Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Software engineering organisations'

Context. System Development Methodologies (SDM’s) have been an area of intensive research in the field of software engineering. Different software organisations adopt different development methodologies and use different development practices. The frequency of usage of development practices and acceptance factors for adoption of development methodology are crucial for software organisations. The factors of acceptance and development practices differ across geographical locations. Many challenges have been presented in the literature with respect to the mismatch of the development practices across organisations while collaborating across organisations in distributed development. There is no considerable amount of research done in context of differences across development practices and acceptance factors for adoption of a particular development methodology. Objectives. The primary objectives of the research are to find out a) differences in (i) practice usage (ii) acceptance factors such as organisational, social and cultural b) explore the reasons for the differences and also investigate consequences of such differences while collaborating, across organisations located in India and Sweden. Methods. A literature review was conducted by searching in scientific databases for identifying common agile and plan-driven development practices and acceptance theories for development methodologies. Survey was conducted across organisations located in India and Sweden to find out the usage frequency of development practices and acceptance factors. Ten interviews were conducted to investigate, reasons for differences and consequences of differences from the software practitioners from organisations located in India and Sweden. Literature evidences were used to support the results collected from interviews. Results. From the survey, organisations in India have adopted a higher frequency of plan driven practices when compared to Sweden and agile practices were adopted at higher frequency in Sweden when compared to India. The number of organisations adopting "pure agile" methodologies have been significantly higher in Sweden. There was significant differences were found across the acceptance factors such as cultural, organisational, image and career factors between India and Sweden. The factors such as cultural, social, human, business and organisational factors are responsible for such differences across development practices and acceptance factors. Challenges related to communication, coordination and control were found due to the differences, while collaborating between Indian and Sweden sites. Conclusions. The study signifies the importance of identifying the frequency of development practices and also the acceptance factors responsible for adoption of development methodologies in the software organisations. The mismatch between these practices will led to various challenges. The study draws insights into various non-technical factors such as cultural, human, organisational, business and social while collaborating between organisations. Variations across these factors will lead to many coordination, communication and control issues. Keywords: Development Practices, Agile Development, Plan Driven Development, Acceptance Factors, Global Software Development.
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Thesis (DPhil (Informatics))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018.
Increasingly, organisations in South African and across the world rely on software for various reasons, such as competitiveness and sustainability. The software are either developed in-house or purchased from the shelf. Irrespective of how the software was acquired, they do encounter challenges, from implementation to support, and use stages. The challenges sometimes hinder and are prohibitive to processes and activities that the software is intended to enable and support. Majority of the challenges that are encountered with software are attributed to the fact that they were not tested or appropriately tested before implementation. Some of the challenges has been costly to many organisations, particularly in South Africa. As a result, some organisations have been lacking in their efforts toward growth, competitiveness and sustainability. The challenges manifest from the fact that there are no testing tools and methods that can be easily customised for an organisation’s purposes. As a result, some organisations adopt more tools and methods for the same testing purposes, which has not solved the problem, as the challenges continue among South Africa organisations. Based on the challenges as stated above, this study was undertaken. The aim was to develop a decision support system framework, which can be used for software testing by any organisation, owing to its flexibility for customisation. The interpretivist and inductive approaches were employed. The qualitative methods and the case study design approach were applied. Three South African organisations, a private, public and small to medium enterprise (SME) were used as cases in this study. A set of criteria was used to select the organisations. The analysis of the data was guided by two sociotechnical theories, actor network theory (ANT) and diffusion of innovation (DOI). The theories were complementarily applied because of their different focuses. The actor network theory focuses on actors, which are both human and non-human, heterogeneity of networks, and the relationship between the actors within networks. This includes the interactions that happen at different moments as translated within the heterogeneous networks. Thus, ANT was employed to examine and gain better understanding of the factors that influence software testing in organisations. The DOI focuses on how new (fresh) ideas are diffused in an environment, with particular focus on innovation decision process, which constitute five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation. Findings from the data analysis of the three cases were further interpreted. Based on the interpretation, a decision support system framework was developed. The framework is intended to be of interest to software developers, software project managers and other stakeholders, most importantly, to provide guide to software testers in their tasks of testing software. Thus, this research is intended to be of interest and benefit to organisations and academic through its theoretical, practical and methodological contribution as detailed in the chapter seven (conclusion). In conclusion, even though this research is rigorous, comprehensive and holistic, there are room for future studies. I would like to propose that future research should be in the areas of measurement of software testing. Also, sociotechnical theories like structuration theory and technology acceptance model should be considered in the analysis of such studies.

A threat analysis of a computer system identifies and analyses threats to the systems and its assets. The process of handling the identified threats, verify the mitigations and to continuously discover new threats during agile development is difficult. By making use of the backlog to track threats and security-related tasks a transparent connection between the threats and their security controls is established.  In combination with other tools, a method of integrating the threat analysis into an agiledevelopment method is created. The method proposed in this thesis is a solution to the problem of integrating a threat analysis into a agile organisation and presents tools that can aid in a continuous threat-driven security work.

