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1.
Context
We are strong advocates of evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) in general and systematic literature reviews (SLRs) in particular. We believe it is essential that the SLR methodology is used constructively to support software engineering research.Objective
This study aims to assess the value of mapping studies which are a form of SLR that aims to identify and categorise the available research on a broad software engineering topic.Method
We used a multi-case, participant-observer case study using five examples of studies that were based on preceding mapping studies. We also validated our results by contacting two other researchers who had undertaken studies based on preceding mapping studies and by assessing review comments related to our follow-on studies.Results
Our original case study identified 11 unique benefits that can accrue from basing research on a preceding mapping study of which only two were case specific. We also identified nine problems associated with using preceding mapping studies of which two were case specific. These results were consistent with the information obtained from the validation activities. We did not find an example of an independent research group making use of a mapping study produced by other researchers.Conclusion
Mapping studies can save time and effort for researchers and provide baselines to assist new research efforts. However, they must be of high quality in terms of completeness and rigour if they are to be a reliable basis for follow-on research. 相似文献2.
Software process improvement success factors for small and medium Web companies: A qualitative study
Context
The context of this research is software process improvement (SPI) in small and medium Web companies.Objective
The primary objective of this paper is to identify software process improvement (SPI) success factors for small and medium Web companies.Method
To achieve this goal, we conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with 21 participants representing 11 different companies in Pakistan, and analyzed the data qualitatively using the Glaserian strand of grounded theory research procedures. The key steps of these procedures that were employed in this research included open coding, focused coding, theoretical coding, theoretical sampling, constant comparison, and scaling up.Results
An initial framework of key SPI success factors for small and medium Web companies was proposed, which can be of use for small and medium Web companies engaged in SPI. The paper also differentiates between small and medium Web companies and analyzes crucial SPI requirements for companies operating in the Web development domain.Conclusion
The results of this work, in particular the use of qualitative techniques - allowed us to obtain rich insight into SPI success factors for small and medium Web companies. Future work comprises the validation of the SPI success factors with small and medium Web companies. 相似文献3.
Context
Customer collaboration is a vital feature of Agile software development.Objective
This article addresses the importance of adequate customer involvement on Agile projects, and the impact of different levels of customer involvement on real-life Agile projects.Method
We conducted a Grounded Theory study involving 30 Agile practitioners from 16 software development organizations in New Zealand and India, over a period of 3 years.Results
We discovered that Lack of Customer Involvement was one of the biggest challenges faced by Agile teams. Customers were not as involved on these Agile projects as Agile methods demand. We describe the causes of inadequate customer collaboration, its adverse consequences on self-organizing Agile teams, and Agile Undercover — a set of strategies used by the teams to practice Agile despite insufficient or ineffective customer involvement.Conclusion
Customer involvement is important on Agile projects. Inadequate customer involvement causes adverse problems for Agile teams. The Agile Undercover strategies we’ve identified can assist Agile teams facing similar lack of customer involvement. 相似文献4.
Context
An operational test means a system test that examines whether or not all software or hardware components comply with the requirements given to a system which is deployed in an operational environment.Objective
It is a necessary lightweight-profiling method for embedded systems with severe resource restrictions to conduct operational testing.Method
We focus on the Process Control Block as the optimal location to monitor the execution of all processes. We propose a profiling method to collect the runtime execution information of the processes without interrupting the system’s operational environment by hacking the Process Control Block information. Based on the proposed method applied to detect runtime memory faults, we develop the operational testing tool AMOS v1.0 which is currently being used in the automobile industry.Results
An industrial field study on 23 models of car-infotainment systems revealed a total of 519 memory faults while only slowing down the system by 0.084-0.132×. We conducted a comparative analysis on representative runtime memory fault detection tools. This analysis result shows our proposed method that has relatively low overhead meets the requirements for operational testing, while other methods failed to satisfy the operational test conditions.Conclusion
We conclude that a lightweight-profiling method for embedded system operational testing can be built around the Process Control Block. 相似文献5.
