Software development techniques in Albanian private software companies Arbora Dalaci, Esmeralda Kapcari 7 th Workshop “Software Engineering Education and Reverse Engineering” Risan, Montenegro, 9 – 14 September 2007.

Software market in Albania  Actually in Albania there are 7 software development companies  About all these companies are partners (have purchased the licences) with: Oracle, Microsoft, IBM...  Mostly they deal with private market but recently they are dealing with the government market too.

Quality criteria of software products developed  Correctness – not so much  Reliability – not so much  Robustness – missing  Efficiency – not so much  User friendliness – good  Maintainability – ok; main profit for the company  Scalability – missing  Readability – poor  Reusability – ok  Modularity – ok  Portability – missing  Compatibility – ok  Testing – ok  Costs – main concern

Quality criteria of software products developed

The main phases from planning to the product  The representatives of the software development firm make a meeting with clients  Here are discussed the main requests about the product  There are not so many suggestions from the clients

Analysis and definitions  It is made an analysis in cooperation with the client  Definitions keep on growing because it misses the methodology on the communication between the client and the solution provider.  Some times the lack of experience from the solution providers.

The first meeting of the development group  Here are discussed the hardware platform were the product will be installed  The main technologies that will host and develop the software product.  During this meeting many questions about the product are raised and pointed out  At this point are defined the licenses needed to be purchased by the client

The second meeting with the clients  Answers are given about the questions raised from the development group  Clients agree about the licenses and other technical conditions that are needed  Here it is agreed about the GUI; desktop or web application or both

The second meeting of the development group  The project timeline (development, testing, implementation and maintenance)  Here are spotted the development phases and assignments  Here is done a cost estimation about the product

The main modelling plan  Here mostly is used the spiral model as the development model for a software product.  Many meetings with the client during the development  Requests (by the client) may change during phases

The development begins  During the development phases can be done several meeting with the representatives of the clients  Can be added or reformulated different specifications or requirements  The development is modular in most of the cases  During the module development there are done several testings on the modules

Testing period  Gather together all the modules  A short period time of testing  At this period there are not spotted the logic problems but the errors that concern in the communications between the modules  After the testing period are revised the requirements for the product

Implementation period  The installation of the software product  The configurations  The hardware installations  Some cases we concern with the connections testing to verify and achieve the technical requirements

Product monitoring after implementation  Monitoring the performance  Monitoring of the reliability  Monitoring of the user friendliness  Monitoring of the security  Gathering of users feedback If any of these its not as was expected, the revision of the module is done.

Maintanance  Depending on the type of contract  In-site or off-site maintenance  Can be as cost per call or fixed fee.  It is considered as the main source of profit for the software development company

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