A Hybrid Model by Integrating Agile Practices for
Pakistani Software Industry
Saadia Sultana, Yasir Hafeez Motla, Sohail Asghar, Muhammad Jamal, Romana Azad
University Institute of Information Technology, PMAS. Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
diya_noor@hotmail.com, yasir@uaar.edu.pk, sohail.asghar@uaar.edu.pk, Jaamaal@hotmail.com, roma_azad@yahoo.com
Abstract—CONTEXT –The software industry can be widely seen
as a key driver for business improvement and is likely to provide
an opportunity to the countries to make dramatic improvements
in economic growth. Software industry of Pakistan can also play
a major role in strengthening the sluggish economy. A well-
organized suitable framework according to the industry needs
helps to engineer quality products within budget and time.
OBJECTIVE – To identify significant issues present in Pakistani
software industry that are considered as barriers in achieving the
international standards of development and to propose suitable
framework by integrating agile practices to resolve various
management, quality and engineering issues.
METHOD –Literature is consulted to highlight various issues of
Pakistani Software industry, some existing hybrid models are
investigated to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and
finally a case study & expert review is presented to validate the
effectiveness of our proposed hybrid model.
RESULTS –The proposed hybrid model provides effective
management, engineering, quality assurance, productivity and
maintenance practices to develop quality products which can
help the industry to compete and achieve the standards of global
software industry.
CONCLUSION –The proposed framework contains features of
Scrum which provides good management practices, XP which
offers engineering practices and DSDM which focuses on
providing solid basis to initiate a project. Additional role of
technical writer for effective documentation also enhances the
understand-ability and maintenance of the software.
Keywords: Agile, XP, Scrum, DSDM
I. INTRODUCTION
Today we are living in a world of Information Technology
(IT) which is changing every aspect of human life. Many
nations have identified their areas of comparative advantage
and developed policies and guidelines that have enabled them
to derive maximum benefits from those areas. One of the most
significant and compelling areas of IT is software
development industry which has the potential to increase the
growth rate of the economy and can make a valuable
contribution in the economic development of any country. We
can emulate India’s success in software as an example. In the
taxonomy of software exporting nations, India is currently
viewed as a tier-1 country, earning more than billions in
exports whereas Pakistan is currently viewed as a tier-3
country —having export earning in millions[1]. In the past
decade, IT has seen explosive growth; however the software
industry is quite young in Pakistan. Most of software projects
fail either totally or partially. Some research has been done
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about the extent and causes of IT project failure in Pakistan.
According to the research, the three main reasons of public
sector IT projects failures are: poor project management and
risk management, software engineering practices and
governance and funding issues [2]. However there is still a
need to explore this area and to provide a well-structured and
organized framework to develop quality software.
Agile methods are a popular alternative in Global
Software Industry to resolve problems of project management
and software engineering practices [3]. These methodologies
are based on incremental development and focus on the value
of individuals, customer involvement, and quick adaptation to
their new requirements, rapid releases and early feedback to
build quality software in quick time [4] [5]. According to the
survey conducted by VersionOne [6] from all over the world,
more than 80% of the respondent said that their organizations
have adopted agile development practices within their
software organizations and most of the respondents said that
none of their agile projects failed. The agile methodology for
software development is a relatively new approach in the
Pakistani software industry as compared to the global software
industry [3]. According to the survey, Scrum is the most
popular methodology used in Pakistan for software
development and surprisingly extreme programming (XP)
usage which provides best engineering practices is not very
visible [7].
The objective of this research paper is to highlight the
main problems present in the software industry of Pakistan
and then to suggest appropriate hybrid model that provides
effective management, engineering, quality assurance,
productivity and maintenance practices for software
development to compete with the global software industry.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 provides
introduction. Section 2 presents a literature review and
analysis of agile practices which can be useful for effective
software development. Section 3 proposes a hybrid model
according to the demands of the software industry in Pakistan.
Section 4 covers core practices of the hybrid model. Section 5
presents industry feedback through a case study and expert
review. At the end, Section 6 sums up the work and suggests
the future work.
II. RELATED WORK
Software Industry of Pakistan is still in a nascent stage as
compared to the global software industry. Despite recession,
