Blockchain-Based Software Process Improvement (BBSPI): An Approach for SMEs to Perform Process Improvement

Abstract

Progressively, Software development organizations are investing their resources, time and, money on Software Process Improvement (SPI) since it is beneficial in the enhancement of product quality, reduction in development time, and cost of software projects. However, the existing methodologies and approaches are time-consuming and costly and their major focus is on the SPI of Large Scale Enterprises (LSEs) therefore, we are introducing blockchain in SPI to overcome its major issues such as reliance on a central body of standardization for certification, knowledge management, high cost, resource management and change in organizational culture, etc. We have performed an exploratory case study to identify the different barriers of traditional SPI approaches. To overcome the identified issues, we have proposed and implemented a new approach by performing two case studies. The first case study was performed to identify the barriers in traditional SPI approaches and the second case study was performed to validate our proposed approach. We have performed our experiments on 55 representatives of 50 organizations. According to the results of proposed approach 56.4% of the population agreed that the SPI cost will decrease, 61.8% agreed that time of SPI will decrease and 60.3% of the population agreed that BBSPI will decrease resource utilization. Moreover, 69.1% of the population agreed with the fact that proposed BBSPI will make effective knowledge management and 83.3% of the population said that an organization can mature its processes equaliant to the central certification (CMMI, ISO) body by employing proposed BBSPI. Our results affirm that the BBSPI can reduce the time, cost, resources and helps to manage knowledge used to perform SPI. Moreover, results also depict that the BBSPI can be an efficient substitute of central bodies that could help small and medium-sized organizations to conform to common process improvement models by spending less money, time, and resources with effective knowledge management.

Una Aproximación Dinámica del Desempeño en Proyectos de Desarrollo de Software

“…Management Problems. The problems corresponding to this category are the following: Multiple rework (Maglyas et al, 2012;Haile and Altmann, 2016;Farooq et al, 2021), Misspecification (Maglyas et al, 2012;Esteban and Palacio, 2017), Changing requirements (Larsson and Venkatesh, 2010;Maglyas et al, 2012;Peixoto et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2016;Haile and Altmann, 2016;Toro and Peláez, 2018), and lack of user involvement (Ahonen and Junttila, 2003;Maglyas et al, 2012;Haile and Altmann, 2016).…”

“…Knowledge management problems. The problems corresponding to this category are Knowledge problems (Fairley and Willshire, 2003;Özkaya et al, 2011;Ahonen and Junttila, 2003;Stepanek, 2005;Wozniak, 2021;Farooq et al, 2021), new technologies (Martinez and Arango, 2017), and inadequate human resources (Stepanek, 2005;Özkaya et al, 2011;Mei-Ying and Yung-Chih, 2014;Rosenberg et al, 2020).…”

Blockchain-Based Software Effort Estimation: An Empirical Study

“…The applications of blockchain are gradually increasing and a lot of research has been carried out. In the past few years blockchain was introduced to the domain of computer science to solve several problems [12], such as implications of blockchain to improve the software process [36]. Recently, the blockchain was also introduced to the domain of SE research community and software engineers are focusing on blockchain implications to resolve certain software development issues [13,14].…”

A Process Improvement Model for Software Organizations during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…However, the authors have not considered the other aspects of process improvement, for example, continuous monitoring of software development processes to successfully execute the development processes according to expected outputs. Farooq et al [23] presented a block chain-based technique to assist organizations in improving the software development processes. The approach has been developed for small and medium-scale organizations.…”