Development Life Cycle Process Research Articles

Framework for a Knowledge Management System for Curriculum Development Process

In this paper, a framework to facilitate development of knowledge management (KM) system for curriculum development process is suggested. It was validated through experts' opinions with thirty two experts. The components of the framework were supported by the experts by emphasizing their necessity and importance in the curriculum development process. Some model curricula and related guidelines were studied to identify components of good curriculum. The curriculum development process was studied through various models for curriculum development proposed by researchers and description of the process by researchers. By the analysis of these models and processes, the Phases in curriculum development process life cycle were identified. Use of knowledge management in business organizations and other disciplines was also studied. Based on all this, this researcher could identify components of a good KM system for curriculum development. This framework will help in implementing a KM system for curriculum development process. It will streamline the process, improve quality of curriculum, save time and efforts by using existing knowledge and avoid repetition of work.

Integrating Acquisition Strategy and PMO Capability: A Catalyst for Defense Systems Engineering Transformation

Considerable research exists in defining organizational structures for project-based organizations; however, minimal research exists to help define organizational structures for complex defense programs. Complex Defense programs differ from traditional projects given that they negate profit, span public and private organizations, often demand considerable effort to integrate programs (sub-systems), and experience dynamic internal (e.g., rotating staff, shifting functionality/capability with progression through major system development milestones) and external environments (e.g., war, budget cuts, shifting priorities, Congressional mandates, etc.). While several factors contribute to program success (and failure), systems integration (SI) emerges as a common contributor in both public and private sectors. This research encompasses key areas that help examine PgMO structure and effectiveness: 1) Enterprise and acquisition strategy, 2) Defense Acquisition and system development life cycle processes, 3) PgMO systems engineering (SE) functionality, 4) organizational structure theory, and 5) factors that influence PgMO organizational structure selection. Literature research offers a preponderance of findings that help link program (sub- system) management implementation, enterprise strategy, PgMO capability, and SI to evaluate the systems integration organizational (SIO) structure design toward improving PgMO effectiveness. This paper provides the methodology used to identify primary SIO structures, evaluate SIO effectiveness, and identify core factors that help Program Executive Officers (PEOs) select a SIO structure in alignment with acquisition strategy.

Research Methodology as SDLC Process in Image Processing

Research work in any area requires a predefined process to be fulfilled. To start with one first identifies the problem area. Then with the step by step analysis he or she comes out with some solution. If it is specifically looked into the research work done in the field of computer technology, it is seen that generally the motive is to build some software or hardware solutions to one's day to day problems. Anyone who is aware of the complete process of a computer system development knows that a system developed always go through System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Process. Therefore, this paper shows how SDLC is an essential part of providing proof of whatever one is proposing as a software solution to one's problem especially in the case of image segmentation and classification of datamining.

SMSCQA: System for Measuring Source Code Quality Assurance

software systems play a critical role in various aspects of human life, and become part of everyday life. Many of these systems are essential for the completion of day-to-day activities. The increased reliance on computer applications, and organization that produced software puts more and more strain on software developers and software systems itself. For these reasons many international standards, requirements, and constrains were established to assure quality of software. In this work the most important fundamentals of software quality assurance used during life cycle development process (LCDP) will be covered. Specially that used in coding phase. This phase is a very important period for all software, because the cure of software system will be established here. Therefore it was sliced in detailes, and all of its aspects were recovered like: Software metrics, Software quality factors, and software quality models like McCall's model, Boehm's model, ISO 9126 model, and SATC NASA model. By comparing and studying these models the System for Measuring Source Code Quality Assurance was retrieved. Using this system over 30 source code metrics, 9 quality factors can be measured and overall quality might be calculated.

Intelligent Knowledge Database (IKD) Tool for Formal Methods

This paper discusses the Intelligent Knowledge Database (IKD) tool generated for formal methods. The knowledge database provides the information regarding the existing formal methods in the area of academia, industry and R&D sectors. The tool provides complete information about the formal methods adopted in the conventional or model-based approach, in the various phases of the software development life cycle process, list of tools using formal techniques with their version and published literature supporting formal methods. This knowledge-database serves as a live encyclopedia which will enable the engineers and researchers interested in the field of formal methods. The database is intelligent because it provides the user with the flexibility of searching the formal method related information using keyword similar to the search engine. This is a unique tool for formal methods encompassing most of the published literature with intelligent search options.

