Leveraging global resources: a process maturity framework for managing distributed development

The popular and well-tested software process frameworks such as the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model and ISO 9001, details key process areas for software development. Focusing more on continuous improvement in code development processes, generic-process frameworks such as the CMM lack key process areas (KPA) that address capabilities for managing distributed software projects, such as establishing mutual knowledge and managing geographically dispersed social networks. We identify 24 new KPAs that address the wide-ranging capabilities needed for managing distributed software development and arrange them in an evolutionary order similar to the CMM framework. The evolutionary or phased approach in improving software management capabilities helps firms systematically assess their situations and plan for improvements. We also report the results of a statistically tested maturity assessment survey and test the overall rigor of our model against industry expert opinion and objective data collected from real-world projects implemented at SAP AG, a leading global-enterprise software firm.     

A systematic approach for resource allocation in software projects

The completion of reliable software products within their expected time frame represents a major problem for companies that develop software applications. Today, the software industry continues to struggle with delivering products in a timely manner. A major cause for delays is the training time required for engineers and other personnel to acquire the necessary skills to complete software tasks. Therefore, it is important to develop systematic personnel assignment processes that consider complete skill sets of candidates to provide solutions that reduce training time. This paper presents a novel methodology to assign resources to tasks when optimum skill sets are not available. The methodology takes into account existing capabilities of candidates, required levels of expertise, and priorities of required skills for the task. A sample case is used to show the model capabilities, and the results are compared with the current resource assignment approach.     

A maturity assessment approach for conceiving context-specific roadmaps in the Industry 4.0 era

The digital transformation of the production sector is setting the scene for a major industrial change. The need for supporting companies in this transformation is currently covered by several maturity models, generally operationalized through standardized questionnaires, which provide, as an outcome, an assessment of the current maturity stage and a set of general improvement recommendations according to it. However, to provide companies with a more tangible support, there is a need for more individual approach. In order to deal with this need, this paper proposes, following a design science research framework, a novel approach based on Problem-Based Learning for structuring the assessment procedure as a dialectic process. This approach aims at facilitating the contextualization of the assessed company and, consequently, the identification of context-specific improvement recommendations. The proposed approach, supported by a maturity model used for framing information collected during the assessment process, is tested in three industrial cases. Although these have been assessed at the same maturity stage, different improvement recommendations have been proposed according to contextual factors such as strategic goals, core processes and key performance indicators.     

A distributed and interactive system to integrated design and simulation for collaborative product development

The goal of applying collaborative product development in industry has raised the need to develop software tools supporting system integration and group collaboration. Current methods and tools mainly focus on the collaborative creation of design components and assemblies. However, few of them support the collaborative work in developing simulation models so that proposed design concepts and solutions can be evaluated by integrating expertise from several disciplines. The purpose of this research is to develop a distributed and interactive system on which designers and experts can work together to create, integrate and run simulations for engineering design. To develop such a system, a number of issues, e.g. effectiveness and efficiency of modeling work, the re-use of models, interaction and cooperation, accuracy of simulation, collaborative operation on models, etc., need to be addressed. This paper describes an open architecture to developing simulations for engineering design in a distributed and collaborative environment, identifies a set of key issues raised in this architecture, and presents the techniques employed in our solution.     

A collaborative face-to-face design support system based on sketching and gesturing

Mobile and pervasive computing has seen a rapid development in the last years. Portable, handheld computing devices are getting more popular as their capabilities increase. Therefore, people having the need to work on-the-field have now the possibility to be supported by computer technology, for example, garden or building designers. Ad-hoc networking capabilities of handheld devices enable the development of supporting tools for collaborative work anywhere. This paper presents MCSketcher, a system that enables face-to-face collaborative design based on sketches using handheld devices equipped for spontaneous wireless peer-to-peer networking. It is especially targeted for supporting preliminary, in-the-field work, allowing designers to exchange ideas through sketches on empty sheets or over a recently taken photograph of the object being worked on, in a brainstorming-like working style. Pen-based designed human–computer interaction is the key to supporting collaborative work. The gestures-based command input results in a lightweight yet efficient and easy to use interface. Graph structured hierarchical documents help to overcome the problems of a small screen size.     

