[opensym] Reviewing the conclusion

Paulo Meireles
1 parent 6dd0b976
Showing 5 changed files with 63 additions and 59 deletions Show diff stats
opensym2017/content/01-introduction.tex
opensym2017/content/04-researchdesign.tex
opensym2017/content/06-architecture.tex
opensym2017/content/08-process.tex
opensym2017/content/09-conclusion.tex
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Approximately five years later from the first problems, a new platform for the
 SPB Portal was planned and funded. Between January 2014 and June 2016, the
 University of Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) in a
 partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management
-(MP) designed an integrated platform for collaborative software development
+designed an integrated platform for collaborative software development
 \cite{bobr2003}, including social networking, mailing lists, version control
 system, and source code quality monitoring. To coordinate and develop this
 project during 30 months, UnB was funded by a grant of 2,619,965.00 BRL (about
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Portal by reporting the technical efforts carried out, our empirical work
 process, and the lessons learned. The new SPB Portal project presented three
 main challenges, related to the open questions described below.
-\textbf{Q1:} \textit{Which strategy could be used to integrate several existing
+\textbf{Q1.} \textit{Which strategy could be used to integrate several existing
 FLOSS tools to promote a collaborative software development?}
 %
 Based on an extensive list of functional requirements defined by the Brazilian
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ were fully aware that we would need to improve those systems in order to
 satisfy the remaining requirements. We were also convinced that it would be
 impossible to satisfy all of those requirements with a single tool.
-\textbf{Q2:} \textit{How to involve students in real-world projects interacting
+\textbf{Q2.} \textit{How to involve students in real-world projects interacting
 with real customers?}
 %
 Our team was mainly composed of software engineering undergraduate students,
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Government.  For the majority of the students, this was a first professional
 experience.  Even though, our development process defined a central role on
 students participation.
-\textbf{Q3:} \textit{How to introduce typical FLOSS collaborative and agile practices in the governmental development process?}
+\textbf{Q3.} \textit{How to introduce typical FLOSS collaborative and agile practices in the governmental development process?}
 %
 The software development in Brazilian government is based on a very traditional
 way, frequently focusing documentation deliveries. We had to convince them to
@@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ network created between them.
 \begin{figure*}[hbt]
   \centering
-    \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/arch3.png}
+    \includegraphics[width=.85\linewidth]{figures/arch3.png}
   \caption{Instanciation view of the SPB architecture.}
   \label{fig:architecture2}
 \end{figure*}
@@ -24,8 +24,8 @@ automation resulting from DevOps practices. Thus, the work process was executed
 in a cadenced and continuous way.
 Finally, the last group of actors of this project was composed of employees of
-the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management (MP is the
-Brazilian acronym). All the project decisions, validations, and scope
+the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management.
+All the project decisions, validations, and scope
 definitions were made by them. In this way, we incrementally developed a
 software product with releases aligned to strategic business objectives. As one
 can see, the project had a wide range of different stakeholders that had to be
@@ -4,20 +4,20 @@
 In this work, we presented and discussed issues experienced during a
 government-funded project, in partnership with the University of Brasilia and
 the University of São Paulo, to evolve the Brazilian Public Software Portal.
-Its contributions are twofold. First, we present the strategy used to develop
+Our contributions are twofold. First, we present the strategy used to develop
 and to deliver an unprecedented platform to Brazilian government. Second, based
 on the results of the SPB Portal project, we point out that it is possible to
 mitigate conflicts experienced in the development environment and to conciliate
 governmental and academy cultures. To summarize our main contributions, we
 answered in this section the three open questions those guided this paper.
-\textbf{Which strategy could be used to integrate several existing
-FLOSS tools to promote a collaborative software development?}
+\textbf{Which strategy could be used to integrate several existing FLOSS tools
+to promote a collaborative software development?}
 %
-The SPB portal integrates more than 10 FLOSS tools and provides several
+The SPB portal integrates more than ten FLOSS tools and provides several
 features, such as social network, mailing list, version control, content
 management and source code quality monitoring. Concerned with the platform
-sustainability and maintainability, the aforementioned 10 FLOSS tools were
+sustainability and maintainability, the aforementioned FLOSS tools were
 integrated with minimum differences from their official versions and the new
 developed features were sent upstream to ensure an alignment between the portal
 systems and their respective official versions. In the integration process, the
@@ -25,8 +25,8 @@ main softwares were identified, specific teams were formed to work with each
 one of them and each team was composed of students with different levels of
 skills and at least one senior professional.
-\textbf{How to involve students in real-world projects interacting with
-real customers?}
+\textbf{How to involve students in real-world projects interacting with real
+customers?}
 %
 In terms of mitigating conflicts, we tried to show that, as long as the
 university can provide a healthy and challenging environment to its students,
@@ -42,29 +42,31 @@ professionals to solve development issues.
 %
 Among the students, we have defined coaches for each team and a meta-coach
 (coach of whole project). All coaches, together with professors, have
-intermediated the communication between client (Ministry of Planning of Brazil)
+intermediated the communication between client (the Brazilian Government)
 and the rest of the group. 
