Thèses sur le sujet « LK. Software methodologies and engineering »

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-158).
As the software industry evolves, various software development methodologies have become widely used in the industry. Most commonly used methodologies are Waterfall and Agile, along with less known alternatives, such as spiral and hybrid methodologies. When deciding on the methodologies, program managers tend to choose one based on the team preference or historical pattern. However, each software project is unique in its own way and has characteristics that are distinct from the previous projects the team has worked on. For each project, it is crucial to adopt a suitable methodology that help teams to produce the software that meets customer needs within schedule and budget constraints. Therefore, a practical question for every program manager is "How to find a suitable methodology for a specific project?" This thesis is aimed to help program managers answer this question.
We first explore how to evaluate each software development methodology based on the two-level decomposition of software development methodology, then analyze the project characteristics based on the situational inputs in three categories: scope, schedule and budget. Thereafter, the thesis proposes a framework to match software development methodology with a specific project. This thesis extends West's work in [1] by introducing a systems approach to assess a software project and a framework to determine the degree of compatibility between a methodology and a software project. The benefits of leveraging the systems approach are: ** The decomposition of methodologies highlights which elements in a methodology play key roles of providing the advantageous ilities over other methodologies. ** The decomposition of a project enables a program manager to evaluate the input elements of a project and gain a systems view on the project characteristics.
The framework allows program managers to compare several candidate methodologies and choose the most compatible one using the mismatch scores, weighted summations that indicate the incompatibilities between the candidate methodologies and the project based on the ilities ranking decided by the program managers. To demonstrate how to use this framework for a real world project, an example project is given. The detailed steps of calculating the mismatch scores between three methodologies and the project are shown. The proposed framework can be used as a guideline for program managers to find methodologies for different projects with the information gathered from project stakeholders. This framework has some limitations. A major one is that, since the framework is quantitative based, induvial experience is used to evaluate the elements of methodologies and factors of projects.
Further work can be done to improve the objectivity of the evaluation through the surveys of industrial experts and members of teams adopting this framework.
by Yuqing Ke.
S.M. in Engineering and Management
S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) covers issues on developing systems with software agents. There are many techniques, mostly agent-oriented and object-oriented, ready to be chosen as building blocks to create agent-based systems. There have been several AOSE methodologies proposed intending to show engineers guidelines on how these elements are constituted in having agents achieve the overall system goals. Although these solutions are promising, most of them are designed in ad-hoc manner without truly obeying software developing life-cycle fully, as well as lacking of examinations on agent-oriented features. To address these issues, we investigated state-of-the-art techniques and AOSE methodologies. By examining them in different respects, we commented on the strength and weakness of them. Toward a formal study, a comparison framework has been set up regarding four aspects, including concepts and properties, notations and modeling techniques, process, and pragmatics. Under these criteria, we conducted the comparison in both overview and detailed level. The comparison helped us with empirical and analytical study, to inspect the issues on how an ideal agent-based system will be formed.

The computer industry has a poor record of system development using the traditional life-cycle approach. The main cause of user dissatisfaction is the unacceptably large amount of time between specification and delivery of a system. In addition, users have limited opportunity to influence how the system will look when implemented once development has commenced. With the advent of 4GLs, system development using a prototyping approach has become a viable option. This has reduced the development tlme significantly and, together with the use of prototyping, has allowed users to become more involved in the development process. However, this change in the development process has meant that often the use of an accepted methodology/system life cycle has been ignored or altered. This has resulted in systems where the definition-of-requirements phase was often fast-tracked or omitted totally and the system documentation is insufficient for effective maintenance. Thus, this approach has not proved to be as successful as expected. However, the opportunities that prototyping offers should not be discarded because of the use of inappropriate software development methodologies, languages or tools. This study seeks to identify factors that may influence the success or failure of a prototyping project and to assess the importance of any developmentmethodologies being used. Information was gathered via interviews, questionnaires and, where deemed necessary, the reviewing of development procedures used. Conclusions have been drawn from data gathered from various organisations in Western Australia that have used prototyping for a number of projects, thus, suggesting a refinement of the development process. Two main areas appeared to affect the success of a software development project. The first is the lack of flexibility in the methodology used and inappropriateness of the development tools and languages. The second is insufficient requirements analysis. The results indicate that a methodology is required that provides a good framework, but is flexible enough to handle different types and sizes of project. It should specifically address prototyping and include guidelines as to how to select the most suitable prototyping approach for each project. It should contain examples of different deliverables and various development cycles appropriate for each type of prototyping. There should be automated tools available to handle documentation and code generation where possible. The development of a methodology with the above characteristics is required if the advantages of prototyping are to be maximised in the future.

Lean Software Development is a new approach to provide a quality philosophy in software development companies. Lean offers a set of principles that helps companies to identify inefficient processes and waste. Therefore, by applying these principles, we can reduce costs, by shorting development time, incrementing productivity.In this study a software company with seven employees is analyzed. The company develops software and wants to increase its maturity and the quality of its processes. Currently, it has few documented processes. Furthermore, the company want a common way of working for every project. The challenge relies in adapting the set of principles provided by Lean to this particular case of study.We seek to analyze the current situation of the company to find out about the problems and limitations of the current way of working. After that we will state recommendations about the use of Lean combined with Agile practices such as Scrum and XP.As a result we present a proposal for implementation adapted from these philosophies to the needs and characteristics of the company.We have found that there are several ways in which the company can benefit from the implementation of Lean practices in combination with Scrum and XP. The result is a new framework that can be applied for other small software development companies in a similar situation.

This thesis presents a procedural approach to evaluating software development methodologies. The evaluation procedure adopts a unique approach based on the fundamental assumption that the requirements govern the process by which software is constructed. To begin with, this research partitions desirable software characteristics into three categories, viz., objectives, principles and attributes. The thesis claims (claims are substantiated with literature references) that there exist definitive relationships (or linkages) among the software objectives, principles and attributes. These linkages form the foundation of the evaluation procedure. The procedure constitutes two processes, top-down process and bottom-up process. These processes are used to assess the software product and the employed software development methodology. The top-down process begins by identifying the objectives and travels down through principles and product attributes; thus, evaluating the adequacy of the methodology. The bottom-up process, on the other hand, starts at the attribute level and goes up through principles and objectives. The bottom-up process highlights the effectiveness of the methodology. Attributes are identified in the product via properties. This research establishes several properties (called factors in the report) for each attribute. A measurement approach is also presented to help assess the extent to which attributes are present. The feasibility and validity of the evaluation procedure are illustrated through the analysis of two real life methodologies.
M.S.

Mathematical models have been used to capture the behaviour of biological systems, from low-level biochemical reactions to multi-scale whole-organ models. Models are typically based on experimentally-derived data, attempting to reproduce the observed behaviour through mathematical constructs, e.g. using Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) for spatially-homogeneous systems. These models are developed and published as mathematical equations, yet are of such complexity that they necessitate computational simulation. This computational model development is often performed in an ad hoc fashion by modellers who lack extensive software engineering experience, resulting in brittle, inefficient model code that is hard to extend and reuse. Several Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) exist to aid capturing such biological models, including CellML and SBML; however these DSLs are designed to facilitate model curation rather than simplify model development. We present research into the application of techniques from software engineering to this domain; starting with the design, development and implementation of a DSL, termed Ode, to aid the creation of ODE-based biological models. This introduces features beneficial to model development, such as model verification and reproducible results. We compare and contrast model development to large-scale software development, focussing on extensibility and reuse. This work results in a module system that enables the independent construction and combination of model components. We further investigate the use of software engineering processes and patterns to develop complex modular cardiac models. Model simulation is increasingly computationally demanding, thus models are often created in complex low-level languages such as C/C++. We introduce a highly-efficient, optimising native-code compiler for Ode that generates custom, model-specific simulation code and allows use of our structured modelling features without degrading performance. Finally, in certain contexts the stochastic nature of biological systems becomes relevant. We introduce stochastic constructs to the Ode DSL that enable models to use Stochastic Differential Equations (SDEs), the Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA), and hybrid methods. These use our native-code implementation and demonstrate highly-efficient stochastic simulation, beneficial as stochastic simulation is highly computationally intensive. We introduce a further DSL to model ion channels declaratively, demonstrating the benefits of DSLs in the biological domain. This thesis demonstrates the application of software engineering methodologies, and in particular DSLs, to facilitate the development of both deterministic and stochastic biological models. We demonstrate their benefits with several features that enable the construction of large-scale, reusable and extensible models. This is accomplished whilst providing efficient simulation, creating new opportunities for biological model development, investigation and experimentation.