Cette thèse présente le résultat de notre travail sur l'étude des structures organisationnelles dans les systèmes multi-agents. L'approche proposée met l'accent sur la primauté de l'organisation multi-agents sur les architectures individuelles pour répondre aux besoins d'hétérogénéité,d'adaptation et de contrôle dans les systèmes de taille importante. Le coeur de ce travail est donc un modèle générique de description d'organisation, basé sur les notions de groupe, agent et rôle. Il est montré comment cette description structurelle et fonctionnelle permet de fédérer des systèmes multi-agents ayant des architectures de contrôle, des buts ou des modèles d'interactions différents. Nous dégageons alors plusieurs conséquences de ce modèle, selon les points de vue de la formalisation, de l'implémentation, de la conception ou des applications. Nous présentons en particulier une expression dans une variante du pi-calcul, que nous illustrons par l'étude du meta-niveau dans cette formalisation. L'aspect opératoire a été abordé par la réalisation une plate-forme générique de développement et exécution de systèmes multi-agents, basée sur le modèle d'organisation proposé et conçue pour permettre l'accueil de systèmes ayant des architectures fortement hétérogènes. Nous montrons alors comment un lien peut être fait avec d'autres approches en conception multi-agent, et proposons quelques pistes pour l'utilisation dans le cadre des langages de modélisation. La validation expérimentale de ce travail est finalement abordée par des expérimentations ciblées sur le modèle et la plate-forme proposée ainsi que par des applications à visée plus générique.

A Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the degree Master of Technology in Information Technology In the FACULTY OF INFORMATICS AND DESIGN at the CAPE PENINSULA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNONLOGY
With the software sector being central to economic growth, it was important for the study to analyse the adequacy of skills in the sector. The provincial government of the Western Cape, the industry and tertiary institutions are collaboratively developing relevant Software Engineering (SE) skills. However, it was unclear whether the joint efforts are achieving the intended outcomes. The risk with uncertainty is that emphases may be placed on aspects that do not accurately address the objective of the initiative. Other SE skills shortage risks may include: failure by the region to improve productivity, innovations, exports, and the risk of failing to reduce high unemployment. It is important therefore, that the efforts to address SE skills shortage in the Western Cape succeed. This research made extensive use of relevant literature. Interviews were conducted with employers from chosen companies in Cape Town, South Africa, with an HR representative, HOD from the faculty of Computer Science from Universities and with SE interns. Within the interpretive epistemology, a qualitative inductive methodology was applied. In this respect, a non-probability purposive sampling was used to approach only members of the population ready and willing to give the required data. Despite internship programs being in full operation, findings highlighted the SE technical skills in short supply in the Western Cape and these include Java, dot Net and database skills. The high shortage of SE skilled personnel is pointed out to be a result of few SE graduates from SE tertiary institutions which is blamed on few Universities enrolments. Furthermore, Universities indicated poor mathematics pass rates at matric level as the main reason for having low SE enrolment levels since mathematics is a prerequisite to the SE course. Adding on to that, findings confirm that high SE skills shortage are a result of the imbalances of theoretical and practical aspect of SE courses at Universities. The main reason for the imbalances is that there is no communication between SE industry and Universities. It would be beneficial if companies were consulted by universities when syllabi are prepared. This way, affected parties could forge a common ground to close the skills gap. It may also help tertiary institutions to review and change their syllabus at the right time, in order to focus on what are current imperatives in the SE industry. Findings also reflect that the main reason for SE internships is the need to build up the SE technical skills of interns through work related learning in the SE industry. These internships have been successful in alleviating the problem but not high enough to solve the SE skills shortage in the province. This implies these Internship programs could positively contribute to the alleviation of SE skills shortage in Cape Town if more is done to improve the programs. A greater focus on enhancing such programs would provide benefits in the SE field. Consultative collaborations between the tertiary sector and the industry on curricula matters are recommended. Thus, a need for a more solid relationship between SE tertiary institutions and the SE field of operation needs further investigation. Students on the other hand need to be proactive by collaborating with other relevant SE related affiliations for knowledge sharing seminars especially on the current technologies in use in the SE industry.

The emerging industrial trend towards agile software development processes brings forth new concerns, challenges as well as opportunities. One of the main concerns is with respect to the achievable quality levels of the final product, for which testing is the well-known assurance mechanism. However, it is not well defined for the community on how to perform testing using existing expertise in an agile environment. This uncertainty may create confusion and contra productivity that can lead to testing teams and their practices considered as an obstacle for full implementation of agile processes within an organisation.   This thesis outlines our current research activities towards identifying and addressing important organisational and technical challenges in the agile environment.  In this context, we propose a new role for traditional testers which will enable them to integrate into the agile team as well as to fully exploit their knowledge in the new context. We have conducted an elaborate industrial survey on the preferences and practices with respect to the contemporary aspects of software testing and identified test-driven development as an important technical area for improvement.  A systematic review on empirical evidences related to test-driven development was performed subsequently, which revealed a list of factors limiting its widespread industrial acceptance. Knowledge of testing was identified as one of those factors and was further investigated in a controlled experiment performed with undergraduate students.   Our future works aim to confirm these research findings in wider as well as industrial settings and investigate other limiting factors in detail, with the aim of providing guidelines for achieving better utilisation of testers and testing practices.