the industry has grown during the past decade and its progress
is visible. The growth can be improved by analysing problems
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and failure factors of the industry. According to the research simple design and system metaphor for shared understanding
and literature, issues related to organizational culture & and sustainable pace (40 hour weeks) benefit the
understanding, quality management, leadership, training & programmers.
development, project management and motivation are of
Scrum is a light SDLC methodology which builds
highest priority [8]. This context shows that there is the need
software iteratively and incrementally. The project is divided
of a well- organized framework that can resolve the main
into a series of consecutive sprints. It provides flexible
issues from industry effectively. To deal with the above
development strategy where team works together to develop
mentioned problems, agile methodologies can be very
the quality product and to deal with unpredictable challenges.
effective [9]. Since each agile method has its own strengths
It is most suitable for the projects where customer’s needs
and weaknesses, many researchers have proposed hybrid
cannot be easily defined up front [16].
models by integrating the strengths of different agile methods
and by suppressing their weaknesses. We have consulted the The Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) is
literature to figure out a model which is enriched with project a framework used to control software development projects
management, engineering, quality and maintenance practices. with short timelines. This process begins with a unique feature
However, we could not find out a model containing all the “feasibility study” to assess the suitability of the model and
particularities mentioned above. the remaining process consists of functional model iteration,
design and builds iteration, and implementation. In this model,
The model presented in [10] provides the skeleton and
requirements can be changed based upon a time-boxed
structured approach along with engineering practices for
approach and fixed project resources. Clear prioritization of
effective software development but the proposed model is not
functional requirements is very important for successful
validated by conducting any case study to evaluate its
development. It supports documentation which is very
potential. The proposed hybrid model in [11] contains
effective to understand and maintain the software [17].
strengths of scrum and RUP by providing management and
project initiation activities. Major artefacts are also defined but Scrum, XP and DSDM have a complementary set of
software engineering practices are not explained. Novel values and practices that are intended to meet the same kinds
Hybrid Model [12] has the full flavour of software of goals. From the above literature, we can conclude that
management and engineering practices that can be effective
scrum helps to increase the productivity of the team, XP
during sprint development life. Project initiation activities are
not defined in this paper. Authors only focused on sprint practices improve quality of the code and DSDM enhances the
development phases and practices. Documentation process is productivity and maintenance of the project. Considering
also neglected. Model presented in [13] contains good features Scrum, XP, and DSDM together provides a good place to
of management and engineering practices which can be develop a project with technical excellence and engineering
effective for small, medium and large size projects. Since RUP practices.
emphasises on documentation but it has remained silent TABLE 1 LIMITATIONS OF XP, SCRUM AND DSDM
throughout the process which is very important feature for
productivity and maintenance of the system. The proposed XP Scrum DSDM
framework is only validated on a small scale projects.
IXPRUM model [14] presents concepts of scrum and XP XP is too light It mainly focuses on It requires
clearly through literature but the proposed model is very on software project management highly skilled
abstract. From the above analysis we can conclude that we management practices, other staff to carry
need to propose a model which provides effective practices. disciplines are out of out successful
management, engineering, quality assurance, productivity and scope. software
maintenance practices. For this purpose we have selected three development.
agile methods: Extreme Programming, Scrum and Dynamic It does not It does not specify Programming
Software Development System. Again the literature is provide software technical practices. techniques and
consulted to highlight strengths and weaknesses of these development life practices are not
methods. cycle coverage fully defined in
so it is not useful DSDM.
Extreme programming is a lightweight software for larger
development methodology that focuses to improve software projects.
quality and embrace change. It is based on five values: XP creates Supports only basic Defines several
Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect. minimal design documentation. documents at
It comprises 12 practices [15]. Pair programming, planning and user individual
game, test driven approach and whole team aims to provide documentation. phase which
fine scale feedback. Continuous process contains three XP lead to heavy
practices: continuous integration, design improvement and documentation.
small release. Coding standards, collective code ownership,