Context: Over the recent years, ‘Lean Software Development’ (LSD) has been emerging as a significant practice in the Software Industry. The inherent nature of ‘Lean’ to efficiently handle frequently changing customer needs by minimizing ‘Waste’ is a major success factor in practicing it in the context of ‘Software Engineering’. In simple words, Lean Software Development is the true translation of Lean Manufacturing and Lean IT principles to Software Engineering. This work presents an in-depth analysis on the implication of lean methodologies from both ‘State of Art’ and ‘State of Practice’ in the context of Software Engineering. Objectives: The prime objective of the study is to investigate what methodologies were considered & adopted under lean philosophy and to present relevant evidence on the implication of lean methodologies in reference to what defines ‘lean’ in Software Engineering. An extensive literature review was aimed to find the existing challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were employed by various software organizations to appease their negative impact. Industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing lean experts, with a motive to find the current state of lean implementation in software industry. The outcomes from the systematic literature review (State of Art) and the industry (State of Practice) are comparatively analysed to explore the similarities and differences on the state of lean implication. Finally, a set of guidelines are recommended that would benefit an Industrial Practitioner/Stakeholder/Academic Researcher in practicing the appropriate lean methodology in the context of software engineering. Methods: We conducted a ‘Systematic literature review’ (SLR) by systematically analyzing relevant studies and then interviewed industrial experts to validate our findings. The systematic literature review was conducted according to the guidelines proposed by Dr. Barbara Kitchenham stated in ‘Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews’ article. The thorough review helped us in identifying various challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were practiced in the context of software engineering. The associated benefits of practicing the lean methodologies are also presented. The extensive review included peer reviewed articles from electronic databases such as IEEE Explore, Inspec, Scopus and ISI. In addition to this, we conducted snowball sampling on the references of the selected articles to avoid the potential risk of losing relevant and valuable information. Also, other potential sources of information such as books, theses/dissertations, white papers and website/blog articles are included as a part of Grey Literature. In this study, the articles related to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering were considered. The review included 72 primary studies published between 1993 and 2012. The primary studies were selected based on the following criteria: If they presented the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean mitigation methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) that appeased the negative impact of the identified challenging factors that hampered the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) in general or for a specific development/ Management/ Maintenance improvement activities that lead to the success of software projects in the context of software engineering. If they presented the benefits of practicing lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. The study quality assessment was done based on the quality criteria defined in the ‘Quality assessment criteria checklist’. The data such as Article ID, Article Title, Literature type (Peer- reviewed, Non-peer reviewed), Context of validation of the lean methodology (Industry/Academia), Subjects considered for the study (Researchers/students, Industrial practitioners), Type of article publication (Conference/ Journal/ Books/ Thesis Reports/ Doctoral dissertations/ Other), Research method used in the study (Case Study/ Experiment/ Experience Report/ Not stated/ Secondary Data Analysis/ Literature Review), Context of conducting the research (Industry/ Academia/ Not stated/ Both), Context of validation of the study (Strong/ Medium/ Weak), Publication date & year, Source of the publication, are extracted as a part of Quantitative analysis. The secondary data analysis for both ‘State of Art’ (Systematic literature review) and ‘State of Practice’ (Industry) was carried by performing a generic data analysis designed to answer our research questions. The more specific data such as the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects, the type of lean contribution presented i.e., the methodology being a Tool, Technique, Practice, Principal, Process or a Method, along with the benefits associated on their implication that helped us to answer our research questions are extracted as a part of qualitative analysis from the selected studies. The industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing potential lean experts who had decent experience in lean software development, to find the current state of lean implication in the software industry. In the end, a comparative analysis was performed to clearly understand the state of convergence and divergence between the results from extensive literature review and the industry with respect to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. Results: A total of 72 primary articles were selected for data extraction. 56 articles were selected from the electronic databases that clearly depicted lean implementation in the context of software engineering. 9 articles were selected by conducting snowball sampling i.e. by scrutinizing the references of the selected primary studies and finally the grey literature resulted in 7 articles. Most of the articles discussed about lean implication in the context of software engineering. The depicted lean methodologies were validated in either Industry or Academia. A few articles depicted regarding lean principles and their benefits in the context of software engineering. Most of the selected articles in our study were peer- reviewed. Peer reviewing is a process of evaluating one’s work or performance by an expert in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of work or performance in the particular field. This indicates that the articles considered for data extraction have been reviewed by potential experts in the research domain. Conclusions: This study provided a deeper insight into lean implication in the context of software engineering. The aim of the thesis is to find the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. A total of 54 challenges were identified from the literature review. The 72 primary articles selected from various resources yielded 53 lean methodologies. The lean methodologies were grouped into Principles, practices, tools and methods. Mapping between the identified challenges and the mitigation lean methodologies is presented. Industrial interviews were conducted to find the current state of lean implication in software engineering. A total of 30 challenges were identified from the industry. A total of 40 lean methodologies were identified from the interviews. Comparative analysis was done to find the common challenges and mitigation lean methodologies between the State of art and State of practice. Based on the analysis a set of guidelines are presented at the end of the document. The guidelines benefit an industrial practitioner in practicing the appropriate lean methodology. Keywords: Lean Methodology, Lean software development, lean software management, lean software engineering, Systematic literature review, literature review.
Context: Over the recent years, ‘Lean Software Development’ (LSD) has been emerging as a significant practice in the Software Industry. The inherent nature of ‘Lean’ to efficiently handle frequently changing customer needs by minimizing ‘Waste’ is a major success factor in practicing it in the context of ‘Software Engineering’. In simple words, Lean Software Development is the true translation of Lean Manufacturing and Lean IT principles to Software Engineering. This work presents an in-depth analysis on the implication of lean methodologies from both ‘State of Art’ and ‘State of Practice’ in the context of Software Engineering. Objectives: The prime objective of the study is to investigate what methodologies were considered & adopted under lean philosophy and to present relevant evidence on the implication of lean methodologies in reference to what defines ‘lean’ in Software Engineering. An extensive literature review was aimed to find the existing challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were employed by various software organizations to appease their negative impact. Industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing lean experts, with a motive to find the current state of lean implementation in software industry. The outcomes from the systematic literature review (State of Art) and the industry (State of Practice) are comparatively analysed to explore the similarities and differences on the state of lean implication. Finally, a set of guidelines are recommended that would benefit an Industrial Practitioner/Stakeholder/Academic Researcher in practicing the appropriate lean methodology in the context of software engineering. Methods: We conducted a ‘Systematic literature review’ (SLR) by systematically analyzing relevant studies and then interviewed industrial experts to validate our findings. The systematic literature review was conducted according to the guidelines proposed by Dr. Barbara Kitchenham stated in ‘Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews’ article. The thorough review helped us in identifying various challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were practiced in the context of software engineering. The associated benefits of practicing the lean methodologies are also presented. The extensive review included peer reviewed articles from electronic databases such as IEEE Explore, Inspec, Scopus and ISI. In addition to this, we conducted snowball sampling on the references of the selected articles to avoid the potential risk of losing relevant and valuable information. Also, other potential sources of information such as books, theses/dissertations, white papers and website/blog articles are included as a part of Grey Literature. In this study, the articles related to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering were considered. The review included 72 primary studies published between 1993 and 2012. The primary studies were selected based on the following criteria: If they presented the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean mitigation methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) that appeased the negative impact of the identified challenging factors that hampered the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) in general or for a specific development/ Management/ Maintenance improvement activities that lead to the success of software projects in the context of software engineering. If they presented the benefits of practicing lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. The study quality assessment was done based on the quality criteria defined in the ‘Quality assessment criteria checklist’. The data such as Article ID, Article Title, Literature type (Peer- reviewed, Non-peer reviewed), Context of validation of the lean methodology (Industry/Academia), Subjects considered for the study (Researchers/students, Industrial practitioners), Type of article publication (Conference/ Journal/ Books/ Thesis Reports/ Doctoral dissertations/ Other), Research method used in the study (Case Study/ Experiment/ Experience Report/ Not stated/ Secondary Data Analysis/ Literature Review), Context of conducting the research (Industry/ Academia/ Not stated/ Both), Context of validation of the study (Strong/ Medium/ Weak), Publication date & year, Source of the publication, are extracted as a part of Quantitative analysis. The secondary data analysis for both ‘State of Art’ (Systematic literature review) and ‘State of Practice’ (Industry) was carried by performing a generic data analysis designed to answer our research questions. The more specific data such as the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects, the type of lean contribution presented i.e., the methodology being a Tool, Technique, Practice, Principal, Process or a Method, along with the benefits associated on their implication that helped us to answer our research questions are extracted as a part of qualitative analysis from the selected studies. The industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing potential lean experts who had decent experience in lean software development, to find the current state of lean implication in the software industry. In the end, a comparative analysis was performed to clearly understand the state of convergence and divergence between the results from extensive literature review and the industry with respect to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. Results: A total of 72 primary articles were selected for data extraction. 56 articles were selected from the electronic databases that clearly depicted lean implementation in the context of software engineering. 9 articles were selected by conducting snowball sampling i.e. by scrutinizing the references of the selected primary studies and finally the grey literature resulted in 7 articles. Most of the articles discussed about lean implication in the context of software engineering. The depicted lean methodologies were validated in either Industry or Academia. A few articles depicted regarding lean principles and their benefits in the context of software engineering. Most of the selected articles in our study were peer- reviewed. Peer reviewing is a process of evaluating one’s work or performance by an expert in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of work or performance in the particular field. This indicates that the articles considered for data extraction have been reviewed by potential experts in the research domain. Conclusions: This study provided a deeper insight into lean implication in the context of software engineering. The aim of the thesis is to find the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. A total of 54 challenges were identified from the literature review. The 72 primary articles selected from various resources yielded 53 lean methodologies. The lean methodologies were grouped into Principles, practices, tools and methods. Mapping between the identified challenges and the mitigation lean methodologies is presented. Industrial interviews were conducted to find the current state of lean implication in software engineering. A total of 30 challenges were identified from the industry. A total of 40 lean methodologies were identified from the interviews. Comparative analysis was done to find the common challenges and mitigation lean methodologies between the State of art and State of practice. Based on the analysis a set of guidelines are presented at the end of the document. The guidelines benefit an industrial practitioner in practicing the appropriate lean methodology. Keywords: Lean Methodology, Lean software development, lean software management, lean software engineering, Systematic literature review, literature review.
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Model-Based Software Engineering (MBSE) a été proposé comme une méthodologie prometteuse de développement de logiciels pour surmonter les limites de la méthodologie traditionnelle basée sur la programmation pour faire face à la complexité des systèmes embarqués. MBSE favorise l’utilisation de langages de modélisation pour décrire les systèmes d’une manière abstraite et fournit des moyens pour générer automatiquement de différents artefacts de développement, p.ex. code et documentation, à partir de modèles. Le développement d’un système complexe implique souvent de multiples intervenants qui utilisent différents outils pour modifier les artefacts de développement, le modèle et le code en particulier dans cette thèse. Les modifications apportées aux artefacts évoquent le problème de cohérence qui nécessite un processus de synchronisation pour propager les modifications apportées dans l’un artefact aux autres artefacts. Dans cette étude, le problème de la synchronisation des modèles d’architecture basés sur les éléments UML composite structure (UML-CS) et UML state machine (UML-SM) du langage de l’Unified Modeling Language (UML), et le code orienté objet est présenté. UML-CSs sont utilisés pour décrire l’architecture du logiciel basée sur les composants et UML-SMs pour les comportements discrets liés aux événements des systèmes réactifs. Le premier défi est de permettre une collaboration entre les architectes de logiciels et les programmeurs produisant de modèle et de code, en utilisant différents outils. Il soulève le problème de synchronisation où il existe de modifications simultanées des artefacts. En fait, il existe un écart de perception entre les langages à base de diagramme (langages de modélisation) et les langages textuels (langages de programmation). D’une part, les programmeurs préfèrent souvent utiliser la combinaison familière d’un langage de programmation et d’un environnement de développement intégré. D’autre part, les architectes logiciels, travaillant à des niveaux d’abstraction plus élevés, favorisent l’utilisation des modèles et préfèrent donc les langages à base de diagramme pour décrire l’architecture du système. Le deuxième défi est qu’il existe un écart d’abstraction significatif entre les éléments du modèle et les éléments du code: les éléments UML-CS et UML-SM sont au niveau d’abstraction plus élevé que les éléments du code. L’écart rend la difficulté pour les approches de synchronisation actuelles car il n’y a pas de façon facile de réflecter les modifications du code au modèle. Cette thèse propose une approche automatisée de synchronisation composée de deux principales contributions corrélées. Pour aborder le premier défi, on propose un patron méthodologique générique de synchronisation entre modèle et code. Il consiste en des définitions des fonctionnalités nécessaires et plusieurs processus qui synchronisent le modèle et le code en fonction de plusieurs scénarios définis où les développeurs utilisent différents outils pour modifier le modèle et le code. Cette contribution est indépendante de UML-CSs et UML-SMs. La deuxième contribution traite du deuxième défi et est basée sur les résultats de la première contribution. Dans la deuxième contribution, un mapping bidirectionnel est présentée pour réduire l’écart d’abstraction entre le modèle et le code. Le mapping est un ensemble de correspondances entre les éléments de modèle et ceux de code. Il est utilisé comme entrée principale du patron méthodologique générique de synchronisation entre modèle et code. Plus important, l’utilisation du mapping fournit les fonctionnalités définies dans la première contribution et facilite la synchronisation des éléments de UML-CS et UML-SM et du code. L’approche est évaluée au moyen de multiples simulations et d’une étude de cas
Model-Based Software Engineering (MBSE) has been proposed as a promising software development methodology to overcome limitations of traditional programming-based methodology in dealing with the complexity of embedded systems. MBSE promotes the use of modeling languages for describing systems in an abstract way and provides means for automatically generating different development artifacts, e.g. code and documentation, from models. The development of a complex system often involves multiple stakeholders who use different tools to modify the development artifacts, model and code in particular in this thesis. Artifact modifications must be kept consistent: a synchronization process needs to propagate modifications made in one artifact to the other artifacts. In this study, the problem of synchronizing Unified Modeling Language (UML)-based architecture models, specified by UML composite structure (UML-CS) and UML state machine (UML-SM) elements, and object-oriented code is presented. UML-CSs are used for describing the component-based software architecture and UML-SMs for discrete event-driven behaviors of reactive systems. The first challenge is to enable a collaboration between software architects and programmers producing model and code by using different tools. This raises the synchronization problem of concurrent artifact modifications. In fact, there is a perception gap between diagram-based languages (modeling languages) and text-based languages (programming languages). On the one hand, programmers often prefer to use the more familiar combination of a programming language and an Integrated Development Environment. On the other hand, software architects, working at higher levels of abstraction, tend to favor the use of models, and therefore prefer diagram-based languages for describing the architecture of the system. The second challenge is that there is a significant abstraction gap between the model elements and the code elements: UML-CS andUML-SM elements are at higher level of abstraction than code elements. The gap makes current synchronization approaches hard to be applied since there is no easy way to reflect modifications in code back to model. This thesis proposes an automated synchronization approach that is composed of two main correlated contributions. To address the first challenge, a generic model-code synchronization methodological pattern is proposed. It consists of definitions of necessary functionalities and multiple processes that synchronize model and code based on several defined scenarios where the developers use different tools to modify model and code. This contribution is independent of UML-CSs and UML-SMs. The second contribution deals with the second challenge and is based on the results from the first contribution. In the second contribution, a bidirectional mapping is presented for reducing the abstraction gap between model and code. The mapping is a set of correspondences between model elements and code elements. It is used as main input of the generic model-code synchronization methodological pattern. More importantly, the usage of the mapping provides the functionalities defined in the first contribution and eases the synchronization of UML-CS and UML-SM elements and code. The approach is evaluated by means of multiple simulations and a case study