 After the end of the project, some students successfully
 embraced opportunities in public and private sectors, within national borders
 and abroad. Some other students went further and started their own companies.
-\textbf{How to introduce collaborative and agile
-practices typical in FLOSS environments in the governmental development process?}
+\textbf{How to introduce typical FLOSS collaborative and agile practices in the
+governmental development process?}
 %
-With some adaptations, what we called the ``translation processes'', it is
+With some adaptations, it is
 feasible to conciliate agile methodologies and FLOSS practices to develop
 software to governmental organizations with functional hierarchical structures
 that use traditional development paradigm.
 %
-Aiming at reducing client questions about workconclusion, a DevOps front was
+Aiming at reducing client questions about workconclusion, a DevOps team was
 created to automate all deploy process and also  to work in continuous
-delivery. The government was brought to our work environment and interacted
+delivery. The Government was brought to our work environment and interacted
 with our management and communication tools. For the project success, we
 focused on providing a friendly working environment as well as on showing to
 governmental agents another way to interact with the FLOSS community and the
 university.
-From the answers of our initial open questions, we can also highlighted six
+\subsection{Lessons Learned}
+
+From the answers of our initial open questions, we also can highlighted six
 lessons learned to make easier to share our experience during the development
 of the new SPB Portal.
@@ -104,21 +106,22 @@ certain expectations about the project development that, let&#39;s say, did not
 exactly match our work style based on agile and FLOSS practices.
 %
 We had to develop strategies that would support these different organizational
-cultures. Therefore, we have created ``translation processes'' between our team
-and the MP managers who managed the project on their side, assuming a
+cultures. Therefore, we have adapted the process between our team
+and the Government managers who managed the project on their side, assuming a
 traditional waterfall process.
 \textbf{Managing higher-level and lower-level goals separately.}
 %
-During the initial phase of the project, the MP team has brought strategic
-discussions to technical/operational meetings that were supposed to be about
-practical technical decisions.
+During the initial phase of the project, the Brazilian Government team has
+brought strategic discussions to technical/operational meetings that were
+supposed to be about practical technical decisions.
 %
 This produced a highly complex communication and management environment,
-overloading the professors because they were supposed for maintaining the MP
-strategy synchronized with the implementation plans of the development team.
-This was hard, especially because the aforementioned cultural mismatch. Mixing
-both concerns in the same discussions caused confusion on both sides.
+overloading the professors because they were supposed for maintaining the
+Government strategy synchronized with the implementation plans of the
+development team.  This was hard, especially because the aforementioned
+cultural mismatch. Mixing both concerns in the same discussions caused
+confusion on both sides.
 %
 From the middle of the project we were able to keep those concerns separated,
 what eased the work of everyone involved.
@@ -126,40 +129,41 @@ what eased the work of everyone involved.
 \textbf{Living with ill-advised political decisions.}
 %
 At the initial phases of the project, by political and personal motivation, the
-main stakeholders from the Brazilian government imposed the use of Colab to
+main stakeholders from the Brazilian Government imposed the use of Colab to
 guide the development of the new SPB platform. Our team was totally against the
 idea because we already knew that Colab was a very experimental project and its
-adoption could dramatically increase the project complexity. Even though we
-provided technical reasons to not utilize Colab, the MP was adamant and we had
-to manage this problem. We did massive changes to Colab, and at the end of the
-project we have completely rewritten it to make it stable. It is important to
-notice that the MP compelled us to accept	a technical decision based only on
-political interests, without considering all the resources that would be spent
-due to that decision. At the end of the project, we verified that Colab indeed
-consumed a vast amount of the budget and increased the project complexity. At
-the end of the project and after our analysis on the decision made by the MP,
-we understand that MP managers are capable of ignoring technical reasons in
-favor of political decisions.
+adoption could dramatically increase the project complexity. Even though, we
+provided technical reasons to not utilize Colab, the Government was adamant and
+we had to manage this problem. We did massive changes to Colab, and at the end
+of the project we have completely rewritten it to make it stable. It is
+important to notice that the Government compelled us to accept a technical
+decision based only on political interests, without considering all the
+resources that would be spent due to that decision. At the end of the project,
+we verified that Colab indeed consumed a vast amount of the budget and
+increased the project complexity. After our analysis on the decision made by
+the Government, we understand that some Brazilian Government managers are
+capable of ignoring technical reasons in favor of political decisions.
 \textbf{Consider sustainability from the beginning.}
 %
-In the process of deploying the SPB platform in the MP infrastructure we had to
-interact with the MP technicians. We did several workshops, training and a
-meticulous documentation describing all the required procedures to update the
-platform, however, we realized that the MP technicians constantly avoid the
-responsibility. After noticing the aforementioned situation, we organized a
-DevOps team that completely automated all the deployment procedure. We
-simplified all the platform deployment to a few steps: (1) initial
-configurations (just ssh configuration) and (2) the execution of simple
-commands to completely update the platform. By the end of the project, we
-observed that the MP technicians invariably still depended on our support to
-update the platform even with all the automation provided by us. We were sadly
-left with a feeling of uncertainty about the future of the platform after the
-project ended. In hindsight, we realize that the MP dedicated system analysts
-and managers to the project, but not operations technicians. The later should
-have been more involved with the process so they could at least be comfortable
-in managing the platform infrastructure.
