The extremely comprehensive overview of the evolution in software processes given in this book makes it very valuable for a wide audience of interested readers. This book specifically provides a platform for practitioners, students and researchers to discuss the studies used for managing aspects of the software process, including managerial, organizational, economical and technical. It provides an opportunity to present empirical evidence using available managerial, organizational, economical and technical strategies of software processes, as well as proposes new techniques, tools, frameworks and approaches to maximize the significance of software process management.

The following studies are discussed in the 14 chapters of this book.

• In Chapter 1, Sujin Choia, Dae-Kyoo Kimc, and Sooyong Park propose a novel recommendation model (i.e., ReMo), which to enables systematic development of quality recommendations through rigorous analysis of assessment findings.
• In Chapter 2, Monica Iovan, Daniela S. Cruzes, and Espen A. Johansen describe the practical solutions in one systematic model for purposely disseminating innovations in software security practices through careful attention to the stages of effective and sustainable implementation of the software security program. The goal of the proposed framework is to enable software organizations to create a sustainable security program that ensures that software teams continue to use the practices that improve and address the security of the products, hence adopting a long-term perspective.
• In Chapter 3, Luis Fernández-Sanz, Inés López Baldominos and Vera Pospelova develop the bridge between software processes and IT professionalism frameworks. They discuss the missing relationships between processes and activities in software development projects, the job profiles involved in them, and the skills recommended for effective performance.
• In Chapter 4, Avais Jan et al. incorporate earned value management (EVM) into agile software development. They propose a novel framework to tackle the key EVM challenges in agile environment.
• In Chapter 5, Vishal Pradhan, Ajay Kumar and Joydip Dhar propose a process model to understand the reliability of open source software (OSS) system releases. The effectiveness of the proposed model is assessed based on the experimental results, which revealed that it is an efficient reliability model for multi-release OSS.
• In Chapter 6, Murat Tahir Çaldağ and Ebru Gökalpb present an open data capability maturity model (OD-CMM) they developed to evaluate the open data capabilities of an organization and provide a road map for further improvements. The model is developed based on the concepts of ISO 330xx family of standards.
• In Chapter 7, Abdul Wahid Khan et al. present a systematic literature review (SLR) and industrial survey study, which they conducted to develop a conceptual map of the success factors that could impact the outsourcing of human resources in the domain of global software development (GSD). A total of thirteen success factors are identified, which are further classified across four main categories.
• In Chapter 8, Shahid Hussain proposes a process framework to address the classification problem of security and non-security bug reports. The framework identifies the important security-related keywords from the security bug reports (SBR) and removes these keywords from the non-security bug reports (NSBR) to improve classification decisions. The framework is empirically evaluated and the results indicate its significance in terms of classification of the SBRs.
• In Chapter 9, Mohammad Shameem presents an SLR study he conducted to identify the challenging factors that could negatively impact the DevOps practices in software development organizations. The SLR study revealed a total of 16 challenging factors, which were further analyzed to reveal the most significant factors. Finally, the identified factors were analyzed across the development and operation silos of DevOps practices.
• In Chapter 10, Muhammad Shoaib Khan, Abdul Wahid Khan and Javed Khan present an SLR protocol to identify the cultural challenges in the DevOps environment. The ultimate goal of the study was to develop a DevOps culture challenges model (DC2M) to improve communication, coordination, understanding, and trust, and to reduce the barriers between development and operation silos.
• In Chapter 11, Noor Rehman and Abdul Wahid Khan report on the barriers of IoTbased software architecture. The SLR approach was used to explore the available primary studies and a total of 20 barriers were identified, which were further analyzed based on different continents.
• In Chapter 12, Sher Badshah addresses the project management challenges in the GSD environment. The sutdy’s findings consist of a total of 25 challenges that could be potential barriers for project management activities in GSD. Finally, the identified challenges are mapped into the knowledge areas of the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK) framework.
• In Chapter 13, Shah Zaib, Abdul Wahid Khan and Iqbal Qasim discuss cybersecurity challenges. The SLR approach was adopted and identified a total of 13 challenging factors. The challenging factors were also analyzed based on the digital repositories of the primary studies and the adopted research methods.
• In Chapter 14, Ebru Gökalp presents the capability maturity model he developed to improve the digital transformation (DX) human resource skill development process in an organization. The proposed model is based on the concepts of ISO 330xx family of standards. The industrial evaluation of the model shows that the proposed approach is applicable to assess the current DX human resource skill development capability level of an organization and provide best practices to move to the next maturity level.

Since it disseminates cutting-edge research that delivers insights into the tools, opportunities, novel strategies, techniques, and challenges for managing software processes, this book will be a useful resource for practitioners, students and researchers alike.

Practitioners and executives will learn what impact the evolving software processes can have on their projects. They will see ways in which the frequent and continuous change in today’s software processes can help to develop software that is faster and more flexible with regard to customer needs. Those practitioners who need to react to the changing requirements by adapting the concepts of continuous development and integration, will read about how DevOps, agile and global software development practices help to live up to these new challenges. This book gives an overview of which methods are used today and how to apply them to a specific project, and includes practices to plan and monitor projects.

Students could benefit from the book by gaining an understanding of the recent trends in software process management. Moreover, it could be used in software engineering degree courses, specifically systematic literature review studies in software process improvement, agile software development, global software development processes, process models, and software project management.

Researchers getting involved with the advanced software processes will find a profound introduction to the subject. They will rapidly become acquainted with these new concepts and understand how these new trends could be used in future research projects.

Arif Ali Khan
Dac-Nhuong Le
October 2021