Processes versus people: How should agile software development maturity be defined?

Maturity in software development is currently defined by models such as CMMI-DEV and ISO/IEC 15504, which emphasize the need to manage, establish, measure and optimize processes. Teams that develop software using these models are guided by defined, detailed processes. However, an increasing number of teams have been implementing agile software development methods that focus on people rather than processes. What, then, is maturity for these agile teams that focus less on detailed, defined processes? This is the question we sought to answer in this study. To this end, we asked agile practitioners about their perception of the maturity level of a number of practices and how they defined maturity in agile software development. We used cluster analysis to analyze quantitative data and triangulated the results with content analysis of the qualitative data. We then proposed a new definition for agile software development maturity. The findings show that practitioners do not see maturity in agile software development as process definition or quantitative management capabilities. Rather, agile maturity means fostering more subjective capabilities, such as collaboration, communication, commitment, care, sharing and self-organization.     

Managing Problems for Global Software Production – Experience and Lessons

With the increase in size and complexity of current software projects, many large companies have established global software production lines over the world to develop and deliver software products with collaborative software development processes involving multiple teams located at different sites. Supporting global software production needs an effective software-engineering environment to meet the special requirements of the collaborative software development process, diverse management methods and engineering practice. WWW technology provides powerful means to set up an enterprise-oriented software engineering environment for global software production due to its advantages in networking, global access, internationalization, and communication. Although there are many articles addressing the methods and experience in building web-based applications systems and tools, very few papers discuss the real-world problems and solutions in the development and deployment of web-based software tools to support a collaborative software development process for global software production. This paper discusses the real world issues, and reports our experience and lessons in building and deploying a web-based problem information management system (PIMS) to support global software development processes at Fujitsu. It focuses on the real issues and needs of current collaborative development process involving multiple teams, and highlights the benefits and impact of the PIMS on global software production. Moreover, it discusses our technical solutions and trade-offs in the development of PIMS, and shares our experience and lessons. Furthermore, it introduces a new data-centered conceptual process model to support diverse collaborative processes for project and problem management in global software production. Finally, the paper shares our key successes and weaknesses, and reports our experience and lessons in the deployment of the system.     

Mobile computing in urban emergency situations: Improving the support to firefighters in the field

Communication support is a serious limitation for Latin American firefighters when they deal with emergency situations. The insufficient number of radio channels and the impossibility to deliver digital information force firemen to improvise during response processes, e.g., to make decisions using their experience and poor or null supporting information. These improvised actions affect the time required to take control of an emergency, and also affect the evolution of the crisis situation. Provided most of Latin American fire companies are volunteer organizations, communication solutions that could help to overcome these problems are usually expensive for them. This article presents a low-cost mobile collaborative application, which may be used in emergency situations to overcome most of the firefighters’ communication problems. The application, named MobileMap, is the result of the research and development work conducted by the authors, supported by a Chilean fire company, during the last three years. MobileMap allows ad hoc communication, decisions support and collaboration among firefighters in the field using mobile devices. This solution complements the radio communication systems. Since the interactions supported by MobileMap are recorded, it is possible to analyze such information after the crisis and learn for future emergencies. The tool was evaluated in simulated and real scenarios, and the obtained results are highly encouraging.     

Work-centered support systems: a human-centered approach to intelligent system design

The work-centered support system approach to human-centered computing focuses on analyzing and supporting the multiple facets of work. The WCSS for global weather management developed to support weather forecasting and monitoring in an airlift service organization, exemplifies this approach. A hallmark of human-centered computing (HCC) is its focus on domain practitioners and their field of practice. Human-centered design depends on a deep analysis of a field's cognitive and collaborative demands and how people work individually, in groups, and in organizations to meet those demands. The objective is to leverage what we know about human cognitive and collaborative processes to create systems that optimize the affordances (direct perception of meanings) and effectivities (knowledge-driven actions) for humans. The WCSS paradigm offers an approach for incorporating software agent technology in a manner that helps the user keep the head in the work and reduces the possibility that software agent states or actions surprise the user.     