Change is unavoidable in software development. During the entire lifecycle of a product, from concept to retirement, the environment changes; the needs of customers or the market change and grow, and with them the requirements on the system being developed. Under these conditions, it is crucial to have strong change control in order to be able to manage change in an orderly fashion. Unmanaged change may lead to fault-prone software, thereby increasing test, support and maintenance costs. Impact analysis is the activity of analysing a change and assessing the consequences it may have, including necessary modifications to development artefacts. Thus, it serves as a very important change control tool. Furthermore, as the consequences may include aspects of time, resources, market and technology, impact analysis has the potential to be a valuable product and project management tool. To this date, impact analysis research has mainly been conducted in the software maintenance field. However, as impact analysis clearly has a wide field of application, it is relevant to study it in other contexts as well. This thesis looks at impact analysis from a requirements engineering perspective, with particular focus on organisational aspects related to different roles and organisational levels. The results show that impact analysis indeed has a diverse nature with respect to these aspects. Furthermore, the thesis includes the proposal and evaluation of a semi-automatic method for performing impact analysis. Finally, it provides a thorough evaluation of a technique for reconstructing missing data in surveys.
Avhandlingen handlar om påverkansanalys av programvaruändringar under utvecklingscykeln. Påverkansanalys diskuteras från ett organisatoriskt perspektiv med fokus på kravhantering. Detta skiljer sig från majoriteten av existerande forskning, där man typiskt har ett tekniskt perspektiv samt fokuserar på programvaruunderhåll. Nyckelord: påverkansanalys, roller, organisatoriska nivåer, kravhantering

Software process improvements are required to increase the productivity of software companies. Generally, it is the aim to increase the quality of the produced software and to keep budget and time. Quality models for software process improvements were developed in context of large organisations and multi-national companies. In this study I investigated how software process improvements are done in a small software company. Ethnography was used as research method. It was the aim of this study to build up an understanding of how software process improvements are done and enabled in a small organisation. Fieldnotes were taken and later analysed using template analysis. Ethnography as the chosen research strategy proved to be applicable and feasible in software engineering research. The qualitative research strategy resulted in a detailed description of how one software company did software process improvements from a bottom-up perspective. Despite the learning potential of "how real world contingencies and possibilities interact and shape software process improvement efforts", such descriptions are rare in software engineering literature. Based on the field experiences and the analysed fieldnotes, the following results were identified: In the studied small software organisation, software process improvement efforts were pushed by the initiative of single employees. The studied company did not have enough resources to implement a complete quality model. In addition, management was heavily involved in daily work and therefore had not enough time to initiate and lead software process improvement efforts. For small software companies in a similar situation, the following guidelines can be given: First, a bottom-up approach with delegating responsibility from management to selected employees is needed. Second, management must ensure to be available if decisions must be taken. Third, improvements must be visible and feedback must be provided contemporary to gain momentum in the whole improvement effort. In some cases it might be important to create awareness of possible improvements. Here, employees should create internal lobbies by involving and convincing other employees of the improvement's importance. A joined effort will help to create enough pressure for change, so that improvement efforts get started.
Please review the chosen subjects! I'm not sure, if I have done this correctly. My thesis touches all those parts, still it is not a complete sociological study. Besides email you can reach me by phone (Germany, mobile): +49 163 4016393

Companies around the world work more globally than ever and it reflects in the system development projects that run. The companies work span continents and the employees work together over the borders. This way of working, the global distributed, brings a number of opportunities for the company but also presents a lot of problems. The distributed way of working means that the teams and/or individuals are divided. I wanted to connect this way of working with the agile framework Scrum, partly due to my own interest on the subject and partly as it is a contradiction to me, distributed work and Scrum, therefore a challenge to combine. To be able to investigate this way of working I got in touch with two companies that work globally and distributed, using the Scrum technique, I read literature and papers on the subject to be able to reach my conclusions. My conclusions are based on the success factors I found in both the literature and the dialogs performed. The study shows three important qualities in a leader, a scrum master, in a globally distributed development team: Coaching leadership, clear leadership and smaller distributed teams not individuals.

Durant ces dernières années, nous avons assisté à une forte émergence de nouvelles technologies et environnements informatiques tels que le cloud computing, l'informatique ubiquitaire ou les réseaux de capteurs. Ces environnements ont permis d'élaborer de nouveaux types d'applications avec une forte valeur ajoutée pour les usagés. Néanmoins, ils ont aussi soulevés de nombreux défis liés notamment à la conception, au déploiement et à la gestion de cycle de vie des applications. Ceci est dû à la nature même de ces environnements distribués, caractérisés par une grande flexibilité, un dynamisme accru et une forte hétérogénéité des ressources. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est de fournir une solution générique, réutilisable et extensible pour l'auto-gestion de ces applications. Nous nous sommes concentrés sur la fourniture d'un support logiciel permettant de gérer à l'exécution les architectures et leur cycle de vie, notamment pour les applications à base de composants s'exécutant dans des environnements dynamiques, distributes et à grande échelle. De façon à atteindre cet objectif, nous proposons une solution synergique – le framework Cube – combinant des techniques issues de domaines de recherche adjacents tels que l'auto-organisation, la satisfaction de contraintes, l'auto-adaptation et la reflexion fondée sur les modèles architecturaux. Dans notre solution, un ensemble de gestionnaires autonomiques décentralisés s'auto-organise de façon à construire et gérer une application cible en s'appuyant sur une description partagée des buts de l'application. Cette description formelle, appelé Archetype, prend la forme d'un graphe orienté exprimant les différents éléments de l'architecture et un ensemble de contraintes. Un prototype du framework Cube a été implanté dans le domaine particulier de la médiation. Des expériences ont été conduites dans le cadre de deux projets de recherché nationaux: Self-XL et Medical. Les résultats obtenus démontrent la validité de notre approche pour créer, réparer et adapter des applications à base de composants s'exécutant dans des environnements distribués, dynamiques et hétérogènes
In recent years, the world has witnessed the rapid emergence of several novel technologies and computing environments, including cloud computing, ubiquitous computing and sensor networks. These environments have been rapidly capitalised upon for building new types of applications, and bringing added-value to users. At the same time, the resulting applications have been raising a number of new significant challenges, mainly related to system design, deployment and life-cycle management during runtime. Such challenges stem from the very nature of these novel environments, characterized by large scales, high distribution, resource heterogeneity and increased dynamism. The main objective of this thesis is to provide a generic, reusable and extensible self-management solution for these types of applications, in order to help alleviate this stringent problem. We are particularly interested in providing support for the runtime management of system architecture and life-cycle, focusing on applications that are component-based and that run in highly dynamic, distributed and large-scale environments. In order to achieve this goal, we propose a synergistic solution – the Cube framework – that combines techniques from several adjacent research domains, including self-organization, constraint satisfaction, self-adaptation and self-reflection based on architectural models. In this solution, a set of decentralised Autonomic Managers self-organize dynamically, in order to build and administer a target application, by following a shared description of administrative goals. This formal description, called Archetype, contains a graph-oriented specification of the application elements to manage and of various constraints associated with these elements. A prototype of the Cube framework has been implemented for the particular application domain of data-mediation. Experiments have been carried-out in the context of two national research projects: Self-XL and Medical. Obtained results indicate the viability of the proposed solution for creating, repairing and adapting component-based applications running in distributed volatile and evolving environments