Context. In recent years there has been observed a significant shift from plan-driven development towards agile, which is considered as a vast improvement to processes. However, it has also been spotted that agile methodologies are hardly ever applied in their pure form. Moreover, hybrid processes as combinations of plan-driven and agile practices emerge. In addition, agile adoption has been reported to result in both: benefits and limitations. Objectives. In this study the following matters are investigated: 1) the commonness of plan driven and agile practices usage, 2) common practices combinations, 3) patterns for agile adoption over time, 4) hybrid development models and 5) the actual effects of agile adoption in terms of benefits and limitations as perceived by practitioners. Methods. The thesis presents an empirical investigation of software development organizations. The objectives are achieved through a targeted survey based on existing evidence and a multidimensional data analysis. The mean for obtaining data is a web-based questionnaire with an interactive board with practices and time indication sliders (to capture applied development models and practices adoption strategies) and hierarchical cumulative voting (to measure the relative significance of benefits and limitations). The data analysis is supported by hierarchical cluster analysis and an extended hierarchical voting analysis framework (EHV-F). Results. In total, 45 practitioners have been successfully surveyed. The commonness of 7 plan-driven and 14 agile practices usage was investigated. The relative significance of agile adoption benefits (32 factors in 10 categories) and limitations (23 factors in 7 categories) was measured with respect to global view (all respondents and perspectives), different agile adoption strategies as well as distinguished development models. Conclusions. It is concluded that agile practices dominate over plan-driven, however, hybrid approaches, being combinations of plan-driven and agile practices, are frequently applied. It is also concluded that some practices are commonly used together since they facilitate each other (e.g. continuous integration with testing which facilitate short iterations and releases). Some agile practices are still unsuccessfully applied and eventually abandoned (e.g. pair programming), what should be further investigated by researchers. Incremental agile adoption strategy was found to be the most beneficial approach. It is also concluded that agile adoption leads first of all to improved quality of working life, increased knowledge transfer and improved verification and validation processes. On the other hand, agile adoption is very demanding since it requires high professional skills from development teams as well as managers. Hence, more resources should be devoted to training on agile for all the parties involved in development. Agile is still commonly considered to be poorly scalable. Moreover, the quality of design with agile methods is not considered as a benefit at all. These areas should be further investigated by researchers.

This research studies currently available maintenance methodologies for expert system knowledge bases and taxonomically classifies them according to the functions they perform. The classification falls into two broad categories. These are: (1) Methodologies for building a more maintainable expert system knowledge base. This section covers techniques applicable to the development phases. Software engineering approaches as well as other approaches are discussed. (2) Methodologies for maintaining an existing knowledge base. This section is concerned with the continued maintenance of an existing knowledge base. It is divided into three subsections. The first subsection discusses tools and techniques which aid the understanding of a knowledge base. The second looks at tools which facilitate the actual modification of the knowledge base, while the last secttion examines tools used for the verification or validation of the knowledge base. Every main methodology or tool selected for this study is analysed according to the function it was designed to perform (or its objective); the concept or principles behind the tool or methodology: and its implementation details. This is followed by a general comment at the end of the analysis. Although expert systems as a rule contain significant amount of information related to the user interface, database interface, integration with conventional software for numerical calculations, integration with other knowledge bases through black boarding systems or network interactions, this research is confined to the maintenance of the knowledge base only and does not address the maintenance of these interfaces. Also not included in this thesis are Truth Maintenance Systems. While a Truth Maintenance System (TMS) automatically updates a knowledge base during execution time, these update operations are not considered 'maintenance' in the sense as used in this thesis. Maintenance in the context of this thesis refers to perfective, adaptive, and corrective maintenance (see introduction to chapter 4). TMS on the other hand refers to a collection of techniques for doing belief revision (Martin, 1990) . That is, a TMS maintains a set of beliefs or facts in the knowledge base to ensure that they remain consistent during execution time. From this perspective, TMS is not regarded as a knowledge base maintenance tool for the purpose of this study.

Integrated development environment products, called CASE technology by practitioners, are being purchased by enterprises to assist systems analysts with the analysis and design of information systems. This work surveys users of a commercially available CASE product. Ninty-one users from 47 enterprises in the U.S. and Canada responded to the personal computer based survey. This work analyses the perceptions of the respondents in an attempt to determine productivity improvement over manual methods. Using the perceptions of the respondents, the component parts of the CASE product were rank ordered in terms of improved productivity. In addition to this, a psychometric preference scaling method was used to interpret the relatedness of the component parts to each other, again based on the perceptions of the respondents.

Actualmente existe una creciente demanda de sistemas flexibles, adaptables y con gran escalabilidad para apoyar las interacciones de personas e instituciones distribuidas en entornos heterogéneos. Esto se debe principalmente al incremento en la necesidad de trabajo colaborativo y la descentralización de los procesos en muchos dominios de aplicación. Por lo general, estas aplicaciones de software deben seguir legislaciones y normativas específicas, es decir, las entidades que participan en el sistema tienen derechos, deberes y restricciones específicas. Al igual que en otros trabajos del área, en esta tesis se utiliza el término sistemas normativos abiertos para referirse a los sistemas de este tipo. El desarrollo de sistemas normativos abiertos puede producir importantes beneficios para las compañías que los usen, ya que permiten la comunicación de instituciones, entidades heterogéneas y diferentes dispositivos con el fin de lograr tanto los objetivos globales del sistema como los individuales de cada institución y entidad. Sin embargo, también hay algunas cuestiones importantes que potencialmente pueden complicar el análisis, diseño e implementación de estos sistemas. La mayoría de estos problemas están relacionados con la interoperabilidad de sus procesos, la privacidad, la combinación de los objetivos individuales y la combinación de las restricciones y la legislación de cada una de las entidades del sistema. Por lo tanto, es necesario el uso de métodos de ingeniería del software y herramientas de desarrollo para hacer frente a estos problemas y guiar a los desarrolladores durante el proceso de desarrollo. La tecnología basada en sistemas multiagente (SMA) es considerada una buena candidata para el desarrollo de sistemas normativos abiertos. Durante los últimos años, el uso de las tecnologías SMA se ha incrementado no sólo en el ámbito académico, sino también en el desarrollo e implementación de aplicaciones industriales. Los SMA se han establecido como un paradigma de la ingeniería de software para la creación de sistemas adaptativos complejos, en entornos distribuidos y heterogéneos. Esta tesis se centra en el análisis y diseño de sistemas normativos abiertos utilizando la tecnología SMA. Algunas metodologías SMA se dedican al desarrollo de sistemas de este tipo. Sin embargo, después de analizar en qué medida las metodologías SMA actuales soportan el análisis y el diseño de estos sistemas, podemos concluir que todavía hay importantes problemas a resolver en el área. Algunos de estos problemas son la integración del contexto normativo del sistema durante el proceso de desarrollo, la falta de directrices para identificar y formalizar este contexto normativo, la falta de técnicas de validación y verificación que garanticen la coherencia del diseño final respecto a los requisitos del sistema, la coherencia entre los objetivos individuales, y la coherencia de las restricciones de cada entidad respecto al contexto normativo del sistema global. La principal aportación de esta tesis es una nueva metodología SMA llamada ROMAS (Sistemas Multiagente Regulados y Abiertos), que se centra en el análisis y diseño de procesos para el desarrollo de sistemas multiagente organizacionales, donde los agentes interactúan por medio de servicios estándares, y donde las relaciones sociales y contractuales se formalizan mediante normas y contratos. La metodología ROMAS define un proceso de desarrollo orientado a agentes y proporciona guías específicas para identificar y formalizar el marco normativo del sistema, así como las comunicaciones y los intercambios de servicios y recursos. ROMAS especifica tanto el comportamiento global del sistema como las características individuales de cada entidad. En la metodología ROMAS, agentes, roles y organizaciones se definen a través de una estructura social formal basada en un arquitectura orientada a servicios. Aquí, las organizaciones representan un conjunto de personas e instituciones que tienen que coor
Garcia Marques, ME. (2013). Engineering Regulated Open Multiagent Systems [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/28588
TESIS

