Variables críticas que influyen en la decisión para la selección de outsourcing de software, caso de las empresas en el área metropolitana de Monterrey.

Tesis (Doctor en Filosofía con Especialidad en Administración) UANL, 2011.

Software Development: Testing

This presentation discusses the role and purpose of testing in the systems/Software Development Life Cycle. We examine the consequences of the 'cost curve' on defect removal and how agile methods can reduce its effects. We concentrate on Black Box Testing and use Equivalence Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis to construct the smallest number of test cases, test scenarios necessary for a test plan.

Evolutionary Testing of Autonomous Software Agents

A system built in terms of autonomous agents may require even greater correctness assurance than one which is merely reacting to the immediate control of its users. Agents make substantial decisions for themselves, so thorough testing is an important consideration. However, autonomy also makes testing harder; by their nature, autonomous agents may react in different ways to the same inputs over time, because, for instance they have changeable goals and knowledge. For this reason, we argue that testing of autonomous agents requires a procedure that caters for a wide range of test case contexts, and that can search for the most demanding of these test cases, even when they are not apparent to the agents’ developers. In this paper, we address this problem, introducing and evaluating an approach to testing autonomous agents that uses evolutionary optimization to generate demanding test cases.

Competitividade e estratégia : uma análise do segmento de outsourcing da indústria brasileira de software

O objetivo desta dissertação é apresentar uma análise das condições competitivas e das características estratégicas da indústria brasileira de software no segmento de Outsourcing, considerando o período de 1995 a 2005. O estudo foi desenvolvido por meio de uma pesquisa de campo com 10 empresas de software, que foram divididas de acordo com seu mercado de atuação: interno e externo. Os resultados apontam as diferenças no padrão de concorrência entre esses dois mercados, bem como algumas diferenças chaves entre os diversos subsegmentos do mercado de Outsourcing.

Analisi e sviluppo di un applicativo software per il testing automatico di elaborati in linguaggio c

Analisi e sviluppo di uno script in PHP per il testing automatico di elaborati in linguaggio c

Analisi e sviluppo di un applicativo software per il testing automatico di elaborati in linguaggio c

Analisi e sviluppo di uno script PHP per il testing automatico di elaborati in linguaggio c

Knowledge transfer in software-maintenance offshore outsourcing

Software-maintenance offshore outsourcing (SMOO) projects have been plagued by tedious knowledge transfer during the service transition to the vendor. Vendor engineers risk being over-strained by the high amounts of novel information, resulting in extra costs that may erode the business case behind offshoring. Although stakeholders may desire to avoid these extra costs by implementing appropriate knowledge transfer practices, little is known on how effective knowledge transfer can be designed and managed in light of the high cognitive loads in SMOO transitions. The dissertation at hand addresses this research gap by presenting and integrating four studies. The studies draw on cognitive load theory, attributional theory, and control theory and they apply qualitative, quantitative, and simulation methods to qualitative data from eight in-depth longitudinal cases. The results suggest that the choice of appropriate learning tasks may be more central to knowledge transfer than the amount of information shared with vendor engineers. Moreover, because vendor staff may not be able to and not dare to effectively self-manage learn-ing tasks during early transition, client-driven controls may be initially required and subsequently faded out. Collectively, the results call for people-based rather than codification-based knowledge management strategies in at least moderately specific and complex software environments.

Managing Knowledge Transfer in Software-Maintenance Outsourcing Transitions: A System-Dynamics Perspective

The existing literature suggests that transitions in software-maintenance offshore outsourcing projects are prone to knowledge transfer blockades, i.e. situations in which the activities that would yield effective knowledge transfer do not occur, and that client management involvement is central to overcome them. However, the theoretical understanding of the knowledge transfer blockade is limited, and the reactive management behavior reported in case studies suggests that practitioners may frequently be astonished by the dynamics that may give rise to the blockade. Drawing on recent research from offshore sourcing and reference theories, this study proposes a system dynamics framework that may explain why knowledge transfer blockades emerge and how and why client management can overcome the blockade. The results suggest that blockades may emerge from a vicious circle of weak learning due to cognitive overload of vendor staff and resulting negative ability attributions that result in reduced helping behavior and thus aggravate cognitive load. Client management may avoid these vicious circles by selecting vendor staff with strong prior related experience. Longer phases of coexistence of vendor staff and subject matter experts and high formal and clan controls may also mitigate vicious circles.

Knowledge in software-maintenance outsourcing projects: beyond integration of business and technical knowledge

Knowledge processes are critical to outsourced software projects. According to outsourcing research, outsourced software projects succeed if they manage to integrate the client’s business knowledge and the vendor’s technical knowledge. In this paper, we submit that this view may not be wrong, but incomplete in a significant part of outsourced software work, which is software maintenance. Data from six software-maintenance outsourcing transitions indicate that more important than business or technical knowledge can be application knowledge, which vendor engineers acquire over time during practice. Application knowledge was the dominant knowledge during knowledge transfer activities and its acquisition enabled vendor staff to solve maintenance tasks. We discuss implications for widespread assumptions in outsourcing research.