This paper tries to identify and understand the human social obstacles for developing quality software. These include lip-service, cutting corners, deception and effects of internal politics. These obstacles can undermine the good intentions behind the software methodologies. The paper draws from the literature in different disciplines and uses an ethnographic research methodology to create a rich picture of the concerning aspects in the framework of one software development company in India. What stands out among the findings are that internal audits has mainly focused on finding errors in documentation procedures but study of the actual practices has often been shallow. In addition the understanding of business risks by the internal auditors have often been weak. Context. The human based obstacles affecting Software Development Methodology analysed in the context of an ISO 9000 quality system in an Indian Software Development company working mainly with Swedish companies. Objectives. Identifying and increasing the understanding of intrinsic negative social aspects such as lip service, cheating and politics which are affecting the results of Software Development Methodologies and if possible suggest some means to mitigate them. In particular to create a deeper understanding of why people cheat and pay lip service to methodologies and to try to understand the political aspects of methodology and quality systems. There are other positive social aspects, but they are not considered since the objective is about understanding the negative aspects and possibly mitigate them. Methods. Ethnographic research using analysis of ISO 9000 and design artefacts, semi-structured interviews, participation in internal audits, Results. Most focus in audits was on documentation and very less focus on underlying methodologies, some indications of lip-service to process and processes were also mainly managed on a higher level in the organization while the understanding and practices were less well established on lower level. It was hard to get a grip on the internal political aspects since the perception of the subject in the informants view was that it is mainly malicious and therefore embarrassing to speak about. Some conflicts between internal quality goals and customers’ needs were also identified. Conclusions. An ethnographic research methodology gives a rich picture. The analysis gives deeper understanding of the problem areas, but not necessary solutions. The author suggests that at the heart of the problem is a difference in world view. Software professionals generally tend to resolve [technical] problems using a reductionist approach, while these intricate challenges cannot easily be resolved by this approach. A more holistic systemic approach is required and while the software methodology is useful to structure the development it does not resolve these dysfunctions. They have to be resolved on another level. It was also found that further studies is required in particular to better understand Internal politics, the effect of Positive and Negative Incentives, the effect of software metrics on quality performance and subjectivity in customers’ perception and expectation.
Uppsatsen försöker förstå mänskliga sociala hinder för att utveckla programvara med hög kvalitet. Dessa hinder inkluderar "läpparnas bekännelser", ta genvägar, vilseleda och internpolitik. Sådana hinder kan underminera utvecklingsmetoder. Denna uppsats bygger på literatur från olika discipliner och använder etnografisk forskningsmetodik för att skapa en rik bild av dessa oroande aspekter inom ramen för ett IT-företag i Indien. Vad står ut är att intern kvalitetsrevision fokuserar för mycket på att finna fel i dokumentationsprocesser medan revision av hur utvecklingsarbetet faktiskt sker har varit för ytligt. Dessutom har de interna revisorernas förståelse av affärsrisker varit svag.

