidence-based software engineering and provides subsidy for the need to address uncertainty in software projects in order to reduce the negative impacts caused by them. In this article, the interviews' results and focus group conducted with project managers and project management researchers are presented. The interviews and focus group aimed to assess the previous concepts as well as the new practical ones. Results: During the interviews, the concept of early signs was designed and associated with the management of software project uncertainties. In addition, project managers became aware of the mindfulness concept and its use for observing projects' uncertainties in order to ensure its success. Based on information collected from managers and literature review, a series of recommendations were drawn. Furthermore, the recommendations were evaluated by a focus group. Finally, a series of recommendations were designed in order to help the software project managers. Conclusion: This study contributes to software project management by developing recommendations to manage uncertainties.
With the increasing integration of computers and smartphones into our daily lives, in addition to the numerous benefits it offers over traditional paper-based methods of conducting affairs, it has become necessary to incorporate one of the most essential facilities into this integration; namely: colleges. The traditional approach for conducting affairs in colleges is mostly paper-based, which only increases time and workload and is relatively decentralized. This project provides educational and management services for the university environment, targeting the staff, the student body, and the lecturers, on two of the most used platforms: smartphones and reliable web applications by cloud hosting. The services include project management, attendance marking, various notifications and alerts, files and resources, a grading system, and an assignment management system. This paper also aims to ultimately digitalize most of the information inside the college which is a great challenge. The proposed system defines five actors, namely: an admin; who is the person with the highest authority within the system, the head of the department, the department coordinator, the project coordinator, the lecturers, and the students. Each of those actors has its privileges and the interaction among participants via the cloud. The mobile platform targets the students exclusively and interacts with the web platform. Finally, this paper stresses the benefits of the proposed system and gives the avenues for future development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.