Today’s software companies face the challenges of highly distributed development projects and constant changing requirements. To be competitive, the software time to market has to be reduced as much as possible while keeping the expected quality. Development methodologies try to address this challenges by introducing new practices, techniques and methods for communication, requirements management, quality assurance, etc. This thesis proposes the adoption of relevant Free/Libre/Open Source Software practices to improve industrial developments. Many FLOSS projects have proven very successful, producing high quality products with steady frequent releases. The selection of the FLOSS best practices that would benefit industrial developments, and its adaptation for a corporate environment is the aim of this study. To achieve this goal, a framework to compare FLOSS and industrial development methodologies has been created and executed. Three successful FLOSS projects where selected as study targets, as well as two Ericsson’s projects. The framework served to identify FLOSS methodology strengths and compare them with the Ericsson projects. Analysing the significant differences resulting from this comparison, FLOSS best practices were tailored to fit industrial development environments. The final results of the thesis are six adoption opportunities that aim to improve software quality and overall development productivity while increasing practitioners’ motivation and commitment.

Exfiltrating or tampering with certain business logic, algorithms, and data can harm the security and privacy of both organizations and end users. Collectively referred to as sensitive program information (SPI), these building blocks are part and parcel of modern software systems in domains ranging from enterprise applications to cyberphysical setups. Hence, protecting SPI has become one of the most salient challenges of modern software development. However, several fundamental obstacles stand on the way of effective SPI protection: (1) understanding and locating the SPI for any realistically sized codebase by hand is hard; (2) manually isolating SPI to protect it is burdensome and error-prone; (3) if SPI is passed across distributed components within and across devices, it becomes vulnerable to security and privacy attacks. To address these problems, this dissertation research innovates in the realm of automated program analysis, code transformation, and novel programming abstractions to improve the state of the art in SPI protection. Specifically, this dissertation comprises three interrelated research thrusts that: (1) design and develop program analysis and programming support for inferring the usage semantics of program constructs, with the goal of helping developers understand and identify SPI; (2) provide powerful programming abstractions and tools that transform code automatically, with the goal of helping developers effectively isolate SPI from the rest of the codebase; (3) provide programming mechanism for distributed managed execution environments that hides SPI, with the goal of enabling components to exchange SPI safely and securely. The novel methodologies, techniques, and software tools, supported by programming abstractions, automated program analysis, and code transformation of this dissertation research lay the groundwork for establishing a secure, understandable, and efficient foundation for protecting SPI. This dissertation is based on 4 conference papers, presented at TrustCom'20, GPCE'20, GPCE'18, and ManLang'17, as well as 1 journal paper, published in Journal of Computer Languages (COLA).
Doctor of Philosophy
Some portions of a computer program can be sensitive, referred to as sensitive program information (SPI). By compromising SPI, attackers can hurt user security/privacy. It is hard for developers to identify and protect SPI, particularly for large programs. This dissertation introduces novel methodologies, techniques, and software tools that facilitate software developments tasks concerned with locating and protecting SPI.

Masters of Science
In a world where technology is advancing at a very rapid pace, global competition has significantly increased, and this is putting pressure on software companies to produce quality software. It has therefore become critically important to manage well the implementation of software engineering projects by employing effective methods that ensure the best product is produced. The most popular software project implementation methodologies are the Traditional methods and Agile methods. This research explored these two methodologies by comparing the strength and weakness of both approaches. The research was conducted using a constructionist epistemology with a critical inquiry using the grounded theory methodology, applying both quantitative and qualitative methods to the case studies. Findings were collected through participant observation using a designed questionnaire targeting a selected sample of the study population. This sample of the population consisted of Ecommerce organizations in the Western Cape province of South Africa to establish which of the Traditional or Agile methods would best lead to the successful implementation of Ecommerce software engineering projects. The research results showed that the Agile methodology was the preferred and recommended approach. Very few participants of the research supported the Traditional approach to still be considered and used for projects with well-known end goals. An Ecommerce website prototype for a local Cape Town business was constructed as following the Agile approach to measure and validate the findings of the research. The prototype was built successfully from conception to the final delivery product and on time confirming the Agile approach as best for Ecommerce software development. In conclusion, the Agile methodology is the choice approach based on reviewed literature, the research results, and the prototype construction. These results will help in critical decision making regarding an appropriate development methodology to follow for the Ecommerce industry in the Western Cape.

Abstract—Background: Software Process Improvement (SPI) maturity models have been developed to assist organizations to enhance software quality. Agile methodologies are used to ensure productivity and quality of a software product. Amongst others they are applied in Small and Medium – sized Enterprises (SMEs). However, little is known about the combination of Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models regarding SMEs and the results that could emerge, as all the current SPI models are addressed to larger organizations and all these improvement models are difficult to be used by Small and Medium – sized firms. Combinations of these methodologies could lead to improvement in the quality of the software products, better project management methodologies and organized software development framework. Objectives: The aim of this study is to identify the main Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models applied in SMEs, the combinations of these methodologies, and the results that could emerge. Through these combinations, new software development frameworks are proposed. What is more, the results of this study can be used as a guide with the appropriate combination for each SME, as a better project management methodology or as improvement in the current software engineering practices. Methods: A Systematic Literature Review was conducted, resulting in 71 selected relevant papers ranging from 2001 to 2013. Besides, a survey has been performed from June 2013 to October 2013, including 49 participants. Results: Seven Agile methodologies and six different SPI maturity models were identified and discussed. Furthermore, the combination of eight different Agile methodologies and Software Process Improvement maturity models is presented, and as well as their benefits and drawbacks that could emerge in Small and Medium – sized firms. Conclusion: The majority of the Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models are addressed to large or very large enterprises. Thus, little research has been conducted for SMEs. The combinations of the Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models are usually performed in experimental stages. However, it has been observed that such type of combination could present numerous benefits, which can also be applicable in SMEs as well. The combinations that are most common are the CMMI and XP, CMMI and Scrum, CMMI and Six Sigma, and the PRINCE2 and DSDM.
0034-636835645

Organizações desenvolvedoras de software enfrentam hoje em dia o desafio de atuar concomitantemente em projetos que exigem tanto a prática de Metodologias Tradicionais quanto a de Metodologias Ágeis, metodologias de desenvolvimento de software com características opostas e conflitantes. Para atender a essa demanda as empresas têm adotado a Ambidestria Organizacional no desenvolvimento de softwares, criando estruturas organizacionais, processos e equipes capacitadas para atuar com ambas as metodologias de forma simultânea. Vários modelos podem ser adotados para a criação da Ambidestria Organizacional, mas pouco se sabe sobre como cada um deles surge e se desenvolve nas empresas. Nesta pesquisa objetivou-se conhecer um dos aspectos que podem influenciar a seleção do modelo de Ambidestria: as barreiras que uma organização pode enfrentar ao introduzir uma Metodologia Ágil em ambiente que já pratica alguma modalidade de Metodologia Tradicional. Através de dados secundários e do método de Estudo de Casos foi possível evidenciar a influência de algumas dessas barreiras no tipo de ambidestria escolhido pelas empresas, concluindo ainda que os impactos das barreiras de introdução de uma metodologia ágil podem ser muito diferentes quando comparamos sua ocorrência entre empresas desenvolvedoras de software para uso próprio e empresas desenvolvedoras de software sob encomenda, influenciando-as de modo diferente na escolha do modelo para a criação da Ambidestria Organizacional. Os resultados obtidos e as conclusões presentes neste estudo estabelecem, portanto, importante contribuição para pesquisas futuras, evidenciando que estudos sobre a Ambidestria Organizacional no campo do desenvolvimento de software devem ser realizados levando-se em consideração os diferentes perfis de empresa e as relações dessas empresas com seus clientes de projeto.
Software development organizations face nowadays challenges in conducting simultaneous projects, applying at the same time both Traditional and Agile Methodologies, software development processes with opposite and conflicting characteristics. In order respond to this challenges this companies adopt Organizational Ambidexterity in software development, creating organizational structures, processes and teams able to deal with both practices simultaneously. Different models exist for creating Organizational Ambidexterity, but there is a lack of knowledge about how each of these models emerge and grow at the companies. In this research we focused in understanding just one of the topics that influences the selection of the ambidexterity model: the barriers companies faces adopting Agile Methodologies on an environment where Traditional Methodologies are in use. Through secondary data analysis and Case Study methodology it was possible to reveal evidences of the influences that some of these barriers puts over the ambidexterity model selection, also concluding that barriers in agile methodologies introduction may be different when comparing their effects over on-demand software development companies and companies which develop software for their own use, influencing both their choices of ambidexterity model in different ways. The results and conclusions we present in this work, bring important contributions for future research, showing that future Organizational Ambidexterity in software development needs to attempt to different companies profile and their relationship with the projects customer.

Aims and Objectives: Information Technology (IT) service management has gained importance in the recent years. A service is a means of delivering value to the customers by facilitating outcomes, which customers want to achieve without ownership of the specific costs and risks. As IT services’ efficient execution revolves around its implementation through software management, the need for understanding the relationship between IT service management and software management has become crucial. The aim of this thesis is to explore this relationship. Methodology: We designed this thesis study as an exploratory study. First, a systematic literature review was conducted to explore the role of software engineering in IT service management and the interconnection between them. Then, we performed a case study at Telenor Sweden AB by conducting interviews in order to further investigate the intersecting elements between ITIL v3 Framework, which is an international standard for IT service management and software engineering considering ISO/IEC 12207 standard on software processes. Results: The outcome of this thesis is a mapping between IT service management and software engineering considering ISO/IEC 12207 for software engineering processes and ITIL V3 Framework for IT service management. These mappings have been recommended to use by the case company to incorporate ‘in-house’ software models in line with ITIL V3 Framework implementation. Conclusion: Though ITIL V3 framework gives in depth guidelines for IT Service Management, it does not give sufficient details for managing applications that constitute IT Services. As ITIL V3 is a framework, it is flexible to accommodate the software engineering processes defined in ISO/IEC 12207 standard. Though we brought three-way relationship between ITIL V3, ISO/IEC 12207 and case company’s software process models, it is found out that replacing existing models with ISO/IEC 12207 shall be difficult as it would be two new standards for the employees. The in house software process models are already inspired from standards. In this thesis, we provide a mapping between ITIL V3 and inhouse models of the case company to support the implementation of ITIL V3 for managing software applications to realize IT Services.
The thesis gives mapping between ITIL V3 Framework and ISO/IEC 12207 Software Engineering processes to incorporate them in integrated Service Management and Software Management
+46762509249

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.