Society’s need for software is drastically increasing in tandem with elevated requirements for functionality and security. It is therefore necessary to investigate what sort of competences are needed for high-quality development and maintenance of software. This investigation is of particular interest given the existing gap in competence between students of software engineering and demands of the industry. Software engineering skill descriptions that have been developed and revised by experts may be the link between education and industry. However, the skill descriptions that exist today — SWEBOK and ACM/IEEE Curriculum — lack a common structure, which presents an obstacle with respect to the establishment of such a link. An attempt to impose a suitable structure is made in the report Everything is Possible to Structure— Even the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, which forms a partial basis for this study. This study explores an enhanced structure of the skill descriptions SWEBOK and ACM/IEEE curriculum. The explorative work is then extended by the development of a software system prototype that can improve the usability and user-friendliness of the skill descriptions’ contents. Additionally, the information in the prototype should be exportable and easily available. Ultimately, the goal of the enhanced structure and the prototype is to facilitate the evaluation of quality in software engineering curricula. The development of an information system that embodies the qualities of usability and user-friendliness can be performed using scientific methodology. In this qualitative study, the hypothetico-deductive method has been chosen. Additionally, a suitable choice of technology for the implementation is required. For the purpose of this study, Google Sheets and the Google Apps Script framework have been chosen. The result of the study is a concrete implementation of a system prototype as a Google Sheets spreadsheet with an underlying relational database. Moreover, the spreadsheet is extended with filtering functionality for various types of information. The prototype also offers the ability to assess and compare academic curricula based on software engineering skill descriptions. Lastly, the information in the prototype can be exported and used in its entirety. The results infer that software engineering skill descriptions found in literature can be structured, in addition to being made more usable and user-friendly. However, the developed prototype is in need of further evaluation and testing before its validity can be fully ascertained.
Samhällets beroende av mjukvara ökar drastiskt samtidigt som kraven på funktionalitet och säkerhet ökar. Det är därför aktuellt att ställa frågan om vilka kompetenser som är nödvändiga för att skapa och hantera mjukvara på ett högkvalitativt sätt. Frågan är speciellt relevant med tanke på att det finns en skillnad mellan mjukvarustudenters kunskaper och krav från industrin. Kunskapsbeskrivningar inom mjukvaruutveckling som har utvecklats och reviderats av experter kan utgöra en länk mellan akademi och industri. Däremot saknar kunskapsbeskrivningarna som finns idag — SWEBOK och ACM/IEEE Curriculum — en gemensam struktur, vilket utgör ett hinder för skapandet av en sådan länk. En ansats till att införa en lämplig struktur görs i rapporten Everything is Possible to Structure — Even the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, som denna studie delvis grundar sig på. Denna studie undersöker en förbättrad struktur av kunskapsbeskrivningarna SWEBOK och ACM/IEEE Curriculum. Det undersökande arbetet förlängs sedan genom utvecklingen av en prototyp för ett IT-system som kan göra kunskapsbeskrivningarnas innehåll mer användbart och användarvänligt. Dessutom borde informationen som prototypen tillhandahåller vara lättillgänglig och möjlig att exportera. Det slutgiltiga målet med den förbättrade strukturen och prototypen är att förenkla utvärderingen av kvalitet med avseende på utbildningar inom mjukvaruutveckling. Utvecklingen av ett informationsteknologiskt system som är användbart och användarvänligt kan genomföras enligt vetenskapliga metoder. I denna kvalitativa studie används den hypotetiskt-deduktiva metoden. Dessutom är ett lämpligt val av teknik för implementationens skull nödvändig. För denna studies ändamål har Google Sheets med skriptramverket Google Apps Script valts ut. Studiens resultat är en konkret tillämpning av en systemprototyp i form av ett kalkylark i Google Sheets med en underliggande relationsdatabas. Kalkylarket är även utökat med filtreringsmöjligheter för olika typer av information. Prototypen erbjuder också möjligheten att utvärdera och jämföra utbildningsprogram baserat på kunskapsbeskrivningar inom mjukvaruutveckling. Till sist erbjuder prototypen möjligheten att exportera och använda all information som den tillhandahåller. Resultaten antyder att färdighetsbeskrivningar för mjukvaruutveckling kan struktureras, samt göras mer användbara och användarvänliga. Däremot behöver den utvecklade prototypen utvärderas och testas i större utsträckning innan dess giltighet kan fastställas.

Durant ces dernières années, nous avons assisté à une forte émergence de nouvelles technologies et environnements informatiques tels que le cloud computing, l'informatique ubiquitaire ou les réseaux de capteurs. Ces environnements ont permis d'élaborer de nouveaux types d'applications avec une forte valeur ajoutée pour les usagés. Néanmoins, ils ont aussi soulevés de nombreux défis liés notamment à la conception, au déploiement et à la gestion de cycle de vie des applications. Ceci est dû à la nature même de ces environnements distribués, caractérisés par une grande flexibilité, un dynamisme accru et une forte hétérogénéité des ressources. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est de fournir une solution générique, réutilisable et extensible pour l'auto-gestion de ces applications. Nous nous sommes concentrés sur la fourniture d'un support logiciel permettant de gérer à l'exécution les architectures et leur cycle de vie, notamment pour les applications à base de composants s'exécutant dans des environnements dynamiques, distributes et à grande échelle. De façon à atteindre cet objectif, nous proposons une solution synergique - le framework Cube - combin- ant des techniques issues de domaines de recherche adjacents tels que l'auto-organisation, la satisfaction de contraintes, l'auto-adaptation et la reflexion fondée sur les modèles architecturaux. Dans notre solution, un ensemble de gestionnaires autonomiques décentralisés s'auto-organise de façon à construire et gérer une application cible en s'appuyant sur une description partagée des buts de l'application. Cette description formelle, appelé Archetype, prend la forme d'un graphe orienté exprim- ant les différents éléments de l'architecture et un ensemble de contraintes. Un prototype du framework Cube a été implanté dans le domaine particulier de la médiation. Des expériences ont été conduites dans le cadre de deux projets de recherché nationaux: Self-XL et Medical. Les résultats obtenus démontrent la validité de notre approche pour créer, réparer et adapter des applications à base de composants s'exécutant dans des environnements distribués, dynamiques et hétérogènes.

