Pattern-based framework for modularized software development and evolution robustness

Context

Software development is now facing much more challenges than ever before due to the intrinsic high complexity and the increasing demands of the quick-service-ready paradigm.

Objective

As the developers are now called for more quality software systems from the industries, there is insufficient guidance from the methodologies and standards of software engineering that can provide assistance to the rapid development of qualified business software.

Method

In this work, we discuss the advantages of the pattern-based software development. We verify the benefits using a pattern-based software framework called OS2F, and a corresponding system design architecture that is intended for the rapid development of web applications.

Results

The objective of the framework/architecture is that, through software patterns, developers should be able to separate the work of system development from the business rules so as to reduce the problems caused by a developer’s lack of business experiences.

Conclusion

Through a suitable pattern-based software framework, the quality of the product can thus be enhanced, software development time and cost decreased, and software evolution robustness improved.     

Applying CIM-to-PIM model transformations for the service-oriented development of information systems

Context

Model-driven approaches deal with the provision of models, transformations between them and code generators to address software development. This approach has the advantage of defining a conceptual structure, where the models used by business managers and analysts can be mapped into more detailed models used by software developers. This alignment between high-level business specifications and the lower-level information technologies (ITs) models is crucial to the field of service-oriented development, where meaningful business services and process specifications are those relevant to real business scenarios.

Objective

This paper presents a model-driven approach which, starting from high-level computational-independent business models (CIMs) - the business view - sets out guidelines for obtaining lower-level platform-independent behavioural models (PIMs) - the information system view. A key advantage of our approach is the use of real high-level business models, not just requirements models, which, by means of model transformations, helps software developers to make the most of the business knowledge for specifying and developing business services.

Method

This proposal is framed in a method for service-oriented development of information systems whose main characteristic is the use of services as first-class objects. The method follows an MDA-based approach, proposing a set of models at different levels of abstraction and model transformations to connect them.

Results

The paper present the complete set of CIM and PIM metamodels and the specification of the mappings between them, which clear advantage is the support for the alignment between high-level business view and ITs. The proposed model-driven process is being implemented in an MDA tool. A first prototype has been used to develop a travel agency case study that illustrates the proposal.

Conclusion

This study shows how a model-driven approach helps to solve the alignment problem between the business view and the information system view that arises when adopting service-oriented approaches for software development.     

Software product line testing - A systematic mapping study

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.     

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.     

Sociomaterial bricolage: The creation of location-spanning work practices by global software developers

Context

Studies on global software development have documented severe coordination and communication problems among coworkers due to geographic dispersion and consequent dependency on technology. These problems are exacerbated by increase in the complexity of work undertaken by global teams. However, despite these problems, global software development is on the rise and firms are adopting global practices across the board, raising the question: What does successful global software development look like and what can we learn from its practitioners?

Objective

This study draws on practice-based studies of work to examine successful work practices of global software developers. The primary aim of this study was to understand how workers develop practices that allow them to function effectively across geographically dispersed locations.

Method

An ethnographically-informed field study was conducted with data collection at two international locations of a firm. Interview, observation and archival data were collected. A total of 42 interviews and 3 weeks of observations were conducted.

Results

Teams spread across different locations around the world developed work practices through sociomaterial bricolage. Two facets of technology use were necessary for the creation of these practices: multiplicity of media and relational personalization at dyadic and team levels. New practices were triggered by the need to achieve a work-life balance, which was disturbed by global development. Reflecting on my role as a researcher, I underscore the importance of understanding researchers’ own frames of reference and using research practices that mirror informants’ work practices.

Conclusion

Software developers on global teams face unique challenges which necessitate a shift in their work practices. Successful teams are able to create practices that span locations while still being tied to location based practices. Inventive use of material and social resources is central to the creation of these practices.     

Drivers of agile software development use: Dialectic interplay between benefits and hindrances

Context

Agile software development with its emphasis on producing working code through frequent releases, extensive client interactions and iterative development has emerged as an alternative to traditional plan-based software development methods. While a number of case studies have provided insights into the use and consequences of agile, few empirical studies have examined the factors that drive the adoption and use of agile.

Objective

We draw on intention-based theories and a dialectic perspective to identify factors driving the use of agile practices among adopters of this software development methodology.

Method

Data for the study was gathered through an anonymous online survey of software development professionals. We requested participation from members of a selected list of online discussion groups, and received 98 responses.