-
+In the process of deploying the SPB platform in the Brazilian Government
+infrastructure we had to interact with the Government technicians. We did
+several workshops, training and a meticulous documentation describing all the
+required procedures to update the platform, however, we realized that they
+constantly avoid the responsibility. After noticing the aforementioned
+situation, we organized a DevOps team that completely automated all the
+deployment procedure. We simplified all the platform deployment to a few steps:
+(i) initial configurations (just ssh configuration) and (ii) the execution of
+simple commands to completely update the platform. By the end of the project,
+we observed that the Government technicians invariably still depended on our
+support to update the platform even with all the automation provided by us. We
+were sadly left with a feeling of uncertainty about the future of the platform
+after the project ended. In hindsight, we realize that the Brazilian Government
+dedicated system analysts and managers to the project, but not operations
+technicians. The later should have been more involved with the process so they
+could at least be comfortable in managing the platform infrastructure.
+
+\subsection{Final Remarks and Future Work}
 Ultimately, the SPB portal is in
 production\footnote{\url{https://softwarepublico.gov.br}} and its full
	@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Approximately five years later from the first problems, a new platform for the		@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Approximately five years later from the first problems, a new platform for the
41	SPB Portal was planned and funded. Between January 2014 and June 2016, the	41	SPB Portal was planned and funded. Between January 2014 and June 2016, the
42	University of Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) in a	42	University of Brasília (UnB) and the University of São Paulo (USP) in a
43	partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management	43	partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management
44	-(MP) designed an integrated platform for collaborative software development	44	+designed an integrated platform for collaborative software development
45	\cite{bobr2003}, including social networking, mailing lists, version control	45	\cite{bobr2003}, including social networking, mailing lists, version control
46	system, and source code quality monitoring. To coordinate and develop this	46	system, and source code quality monitoring. To coordinate and develop this
47	project during 30 months, UnB was funded by a grant of 2,619,965.00 BRL (about	47	project during 30 months, UnB was funded by a grant of 2,619,965.00 BRL (about
	@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Portal by reporting the technical efforts carried out, our empirical work		@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Portal by reporting the technical efforts carried out, our empirical work
6	process, and the lessons learned. The new SPB Portal project presented three	6	process, and the lessons learned. The new SPB Portal project presented three
7	main challenges, related to the open questions described below.	7	main challenges, related to the open questions described below.
8		8
9	-\textbf{Q1:} \textit{Which strategy could be used to integrate several existing	9	+\textbf{Q1.} \textit{Which strategy could be used to integrate several existing
10	FLOSS tools to promote a collaborative software development?}	10	FLOSS tools to promote a collaborative software development?}
11	%	11	%
12	Based on an extensive list of functional requirements defined by the Brazilian	12	Based on an extensive list of functional requirements defined by the Brazilian
	@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ were fully aware that we would need to improve those systems in order to		@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ were fully aware that we would need to improve those systems in order to
17	satisfy the remaining requirements. We were also convinced that it would be	17	satisfy the remaining requirements. We were also convinced that it would be
18	impossible to satisfy all of those requirements with a single tool.	18	impossible to satisfy all of those requirements with a single tool.
19		19
20	-\textbf{Q2:} \textit{How to involve students in real-world projects interacting	20	+\textbf{Q2.} \textit{How to involve students in real-world projects interacting
21	with real customers?}	21	with real customers?}
22	%	22	%
23	Our team was mainly composed of software engineering undergraduate students,	23	Our team was mainly composed of software engineering undergraduate students,
	@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Government. For the majority of the students, this was a first professional		@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Government. For the majority of the students, this was a first professional
27	experience. Even though, our development process defined a central role on	27	experience. Even though, our development process defined a central role on
28	students participation.	28	students participation.
29		29
30	-\textbf{Q3:} \textit{How to introduce typical FLOSS collaborative and agile practices in the governmental development process?}	30	+\textbf{Q3.} \textit{How to introduce typical FLOSS collaborative and agile practices in the governmental development process?}
31	%	31	%
32	The software development in Brazilian government is based on a very traditional	32	The software development in Brazilian government is based on a very traditional
33	way, frequently focusing documentation deliveries. We had to convince them to	33	way, frequently focusing documentation deliveries. We had to convince them to
	@@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ network created between them.		@@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ network created between them.
159		159
160	\begin{figure*}[hbt]	160	\begin{figure*}[hbt]
161	\centering	161	\centering
162	- \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/arch3.png}	162	+ \includegraphics[width=.85\linewidth]{figures/arch3.png}
163	\caption{Instanciation view of the SPB architecture.}	163	\caption{Instanciation view of the SPB architecture.}
164	\label{fig:architecture2}	164	\label{fig:architecture2}
165	\end{figure*}	165	\end{figure*}