[EN] Renewing software systems is one of the most cost-effective ways to protect software investment, which saves time, money and ensures uninterrupted access to technical support and product upgrades. There are several motivations to promote investment and scientific effort for specifying systems by means of conceptual models and supporting its evolution. In order to contribute to the requirements engineering field with automated software production methods, we design TraceME to cover the spectrum of activities from requirements to code focusing on organisational evolution. In this sense, the spectrum of activities involves various information system perspectives of analysis that need to be integrated. In this complex setting, traceability and conceptual models are key concepts. Mechanisms to trace software specifications from requirements to code are important to justify evolution processes; versions of information systems should be traced in order to get the connection between old and new specifications. Moreover, it is necessary to find mechanisms to facilitate change specifications, measurement, and interpretation. To design this thesis we follow Design Science by Roel Wieringa. Design Science gives us the hints on how to conduct the research, be rigorous, and put in practice scientific rules. Besides Design Science has been a key factor for structuring our research, we acknowledge the application of this framework since it has helps us to report clearly our findings. We build TraceME by making a method engineering effort, which shapes its fragmented nature in chunks. The architecture of TraceME opens a wide window of opportunities for its application in real world situations. To facilitate industrial adoption, we develop open source tools to support the implementation of the TraceME chunks. For example, one case study and one action-research protocols have been executed in two different organisations in Spain. The validation of TraceME has taken place in laboratory demonstrations, controlled experiments, action research and case study experiences in industry. Thanks to the validations various lessons learnt have been gathered and greatly influenced the maturity of the method. For example: the importance to consider end-users' perceptions for discovering needs to mitigate, and the significance to get knowledge from the application of TraceME in different contexts. The evidences from the validations demonstrate that TraceME is feasible to be applied to support evolution projects. In addition, future research is needed for promoting the implementation of TraceME. We envision short term and future-term work that motivate us to tackle the challenge to support evolution projects.
[ES] La evolución de sistemas software es una de las actividades mas importantes que permiten minimizar el tiempo de puesta en producción de actualizaciones y nuevos desarrollos, reducir los costos que implica desarrollar una aplicación desde cero, y además asegura el acceso ininterrumpido de servicios. Existen variadas motivaciones para promover la investigación y desarrollo de soluciones para especificar y evolucionar sistemas de información mediante modelos conceptuales. Para contribuir al campo de la ingeniería de requisitos con métodos automáticos de producción de software, hemos diseñado el método TraceME para cubrir el espectro de actividades desde requisitos a código con un enfoque de evolución organizacional. De este modo, el espectro de actividades involucra diferentes perspectivas de análisis de sistemas de información que necesitan ser integradas. En este escenario tan complejo, la trazabilidad y los modelos conceptuales son conceptos clave. Es necesario disponer de mecanismos para trazar especificaciones de software desde requisitos a código con el fin de justificar procesos de evolución. Las versiones de los sistemas de información deben ser trazables con el fin de establecer la conexión entre especificaciones obsoletas y actuales. Adicionalmente, es necesario encontrar mecanismos para facilitar la especificación del cambio, su medición e interpretación. Para diseñar esta tesis hemos seguido el marco de Design Science de Roel Wieringa. Design Science nos ha proporcionado las claves para conducir esta investigación, ser rigurosos y poner en práctica reglas científicas. Además de que Design Science ha sido un factor clave para estructurar nuestra investigación, reconocemos que la aplicación de este marco nos ha ayudado a reportar claramente nuestros hallazgos. Hemos aplicado ingeniería de métodos para diseñar y construir TraceME. Gracias a esto, la naturaleza de TraceME es conformada mediante fragmentos de método. La arquitectura de TraceME abre una amplia ventana de oportunidades para su aplicación en situaciones de la vida real. Para facilitar la adopción industrial de TraceME, hemos desarrollado herramientas de software libre para dar soporte a los fragmentos de TraceME. Por ejemplo, un caso de estudio y una experiencia de action research han sido ejecutadas en dos organizaciones en España. La validación de TraceME ha sido llevada a cabo mediante demostraciones de laboratorio, experimentos controlados, un caso de estudio y una experiencia de action research en industria. Como resultado, TraceME ha sido mejorado considerablemente; además hemos descubierto investigaciones a realizar a corto, mediano y largo plazo con el fin de implementar TraceME en la industria. Las evidencias obtenidas como resultado de las validaciones demuestra la factibilidad de TraceME para ser aplicado en proyectos de evolución organizacional. El trabajo futuro nos motiva a afrontar los retos que conlleva el soporte de proyectos de evolución de sistemas de información.
[CAT] L'evolució dels sistemes programari és una de les activitats més importants que permeten minimitzar el temps de posada en producció d'actualitzacions i nous desenvolupaments, reduir els costos que involucra desenvolupar una aplicació des de cero, a més d' assegurar l'accés ininterromput de serveis. Existixen diverses motivacions per promoure la investigació i desenvolupament de solucions per a especificar i evolucionar sistemes de informació mitjançant models conceptuals. Per tal de contribuir al camp de l'enginyeria de requisits amb mètodes automàtics de producció de programari, hem dissenyat el mètode TraceME per cobrir l'espectre d'activitats des de requisits a codi en un enfocament d'evolució organitzacional. Així, l'espectre d'activitats involucra diferents perspectives d'anàlisi de sistemes d'informació que necessiten ser integrades. En aquest escenari tan complex, la traçabilitat i els models conceptuals són conceptes clau. És necessari disposar de mecanismes per traçar especificacions de programari des de requisits a codi amb la fi de justificar processos d'evolució. Les versions dels sistemes d'informació deuen ser traçables amb la fi d'establir la connexió entre especificacions obsoletes i actuals. Addicionalment, és necessari trobar mecanismes per facilitar l'especificació del canvi, la seua mesura i interpretació. Per tal de dissenyar aquesta tesi, hem seguit el marc de Design Science de Roel Wieringa. Design Science ens ha proporcionat les claus per conduir aquesta investigació, ser rigorosos i posar en pràctica regles científiques. A més a més, Design Science ha sigut un factor clau per estructurar la nostra investigació, reconeixem que l'aplicació de aquest marc ens a ajudat a reportar clarament els nostres resultats. Hem aplicat enginyeria de mètodes per dissenyar i construir TraceME. Gràcies a açò, la natura de TraceME es conforma mitjançant fragments de mètodes. L'arquitectura de TraceME obri una ampla finestra d'oportunitats per a la seua aplicació en situacions de la vida real. Per facilitar l'adopció industrial de TraceME, hem desenvolupat ferramentes de programari lliure per tal de donar suport als fragments de TraceME. Per exemple, un cas d'estudi i una experiència de action research han sigut executades en dos organitzacions a Espanya. La validació de TraceME ha sigut portada a cap mitjançant demostracions de laboratori, experiments controlats , un cas d'estudi i una experiència de action research en l'industria. Com a resultat, TraceME ha sigut millorada considerablement; a més a més, hem descobert investigacions a realitzar a curt, mig i llarg termini amb la fi d'implementar TraceME a l'industria. Les evidències obtingudes com a resultat de les validacions, demostren la factibilitat de TraceME per ser aplicat en projectes d'evolució organitzacional. El treball futur presenta nous reptes que ens motiven a afrontar el suport de projectes d'evolució de sistemes d'informació.
Ruiz Carmona, LM. (2016). TraceME: Traceability-based Method for Conceptual Model Evolution [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/64553
TESIS

