Requirements engineering during global software development : some impediments to the requirements engineering process : a case study

Requirements engineering is not straightforward for any software development team. Developing software when team members are located in widely distributed geographic locations poses many challenges for developers, particularly during the requirements engineering phase. This paper reports on a case study concerning a large software development project that was completed in just seven months between users located in the UK and software developers from an international software house based in New Zealand. The case indicates that while “true” global requirements engineering may be desirable in achieving economy of resources, a “hybrid” structure of requirements engineering processes is more realistic so that lasting relationships with clients may be formed, and requirements engineering activities achieved. The main impediment to the process of requirements engineering during global software development, as recounted by the team members in this case, is communication. Communication issues may be further described in terms of four categories: distribution of the clients and the development team, distribution of the development team, cultural differences between the clients and the development team and cultural differences among the development team.

Exploring the influences on requirements engineering during global software development

Through an interpretive study of global virtual teams, this research has explored the influences on the requirements engineering processes during global software development. Complex layers of explicit and implicit elements in the project environment, including systems methodology, project steering, management commitment and cultural differences, were found to influence these processes.

Exploring the sociotechnical systems perspectives in global software development

Global software development teams expressed dissatisfaction with their structures. Job satisfaction was reduced by the inefficiencies of communication technologies and from the functional structures imposed by the management. This led to a reduced contextual understanding of projects which could be improved if employees were to participate in the work designs.

Global software development : measuring, approximating and reducing the complexity of global software development using extended axiomatic design theory

This paper considers GSD projects as designed artefacts, and proposes the application of an Extended Axiomatic Design theory to reduce their complexity in order to increase the probability of project success. Using an upper bound estimation of the Kolmogorov complexity of the so-called ‘design matrix’ (as a proxy of Information Content as a complexity measure) we demonstrate on two hypothetical examples how good and bad designs of GSD planning compare in terms of complexity. We also demonstrate how to measure and calculate the ‘structural’ complexity of GSD projects and show that by satisfying all design axioms this ‘structural’ complexity could be minimised.

A JML-Based strategy for incorporating formal specifications into the software development process

This thesis presents a JML-based strategy that incorporates formal specifications into the software development process of object-oriented programs. The strategy evolves functional requirements into a “semi-formal” requirements form, and then expressing them as JML formal specifications. The strategy is implemented as a formal-specification pseudo-phase that runs in parallel with the other phase of software development. What makes our strategy different from other software development strategies used in literature is the particular use of JML specifications we make all along the way from requirements to validation-and-verification.

Supervisory software development according to IEEE 1451.1 standard

IEEE 1451 is Standard to connect transduscers through a communication network. This article describes a supervisory system implementaion according to IEEE 1451 Standard using Java. This software, named NCAP, may be used in several industrial applications, besides making feasible to obtain TEDS as a report or by Internet. NCAP communicates with transduscer module through RS232 Interface and was testes in industrial automation processes. © 2009 IEEE.

A software development process model for gesture-based interface

Gesture-based applications have particularities, since users interact in a natural way, much as they interact in the non-digital world. Hence, new requirements are needed on the software design process. This paper shows a software development process model for these applications, including requirement specification, design, implementation, and testing procedures. The steps and activities of the proposed model were tested through a game case study, which is a puzzle game. The puzzle is completed when all pieces of a painting are correctly positioned by the drag and drop action of users hand gesture. It also shows the results obtained of applying a heuristic evaluation on this game. © 2012 IEEE.