Managing collaboration performance to govern virtual organizations

The ability to collaborate with partners will become an essential core competence that is required from companies when they are going to take up future challenges. Growing complexity of products and services, increasing global competition and accelerated business processes will exceed in many cases the capabilities and capacities of single companies. The involvement of other companies can help to overcome these limitations. However, only what is measured can be managed. Consequently it is necessary to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of how partners work together in joint processes for a common goal. In other word: the collaboration performance has to be measured. But traditional Performance Measurement (PM) methodologies and indicators are designed to assess the performance of single companies or static cooperation like in supply chains. Evaluation and management of collaboration performance as a particular performance perspective in cooperation is not covered by existing approaches so far. Therefore there is still a need for an approach that provides an information basis for the management of collaboration when companies work together in in cooperation. In this paper, which is initially based on a paper presented on the ProVE conference in 2007, different perspectives of collaboration performance are identified and structured. The considerations are based on Virtual Organisations VOs, a particular type of cooperation that requires usually intensive collaborative interactions between the partners.     

Maintaining constraints of UML models in distributed collaborative environments

Constraint maintenance plays an important role in keeping the integrity and validity of UML models in embedded software design. While constraint maintenance capabilities are reasonably adequate in existing UML modeling applications, little work has been done to address the distributed constraint maintenance issue in multi-user collaborative modeling environments. The nature of the issue is to maintain constraint consistently across distributed sites in a collaborative modeling environment in the face of concurrency. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to this issue, which can retain the effects of all concurrent modeling operations even though they may cause constraint violations. We further contribute a distributed constraint maintenance framework in which the solution is encapsulated as a generic engine that can be mounted in a variety of single-user UML modeling applications to support collaborative UML modeling and distributed constraint maintenance in embedded software design processes. This framework has been implemented in a prototype distributed collaborative UML modeling application CoRSA.     

Evaluating the service quality of software providers appraised in CMM/CMMI

Recently, several companies have decided to adopt maturity models such as the CMM/CMMI to ensure quality software processes. The state year report of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) showed that more than three thousand CMMI appraisals have been conducted since 2002. Many of these were performed at software providers, i.e. companies that develop software for other companies. Although the costs of the implementation and appraisal of CMM/CMMI are high for the software providers, there is no formal study investigating whether this investment pays off or, in other words, whether their customers are measurably satisfied with the quality of the service provided. This article presents the results of a formal evaluation of customer perception of the service quality offered by the software providers appraised in CMM/CMMI. We developed an instrument based on a widely used service quality evaluation model (SERVQUAL) and applied this instrument to several customers of software providers appraised in CMM/CMMI. The results show a considerable discrepancy between customers’ expectations and their perceptions of the services provided.     

SECOL: a semantic environment based on social media to support organisational learning

Organisational learning (OL) helps companies to significantly improve their processes through the reuse of experiences, making knowledge accessible to the whole organisation. However, establishing learning in software development companies is not a trivial task, since it is an area in which processes and knowledge are usually hidden inside the employees’ mind. Generally, employees prefer to look for knowledge via Internet search engines rather than using the knowledge produced inside the company. Hence, we explored how better organising content produced within the company may minimise this problem. We investigated how a semantic collaborative environment, titled semantic collaborative environment for organisational learning (SECOL), based on social software, learning objects (LOs), and units of learning (UL) may assist to improve OL for software development companies. We defined an approach to generate LOs and UL from social software’s content used by companies. The environment was implemented based on ontologies in order to represent and organise acquired knowledge. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted using qualitative data analysis. The results indicated that the use of the environment is appropriate to improve OL in software development teams and the use of SECOL is efficient, particularly in order to acquire new knowledge, assisting the promotion of the use of organisational patterns and minimising repeated solutions.     

