A Decentralized Framework for Managing Task Allocation in Distributed Software Engineering

Abstract

In distributed software development, planning and managing fair and transparent task allocation is both critical and challenging. The objective of this paper is to propose a decentralized blockchain-oriented, transparent task allocation framework to improve the quality of the task allocation process. It addresses the concerns of (i) enhancing collaboration, (ii) inhibiting knowledge vaporization, and (iii) reducing documentation problems. The proposed method is a novel two-fold process: First, it identifies and categorizes tasks exhibiting different dependencies and complexities to create equal task clusters based on their dependency type, difficulty, cost, and time. Second, it uses a blockchain-oriented framework to broadcast, check bid validity, allow developers to bid on tasks matching their roles and expertise, evaluate, and announce the winner for task allocation using smart contracts. Results of experimentation, surveys, and interviews with software practitioners conclude that the proposed solution is transparent and effective in allocating tasks (with Cranach’s alpha of 0.894) at a low cost of contract execution in a distributed software development environment. Overall, the proposed approach will have a positive and significant impact in industrial settings.

Enhancing Secure Development in Globally Distributed Software Product Lines: A Machine Learning-Powered Framework for Cyber-Resilient Ecosystems

“…Our research hypothesis states that in order to build product lines in GSD, PF will be able to handle issues with collaboration, communication, stakeholders, or clients' control as well as the GSD developing team along with software development teams. The criteria for evaluation depend upon challenges and issues such as dynamic variability management, secure development, and correct selection of features in SPL during agile-based GSD, which were identified from existing studies [3,5,19,34,35], including (depicted in Fig. 4) communication, reusability, repository management, coordination, control, usability, and completeness as mentioned in Table 1.…”

“…Application engineering (AE) involves the construction of individual software systems. The reuse of software resources in AE saves developers time and effort [3,5,6]. However, this ad-hoc process presents numerous issues.…”

“…Teams that collaborate need to coordinate. As a result, Scrum masters collaborate with each team to plan activities, handle dependencies, and prevent effort duplication [5,9]. Recent trends in software engineering involve working with geographically dispersed teams.…”

“…However, it may also lead to the development of new creative solutions for challenging technical problems [3,10]. To develop families of systems through reuse, software product lines engineering (SPLE) is an approach [5]. Because of advancement, often changing requirements, and quick release in the software industry, organizations develop a family of products by reusing certain fundamental assets with modifications rather than creating new products and versions [12].…”

Identifying Key Characteristics of Business Rules That Affect Software Project Success

“…Moreover, existing surveys are concentrating on business rules (i.e., taxonomy of BR organizing approaches regarding business process compliance [14], factors affecting the business process and BR integration [15], dynamically stable business processes operation [16], modeling context for BR management [17], etc.) or on software project success (such as soft skills for IT project success [18], scope creep factors and their impact on software project success [19], agile software project success [20], transparent task allocation [21], etc. ), but there are no studies on the conjunction of those two topics.…”