Användandet av agila metodiker har ökat under de senaste decennierna. Detta har lett till en uppskalning av agila metodiker då även stora organisationer vill uppnå fördelarna som kommer med det agila arbetssättet. Att skala upp agila metodiker, och använda dessa i storskaligt agila miljöer (författarnas koncept skagila miljöer, som återfinns i sektionen ’Begreppet ’skagil’'), kommer dock med flera nya organisatoriska utmaningar. En utmaning, som omnämns i både litteratur och i arbetets empiriska undersökning på företaget Avanza, är inter-teamsamordning i skagila miljöer. Avanza har identifierat problemen med beroenden mellan team i skagila mjukvaruutvecklingsprojekt. För att möta problemet med beroenden initierades det här arbetet med syftet att, utifrån Avanzas nuvarande projekt design, undersöka hur teamöverskridande arbete kan samordnas för att möta beroenden i projektprocessen. För att uppnå syftet genomfördes en fallstudie på Avanza innehållande intervjuer med tolv respondenter och observation av interna dokument. Den empiriska undersökningen bekräftade ursprungsproblematiken gällande inter-teamsamordning och bidrog även med information om företagets nuvarande projektdesign. Resultatet visade att projektorganisationen verkar som en hybrid organisation med starka, agila inslag. Dock visade sig Avanza uppleva sin projektdesignen som helt agil. Vidare ansågs projektets beroenden bidra till agilt slöseri, vilket påverkar både produktivitet och effektivitet negativt i mjukvaruutvecklingsprocessen. Fyra huvudområden av agilt slöseri identifierades vilka var väntan, rörelse, defekter och tilläggsprocesser. Genom att klustra ihop liknande slöseri framtogs tre problemområden kopplade till Avanzas projektprocess, nämligen ’viss frånvaro av proaktivt angreppssätt och planering’, ’viss frånvaro av forum för hantering av inter-teamberoenden’ och ’skillnader i implementering av agila metodiker och projektprioritering bland teamen’. För att möta problemen fastställdes sex åtgärder, nämligen implementering av en mer proaktiv projektledarroll, anammning av hybridkulturen, skapande av rollspecifika team, implementering av arrangerade forum för teamsynkronisering, kodifiering och utveckling av befintliga mekanismer och samordning samt skapande av ett gemensamt förhållningssätt till agila principer i projekt. Arbetets slutsatser är till viss del generaliserbara och skulle kunna adopteras av andra företag eller projektorganisationer som har liknande problem och projektdesign som Avanza. Dock krävs en viss ansträngning för att först identifiera vilken projektdesign intressentföretag har samt att identifiera projektrelaterat slöseri. Avanza är även verksamma inom tech-branschen där projektorganisationen verkar kring mjukvaruutveckling. Därför kan det antas att slutsatserna mer sannolikt, passar andra organisationer som jobbar med mjukvaruutveckling.
The usage of agile methodologies has rapidly increased over the last decades. This has led to an upscaling of agile methods since larger organizations want to gain the benefits of the agile way of working. However, this has not come without issues, and using agile at scale (authors’ concept scagile, in upcoming section ’Begreppet ’skagil”) has introduced new organizational challenges. One challenge that is mentioned both in literature and in the empirical findings at the case company, Avanza, is inter-team coordination in scagile environments. Today Avanza is struggling with dependencies between teams in scaled agile software projects. To address this issue this study was initiated with the purpose to, based on Avanza’s current project design, investigate how cross-team collaboration could be coordinated to face and overcome dependencies in the project process. To accomplish this a case study, containing interviews with twelve respondents and observation of internal documents, was made. The empirical findings confirmed the original issues related to inter-team coordination and also provided valuable information about the company’s project design. Regarding the project design the findings showed that the project organization is a hybrid organization with strong agile influences. However, the alleged perception of the project design was a fully agile organization. Further, the dependencies in the projects seem to cause agile waste, which has a negative influence on productivity and efficiancy in software projects. Four main areas of agile waste were detected, namely waiting, motion, defects and extra processes. By clustering similar waste, three main problem areas were detected, viz ’a certain absence of a proactive approach and planning’, ‘a certain absence of forums for handling inter-team dependencies’, and ‘differences between teams regarding the implementation and usage of agile principles, and project prioritization’. To face these issues, six measures were determined, namely implementation of a more proactive project management approach, embracing the hybrid culture, creating role specific teams, arranging forums for team synchronization, codifying and developing the current coordination mechanisms and deciding on a shared approach for project methodologies. The findings of this study is to some extent generalizable and could be adopted by other companies, or project organizations, that are struggling with the same problem areas and have the same project design as Avanza. However, some effort is required to first determine current project design and to identify project related waste. Further, the client company is operative in the fin-tech industry where the project organization orbits around software development. Therefore it can be assumed that the findings are more likely to fit another software organization.