Results

Our analyses reveal that subjective norm and training play a significant role in influencing software developers’ use of agile processes and methods, while perceived benefits and perceived limitations are not primary drivers of agile use among adopters. Interestingly, perceived benefit emerges as a significant predictor of agile use only if adopters face hindrances to their agile practices.

Conclusion

We conclude that research in the adoption of software development innovations should examine the effects of both enabling and detracting factors and the interactions between them. Since training, subjective norm, and the interplay between perceived benefits and perceived hindrances appear to be key factors influencing the adoption of agile methods, researchers can focus on how to (a) perform training on agile methods more effectively, (b) facilitate the dialog between developers and managers about perceived benefits and hindrances, and (c) capitalize on subjective norm to publicize the benefits of agile methods within an organization. Further, when managing the transition to new software development methods, we recommend that practitioners adapt their strategies and tactics contingent on the extent of perceived hindrances to the change.     

Exploring a Bayesian and linear approach to requirements traceability

Context

For large software projects it is important to have some traceability between artefacts from different phases (e.g.requirements, designs, code), and between artefacts and the involved developers. However, if the capturing of traceability information during the project is felt as laborious to developers, they will often be sloppy in registering the relevant traceability links so that the information is incomplete. This makes automated tool-based collection of traceability links a tempting alternative, but this has the opposite challenge of generating too many potential trace relationships, not all of which are equally relevant.

Objective

This paper evaluates how to rank such auto-generated trace relationships.

Method

We present two approaches for such a ranking: a Bayesian technique and a linear inference technique. Both techniques depend on the interaction event trails left behind by collaborating developers while working within a development tool.

Results

The outcome of a preliminary study suggest the advantage of the linear approach, we also explore the challenges and potentials of the two techniques.

Conclusion

The advantage of the two techniques is that they can be used to provide traceability insights that are contextual and would have been much more difficult to capture manually. We also present some key lessons learnt during this research.     

Mutant generation for embedded systems using kernel-based software and hardware fault simulation

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.     

Partnering effects on user-developer conflict and role ambiguity in information system projects

Context

Information system development (ISD) has been plagued with high failure rates. This is partially due to the activities being a combination of both a technical and social processes involving stakeholders with conflicting interests.

Objective

Existing software risk management theories and frameworks offer limited suggestions for actions that can be taken to reduce the chance of failure of ISD projects. Our objective is to examine the connections among some of the more important user related risks in order to shed light on how specific strategies enhance the chance of project success.

Method

We conducted a sample of information systems project managers to test a multivariate model to explain the impact of pursuing a partnership with users on the conflicts that arise between users and developers, role ambiguity, and subsequent impact on project performance.

Results

The proposed model was supported, suggesting that user-developer conflict and role ambiguity have a negative impact on performance estimation difficulty, which negatively affects project performance.

Conclusion

Pursuit of project partnering yields a number of significant relationships in the model indicating an organization can implement practices that reduce risks associated with role ambiguity and conflict in system development projects.     

Towards understanding the underlying structure of motivational factors for software engineers to guide the definition of motivational programs

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.     

Determinants of software quality in offshore development - An empirical study of an Indian vendor

Context

Cost advantage has been one of the primary drivers of successful offshoring engagements of Indian software and services companies. However, the emphasis has shifted to the ability of the vendors to provide high quality over cost advantage in delivering software products and services. Meeting high quality requirements of the clients is a challenge due to the very nature of development and delivery of software through offshoring.

Objective

The objective of this research paper is to identify and evaluate the key determinants of quality in the case of software projects delivered through offshoring model.

Method

A detailed survey was conducted among project managers/project leaders (leads) of a leading midsize Indian IT services company to evaluate the relationship of the determinants on the attributes of quality.

Results

Out of six determinants, our research reveals requirements uncertainty has significant association with all the attributes of quality. While process maturity and trained personnel have moderate association, communication and control, knowledge transfer and integration and technical infrastructure have relatively low association on software quality attributes in the case of offshoring.

Conclusion

It is concluded that the complexities in offshoring necessitates proper capturing of requirements. In addition high level of process maturity and availability of trained personnel to the project will help vendors to achieve software quality. The paper provides a set of implications for practice and directions for further research.     

Analogy-based software effort estimation using Fuzzy numbers

Background

Early stage software effort estimation is a crucial task for project bedding and feasibility studies. Since collected data during the early stages of a software development lifecycle is always imprecise and uncertain, it is very hard to deliver accurate estimates. Analogy-based estimation, which is one of the popular estimation methods, is rarely used during the early stage of a project because of uncertainty associated with attribute measurement and data availability.