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 III. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED HYBRIID MODEL
Figure1. Proposed Hybrid Model
A. Project Initiation
1) Business Case Study provides the description
d of the
business problem, identification of altternative solutions
with their cost and benefits, and then reecommends a most
preferable solution to sponsors. The arteefact of this phase
is business case document which helps to t gain approval of
funds needed to get started the project.
2) Feasibility Study provides an opporrtunity to decide
whether a candidate project is likelyy to be workable
from a business and technical perspeective. High level
investigation is done to determine pootential solutions,
time and budget of the project. It prodduces a feasibility
report that addresses the feasibility of the
t project. It also
provides an outline plan that includes development plan
and risk log. Workshop is the most valuuable technique for
this phase.
3) Project Charter refines the plans executed in previous
stage and outlines the vision, objectivee and scope of the
project. Again workshop is conducteed in which the
different stakeholders discuss the reqquirements of the
proposed project and the newly collectedd information is
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added into the requiremennt list. It also produces Business
Area Definition to providde insight into the company’s
business processes as well as the users who will be
affected by the implementtation of this system and specify
the non-functional requireements. A System Architecture
Definition along with devvelopment plan is also produced
to explain initial architectuure of the proposed system. On
the basis of above doccumentation, requirements are
prioritized according to thee MoSCoW technique [15].
4) In this phase, a review is conducted to check where the
team has met the so far obbjectives set for the project and
to measure the produced deliverables. Technical writer
completes the Project Reeview document which allows
procession to the “planningg phase”.
B. Product Backlog Planning
1) Product backlog contains prioritized list of user stories,
containing brief descriptioons of all required functionality
in the product. Initially, user
u stories are estimated by the
team to measure the degree d of required effort to
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 implement a particular story. It gives the product owner
and the team a clue of a particular story’s cost and in turn,
this clue helps the product owner to prioritize the use
stories.
2) During a product backlog grooming meeting, the product
owner presents new and changed stories. He also delivers
his plan for the next few sprints. For estimation, analysis
and prioritization of new stories, the team can take some
extra time during this meeting to review the current
architecture of the system and to plan and design
upcoming requirements. During this process, estimates
are often changed, and new large-sized stories are
decomposed into smaller ones. At the end of each
meeting, the product owner is responsible for publishing
the changes to keep product backlog updated.
C. Sprint Development Life Cycle
This phase consists of four sub-parts: sprint planning,
sprint design, sprint implementation and sprint testing.
During sprint development, stand-up meeting is held daily
to provide status of previous day tasks, current tasks to be
developed and obstacles that are impeding progress. It is
time boxed to 5-15 minutes daily and sprint master is
responsible to set up this meeting. To show the remaining
work and progress of the sprint, sprint burn down chart is
displayed publically. Technical writer must be present to
document all the necessary information throughout the
Sprint Development Life Cycle.
1) Sprint Backlog Planning meeting is held to select user
stories from product backlog and then the team identifies
the list of tasks required to complete each user story. The
team also estimates how many hours will require
fulfilling each task. For estimation, Scrum Poker
technique is used. Initially selected story is discussed
and after a period of discussion, each team member pick
outs from his own deck the numbered card to represent
his estimate of how much work is involved in the story
under discussion. Units for estimation may vary. Days or
hours may be required to complete the task. Team
members possessing maximum and minimum estimates
explain the reasons for their estimate and then discussion
continues until a consensus is reached. It is owned by
team and team is responsible to update backlog as new
information becomes available.
2) In design phase, class diagram, object diagram and test
classes are designed. Test driven approach will be
followed. Unit test are designed before coding. It is very
important for the developer to understand the feature’s
requirements to write a test. Use cases and user stories
are available to the developers to cover the requirements
and exception conditions. This practice can lead to more
modularized, adaptable, and extensible code.
3) Coding is the most important phase of the sprint
development cycle. It follows core practices of XP like
coding standards, code ownership, pair programming,
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code refactoring and continuous integration. Coding
standards must be followed for better readability,
maintainability and compatibility. Collective code
ownership ensures that every team member can make
changes to file, either to complete the task defined in
sprint backlog or to fix a defect or even to improve the
programming reduces the defect rate [15] and provides
faster solutions to the problems. Code refactoring refers
to changing the internal structure of the program without
influencing external behavior in order to reduce
complexity of the source code and improves readability.
4) In sprint testing, the smallest unit of source code is
tested to ensure that module is fit for use. Module which
passes the unit test is considered successful and
integrated with the existing code. Integration testing is
done to expose defects in the interfaces and interaction
between integrated modules before moving to sprint
review phase.
D. Sprint Review & Retrospectives
1) On completion of a sprint, sprint review meeting is held.
This takes place at the beginning of this phase where team
shows accomplished tasks. In this meeting, the team
meets with the product owner, customers and stakeholders
to incorporate feedback and also to identify new
requirements. Incomplete stories will remain in product
backlog and new requirements will be added in the
product backlog. On the last day of sprint, the team
attends a sprint retrospectives meeting to review their own
work in order to make improvements and to review the
priorities of the product backlog. Team summarizes
concrete suggestions about what can be done better in the
next sprint.
E. System Testing
1) After complete development, testing is done on complete
and integrated system, to evaluate the specified
requirements of the system. Designing and writing test
cases require only application knowledge rather than
programming knowledge as it checks that system works
correctly from the user point of view.
F. Final Release
1) Finally, the system along with documentation is delivered
to the users for the final acceptance testing.
IV. PRACTICES OF THE PROPOSED MODEL
The proposed hybrid model provides all core practices that
must be followed to develop quality software. These practices
are divided into four categories: management practices,
engineering practices, testing and quality assurance practices
and productivity & maintenance practices. All practices are
adopted form agile methodologies except productivity and
maintenance practices. Since agile methodologies emphasise
on working piece of software rather than comprehensive
documentation, importance of documentation cannot be
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denied. Documentation is effective to understand and maintain
the software. Our proposed model suggests a role of a
technical writer to produce important artefacts to increase
development efficiency, quality and maintenance support.
V. EVALUATION
A. Control Experiment
To validate and evaluate the proposed hybrid model,
a controlled case study was conducted. For this purpose,
two teams (Team A, Team B) were selected. In each
team, eight members was selected and divided into
designers, developers and testers. Team A followed the
proposed hybrid model while team B followed the
simple scrum process. The duration of the case study
was six weeks and four iterations were produced. The
first and second iteration was of two weeks. Team A
assigned each task to two person i.e an experienced
programmer and an amateur. This technique helped the
newly hired programmer to learn and gain experience of
professional development. The rest of the two iterations
were of one week and each programmer of team A
performed the task individually. Initially, both teams
conducted a training program to introduce themes and
concepts of the agile practices and proposed models to
both the development teams. The training involves the
introduction of agile principles & values, project
initiation activities, introduction to main artefacts to be
developed, product & sprint backlog planning, daily
stand-up meeting, sprint review meeting, and sprint
retrospective. The projects assigned to team A was SIFT
Features Matching while team B was given MOSAIC
Image. Complexity level and nature of the projects were
almost same. Both teams were well balanced according
to experience, domain and language expertise. Software
used for development and documentation were
MyEclipse, JUnit, UMLet and MS Office 2010.