L'élaboration de plannings de travail de personnel représente un problème majeur auquel sont confrontées la plupart des organisations. Nous nous préoccupons ici de l'automatisation de cette tâche, liant négociation et calcul combinatoire. Les modèles préférentiels sur lesquels se base l'évaluation des plannings sont complètement révisés. Une nouvelle représentation combinatoire des préférences est proposée, couplant le concept de relation binaire de préférence à celui de contrainte souple. Elle est mieux adaptée à la formulation des opinions de chaque acteur et intègre la notion d'aide à la décision et d'interactivité en admettant l'incomparabilité et l'intransitivité. Ensuite, l'agrégation des préférences individuelles est réalisée par la méthode axiomatique en usant de plusieurs principes éthiques : l'équité (Pigou-Dalton, Suppes-Sen) et l'efficacité (Pareto). Divers algorithmes de filtrage et de recherche de solution adaptés à la forme particulière des préférences et critères sont conçus. Un système interactif d'élaboration de plannings infirmiers est décrit.

Text in English
Scrum is the most adopted and under-researched Agile methodology. The research conducted on Scrum adoption is mainly qualitative. Therefore, there was a need for a quantitative study to investigate Scrum adoption challenges. The general objective of this study was to investigate the factors that have a significant relationship with Scrum adoption as perceived by Scrum practitioners working within South African organisations. To achieve this objective a narrative review to synthesise the existing challenges was conducted, followed by the use of these challenges in the development of a conceptual framework. After that, a survey questionnaire was used to test and evaluate the developed framework. The research findings indicate that relative advantage, complexity, and sprint management are factors that have a significant linear relationship with Scrum adoption. The findings are generalisable to the population, and the author recommends that organisations review the findings during their adoption phase of Scrum.
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
University of South Africa (UNISA)
School of Computing
M.Sc. (Computing)

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Engineering, 18 October 2019
The technology advancement of the latter half of the twentieth century and into this century has been the most significant driver of the emergence of Systems Engineering as a critical skill in the development of complex systems. Not only did the advancement of technology affected the products, but, also the manner in which these products are being developed, manufactured, operated, supported and maintained. The challenges confronting many organisations seeking to implement Systems Engineering in their projects are far from trivial. The current practices and culture in most of these organisations often constrain the adoption of Systems Engineering. A survey research was conducted to investigate the status of Systems Engineering at a South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) using one of its business unit, namely Defence, Peace, Safety and Security (DPSS) as a unit of measure. The research instrument for the study was developed based on the international standards and capability maturity models of Systems Engineering, to assess the status of Systems Engineering and to investigate whether an association exist between the status of Systems Engineering and a Competency Area or Job Category at DPSS. The results showed that the majority in the Competency Areas within DPSS utilises the specific practices associated with the technical processes of Systems Engineering in their projects and that there is no association between the status of Systems Engineering and Competency Area or Job Category. However, the study also shows that there is still room for improvement.
PH2020

The software development continues to become more competitive and demanding, placing pressure on developers. Changes in the international political climate have resulted in shrinking military budgets, putting developers of defence software under further pressure. At present, systematic reuse is probably the most realistic way of addressing this pressure by improving software development productivity and quality. Software product line (SPL) engineering provides a comprehensive approach to systematic software reuse and is becoming widely accepted. The focus of this interpretive case study was ground station software development in a small multidisciplinary project-centric company which produces avionics systems for military aircraft. The purpose of the study was to investigate the potential implementation of systematic software reuse in the company. The study consisted of three phases, a literature study, a contextualisation and a set of field interviews, and used elements of the Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Product Line Practice Framework to examine the suitability of SPL engineering for the company. The findings of the study highlight the potential challenges that SPL engineering poses for the company, and emphasise how the company's project-centric structure could impede its implementation of systematic software reuse.
Computing
M.Sc. (Information Systems)