Aims

We have integrated analogy-based estimation with Fuzzy numbers in order to improve the performance of software project effort estimation during the early stages of a software development lifecycle, using all available early data. Particularly, this paper proposes a new software project similarity measure and a new adaptation technique based on Fuzzy numbers.

Method

Empirical evaluations with Jack-knifing procedure have been carried out using five benchmark data sets of software projects, namely, ISBSG, Desharnais, Kemerer, Albrecht and COCOMO, and results are reported. The results are compared to those obtained by methods employed in the literature using case-based reasoning and stepwise regression.

Results

In all data sets the empirical evaluations have shown that the proposed similarity measure and adaptation techniques method were able to significantly improve the performance of analogy-based estimation during the early stages of software development. The results have also shown that the proposed method outperforms some well know estimation techniques such as case-based reasoning and stepwise regression.

Conclusions

It is concluded that the proposed estimation model could form a useful approach for early stage estimation especially when data is almost uncertain.     

The longitudinal, chronological case study research strategy: A definition, and an example from IBM Hursley Park

Context

There is surprisingly little empirical software engineering research (ESER) that has analysed and reported the rich, fine-grained behaviour of phenomena over time using qualitative and quantitative data. The ESER community also increasingly recognises the need to develop theories of software engineering phenomena e.g. theories of the actual behaviour of software projects at the level of the project and over time.

Objective

To examine the use of the longitudinal, chronological case study (LCCS) as a research strategy for investigating the rich, fine-grained behaviour of phenomena over time using qualitative and quantitative data.

Method

Review the methodological literature on longitudinal case study. Define the LCCS and demonstrate the development and application of the LCCS research strategy to the investigation of Project C, a software development project at IBM Hursley Park. Use the study to consider prospects for LCCSs, and to make progress on a theory of software project behaviour.

Results

LCCSs appear to provide insights that are hard to achieve using existing research strategies, such as the survey study. The LCCS strategy has basic requirements that data is time-indexed, relatively fine-grained and collected contemporaneous to the events to which the data refer. Preliminary progress is made on a theory of software project behaviour.

Conclusion

LCCS appears well suited to analysing and reporting rich, fine-grained behaviour of phenomena over time.     

A controlled experiment in assessing and estimating software maintenance tasks

Context

Software maintenance is an important software engineering activity that has been reported to account for the majority of the software total cost. Thus, understanding the factors that influence the cost of software maintenance tasks helps maintainers to make informed decisions about their work.

Objective

This paper describes a controlled experiment of student programmers performing maintenance tasks on a C++ program. The objective of the study is to assess the maintenance size, effort, and effort distributions of three different maintenance types and to describe estimation models to predict the programmer’s effort spent on maintenance tasks.

Method

Twenty-three graduate students and a senior majoring in computer science participated in the experiment. Each student was asked to perform maintenance tasks required for one of the three task groups. The impact of different LOC metrics on maintenance effort was also evaluated by fitting the data collected into four estimation models.

Results

The results indicate that corrective maintenance is much less productive than enhancive and reductive maintenance and program comprehension activities require as much as 50% of the total effort in corrective maintenance. Moreover, the best software effort model can estimate the time of 79% of the programmers with the error of or less than 30%.

Conclusion

Our study suggests that the LOC added, modified, and deleted metrics are good predictors for estimating the cost of software maintenance. Effort estimation models for maintenance work may use the LOC added, modified, deleted metrics as the independent parameters instead of the simple sum of the three. Another implication is that reducing business rules of the software requires a sizable proportion of the software maintenance effort. Finally, the differences in effort distribution among the maintenance types suggest that assigning maintenance tasks properly is important to effectively and efficiently utilize human resources.     

Problems in the interplay of development and IT operations in system development projects: A Delphi study of Norwegian IT experts

Context

The assumption of the presented work is that the ability of system developers and IT operations personnel to cooperate effectively in system development projects has great impact on the quality of the final system solution, as well as on the service level of its subsequent operation.

Objective

The present research explores the interplay of system development and IT operations and the challenges they are meeting. We are especially interested in identifying problems encountered between these two parties in system development projects.

Method

We identify and rank problems by using a ranking-type Delphi study. We involved 42 Norwegian IT experts and split them into three expert panels: system developers, IT operations personnel and system owners. We then guided them through the three phases of the Delphi method - brainstorming, reduction and ranking.

