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for distributing team’s work.
Culture. This factor determines the application
of a methodology that leads to flexibility in decision-
making processes and problem resolution within a
formal framework, so as to achieve agility without
risking team work planning.
Personnel. This factor determines the applica-
tion of an agile methodology that allows experts to
solve immediate problems with a sufficient level of
discipline aimed at work management for the rest of
the group.
Criticality. This factor determines the applica-
tion of a plan-driven methodology.
Dynamism. This factor determines the applica-
tion of a plan-driven methodology.
4 TOOLS SELECTION CRITERIA
Although software engineering supporting tools
were developed to support the stakeholders’ tasks
and processes throughout the information system life
cycle (Lundell & Lings, 2004), they share multiple
scopes and are subjected to constant changes derived
from the advances in the software engineering
knowledge field. For S&C, the decision of acquiring
a tool may have significant implications in terms of
costs and implementation. Hence, the need for mak-
ing well-grounded decisions regarding technology-
adoption processes.
For this reason, we intend proposing a set of cri-
teria for tools selection in S&C. These criteria estab-
lish a framework for decision making processes and
serve as referential parameters for the evaluation and
selection of tools, so to offer advantages for achiev-
ing the necessary agility-discipline balance through-
out the software development processes at S&C.
Such criteria have been established based on the
S&C characteristics analyzed herein and the factors
affecting the required balance (see Figure 2).
Flexible Project Management. S&C have time,
people and financial restrictions, i.e., S&C need an
efficient management of their resources. This poses
some expectations regarding support to flexible pro-
ject management, which are related to the tool func-
tional characteristics, are: (a) Organizational man-
agement: objectives, time, tasks -per individuals and
groups- goals, events, unplanned actions, and correc-
tive actions; (b) Metrics management and generation
of reports on metrics related to the project follow-
up: percentage of completion, planned/executed
progress, percentage of participation.
Flexible Process Management. High competi-
tive environment, and productivity pressures, de-
mands to S&C to be prepared for handle changes
that arise during the project development. Then,
considerations about personnel skills and distribu-
tion of software development activities among ex-
perts and senior developers are very important. Bal-
ance of agility and discipline is required to solve
problems and manage work, respectively. Criteria
proposed include (a) methodology customization
support; key device generation in accordance with
time, objectives and available personnel; selection or
omission of activities according to the context; (b)
strengths in analysis activities; UML support, use
case-oriented analysis; iterative development sup-
port; (c) prototypes’ design; (d) role management
support: role selection, fluent communication among
roles
Coordination, Communication, and Coopera-
tion. The process requires mechanisms to facilitate
for efficient interaction among the team members,
since development teams are usually diverse, shared
and distributed. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate
tools with features such as: (a) portability, thus fa-
cilitating users’ handling in different time-zones and
locations; (b) allow for efficient information ex-
change: notification mechanisms; support at reposi-
tories and virtual or distributed environments.
Scalable Repository Management. The tool’s
ability to facilitate coordination, communication and
cooperation, demands integrated data management
and safeguarding. It is relevant to count on tools
capable of (a) interoperations, by being compatible
with other data storage tools, protocols, standards,
shared databases; (b) providing access security and
appropriate role and team restrictions; (c) offering
accurate results by being consistent in the integrated
exchange of data recorded in the repository.
Support to the Methods and Approaches. In
order to support planning required by S&C, we ex-
pect the satisfaction of the following criteria: (a)
support to the methods, models, and notation of
analysis and designs used by the organization, (b)
adherence to standards (c) availability of documen-
tation on the methods used, (d) support to the devel-
opment approach used by S&C.
Quality Assurance. Normally S&C accept chal-
lenges of increasingly critical projects; therefore, we
have conceived this criterion as support to activities
mainly related to software internal features, such as
availability of resources for (a) Audit and inspection
checklists; (b) Code standard analyzability; (c) Test-
ability: black-and- white box tests, (d) model verifi-
cation (logic checks, error messages, ease of debug-
ging, trace files step, dynamic display of elements
and display of the workflow path).
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