Alexander Boden Claudia Müller Bernhard Nett 《Information and Software Technology》2011,53(9):1012-1021
Context
Studying work practices in the context of Global Software Development (GSD) projects entails multiple opportunities and challenges for the researchers. Understanding and tackling these challenges requires a careful and rigor application of research methods.Objective
We want to contribute to the understanding of the challenges of studying GSD by reflecting on several obstacles we had to deal with when conducting ethnographically-informed research on offshoring in German small to medium-sized enterprises.Method
The material for this paper is based on reflections and field notes from two research projects: an exploratory ethnographic field study, and a study that was framed as a Business Ethnography. For the analysis, we took a Grounded Theory-oriented coding and analysis approach in order to identify issues and challenges documented in our research notes.Results
We introduce the concept of Business Ethnography and discuss our experiences of adapting and implementing this action research concept for our study. We identify and discuss three primary issues: understanding complex global work practices from a local perspective, adapting to changing interests of the participants, and dealing with micro-political frictions between the cooperating sites.Conclusions
We identify common interests between the researchers and the companies as a challenge and chance for studies on offshoring. Building on our experiences from the field, we argue for an active conceptualization of struggles and conflicts in the field as well as for extending the role of the ethnographer to that of a learning mediator. 相似文献6.
Francesco Di Tria Ezio Lefons Filippo Tangorra 《Information and Software Technology》2012,54(4):360-379
Context
Data warehouse conceptual design is based on the metaphor of the cube, which can be derived from either requirement-driven or data-driven methodologies. Each methodology has its own advantages. The first allows designers to obtain a conceptual schema very close to the user needs but it may be not supported by the effective data availability. On the contrary, the second ensures a perfect traceability and consistence with the data sources—in fact, it guarantees the presence of data to be used in analytical processing—but does not preserve from missing business user needs. To face this issue, the necessity emerged in the last years to define hybrid methodologies for conceptual design.Objective
The objective of the paper is to use a hybrid methodology based on different multidimensional models in order to gather all advantages of each of them.Method
The proposed methodology integrates the requirement-driven strategy with the data-driven one, in that order, possibly performing alterations of functional dependencies on UML multidimensional schemas reconciled with data sources.Results
As case study, we illustrate how our methodology can be applied to the university environment. Furthermore, we evaluate quantitatively the benefits of this methodology by comparing it with some popular and conventional methodologies.Conclusion
In conclusion, we highlight how the hybrid methodology improves the conceptual schema quality. Finally, we outline our present work devoted to introduce automatic design techniques in the methodology on the basis of the logical programming. 相似文献7.
Richard Baskerville 《Information and Software Technology》2011,53(5):543-555
Context
Agile information systems development (ISD) has received much attention from both the practitioner and researcher community over the last 10-15 years. However, it is still unclear what precisely constitutes agile ISD.Objective
Based on four empirical studies conducted over a 10-year time period from 1999 to 2008 the objective of this paper is to show how the meaning and practice of agile ISD has evolved over time and on this basis to speculate about what comes next.Method
Four phases of research has been conducted, using a grounded theory approach. For each research phase qualitative interviews were held in American and/or Danish companies and a grounded theory was inductively discovered by careful data analysis. Subsequently, the four unique theories have been analyzed for common themes, and a global theory was identified across the empirical data.Results
In 1999 companies were developing software at high-speed in a desperate rush to be first-to-market. In 2001 a new high-speed/quick results development process had become established practice. In 2003 changes in the market created the need for a more balanced view on speed and quality, and in 2008 companies were successfully combining agile and plan-driven approaches to achieve the benefits of both. The studies reveal a two-stage pattern in which dramatic changes in the market causes disruption of established practices and process adaptations followed by consolidation of lessons learnt into a once again stable software development process.Conclusion
The cyclical history of punctuated process evolution makes it possible to distinguish pre-agility from current practices (agility), and on this basis, to speculate about post-agility: a possible next cycle of software process evolution concerned with proactively pursuing the dual goal of agility and alignment through a diversity of means. 相似文献8.
Context
Different method calls may have different contributions to the precision of the final application when abstracted into the call strings. The existing call string based pointer analysis algorithms do not consider such contribution difference and hence may not achieve best cost-effectiveness.Objective
To be more cost-effective, we try to leverage the contribution information of each method call in call string based pointer analysis.Method
The paper firstly proposes a contribution-based call stack abstraction method which abstracts the call stacks into call strings with the contribution information under consideration. Then, we apply the new call stack abstraction method to the pointer analysis of AspectJ programs and propose a concern-sensitive points-to analysis method. Besides, the new abstraction method is also applied to multi-threaded Java programs and results in a thread-sensitive pointer analysis method.Results
The experimental results show that the two pointer analysis methods with contribution-based call stack abstraction can be more cost-effective than the ordinary call string based approaches for an application that detects harmful advices and an application that detects inter-thread data flow.Conclusion
These pointer analysis methods more concretely and more clearly show that the contribution-based call stack abstraction can lead to better cost-effectiveness for the given applications. 相似文献9.