Business-IT alignment has been a top research topic for three decades now and consistently ranks high on CIO priorities and concerns. In spite of its seeming advantages, sustainable business-IT alignment remains elusive in practice. This can be attributed to the language and knowledge gaps which impede mutual understanding between business and IT stakeholders. It can also be attributed to the limitations imposed by approaching alignment solely from a strategic perspective. This thesis argues for an ontology-based framework that bridges the language and knowledge gaps through closer interaction between business and IT stakeholders throughout the software development and project management lifecycles, especially at the requirements engineering stage. Attempts at achieving sustainable business-IT alignment predominantly focus on strategic alignment and have not been successful for various reasons. Firstly, driving down alignment initiatives to the operational and tactical levels is challenging. Secondly, it is difficult to operationalize the metrics used for evaluating alignment maturity at strategic levels. These limitations are less pronounced at the functional levels of an organization. It is at these levels that business strategies are executed and interaction between business and IT personnel is most frequent. The interaction between business and IT stakeholders in the execution of IT projects presents an opportunity that can be leveraged to drive alignment maturity. The proposed framework is discussed in terms of its underpinning hypotheses, workflows, tool design and implementation, its use with a third party framework and tool. Antecedents to operational and tactical alignment such as quality, reuse, communication, learning, and shared understanding, are proposed as a practical means of achieving sustainable alignment maturity. The framework is applied to real world, business-critical projects in a top global financial services organization and validated using descriptive statistical analysis and structural equation modelling techniques. Contributions made through the study are highlighted. This includes the Alignment Forces Model which unifies the proposed framework and its support tool within software development and project management lifecycles. The Alignment Forces model and how it can be applied in practice is presented. Results of the quantitative data analyses indicate support for the arguments for the framework towards improving business-IT alignment, however with some limitations. Results also indicate support for the hypotheses for the antecedents to sustainable alignment maturity at lower organizational levels put forward. Finally, suggestions on furthering the study, addressing its limitations, and refining the framework and tool are articulated.

The scientific software development has particularities that, frequently, differ from usual rules in commercial software production. The emerging requirements that appear while the development process is running, needs for often communication between stakeholders (researchers) and developers, and necessary ways to customize the process, make this kind of software building activity more iterative than conventional. Agile methodologies for software development arise as alternatives for prescriptive methods and, as analyzed in this research, have the answer for how to build software in dynamics environments. In this work is proposed a management method for the scientific software development process. The agile methodologies Scrum and Extreme Programming were tailored to reach the peculiarity of scientific process, and the method definition. The model was applied in real projects in a small business company for validation and, through a qualitative analysis, the improvement of the development process could be checked.
O desenvolvimento de software científico possui particularidades que, frequentemente, diferem das regras comumente utilizadas na produção de softwares comerciais. Novos requisitos que surgem no decorrer do desenvolvimento, necessidades de comunicação constante com os stakeholders (pesquisadores) e adaptação nos processos fazem da produção desse tipo software uma atividade mais interativa do que o convencional. Metodologias ágeis para desenvolvimento de software surgem como alternativas aos métodos planejados ou prescritivos e, como analisado, atendem às carências decorrentes da elaboração de softwares em ambientes dinâmicos. Neste trabalho, é proposto um método de gestão para o processo de desenvolvimento de software científico. Na definição do método, combinaram-se as metodologias ágeis Scrum e Extreme Programming levando-se em consideração as características do processo científico. O método foi aplicado em projetos reais de uma microempresa de base tecnológica para sua validação e, através de uma análise qualitativa, pode-se verificar a melhoria dos processos de desenvolvimento da empresa.

Generalized hyper competitiveness in the world markets has determined the need to offer better products to potential and actual clients in order to mark an advantagefrom other competitors. To ensure the production of an adequate product, enterprises need to work on the efficiency and efficacy of their business processes (BPs) by means of the construction of Interactive Information Systems (IISs, including Interactive Multimedia Documents) so that they are processed more fluidly and correctly.The construction of the correct IIS is a major task that can only be successful if the needs from every intervenient are taken into account. Their requirements must bedefined with precision, extensively analyzed and consequently the system must be accurately designed in order to minimize implementation problems so that the IIS isproduced on schedule and with the fewer mistakes as possible. The main contribution of this thesis is the proposal of Goals, a software (engineering) construction process which aims at defining the tasks to be carried out in order to develop software. This process defines the stakeholders, the artifacts, and the techniques that should be applied to achieve correctness of the IIS. Complementarily, this process suggests two methodologies to be applied in the initial phases of the lifecycle of the Software Engineering process: Process Use Cases for the phase of requirements, and; MultiGoals for the phases of analysis and design. Process Use Cases is a UML-based (Unified Modeling Language), goal-driven and use case oriented methodology for the definition of functional requirements. It uses an information oriented strategy in order to identify BPs while constructing the enterprise’s information structure, and finalizes with the identification of use cases within the design of these BPs. This approach provides a useful tool for both activities of Business Process Management and Software Engineering. MultiGoals is a UML-based, use case-driven and architectural centric methodology for the analysis and design of IISs with support for Multimedia. It proposes the analysis of user tasks as the basis of the design of the: (i) user interface; (ii) the system behaviour that is modeled by means of patterns which can combine Multimedia and standard information, and; (iii) the database and media contents. This thesis makes the theoretic presentation of these approaches accompanied with examples from a real project which provide the necessary support for the understanding of the used techniques.
Orientador Professor Doutor Paulo Nazareno Maia Sampaio

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between organizational and national culture and the use and effectiveness of systems development methodologies. Various different aspects of both culture and systems development methodologies are analysed. The first aspect studied is the state of systems development methodology use in South Africa. The results indicate that 74% of the organizations that participated in this study use a systems development methodology. Relationships between horizontal use of systems development methodologies and the success of the IS system and the success of the development process are also found. This relationship shows that when the systems development methodology knowledge is used in a bigger proportion of projects and by a bigger proportion of people, then both the development process and the IS system will be more successful. A relationship is also found that exists between organizational culture and system development methodologies. Organizations with a more hierarchical culture have been using SDMs longer than other organizational cultures. Relationships between national culture and systems development methodologies are also studied. The results show that when people prefer to work in a group (low individualism), the systems development methodology knowledge will be used more horizontally in the organization. The results also show relationships between the success of the IS system, the success of development process and the national and organizational cultures. When managers involve people at lower levels in the organizations in the decision making process, the developed IS system is more successful. The results show that organizations with a more developmental culture will have a more successful development system. The more an organization have a rational culture the more successful the IS system is perceived to be.
Thesis (MSc (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

View John Huân Vũ's thesis presentation at http://youtu.be/y3bzNmkTr-c. In 2001, the ACM and IEEE Computing Curriculum stated that it was necessary to address "the need to develop implementation models that are international in scope and could be practiced in universities around the world." With increasing connectivity through the internet, the move towards a global economy and growing use of technology places software internationalization as a more important concern for developers. However, there has been a "clear shortage in terms of numbers of trained persons applying for entry-level positions" in this area. Eric Brechner, Director of Microsoft Development Training, suggested five new courses to add to the computer science curriculum due to the growing "gap between what college graduates in any field are taught and what they need to know to work in industry." He concludes that "globalization and accessibility should be part of any course of introductory programming," stating: A course on globalization and accessibility is long overdue on college campuses. It is embarrassing to take graduates from a college with a diverse student population and have to teach them how to write software for a diverse set of customers. This should be part of introductory software development. Anything less is insulting to students, their family, and the peoples of the world. There is very little research into how the subject of software internationalization should be taught to meet the major requirements of the industry. The research question of the thesis is thus, "Is there a framework for software internationalization that has been validated against industry requirements?" The answer is no. The framework "would promote communication between academia and industry ... that could serve as a common reference point in discussions." Since no such framework for software internationalization currently exists, one will be developed here. The contribution of this thesis includes a provisional framework to prepare graduates to internationalize software and a validation of the framework against industry requirements. The requirement of this framework is to provide a portable and standardized set of requirements for computer science and software engineering programs to teach future graduates.

A tecnologia de agentes tem sido reconhecida como um paradigma promissor em sistemas educacionais da nova geração. Entretanto, o esforço e inflexibilidade de algumas metodologias próprias para agentesacarretam num alto custo, tempo e adaptação de escopo. Este trabalho visaavaliar alternativas de desenvolvimento de um jogo educacional médico orientado a agentes, através da aplicação de um estudo de caso, com o intuito de verificar se metodologias próprias para implementação de sistemas multiagentes trazem benefícios no resultado final da implementação do jogo, e também se os resultados alcançados na comparação de processos de desenvolvimento de cunho tradicional e ágil fazem diferença no resultado final. Desta forma, este trabalho compara três metodologias baseadas nos conceitos da Engenharia de Software através de um estudo de caso, sendo elas: O-MaSE que é uma metodologiatradicional de desenvolvimento de sistemas multiagentes e utiliza um processo de desenvolvimento tradicional; AgilePASSI que é baseada no processo de desenvolvimento ágil e específica para sistemas multiagentes; e, por último, Scrum que é uma metodologia ágil, não sendo específica para implementação de sistemas multiagentes
The agent technology has been recognized as a promising paradigm in educational systems of the new generation. However, the effort and inflexibility of some specific methodologies entail a high cost, time and adaptation scope. This work aims to validate options for developing an educational medical game oriented agents by applying an experiment in order to verify that methodologies specific to implement multi-agent systems provide benefits in the result of the implementation of the game, and also the results achieved by comparison of traditional and agile development processes makes a difference in the outcome. Thus, this paper compares three approaches based on the concepts of software engineering through an experiment, as follows: O-MaSE is a traditional methodology for the development of multi-agent systems and uses a traditional development process; AgilePASSI which is based on agile and specific development for multi-agent systems; and finally, Scrum that is an agile methodology, not specific to implementation of multi-agent systems.