How collaborative technology supports cognitive processes in collaborative process modeling: A capabilities-gains-outcome model

We examine which capabilities technologies provide to support collaborative process modeling. We develop a model that explains how technology capabilities impact cognitive group processes, and how they lead to improved modeling outcomes and positive technology beliefs. We test this model through a free simulation experiment of collaborative process modelers structured around a set of modeling tasks. With our study, we provide an understanding of the process of collaborative process modeling, and detail implications for research and guidelines for the practical design of collaborative process modeling.     

可适应性企业级整体 IT成熟度模型及其评价

目前部分企业计划或已经采用不同的成熟度模型和指标对其 IT成熟度进行评估 ,如 IT服务成熟度、软件成熟度、信息风险成熟度等方法 ,但无有效的方法对整体 IT成熟度进行评估。基于 SEI开发的能力成熟度框架( CMM)提出可适应性整体 IT成熟度模型 ( adaptive total IT maturity model / ATITMM/ @ ITMM, @ ITMM)的概念,并建立可适应性的企业级通用 IT成熟度模型 ;运用一种合适的通用评估纬度反映企业整体 IT状况 ,同时采用模糊综合评价法对整体 I     

An architecture process maturity model of software product line engineering

Software architecture has been a key research area in the software engineering community due to its significant role in creating high-quality software. The trend of developing product lines rather than single products has made the software product line a viable option in the industry. Software product line architecture (SPLA) is regarded as one of the crucial components in the product lines, since all of the resulting products share this common architecture. The increased popularity of software product lines demands a process maturity evaluation methodology. Consequently, this paper presents an architecture process maturity model for software product line engineering to evaluate the current maturity of the product line architecture development process in an organization. Assessment questionnaires and a rating methodology comprise the framework of this model. The objective of the questionnaires is to collect information about the SPLA development process. Thus, in general this work contributes towards the establishment of a comprehensive and unified strategy for the process maturity evaluation of software product line engineering. Furthermore, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results, which show the maturity of the architecture development process in two organizations.     

Development of a maturity model for electronic invoice processes

The digitalization of invoice processes provides a good opportunity for companies to pare down expenses, optimize administrative tasks, and increase efficiency and competitiveness. But the digitalization is limited by a variety of software solutions, legal uncertainties, heterogeneous demands, lack of know-how, and information system infrastructure incompatibilities. A holistic map of electronic invoice processes is mandatory, especially to demonstrate different levels of process integration and optimization. A maturity model puts this into practice and provides companies with a tool to identify their current situation and to derive recommendations to optimize that situation. In this paper, a maturity model for electronic invoice processes will be developed using exploratory data from focus groups. A theoretical approach that is based on a procedure-model for developing maturity models is applied. Four categories (strategy, acceptance, processes & organization, and technology) are identified and enriched by sub-categories. Future research requires the development of detailed maturity metrics.     

Internet Based Collaborative Product Conceptual Design

Generation of Product Concept needs to give full play to the designers' innovative potential and collaborative work of experts in different fields. However, the collaborative innovative capabilities of geographically distributed designers are often limited and hindered by space and time. Therefore, on the basis of the requirements analysis of Internet based collaborative conceptual design and the research work we have done, this paper proposes the overall framework of supporting collaborative conceptual design on Internet. Based on this overall framework, the authors further put forward collaborative conceptual design process model that includes three stages: concept generation, concept communication and optimal product concept selection. At the end of the paper, the experiment environment of collaborative design is described. The overall framework and collaborative conceptual design process model proposed can take full advantage of Internet and give full play to experts' experiences and wisdom, so that the rapid development and innovative design of product can be provided with effectively and efficiently implemental mode and support on Internet.