Knowledge-based risk management: Survey on Brazilian software development enterprises

A risks management, carried on in an effective way, leads the software development to success and may influence on the organization. The knowledge takes part of such a process as a way to help taking decisions. This research aimed to analyze the use of Knowledge Management techniques to the Risk Management in software projects development and the possible influence on the enterprise revenue. It had, as its main studying subject, Brazilian incubated and graduated software developing enterprises. The chosen research method was the Survey type. Multivariate statistical methods were used for the treatment and analysis of the obtained results, this way identifying the most significant factors, that is, enterprise's achievement constraining factors and those outcome achievement ones. Among the latter we highlight the knowledge methodology, the time of existence of the enterprise, the amount of employees and the knowledge externalization. The results encourage contributing actions to the increasing of financial revenue. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

An integrated approach of software development and test processes to distributed teams

The Distributed Software Development (DSD) is a development strategy that meets the globalization needs concerned with the increase productivity and cost reduction. However, the temporal distance, geographical dispersion and the socio-cultural differences, increased some challenges and, especially, added new requirements related with the communication, coordination and control of projects. Among these new demands there is the necessity of a software process that provides adequate support to the distributed software development. This paper presents an integrated approach of software development and test that considers distributed teams peculiarities. The approach purpose is to offer support to DSD, providing a better project visibility, improving the communication between the development and test teams, minimizing the ambiguity and difficulty to understand the artifacts and activities. This integrated approach was conceived based on four pillars: (i) to identify the DSD peculiarities concerned with development and test processes, (ii) to define the necessary elements to compose the integrated approach of development and test to support the distributed teams, (iii) to describe and specify the workflows, artifacts, and roles of the approach, and (iv) to represent appropriately the approach to enable the effective communication and understanding of it.

Hardware and software development of a multichannel readout board named CARLOSrx for the ALICE experiment

ALICE, that is an experiment held at CERN using the LHC, is specialized in analyzing lead-ion collisions. ALICE will study the properties of quarkgluon plasma, a state of matter where quarks and gluons, under conditions of very high temperatures and densities, are no longer confined inside hadrons. Such a state of matter probably existed just after the Big Bang, before particles such as protons and neutrons were formed. The SDD detector, one of the ALICE subdetectors, is part of the ITS that is composed by 6 cylindrical layers with the innermost one attached to the beam pipe. The ITS tracks and identifies particles near the interaction point, it also aligns the tracks of the articles detected by more external detectors. The two ITS middle layers contain the whole 260 SDD detectors. A multichannel readout board, called CARLOSrx, receives at the same time the data coming from 12 SDD detectors. In total there are 24 CARLOSrx boards needed to read data coming from all the SDD modules (detector plus front end electronics). CARLOSrx packs data coming from the front end electronics through optical link connections, it stores them in a large data FIFO and then it sends them to the DAQ system. Each CARLOSrx is composed by two boards. One is called CARLOSrx data, that reads data coming from the SDD detectors and configures the FEE; the other one is called CARLOSrx clock, that sends the clock signal to all the FEE. This thesis contains a description of the hardware design and firmware features of both CARLOSrx data and CARLOSrx clock boards, which deal with all the SDD readout chain. A description of the software tools necessary to test and configure the front end electronics will be presented at the end of the thesis.

Towards model driven software development for Arduino platforms: a DSL and automatic code generation