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CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Nos dias atuais uma boa gerência de projetos tem se tornado um fator competitivo no mercado pois influencia diretamente na qualidade do software. Muitas empresas e organizações voltadas para o desenvolvimento de software investem na melhoria de seus processos de desenvolvimento. No entanto, o mercado atual está exigindo destas empresas uma maior rapidez e uma adaptação a ambientes de negócio bastante dinâmicos. Para atender a esta realidade surgiram as metodologias ágeis que dão suporte a esta nova realidade. No entanto, as ferramentas atuais de gerência de projetos mais utilizadas não apresentam uma solução que permite o planejamento integrado de atividades gerenciais e de atividades de desenvolvimento. Esta deficiência de integração pode resultar em distorções no planejamento de projetos ocasionando atrasos na entrega do software. Diante disso, o objetivo deste trabalho foi criar um ambiente de gerência de software para metodologias ágeis que permitisse uma gerência de projetos de software de forma personalizada em ambientes de desenvolvimento que utilizam conceitos e características de metodologias ágeis. Para isso ser possível, foi definido um modelo dinâmico e modular que contempla todos os aspectos relacionados à gerência de projetos e metodologias ágeis que pode ser instanciado gerando modelos concretos específicos para cada projeto. Esta dinamicidade dada ao modelo foi o grande diferencial frente aos outros trabalhos avaliados. Baseado no modelo abstrato proposto foi criado um ambiente de gerência de projetos que explorou todo o seu potencial. Este ambiente é apoiado por um conjunto de agentes de software que mantêm o modelo concreto atualizado. Sobre o modelo concreto, podem ser extraídos relatórios gerenciais e gráficos de gantt dinâmicos que o deixam ainda mais flexível, de forma a dar ao gestor do projeto uma visão macro e precisa do andamento das atividades. Como forma de validar o trabalho proposto, foi realizado um estudo de caso em uma empresa externa. A aplicação desenvolvida foi utilizada durante o desenvolvimento de um projeto real e trouxe como resultado concreto uma maior segurança para a gestão de projetos. Sua utilização permitiu detectar falhas rapidamente dando mais tempo para ajustar os impactos no cronograma, antes feitos somente através de conversas individuais ou reuniões de acompanhamento diretamente com a equipe.
Nowadays a good project management has become a competitive factor in the market because it directly influences the quality of software. Many companies and organizations for the development of software invest in improving their development processes. However, the current market is requiring these companies to more quickly and adapt to highly dynamic business environments. To meet this reality emerged agile methodologies that support this new reality. However, current tools in project management more used does not have a solution that enables integrated planning of management activities and development activities. This deficiency of integration can result in distortions in the planning of projects causing delays in delivery of the software. Therefore, the objective was to create an environment management software that allows an agile project management software in a customized way in development environments that use concepts and characteristics of agile methodologies. To make this possible, we defined a modular dynamic model and covers all aspects related to project management and agile methodologies that can be instantiated by generating concrete models for each specific project. This dynamics model was given to the great advantage compared to other studies evaluated. Based on the proposed model was created a project management environment that exploited its full potential. This environment is supported by a set of software agents that maintain the upgraded concrete model. On the concrete model can be extracted and management reports gantt dynamic that makes them even more flexible so as to give the project manager and have a macro view of the progress of activities. In order to validate the proposed work, we performed a case study in a foreign company. The developed application was used during the development of a real project as a concrete result and brought greater security to project management. Its use enabled to detect failures quickly giving more time to adjust to the impacts on schedule, before being made only through individual conversations or meetings to follow up directly with the team.

Localization of Drosophila embryos in images is a fundamental step in an automatic computational system for the exploration of gene-gene interaction on Drosophila. Contour extraction of embryonic images is challenging due to many variations in embryonic images. In the thesis work, we develop a localization framework based on the analysis of connected components of edge pixels in a scale space. We propose criteria to select optimal scales for embryonic localization. Furthermore, we propose a scale mapping strategy to compress the range of a scale space in order to improve the efficiency of the localization framework. The effectiveness of the proposed framework and the scale mapping strategy are validated in our experiments.

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
A modelagem orientada a agentes surge como paradigma no desenvolvimento de software, haja vista a quantidade de iniciativas e estudos que remetem à utilização de agentes de software como solução para tratar de problemas mais complexos. Apesar da popularidade de utilização de agentes, especialistas esbarram na falta de universalidade de uma metodologia para construção dos Sistemas Multiagentes (MAS), pois estas acabam pecando pelo excesso ou falta de soluções para modelar o problema. Esta dissertação propõe o uso de uma Ontologia sobre Metodologias Multiagentes, seguindo os princípios da Engenharia de Métodos Situacionais que se propõe a usar fragmentos de métodos para construção de metodologias baseados na especificidade do projeto em desenvolvimento. O objetivo do estudo é sedimentar o conhecimento na área de Metodologias Multiagentes, auxiliando o engenheiro de software a escolher a melhor metodologia ou o melhor fragmento de metodologia capaz de modelar um Sistema Multiagentes.
The agent-oriented modeling emerges as a paradigm in software development, considering the amount of initiatives and studies that refer to the use of software agents as a solution to address more complex problems. Despite the popularity of using agents, experts bump in the lack of universality of a methodology for the construction of Multiagent Systems (MAS), as they end up sinning by excess or lack of solutions to model the problem. This thesis proposes the use of an Ontology based in Methodologies for Multi-Agent Systems, following the principles of Situational Method Engineering, which proposes to use fragments of methods for constructing methodologies based on the specificity of the development project. The aim of this work is to consolidate the knowledge in the area of Multiagent Methodologies by helping the software engineering to choose the best methodology or the best fragment method able to model a specific Multiagent System.

As metodologias ágeis e em especial a Programação eXtrema (XP) surgem como um contraponto aos métodos tradicionais de desenvolvimento de software. Nos encontramos em um momento no qual considera-se aceitável encontrar defeitos em programas de computador, até mesmo naqueles sistemas pelos quais temos que pagar muito dinheiro. Melhorar o ensino de técnicas para que equipes possam colaborar no desenvolvimento de software de qualidade é essencial para que esta área do conhecimento alcance a maturidade que esperamos. O ensino de XP é uma tarefa relativamente complexa pois exige que pessoas passem por uma mudança cultural, para aceitar seus valores, princípios e práticas. Diferentes organizações precisam adaptar a metodologia para que ela funcione bem em seu contexto local. Encontrar maneiras de facilitar o ensino e a adoção das práticas ágeis é fundamental para melhorar a qualidade do software desenvolvido no país. Este trabalho pesquisa o ensino de XP em contextos acadêmicos, governamentais e industriais. Três estudos de caso foram conduzidos e analisados para sugerir padrões que podem auxiliar o ensino da metodologia por um educador em qualquer contexto.
Agile methodologies, specially eXtreme Programming (XP), appear as a counterpoint to traditional software development methods. We live in a moment were it is considered acceptable to find bugs in computer programs, even those for which we pay a lot of money. It is essential to improve the way we teach techniques with which teams can collaborate on the development of quality software so that this area of knowledge reaches the maturity we wish. Teaching XP is a relatively complex task because it implies that people must go through a cultural change to accept its values, principles, and practices. Different organizations need to adapt the methodology so that it will work well in their local context. Finding ways to facilitate teaching and adopting agile practices is fundamental to improve the quality of software being developed in the country. This work researches the process of teaching XP in academic, governmental and industrial con- texts. Three case studies were conducted and analyzed so that we could suggest patterns that can support educators teaching the methodology in any context.

The integration and interoperability of autonomous and heterogeneous electronic government (e-government) systems of government departments and agencies for a seamless services delivery to citizens through one-stop e-government portals remain challenging issues in egovernment development. In recent years, Semantic Web technologies have emerged as promising solutions to these problems. Semantic Web technologies base on ontology allow the description and specification of electronic services (e-services), making it easy to compose, match, map and merge e-services and facilitate their semantic integration and interoperability. However, a unified and comprehensive methodology that provides structured guidelines for the semantic-driven planning and implementation of e-government systems does not exist yet. This study presents a methodology framework for the semantic-driven development of future e-government systems. The features of maturity models, software engineering and Semantic Web domains are investigated and employed to draw and specify the methodology framework. Thereafter, the semantic content of the methodology framework is further specified using ontology building methodology and Semantic Web ontology languages and platforms. The study would be useful to e-government developers, particularly those of developing countries where there is little or no practice of semantic content development in e-government processes as well as where little progress has been made towards the development of one-stop e-government portals for seamless services delivery to citizens. Part of the study would also be of interest to novice Semantic Web developers who might use it as a starting point for further investigations.
Thesis (Ph.D. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

By means of a systemic approach toward analysis and design of complex systems, we introduce the issue of implementing open computational systems on service-oriented architectures. We start by studying general systems theory, as it accounts for analysis and modeling of complex systems, and then compare three different implementation strategies toward system implementation. As such, the comparison is grounded in the notion of supporting architectures and, more specifically, in the practical case of a service-oriented layered architecture for communicating entities (SOLACE).
More material can be found on http://www.soclab.bth.se

Choosing the Software Development Methodology is the very first step of any project; thus,has been a hot topic among, both, practitioners and academic people. After using plandrivensoftware development methodologies software development researchers came up withthe idea of agile software development methodologies as a masterpiece. Although, failurestories of some teams brought about fading the idea that agile methodologies are thebest recipe for any kind of development project. Considering the lack of studies in helpingpractitioners to select the most appropriate agile software methodology, this study aims atprovide the software development manager with a thorough knowledge of agile methodologiesand the criteria that should be considered, while selecting one of them. A case study is used asan empirical support.
Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Agile principles for software development are now the industry standard for innovative projects. Agile is often hailed for being flexible, but there is also a commonly held 'truth' that agile principles and software security do not work well together. For this reason it is not uncommon to place all security responsibilities with a separate team, which goes against the agile principles of being team-centered and may affect flexibility or timeframe of a project. Additionally, software security is difficult and requires extensive experience and knowledge, something that varies a lot among software developers. This study presents a threat modeling process tailored for the specific needs and capabilities of the agile developer team. The process combines features of attack trees and abuser stories with other supplementary techniques in a pedagogical instruction manual to create an accessible and easy-to-get-started method intended to be driven by the developers themselves. The process has been developed through extensive review of extant threat modeling methods and the circumstances of the agile team, and trialed through user tests at an agile ITorganization in the financial services.
Agila principer för mjukvaruutveckling är nu industristandard för innovativa projekt. Agila metoder hyllas ofta för sin flexibilitet men det finns också en vidspridd uppfattning att agila metoder och mjukvarusäkerhet inte går bra ihop. Av den anledningen är det inte ovanligt att säkerhetsansvar och -uppgifter drivs av en separat säkerhetsgrupp, vilket går emot de agila principerna om fokus på utvecklarteamet. Detta kan få effekter både för projektets flexibilitet och dess tidsram. Dessutom är IT-säkerhet ett svårt ämne som kräver både erfarenhet och avsevärd kunskap, något som funnits variera mycket bland mjukvaruutvecklare. Den här studien presenterar en hotmodelleringsprocess som skräddarsytts för utvecklarteamets specifika behov och styrkor. Processen kombinerar funktioner från attackträd och abuser stories med andra, komplementära tekniker i en pedagogisk instruktionsmanual för att leverera en lättillgänglig och snabbstartad metod menad att drivas av utvecklarna själva. Processen har utvecklats genom omfattande studier av etablerade hotmodelleringsprocesser, samt den agila teammiljön, och testats och vidareutvecklats genom användartester hos en agil IT-organisation inom finansbranschen.

