Individual empowerment of agile and non-agile software developers in small teams

ContextEmpowerment of employees at work has been known to have a positive impact on job motivation and satisfaction. Software development is a field of knowledge work wherein one should also expect to see these effects, and the idea of empowerment has become particularly visible in agile methodologies, in which proponents emphasise team empowerment and individual control of the work activities as a central concern.ObjectiveThis research aims to get a better understanding of how empowerment is enabled in software development teams, both agile and non-agile, to identify differences in empowering practices and levels of individual empowerment.MethodTwenty-five interviews with agile and non-agile developers from Norway and Canada on decision making and empowerment are analysed. The analysis is conducted using a conceptual model with categories for involvement, structural empowerment and psychological empowerment.ResultsBoth kinds of development organisations are highly empowered and they are similar in most aspects relating to empowerment. However, there is a distinction in the sense that agile developers have more possibilities to select work tasks and influence the priorities in a development project due to team empowerment. Agile developers seem to put a higher emphasis on the value of information in decision making, and have more prescribed activities to enable low-cost information flow. More power is obtained through the achievement of managing roles for the non-agile developers who show interest and are rich in initiatives.ConclusionAgile developers have a higher sense of being able to impact the organisation than non-agile developers and have information channels that is significantly differently from non-agile developers. For non-agile teams, higher empowerment can be obtained by systematically applying low-cost participative decision making practices in the manager–developer relation and among peer developers. For agile teams, it is essential to more rigorously follow the empowering practices already established.     

A systematic literature review of software requirements prioritization research

ContextDuring requirements engineering, prioritization is performed to grade or rank requirements in their order of importance and subsequent implementation releases. It is a major step taken in making crucial decisions so as to increase the economic value of a system.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to identify and analyze existing prioritization techniques in the context of the formulated research questions.MethodSearch terms with relevant keywords were used to identify primary studies that relate requirements prioritization classified under journal articles, conference papers, workshops, symposiums, book chapters and IEEE bulletins.Results73 Primary studies were selected from the search processes. Out of these studies; 13 were journal articles, 35 were conference papers and 8 were workshop papers. Furthermore, contributions from symposiums as well as IEEE bulletins were 2 each while the total number of book chapters amounted to 13.ConclusionPrioritization has been significantly discussed in the requirements engineering domain. However, it was generally discovered that, existing prioritization techniques suffer from a number of limitations which includes: lack of scalability, methods of dealing with rank updates during requirements evolution, coordination among stakeholders and requirements dependency issues. Also, the applicability of existing techniques in complex and real setting has not been reported yet.     

Betting system for formative code review in educational competitions

Using competitions to motivate students is a well-known practice that has proved to be successful. Nevertheless, grading students only through their results in the competition could unfairly limit the range of grades that each student can get: regardless of the quality of the different teams participating, one student must necessarily win the tournament, another must be second, and so on until the last place. In fact, player rankings are relative assessments that are conditioned by the performance of every student. In this paper, we propose solving this issue by making students do a code review before betting on the competition. By betting, the grade of students depends both on the performance of their own solution and the one they bet on. This way, grades represent not only coding skills, but also code analysis skills, widening the attainable range of grades and allowing for a fairer grade distribution. As a result, students that are not so proficient in coding are rewarded if they demonstrate they can do a good analysis of the source code written by others, which is a very valuable skill in the professional world. We provide a case study in an undergraduate course, showing positive results.     

软件定义网络中交换机处理时延的仿真

针对目前的网络仿真工具在对软件定义网络(SDN)的仿真过程中,未考虑交换机的处理时延的问题,提出一种处理时延的仿真方法,目的是为了使仿真结果更加真实和准确。该方法首先将交换机的转发处理过程分解为对流表的查询操作和执行不同的动作;然后,利用交换机的处理器频率和访存周期,将查询流表和执行动作转换为处理时间。实验中测量了真实环境中不同配置的交换机处理时延,并与利用该方法仿真出的处理时延进行对比。实验结果表明,利用该方法仿真出的处理时延和真实交换机的处理时延基本一致,该方法能够较准确地仿真交换机处理时延。     

基于Multi-Agent和HLA的口岸物流仿真

针对高层体系结构（ HLA）仿真建模技术的仿真联邦成员缺乏智能性和Multi-Agent仿真方法分布通信协同能力较差的问题。提出了一种集成两者的自适应中间件的方法,通过自适应中间件实现了两者集成的数据转换、通信及控制等功能,并进行实例验证。结果表明此方法在最小改变的情况下保证了集成开发的灵活性及方法的可行性、实用性和可靠性。     

基于CUDA的AES并行算法优化

为提升高级加密标准(AES)的加密性能,利用显卡的通用计算能力,在统一计算设备架构(CUDA)平台上实现AES的128位、192位和256位3个版本的GPU并行算法,并提出优化的AES并行算法。在考虑块内线程数量、共享存储器容量和总块数的基础上,根据分块最优值的经验数据指导AES算法在GPU上的最优分块。实验结果表明,与未优化的AES并行算法相比,该算法的3个版本在Nvidia Geforce G210显卡上的加密速度分别提高5.28%,14.55%和12.53%,而在Nvidia Geforce GTX460显卡上的加密速度分别提高12.48%,15.40%和15.84%,且能更好地对SSL数据进行加密。     

综合液压试验管理系统的设计与实现

介绍了一种液压试验管理系统软件的设计与实现,该软件使用Visual Basic语言编写完成,由试验流程管理和数据存储管理等几部分组成。使用该软件,试验操作人员可以自由定义试验流程和数据报表。     

中国建筑涂料工业的现状及当前形势下的发展对策

本文详细分析了中国建筑涂料工业的现状和存在问题，并结合当前形势，提出了中国建筑涂料工业的发展对策。     

基于CDIO理念的《软件工程》课程建设研究

为实现面向能力的人才培养,在CDIO工程教育理论的指导下,从《软件工程》的工程性特点着手,讨论如何全面实施CDIO人才培养理念,以CDIO能力培养大纲为依据,以CDIO的人才培养模式指导课程建设,建立理论与实践相结合,多维度、立体化的《软件工程》课程内容体系,为培养具有国际竞争力的软件工程师奠定坚实基础。     

个人健康体检意向的调查分析

据相关部门统计,我国目前十大死亡原因中,与“三高”相关的死亡人占总死亡人数的27％．这些疾病可以通过个人健康体检得到预防。可见,个人体检对身体健康的重要性。利用呼和浩特市居民个人健康体检的调查问卷数据．运用SPSS软件,对问卷中的六个属性变量进行对数线性回归模型的分析．探寻了影响居民个人健康体检的意向及其原因,并得出相应的结论。