La tesi ha lo scopo di esplorare la produzione di sistemi software per Embedded Systems mediante l'utilizzo di tecniche relative al mondo del Model Driven Software Development. La fase più importante dello sviluppo sarà la definizione di un Meta-Modello che caratterizza i concetti fondamentali relativi agli embedded systems. Tale modello cercherà di astrarre dalla particolare piattaforma utilizzata ed individuare quali astrazioni caratterizzano il mondo degli embedded systems in generale. Tale meta-modello sarà quindi di tipo platform-independent. Per la generazione automatica di codice è stata adottata una piattaforma di riferimento, cioè Arduino. Arduino è un sistema embedded che si sta sempre più affermando perché coniuga un buon livello di performance ed un prezzo relativamente basso. Tale piattaforma permette lo sviluppo di sistemi special purpose che utilizzano sensori ed attuatori di vario genere, facilmente connessi ai pin messi a disposizione. Il meta-modello definito è un'istanza del meta-metamodello MOF, definito formalmente dall'organizzazione OMG. Questo permette allo sviluppatore di pensare ad un sistema sotto forma di modello, istanza del meta-modello definito. Un meta-modello può essere considerato anche come la sintassi astratta di un linguaggio, quindi può essere definito da un insieme di regole EBNF. La tecnologia utilizzata per la definizione del meta-modello è stata Xtext: un framework che permette la scrittura di regole EBNF e che genera automaticamente il modello Ecore associato al meta-modello definito. Ecore è l'implementazione di EMOF in ambiente Eclipse. Xtext genera inoltre dei plugin che permettono di avere un editor guidato dalla sintassi, definita nel meta-modello. La generazione automatica di codice è stata realizzata usando il linguaggio Xtend2. Tale linguaggio permette di esplorare l'Abstract Syntax Tree generato dalla traduzione del modello in Ecore e di generare tutti i file di codice necessari. Il codice generato fornisce praticamente tutta la schematic part dell'applicazione, mentre lascia all'application designer lo sviluppo della business logic. Dopo la definizione del meta-modello di un sistema embedded, il livello di astrazione è stato spostato più in alto, andando verso la definizione della parte di meta-modello relativa all'interazione di un sistema embedded con altri sistemi. Ci si è quindi spostati verso un ottica di Sistema, inteso come insieme di sistemi concentrati che interagiscono. Tale difinizione viene fatta dal punto di vista del sistema concentrato di cui si sta definendo il modello. Nella tesi viene inoltre introdotto un caso di studio che, anche se abbastanza semplice, fornisce un esempio ed un tutorial allo sviluppo di applicazioni mediante l'uso del meta-modello. Ci permette inoltre di notare come il compito dell'application designer diventi piuttosto semplice ed immediato, sempre se basato su una buona analisi del problema. I risultati ottenuti sono stati di buona qualità ed il meta-modello viene tradotto in codice che funziona correttamente.

Engineering Agent-Oriented Technologies and Programming Languages for Computer Programming and Software Development

Mainstream hardware is becoming parallel, heterogeneous, and distributed on every desk, every home and in every pocket. As a consequence, in the last years software is having an epochal turn toward concurrency, distribution, interaction which is pushed by the evolution of hardware architectures and the growing of network availability. This calls for introducing further abstraction layers on top of those provided by classical mainstream programming paradigms, to tackle more effectively the new complexities that developers have to face in everyday programming. A convergence it is recognizable in the mainstream toward the adoption of the actor paradigm as a mean to unite object-oriented programming and concurrency. Nevertheless, we argue that the actor paradigm can only be considered a good starting point to provide a more comprehensive response to such a fundamental and radical change in software development. Accordingly, the main objective of this thesis is to propose Agent-Oriented Programming (AOP) as a high-level general purpose programming paradigm, natural evolution of actors and objects, introducing a further level of human-inspired concepts for programming software systems, meant to simplify the design and programming of concurrent, distributed, reactive/interactive programs. To this end, in the dissertation first we construct the required background by studying the state-of-the-art of both actor-oriented and agent-oriented programming, and then we focus on the engineering of integrated programming technologies for developing agent-based systems in their classical application domains: artificial intelligence and distributed artificial intelligence. Then, we shift the perspective moving from the development of intelligent software systems, toward general purpose software development. Using the expertise maturated during the phase of background construction, we introduce a general-purpose programming language named simpAL, which founds its roots on general principles and practices of software development, and at the same time provides an agent-oriented level of abstraction for the engineering of general purpose software systems.

Metodologie di sviluppo agile per il corporate banking

L’applicazione dei metodi tradizionali dell’ingegneria del software non garantiscono il successo di un progetto, per questo motivo da circa quindici anni è emersa una nuova filosofia di sviluppo nota come Agile Software Development. In questa tesi è stata decritta una panoramica sulle metodologie agili, con particolare attenzione al framework Scrum e un caso di studio reale al quale Scrum è stato applicato. Il caso di studio riguarda l’implementazione di una applicazione web per la gestione del front-end di un Corporate Banking. L’applicazione di Scrum ha permesso di ottenere la soddisfazione del cliente finale, la crescita dello Scrum Team e un tasso di manutenzione correttiva accettabile.