Allt fler aktörer uppkommer på den redan konkurrenskraftiga marknaden vilket ställer höga krav på utveckling av nya innovativa produkter för företag inom mjukvarubranschen. Detta leder till att företag måste förändra sin struktur och sitt arbetssätt för att kunna anpassa sin produktutveckling efter kunderna och marknaden. Ett sätt för företag att kunna fortsätta vara konkurrenskraftiga och bemöta marknadens behov är att implementera agila arbetssätt. Syftet med detta arbete är att bidra till ökad kunskap kring hur produktutvecklingsprocessen för en agil transformation från beslut till implementation kan ske i mjukvarubranschen. Arbetet har undersökt tre frågeställningar relaterade till agil transformation i mjukvarubranschen. Inledningsvis genomfördes en litteraturstudie för att erhålla en ökad förståelse för produktutveckling i mjukvarubranschen och för det agila arbetssättet. Vidare utfördes en kvalitativ semistrukturerad intervjuundersökning med fyra respondenter från tre företag där samtliga arbetar med agila arbetssätt och produktutveckling inom mjukvarubranschen. Den kvalitativa studien undersökte vilka utmaningar och potentiella fördelar en agil transformation kan generera samt vad som kännetecknar en lyckad agil transformation. Utifrån resultatet av denna studie utformades ett antal kategorier som kan användas som riktlinjer för hur en organisation kan gå tillväga vid en agil transformation i mjukvarubranschen. Studien visar att en agil transformation är en komplex och tidskrävande process. Utmaningar med agil transformation innefattar att ett agilt arbetssätt ofta blir beroende av en nyckelperson, det kräver en hög samverkan och ökad förståelse för varandras arbetsuppgifter samt ett anpassningsbart tankesätt som är mottagligt för förändring. Däremot genererar den agila transformationen fördelar så som en ökad produktivitet och användarnöjdhet, minskat antal defekter och en kortare ledtid hos samtliga företag. För att lyckas med en agil transformation visar studien på att ett företags medarbetare bör vara mottagliga för förändring och att motivet till transformationen borde komma inifrån organisationen. Sammanfattningsvis resulterade den agila transformationen i en förbättrad mjukvaruutveckling.
A large number of businesses are emerging on the already competitive market which places high demands on the development of new innovative products for companies in the software industry. As a result, companies must change the structure of the organization and their methods. Due to this, they have to customize their product development in order to meet the requirements of the customers and the markets demand and maintain their competitiveness. One way for companies to stay competitive is by implementing agile working methodologies. This study aims to contribute with knowledge and investigate the processes of an agile transformation from decision-making to implementation in the software industry. The study has examined three problem statements related to the agile transformation in the software industry. Initially a literature review was performed to gain an insight into product development in the software industry and the agile working methodologies. Furthermore, a semi structured qualitative interview was conducted which involved four respondents from three companies that work with agile working methodologies and product development in the software industry. This qualitative study examined the challenges and possible opportunities that an agile transformation generates as well as the characteristics of a successful transformation. Based on the result of this study, several categories were chosen and treated as guidelines for how an organization in the software industry can approach the agile transformation and proceed with it successfully. The results of the study demonstrate that an agile transformation is a complex and time-consuming process. The many challenges involving the agile transformation includes that the agile working methodology often becomes dependent of a single key person, it also requires collaboration, an increased understanding of each other’s work as well as an adaptable mindset that is receptive towards change. However, the agile transformation enables advantages amongst all the companies such as an increased productivity and user satisfaction, decreased number of defects as well as a reduced leadtime. To succeed with an agile transformation, it is of importance that a company’s employees are receptive towards change and that the motive behind the transformation comes internally within the organization. In conclusion, the agile transformation improved and strengthened the companies’ software development.

O desenvolvimento de software depende essencialmente das pessoas e isso faz com que surjam diversas questões, especialmente em relação à qualidade e consistência. Garantir a qualidade, estimativas precisas, e profissionais intelectuais de alto desempenho não é uma tarefa fácil, e para isso existem muitas metodologias e processos que ajudam. Este não é um assunto novo pois muitas empresas de desenvolvimento de software, em algum momento ao longo de sua vida, passaram por esse incómodo, e com o estudo das suas vitórias e derrotas, e com a aplicação das melhores práticas reconhecidas a nível mundial, foram capazes de melhorar os seus processos e o seu desempenho.A ALERT é um exemplo de uma empresa de desenvolvimento de software que se esforça continuamente para melhorar, e seu objetivo de momento, é aumentar a qualidade, a produtividade e a precisão das estimativas.O objetivo deste projeto é identificar quaisquer problemas existentes nos processos e práticas de desenvolvimento de software atuais da organização, propor uma proposta híbrida e personalizada de metodologias ágeis e clássicas que irão ajudar a otimizar o desempenho dos trabalhadores, nunca esquecendo que a produtividade de profissionais intelectuais está correlacionada com a sua motivação.Este projeto foi realizado em três grandes fases, diagnóstico, proposta e implementação da proposta em três equipas piloto.Através da informação recolhida nas entrevistas individuais e observação atenta, foi criado um diagnóstico que representa o estado da empresa naquele momento. Com base no diagnóstico, nas experiências passadas da empresa, e em modelos bem conhecidos, metodologias e processos, foi definido um âmbito - Scrum, Kanban, TSP e CMMI - e a proposta elaborada.Os objetivos da proposta foram criados na expectativa de aumentar a produtividade, reduzir defeitos e/ou melhorar a precisão das estimativas, agilizando o processo de desenvolvimento de software.No final, é apresentada uma análise dos resultados subjetivos e objetivos resultantes do impacto da proposta nas equipas-piloto. No entanto, os principais outputs desta dissertação são o diagnóstico e a proposta personalizada, uma vez que o sucesso do projeto piloto depende essencialmente dos seus participantes.
Software development depends on people and because of this many issues arise specially regarding consistency and quality. Guaranteeing quality, accurate estimation, and highperformance knowledge workers is not an easy job, and for this there are many methodologies and processes that help.This is not a new issue; many software development companies, somewhere along their lifetime passed through this hassle, and with the study of their victories and defeats as well as worldwide recognized best practices, were able to improve their processes and performance.ALERT, is an example of a software development company that is continuously striving to improve, and their goal, at the moment is to increase quality, productivity and estimation accuracy.The goal of this project is to identify any exiting issues in the current software development processes and practices at the organization, propose a hybrid and customized proposal of agile and classical methodologies that will help to optimize the performance of the knowledge workers, never forgetting that the productivity of knowledge workers is deeply connected with their motivation.This project was developed in three main phases, diagnosis, proposal and implementation of the proposal in three pilot teams.With the information gathered from individual interviews and close observation, a diagnosis was created that represented the company status at that moment. Based on the diagnosis, the company's past experiences, and well known models, methodologies and processes the scope was defined - Scrum, Kanban, TSP and CMMI - and a proposal was created.The goals of the proposal were created in order to hopefully increase productivity, reduce defects and/or improve estimation accuracy, expediting the software development process. In the end it is presented an analysis of the subjective and objective results of the proposal's impact in the pilot teams. Nevertheless the main outputs of this dissertation are the diagnosis and the customized proposal, as the pilot's project success is highly dependent on the participating knowledge workers.

O desenvolvimento de software depende essencialmente das pessoas e isso faz com que surjam diversas questões, especialmente em relação à qualidade e consistência. Garantir a qualidade, estimativas precisas, e profissionais intelectuais de alto desempenho não é uma tarefa fácil, e para isso existem muitas metodologias e processos que ajudam. Este não é um assunto novo pois muitas empresas de desenvolvimento de software, em algum momento ao longo de sua vida, passaram por esse incómodo, e com o estudo das suas vitórias e derrotas, e com a aplicação das melhores práticas reconhecidas a nível mundial, foram capazes de melhorar os seus processos e o seu desempenho.A ALERT é um exemplo de uma empresa de desenvolvimento de software que se esforça continuamente para melhorar, e seu objetivo de momento, é aumentar a qualidade, a produtividade e a precisão das estimativas.O objetivo deste projeto é identificar quaisquer problemas existentes nos processos e práticas de desenvolvimento de software atuais da organização, propor uma proposta híbrida e personalizada de metodologias ágeis e clássicas que irão ajudar a otimizar o desempenho dos trabalhadores, nunca esquecendo que a produtividade de profissionais intelectuais está correlacionada com a sua motivação.Este projeto foi realizado em três grandes fases, diagnóstico, proposta e implementação da proposta em três equipas piloto.Através da informação recolhida nas entrevistas individuais e observação atenta, foi criado um diagnóstico que representa o estado da empresa naquele momento. Com base no diagnóstico, nas experiências passadas da empresa, e em modelos bem conhecidos, metodologias e processos, foi definido um âmbito - Scrum, Kanban, TSP e CMMI - e a proposta elaborada.Os objetivos da proposta foram criados na expectativa de aumentar a produtividade, reduzir defeitos e/ou melhorar a precisão das estimativas, agilizando o processo de desenvolvimento de software.No final, é apresentada uma análise dos resultados subjetivos e objetivos resultantes do impacto da proposta nas equipas-piloto. No entanto, os principais outputs desta dissertação são o diagnóstico e a proposta personalizada, uma vez que o sucesso do projeto piloto depende essencialmente dos seus participantes.
Software development depends on people and because of this many issues arise specially regarding consistency and quality. Guaranteeing quality, accurate estimation, and highperformance knowledge workers is not an easy job, and for this there are many methodologies and processes that help.This is not a new issue; many software development companies, somewhere along their lifetime passed through this hassle, and with the study of their victories and defeats as well as worldwide recognized best practices, were able to improve their processes and performance.ALERT, is an example of a software development company that is continuously striving to improve, and their goal, at the moment is to increase quality, productivity and estimation accuracy.The goal of this project is to identify any exiting issues in the current software development processes and practices at the organization, propose a hybrid and customized proposal of agile and classical methodologies that will help to optimize the performance of the knowledge workers, never forgetting that the productivity of knowledge workers is deeply connected with their motivation.This project was developed in three main phases, diagnosis, proposal and implementation of the proposal in three pilot teams.With the information gathered from individual interviews and close observation, a diagnosis was created that represented the company status at that moment. Based on the diagnosis, the company's past experiences, and well known models, methodologies and processes the scope was defined - Scrum, Kanban, TSP and CMMI - and a proposal was created.The goals of the proposal were created in order to hopefully increase productivity, reduce defects and/or improve estimation accuracy, expediting the software development process. In the end it is presented an analysis of the subjective and objective results of the proposal's impact in the pilot teams. Nevertheless the main outputs of this dissertation are the diagnosis and the customized proposal, as the pilot's project success is highly dependent on the participating knowledge workers.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering.
Due to the dynamic nature of the software engineering industry there is a constant move towards new strategies for solving design problems. More specifically there is a move towards Object Oriented (OO) methodologies, presumably because of the various advantages offered in terms of maintainability, and reuse of code produced this way. As with various other aspects of the software industry there are however also problems encountered in this transition and lessons to be learned from the experience of companies who have already performed this change. This research report investigates possible guidelines for companies who are currently contemplating a change to the OO software design methodologies, by covering a collection of issues one should know about prior to this change. It also summarises the problems faced in the transition so far, the reasons for these problems and suggests possible solutions. Lastly it also investigates new trends in the OO arena. The emphasis is on South African companies and projects. The results obtained are compared with results obtained overseas to find out what the differences and similarities are. Areas of concern are also identified, where theoreticians' views have been ignored, and both South African and overeeas companies have not implemented any of the suggestions made.
Andrew Chakane 2018