Figure 2 Practices of the Proposed Hybrid Model

TABLE 2 DATA COLLECTED FROM BOTH TEAMS

Parameters Team A Team B

Iterations Total Iterations Total

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Sprint Duration in Week 2 2 1 1 6 2 2 1 1 6
Modules 10 6 4 3 23 8 6 4 4 22
Tasks 50 25 21 19 115 48 25 19 21 113
Classes 60 18 15 9 102 50 27 18 22 117
Test Classes 20 8 7 5 40 24 12 8 11 55
Pre Release Defect 6 3 1 2 12 8 4 5 3 20
Post Release Defects 6 3 2 2 13 7 5 5 6 23
Pair Programming Yes No No No - No No No No -
Refactoring Yes Yes Yes Yes - No No No No -
Customer Satisfaction 75 % 80% 80% 85% 80 % 70 % 70% 75% 75% 72.5%
Maintenance Support 80% 80% 80% 80% 80% 45% 45% 45% 45% 45%
(Documentation)

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 Figure 3 Comparing results in contexxt of pre and post defects rate, maintenance support annd customer satisfaction

The data collected from the case study s and above

comparison reveals that our proposed hybridd model is suitable TABLE 4 EVALUA
ATION OF EXPERTS OPNION
for industry to develop quality software within
w budget and
time.

B. Expert Reviews
We have also collected expert review ws to validate the
proposed model. We visited a medium sizze software house
and conduct an interview of 6 experts. We took t their reviews
about our proposed work for the software development. We
designed a questionnaire about the parameteers to be evaluated
and circulated it to the different experts. Ressponses are shown
in table 3.
6
TABLE 3 EXPERT OPINION Agreed
4
2
0 Partially
Agreed
Disagreed

Figure 4 Groups
G Opinion Graph

According to the expert our proposed hybrid model

provides a good approach for the software development and
some experts also suggested that proposed model can be
improved by adding new practiices.

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VI. CONCLUSION
Software industry can play a vital role in the economic
development of Pakistan as demonstrated by countries like
India, Canada etc. These countries have adopted aggressive
investment strategies for growth. To compete with global
software industry, it is important for the industry to define
clear direction, strategies, software processes and research
projects.
The purpose of this research was to suggest a suitable
framework to Pakistani software industry to resolves issues of
software engineering and management. The proposed
framework contains features of DSDM, XP and scrum which
provide blended mixture of engineering, management,
maintenance and productivity practices. Since agile
methodologies focus on working software rather than
comprehensive documentation, our research also recommends
a technical writer role for ensuring the documentation is done
properly to enhance the understand-ability and maintenance of
the software. The results of the case study ensure that
proposed framework will be more likely to deliver benefits to
the business and most importantly to the user as well.
We believe that the adoption of this framework will help
the Pakistani software industry to enhance the productivity of
a team and to develop quality products. Future research will
apply principles of DiCot methodology with proposed
framework to resolve cultural issues and communication gaps
within software development teams.
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