Fabio Q.B. da SilvaAuthor Vitae A. César C. França Author Vitae 《Journal of Systems and Software》2012,85(2):216-226
Aim
In this article, factors influencing the motivation of software engineers is studied with the goal of guiding the definition of motivational programs.Method
Using a set of 20 motivational factors compiled in a systematic literature review and a general theory of motivation, a survey questionnaire was created to evaluate the influence of these factors on individual motivation. Then, the questionnaire was applied on a semi-random sample of 176 software engineers from 20 software companies located in Recife-PE, Brazil.Results
The survey results show the actual level of motivation for each motivator in the target population. Using principal component analysis on the values of all motivators, a five factor structure was identified and used to propose a guideline for the creation of motivational programs for software engineers.Conclusions
The five factor structure provides an intuitive categorization for the set of variables and can be used to explain other motivational models presented in the literature. This contributes to a better understanding of motivation in software engineering. 相似文献10.
Context
Mutation testing is a fault-injection-based technique to help testers generate test cases for detecting specific and predetermined types of faults.Objective
Before mutation testing can be effectively applied to embedded systems, traditional mutation testing needs to be modified. To inject a fault into an embedded system without causing any system failure or hardware damage is a challenging task as it requires some knowledge of the underlying layers such as the kernel and the corresponding hardware.Method
We propose a set of mutation operators for embedded systems using kernel-based software and hardware fault simulation. These operators are designed for software developers so that they can use the mutation technique to test the entire system after the software is integrated with the kernel and hardware devices.Results
A case study on a programmable logic controller for a digital reactor protection system in a nuclear power plant is conducted. Our results suggest that the proposed mutation operators are useful for fault-injection and this is evidenced by the fact that faults not injected by us were discovered in the subject software as a result of the case study.Conclusion
We conclude that our mutation operators are useful for integration testing of an embedded system. 相似文献11.
Context
In recent years, many software companies have considered Software Process Improvement (SPI) as essential for successful software development. These companies have also shown special interest in IT Service Management (ITSM). SPI standards have evolved to incorporate ITSM best practices.Objective
This paper presents a systematic literature review of ITSM Process Improvement initiatives based on the ISO/IEC 15504 standard for process assessment and improvement.Method
A systematic literature review based on the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and the review protocol template developed by Biolchini et al. is performed.Results
Twenty-eight relevant studies related to ITSM Process Improvement have been found. From the analysis of these studies, nine different ITSM Process Improvement initiatives have been detected. Seven of these initiatives use ISO/IEC 15504 conformant process assessment methods.Conclusion
During the last decade, in order to satisfy the on-going demand of mature software development companies for assessing and improving ITSM processes, different models which use the measurement framework of ISO/IEC 15504 have been developed. However, it is still necessary to define a method with the necessary guidelines to implement both software development processes and ITSM processes reducing the amount of effort, especially because some processes of both categories are overlapped. 相似文献12.
Evaluating software engineering techniques for developing complex systems with multiagent approaches
Context
Multiagent systems (MAS) allow complex systems to be developed in which autonomous and heterogeneous entities interact. Currently, there are a great number of methods and frameworks for developing MAS. The selection of one or another development environment is a crucial part of the development process. Therefore, the evaluation and comparison of MAS software engineering techniques is necessary in order to make the selection of the development environment easier.Objective
The main goal of this paper is to define an evaluation framework that will help in facilitating, standardizing, and simplifying the evaluation, analysis, and comparison of MAS development environments. Moreover, the final objective of the proposed tool is to provide a repository of the most commonly used MAS software engineering methods and tools.Method
The proposed framework analyzes methods and tools through a set of criteria that are related to both system engineering dimensions and MAS features. Also, the support for developing organizational and service-oriented MAS is studied. This framework is implemented as an online application to improve its accessibility.Results
In this paper, we present Masev, which is an evaluation framework for MAS software engineering. It allows MAS methods, techniques and environments to be analyzed and compared. A case study of the analysis of four methodologies is presented.Conclusion
It is concluded that Masev simplifies the evaluation and comparison task and summarizes the most important issues for developing MAS, organizational MAS, and service-oriented MAS. Therefore, it could help developers to select the most appropriate MAS method and tools for developing a specific system, and it could be used for MAS software engineering developers to detect and deficiencies in their methods and tools. Also, developers of new tools can understand this application as a way to publish their tools and demonstrate what their contributions are to the state of the art. 相似文献13.
