A Few Insights Into Romanian Information Systems Analysts and Designers Toolbox

Abstract Information Systems (IS) analysts and designers have been key members in software development teams. From waterfall to Rational Unified Process, from UML to agile development, IS modelers have faced many trends and buzzwords. Even if the topic of models and modeling tools in software development is important, there are no many detailed studies to identify for what the developers, customers and managers decide to use the modeling and specific tools. Despite the popularity of the subject, studies showing what tools the IS modelers prefer are scarce, and quasi-non-existent, when talking about Romanian market. As Romania is an important IT outsourcing market, this paper investigated what methods and tools Romanian IS analysts and designers apply. In this context, the starting question of our research focuses on the preference of the developers to choose between agile or non-agile methods in IT projects. As a result, the research questions targeted the main drivers in choosing specific methods and tools for IT projects deployed in Romanian companies. Also, one of the main objectives of this paper was to approach the relationship between the methodologies (agile or non-agile), diagrams and other tools (we refer in our study to the CASE features) with other variables/metrics of the system/software development project. The observational study was conducted based on a survey filled by IS modelers in Romanian IT companies. The data collected were processed and analyzed using Exploratory Data Analysis. The platform for data visualization and analysis was R.