Characterisation of software development methodologies in the telecommunications industry

Abstract

The telecommunication industry provides products and services to enable communication. In South Africa, there are several telecommunication service providers which include Vodacom, Cell C, MTN and Telkom. These companies provide mobile, wireless and cable telecommunication services. For telecommunication services to be offered, there is a need for efficient and effective software solutions even though the development of software in the industry may be a difficult task to achieve. In a bid to resolve this, information technology practitioners recommend software development methodologies (SDMs) to augment the software development process. The demand for telecommunication services has risen over the years, resulting in massive challenges in the provision of quality software to satiate the user needs in time. This research aimed to investigate and interrogate the role of SDMs used m the telecommunication industry. The main objectives were to identify SDMs used m the telecommunication industry, and in tandem identify key specifications for SDMs suitable for the industry. Lastly, the impact of SDMs on software development processes in the telecommunication industry was investigated. The motive to conduct this study was the lack of literature on SDMs in the telecommunication industry. Chapter 2 assessed SDMs in the telecommunication industry, in order to determine the SDMs role in software development. This assessment showed that SDMs are used to assist software development in general, however there are SDMs that are specifically developed for software development in the telecommunication industry. In order to successfully investigate the SDMs used in telecommunication industry, four leading telecommunication companies were identified for investigation. Case studies were conducted in these companies and data was collected through semi structured interviews. Atlas.ti was used to analyse interview transcripts. Thereafter a cross analysis method was used to identify similar patterns among the findings. The results indicated that software development life cycle and agile methodologies are used in the telecommunication industry even though these SDMs do not fully address the telecommunication requirements, hence the modifications.