Context
Comparing and contrasting evidence from multiple studies is necessary to build knowledge and reach conclusions about the empirical support for a phenomenon. Therefore, research synthesis is at the center of the scientific enterprise in the software engineering discipline.Objective
The objective of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges in synthesizing software engineering research and their implications for the progress of research and practice.Method
A tertiary study of journal articles and full proceedings papers from the inception of evidence-based software engineering was performed to assess the types and methods of research synthesis in systematic reviews in software engineering.Results
As many as half of the 49 reviews included in the study did not contain any synthesis. Of the studies that did contain synthesis, two thirds performed a narrative or a thematic synthesis. Only a few studies adequately demonstrated a robust, academic approach to research synthesis.Conclusion
We concluded that, despite the focus on systematic reviews, there is limited attention paid to research synthesis in software engineering. This trend needs to change and a repertoire of synthesis methods needs to be an integral part of systematic reviews to increase their significance and utility for research and practice. 相似文献14.
Context
Testing a module that has memory using the black-box approach has been found to be expensive and relatively ineffective. Instead, testing without knowledge of the specifications (white-box approach) may not be effective in showing whether a program has been properly implemented as stated in its specifications. We propose instead a grey-box approach called Module Documentation-based Testing or MD-Test, the heart of which is an automatic generation of the test oracle from the external and internal views of the module.Objective
This paper presents an empirical analysis and comparison of MD-Test against three existing testing tools.Method
The experiment was conducted using a mutation-testing approach, in two phases that assess the capability of MD-Test in general and its capability of evaluating test results in particular.Results
The results of the general assessment indicate that MD-Test is more effective than the other three tools under comparison, where it is able to detect all faults. The second phase of the experiment, which is significant to this study, compares the capabilities of MD-Test and JUnit-black using the test evaluation results. Likewise, an analysis of the test evaluation results shows that MD-Test is more effective and efficient, where MD-Test is able to detect at least the same number of faults as, or is at par with, the black-box approach.Conclusion
It is concluded that test evaluation using grey-box approach is more effective and efficient that the black-box approach when testing a module that has memory. 相似文献15.
Emelie Engström 《Information and Software Technology》2011,53(1):2-13
Context
Software product lines (SPL) are used in industry to achieve more efficient software development. However, the testing side of SPL is underdeveloped.Objective
This study aims at surveying existing research on SPL testing in order to identify useful approaches and needs for future research.Method
A systematic mapping study is launched to find as much literature as possible, and the 64 papers found are classified with respect to focus, research type and contribution type.Results
A majority of the papers are of proposal research types (64%). System testing is the largest group with respect to research focus (40%), followed by management (23%). Method contributions are in majority.Conclusions
More validation and evaluation research is needed to provide a better foundation for SPL testing. 相似文献16.
Andréa Magalhães MagdalenoAuthor Vitae Cláudia Maria Lima WernerAuthor Vitae 《Journal of Systems and Software》2012,85(2):351-369
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to characterize reconciliation among the plan-driven, agile, and free/open source software models of software development.Design/methodology/approach
An automated quasi-systematic review identified 42 papers, which were then analyzed.Findings
The main findings are: there exist distinct - organization, group and process - levels of reconciliation; few studies deal with reconciliation among the three models of development; a significant amount of work addresses reconciliation between plan-driven and agile development; several large organizations (such as Microsoft, Motorola, and Philips) are interested in trying to combine these models; and reconciliation among software development models is still an open issue, since it is an emerging area and research on most proposals is at an early stage.Research limitations
Automated searches may not capture relevant papers in publications that are not indexed. Other data sources not amenable to execution of the protocol were not used. Data extraction was performed by only one researcher, which may increase the risk of threats to internal validity.Implications
This characterization is important for practitioners wanting to be current with the state of research. This review will also assist the scientific community working with software development processes to build a common understanding of the challenges that must be faced, and to identify areas where research is lacking. Finally, the results will be useful to software industry that is calling for solutions in this area.Originality/value
There is no other systematic review on this subject, and reconciliation among software development models is an emerging area. This study helps to identify and consolidate the work done so far and to guide future research. The conclusions are an important step towards expanding the body of knowledge in the field. 相似文献17.