Results

A comprehensive list of 66 problems, organized into seven groups, is compiled. Through a selection and ranking procedure, the panels found the following to be the six most serious problems in the interplay of system development and IT operations: (1) IT operations not being involved in the requirements specification; (2) poor communication and information flow; (3) unsatisfactory test environments; (4) lack of knowledge transfer; (5) systems being put into production before they are complete; and (6) operational routines not being established prior to deployment.

Conclusion

The sheer amount and variety of problems mentioned and the respondents’ explanations confirm that this interplay needs attention; the parties agree that they do not cooperate effectively in development projects. The results imply that IT operations should be regarded as an important stakeholder throughout several systems development activities, especially requirements analysis, testing and deployment. Moreover, such involvement should be facilitated by an increased focus on enhancing cooperation and communication.     

An ant colony optimization algorithm to improve software quality prediction models: Case of class stability

Context

Assessing software quality at the early stages of the design and development process is very difficult since most of the software quality characteristics are not directly measurable. Nonetheless, they can be derived from other measurable attributes. For this purpose, software quality prediction models have been extensively used. However, building accurate prediction models is hard due to the lack of data in the domain of software engineering. As a result, the prediction models built on one data set show a significant deterioration of their accuracy when they are used to classify new, unseen data.

Objective

The objective of this paper is to present an approach that optimizes the accuracy of software quality predictive models when used to classify new data.

Method

This paper presents an adaptive approach that takes already built predictive models and adapts them (one at a time) to new data. We use an ant colony optimization algorithm in the adaptation process. The approach is validated on stability of classes in object-oriented software systems and can easily be used for any other software quality characteristic. It can also be easily extended to work with software quality predictive problems involving more than two classification labels.

Results

Results show that our approach out-performs the machine learning algorithm C4.5 as well as random guessing. It also preserves the expressiveness of the models which provide not only the classification label but also guidelines to attain it.

Conclusion

Our approach is an adaptive one that can be seen as taking predictive models that have already been built from common domain data and adapting them to context-specific data. This is suitable for the domain of software quality since the data is very scarce and hence predictive models built from one data set is hard to generalize and reuse on new data.     

API2MoL: Automating the building of bridges between APIs and Model-Driven Engineering

Context

A software artefact typically makes its functionality available through a specialized Application Programming Interface (API) describing the set of services offered to client applications. In fact, building any software system usually involves managing a plethora of APIs, which complicates the development process. In Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), where models are the key elements of any software engineering activity, this API management should take place at the model level. Therefore, tools that facilitate the integration of APIs and MDE are clearly needed.

Objective

Our goal is to automate the implementation of API-MDE bridges for supporting both the creation of models from API objects and the generation of such API objects from models. In this sense, this paper presents the API2MoL approach, which provides a declarative rule-based language to easily write mapping definitions to link API specifications and the metamodel that represents them. These definitions are then executed to convert API objects into model elements or vice versa. The approach also allows both the metamodel and the mapping to be automatically obtained from the API specification (bootstrap process).

Method

After implementing the API2MoL engine, its correctness was validated using several APIs. Since APIs are normally large, we then developed a tool to implement the bootstrap process, which was also validated.

Results

We provide a toolkit (language and bootstrap tool) for the creation of bridges between APIs and MDE. The current implementation focuses on Java APIs, although its adaptation to other statically typed object-oriented languages is straightforward. The correctness, expressiveness and completeness of the approach have been validated with the Swing, SWT and JTwitter APIs.

Conclusion

API2MoL frees developers from having to manually implement the tasks of obtaining models from API objects and generating such objects from models. This helps to manage API models in MDE-based solutions.     

The agile requirements refinery: Applying SCRUM principles to software product management

Context

Although agile software development methods such as SCRUM and DSDM are gaining popularity, the consequences of applying agile principles to software product management have received little attention until now.

Objective

In this paper, this gap is filled by the introduction of a method for the application of SCRUM principles to software product management.

Method

A case study research approach is employed to describe and evaluate this method.

Results

This has resulted in the ‘agile requirements refinery’, an extension to the SCRUM process that enables product managers to cope with complex requirements in an agile development environment. A case study is presented to illustrate how agile methods can be applied to software product management.

Conclusions

The experiences of the case study company are provided as a set of lessons learned that will help others to apply agile principles to their software product management process.