MCom (Business Information Systems)
Deparment of Business Information Systems
The extent of success of a given project can be increased by using an appropriate Project Management Methodology (PMM) that takes into account the specific characteristics of the project (such as complexity, size, budget, nature of risk, etc.). PMMs have evolved over the years to become more diverse, complex, with evolving and dynamic ICT platforms. Such PMMs have traditionally been used as frameworks to guide the project management process for decision makers (such as Project Managers, Project Owners and Project Teams). The choice of selecting an appropriate project methodology is daunting; apart from other considerations related to project characteristics such as budget, scope, schedule, performance and resource constraints. One of the vital stages of a successful software development project is selecting a good software development methodology that best suits that project. The aim of this research is to investigate the critical factors to be considered by project managers in the selection of the software development methodology for the project. These critical factors are then used as a foundation for an architecture for an “unbounded rule-based expert system. A survey was conducted amongst project managers to determine the critical factors necessary for the selection of a software development methodology. From the findings of the study, it was established the critical factors revolved around three constructs of Project Excellence Enablers, Excellent Project Management Practices, and Business Value Proposition factors. The findings from this study therefore provided a rationale and a basis for the evolution of an “Unbounded Rule-Based Expert Systems Architecture” as a basis for the selection of the right software development methodology
NRF

La metodología Mockup-Driven Development (MockupDD) propone utilizar prototipos de interfaz de usuario (usualmente conocidos como Mockups) como artefactos principales de elicitación de requerimientos y modelado en el contexto de un proceso Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE). Su proceso se basa en construir estos prototipos de manera obligatoria, temprana y de su posterior anotación al utilizar un microlenguaje de tags. MockupDD propone un enfoque ágil para MDWE, sin embargo, tratar conceptos del lenguaje para implementar requerimientos específicos sigue presentado las mismas dificultades que en los procesos MDWE convencionales: es necesario agregar nuevos elementos al metamodelo y modificar generadores de código. En esta tesis se presenta una estrategia (extensión de MockupDD) que propone agregar características al paradigma MDWE ortodoxo, en donde, cada concepto del lenguaje en lugar de ser inmutable será ejecutable por sí mismo, convirtiéndose en prototipos de implementaciones por defecto, que pueden modificarse según se requiera al utilizar codificación manual – a costas de sacrificar parte o la totalidad de su abstracción. Esto provocará cambios importantes en comparación con la versión de MockupDD original, al plantear una nueva arquitectura de semántica de tags y un alejamiento del paradigma MDWE puro en pos de mejorar la agilidad y la adaptabilidad.
The Mockup - Driven Development (MockupDD) methodology proposes using user interface prototypes (usually known as Mockups) as key artifacts of requirements elicitation and modeling in the context of Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE ) process. Its process is based on building these prototypes early and their subsequent annotation using a microlanguage of tags. MockupDD proposes an agile approach for MDWE. However, in this methodology extending language concepts presents the same difficulties as in conventional MDWE processes: you need to add new elements to the metamodel and modify code generators. In this thesis proposes a strategy (an extension to MockupDD) that adds features to the orthodox MDWE paradigm. In this work, each concept of the language it is executable by itself instead of being immutable, thus becoming a prototype of a default implementation that can be modified as required using manual coding - at the expense of sacrificing some or all of its abstraction. This will cause major changes compared to the original version MockupDD, proposing a new architecture to specify tags semantics and a departure from the pure MDWE paradigm, towards improving agility and adaptability.

This work presents Quantum Predicative Programming --- a theory ofquantum programming that encompasses many aspects of quantum computation and quantum communication. The theory provides a methodology to specify, implement, and analyse quantum algorithms, the paradigm of quantum non-locality, quantum pseudotelepathy games, computing with mixed states, and quantum communication protocols that use both quantum and classical communication channels.

En este trabajo de tesis se describirá una técnica de modelado centrado en mockups, introduciéndola primero con MockupDD Web. Luego de haber ejemplificado el desarrollo centrado en mockups para metodologías MDWE, se describirá un marco general para el modelado sobre mockups (lo que se referenciará como metodología MockupDD general) y una instanciación particular de esta metodología además de la ya presentada para la Web. Las principales contribuciones de la metodología MockupDD y sus especializaciones son: (1) Mejorar el workflow en cascada de las metodologías MDD tradicionales (en especial, aquellas MDWE) para permitir acortar las iteraciones y permitir a usuarios finales y clientes involucrados interactuar más rápidamente son el software generado, agilizando el proceso. (2) Mejorar la productividad en el modelado de aplicaciones a través de la técnica de modelado de aplicaciones sobre mockups reduciendo sus errores y tiempo requerido, como se mostrará luego en las secciones de validación (3) Introducir a clientes y usuarios finales en el proceso de desarrollo, utilizando artefactos de especificación de requerimientos de fácil comprensión para los mismos en lugar de conceptos de modelado comprensibles sólo para desarrolladores. En este contexto se utilizarán mockups y diferentes técnicas de anotación y especificación de requerimientos formales sobre los mismos. (4) La implementación de un lenguaje de modelado sobre mockups con diferentes vistas, satisfaciendo al mismo tiempo la necesidad de comprensión de requerimientos por parte de los usuarios finales y las capacidades técnicas requeridas por los desarrolladores. (5) Con ayuda de esta versatilidad del lenguaje y del uso de mockups (los cuales son comprensibles en su totalidad por usuarios finales), proveer un método de modelado más trazable desde el punto de vista de los requerimientos.

The emergence of cloud computing is influencing how businesses develop, re-engineer, and implement critical software applications. The cloud requires developers to elevate the importance of compliance with security policies, regulations and internal engineering standards in their software development life cycles. Cloud computing and agile development methodologies are new technologies associated with new approaches in the way computing services are provisioned and development of quality software enhanced. However adoption and use of agile and cloud computing by SMMEs in South Africa is seemingly constrained by a number of technical and non-technical challenges. Using Grounded Theory and case study method this study was aimed at exploring the development of a framework for agile methodologies to promote the adoption and use of cloud computing services by SMMEs in South Africa. Data was collected through survey and in-depth interviews. Open, Axial and Selective coding was used to analyse the data. In tandem with its main objective the study, besides exploring the development of the envisaged framework, also generated and made available valuable propositions and knowledge that SMMEs in South Africa using agile development methodologies can use to work better with cloud computing services in the country without compromising on software quality. The findings of this study and the emerging insights around the development of the framework, which in itself also constitutes an important decision making tool for supporting adoption and use of cloud computing services, are a substantial contribution to knowledge and practice in the ICT field of information systems in South Africa
Information Science
D. Phil. (Information Systems)

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de Informação
Este trabalho tem por base o desenvolvimento de uma framework de métricas no ramo da gestão de projetos, com foco nos projetos que são desenvolvidos através de metodologias ágeis. Para isso, será analisado o caso de um projeto real ongoing e a framework será desenvolvida e experimentada com vista ao aperfeiçoamento do mesmo. Com este projeto de dissertação pretendemos fazer um levantamento de toda a informação relacionada com a engenharia de software, metodologias ágeis e métricas que são utilizadas para fazer controlo de projetos de software. Isto vai também envolver um estudo de metodologias tradicionais para compreender limitações e benefícios em contraste com as metodologias ágeis e o impacto que estas têm nas organizações. Uma abordagem ágil tem como pressuposto um agilizar dos processos da equipa de desenvolvimento, com rápidas entregas de software produzido ao cliente para que haja constante feedback entre o cliente e a organização. Assim, requisitos que não estejam a ir ao acordo do planeamento podem mais facilmente ser alterados. A framework criada foi testada num caso real de desenvolvimento de software, apesar de a ideia inicial ser o aperfeiçoamento de uma framework depois de testar em projetos reais, mas já terminados e só de seguida passar ao projeto real de caso de estudo.
The assumption behind this paper is the development of a metric framework in the branch of project management, with focus on project being developed through agile methodologies. In order to do so, a real and ongoing project was analyzed, and the framework developed and tested to improve it. With this dissertation project, it’s intended to absorb all the knowledge related with software engineering, agile methodology and metrics used to control software projects. This will involve a study of traditional methodology to understand the limitations and benefits in contrast with the agile methodology and the impact this has on organizations. An agile approach has as assumption, expedite the team development processes with quick software delivery produced to the client, having constant feedback between client and organization. This away, requirements that are not going according to plan can easily be altered. The created framework was tested in a real case of software development, even though the initial idea was to perfect the framework after testing in already finished projects and only then pass onto the real case study project.

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)