Context
Pointer analysis is an important building block of optimizing compilers and program analyzers for C language. Various methods with precision and performance trade-offs have been proposed. Among them, cycle elimination has been successfully used to improve the scalability of context-insensitive pointer analyses without losing any precision.Objective
In this article, we present a new method on context-sensitive pointer analysis with an effective application of cycle elimination.Method
To obtain similar benefits of cycle elimination for context-sensitive analysis, we propose a novel constraint-based formulation that uses sets of contexts as annotations. Our method is not based on binary decision diagram (BDD). Instead, we directly use invocation graphs to represent context sets and apply a hash-consing technique to deal with the exponential blow-up of contexts.Result
Experimental results on C programs ranging from 20,000 to 290,000 lines show that applying cycle elimination to our new formulation results in 4.5 ×speedup over the previous BDD-based approach.Conclusion
We showed that cycle elimination is an effective method for improving the scalability of context-sensitive pointer analysis. 相似文献18.
Adrian Fernandez Emilio Insfran Silvia Abrahão 《Information and Software Technology》2011,53(8):789-817
Context
In recent years, many usability evaluation methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web applications. However, many of these applications still do not meet most customers’ usability expectations and many companies have folded as a result of not considering Web usability issues. No studies currently exist with regard to either the use of usability evaluation methods for the Web or the benefits they bring.Objective
The objective of this paper is to summarize the current knowledge that is available as regards the usability evaluation methods (UEMs) that have been employed to evaluate Web applications over the last 14 years.Method
A systematic mapping study was performed to assess the UEMs that have been used by researchers to evaluate Web applications and their relation to the Web development process. Systematic mapping studies are useful for categorizing and summarizing the existing information concerning a research question in an unbiased manner.Results
The results show that around 39% of the papers reviewed reported the use of evaluation methods that had been specifically crafted for the Web. The results also show that the type of method most widely used was that of User Testing. The results identify several research gaps, such as the fact that around 90% of the studies applied evaluations during the implementation phase of the Web application development, which is the most costly phase in which to perform changes. A list of the UEMs that were found is also provided in order to guide novice usability practitioners.Conclusions
From an initial set of 2703 papers, a total of 206 research papers were selected for the mapping study. The results obtained allowed us to reach conclusions concerning the state-of-the-art of UEMs for evaluating Web applications. This allowed us to identify several research gaps, which subsequently provided us with a framework in which new research activities can be more appropriately positioned, and from which useful information for novice usability practitioners can be extracted. 相似文献19.
Context
Formal methods are very useful in the software industry and are becoming of paramount importance in practical engineering techniques. They involve the design and modeling of various system aspects expressed usually through different paradigms. These different formalisms make the verification of global developed systems more difficult.Objective
In this paper, we propose to combine two modeling formalisms, in order to express both functional and security timed requirements of a system to obtain all the requirements expressed in a unique formalism.Method
First, the system behavior is specified according to its functional requirements using Timed Extended Finite State Machine (TEFSM) formalism. Second, this model is augmented by applying a set of dedicated algorithms to integrate timed security requirements specified in Nomad language. This language is adapted to express security properties such as permissions, prohibitions and obligations with time considerations.Results
The proposed algorithms produce a global TEFSM specification of the system that includes both its functional and security timed requirements.Conclusion
It is concluded that it is possible to merge several requirement aspects described with different formalisms into a global specification that can be used for several purposes such as code generation, specification correctness proof, model checking or automatic test generation. In this paper, we applied our approach to a France Telecom Travel service to demonstrate its scalability and feasibility. 相似文献20.
Seyed Reza Shahamiri Wan Mohd Nasir Wan Kadir Suhaimi Ibrahim Siti Zaiton Mohd Hashim 《Information and Software Technology》2011,53(7):774-788