Development of a product design and supply-chain fulfillment system for discontinuous innovation

Given the lengthy product development lifecycle process, high cost, and low success rate, many firms avoid considering discontinuous innovation strategies, in spite of their increase in frequency and importance in many markets. Even with advances in automation and technology, many of the techniques being utilised in product development are relatively unchanged, and the definition of discontinuous innovation itself lacks a structural component. To address this problem, the authors developed a methodology for generative customisation to implement discontinuous innovation. Using the emerging technologies of generative design and agent-based modelling, the authors developed a methodology to create product inventions and measure product innovations using a complex adaptive system (CAS) model. This appears to be the first model that represents a complex adaptive system environment to measure the success of discontinuous innovation in the development of a market equilibrium agent model.

Evaluation of work product defects during corrective & enhancive software evolution

Information systems portfolio management assumes that software will evolve to maintain alignment with operational needs, a goal that must be met through effective ongoing maintenance. Thus, a primary goal of software maintainers is to ensure that production code is updated without the introduction of defects. However, there is a dearth of research that examines the work product defects that occur as these applications evolve. The goal of this study is to characterize software evolution lifecycle work product defects and factors that may increase or reduce their occurrence. The study takes place within a global consulting organization conducting ongoing software maintenance for a Fortune 100 telecommunications firm by a project team assessed at Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3. This study reports on 991 work product reviews conducted across the evolution activities of the ISO/IEC 12207 Software Development Life Cycle Processes. After controlling for team and expertise differences, the study's major finding is that corrective evolution projects inject a greater number of work product defects than enhancive evolution projects. This result does not arise from the schedule compression often associated with corrective evolution. Rather, it is concluded that the increase in work product defects is associated with the increased complexity of analysis-stage problem diagnosis found in corrective evolution projects. The analysis is augmented by additional covariates including the number of work product reviewers, preparation time of reviewers, and size of the project.

Information Assurance Metric for Assessing NIST's Monitoring Step in the Risk Management Framework

ABSTRACT This paper proposes an information assurance (IA) metric that can be used to measure the security posture of an enterprise system in the “monitoring” step (Step 6) of the risk management framework (RMF), as required in the new certification and accreditation (C&A) process described in NIST SP 800-37, Rev. 1, Guide for Applying the Risk Management Framework to Federal Information Systems: A Security Life Cycle Approach. This metric was developed by adopting the Object Measurement (OM®1) approach, created to evaluate system development life cycle (SDLC) processes, for use as an IA metric. This metric supports organizational management's decision-making processes by enabling an organization to determine how well a system is complying with its monitoring plan. The values obtained through use of this metric can be abstracted to roll up values from multiple systems, creating an aggregate measure usable by organizational management to assess the security posture of all, or a subset, of their accredited systems undergoing monitoring.

Early estimation of software complexity using requirement engineering document

There has been a continuous effort to estimate software complexity but very little established methods exist that can estimate the complexity of the software before it is written. Since a high quality Software Requirement Specification (SRS) is a pre requisite for high quality software, this work attempts to empirically demonstrate that the complexity of the code can be determined based on its IEEE software requirement specification document (IEEE 830-1998). Existing complexity measures established are based on the code and the cognitive metrics value of the software. This may require recodingleading to loss of time and cost. Considering the shortcoming of code-based approaches, our proposed approach is able to compute the complexity of yet-to-be-written software immediately after freezing the requirement in the Software development Lifecycle (SDLC) process. The proposedcomplexity measure compares well with established complexity measures like Halstead, Mc Cabe, KLCID, CFS and CICM. Results obtained show that the complexity values are comparable with other established measures. The robustness of our complexity measure is established by evaluating our measure against Weyuker properties.

Tool Integration to Support SPEM Model Transformations in Eclipse

Tool Integration to Support SPEM Model Transformations in Eclipse This paper propose the approach for integrating SPEM modeling tools with the Query/View/Transformation (QVT) tools using Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). The aim of tool integration is to support the adoption of Model Driven Architecture within the organizations, which currently use "traditional" software development approaches. The software development process lifecycle of organization is supposed to be expressed with the help of OMG SPEM language. The approach presented in the paper is based on the model-level integration using EMF based interfaces, which will help to link the MOF based Ecore models with the QVT transformation tools. The outcomes of the work are: (i) the design of EMF based tool integration, (ii) solution prototype for Eclipse environment (iii) QVT Relations transformation rules. Model transformations are performed using mediniQVT tool, which is able to operate with the models expressed as Ecore metamodels and provides debugging features and transformation rules tracing. The QVT Relations transformations are applied to the source model, which corresponds to the "traditional" software development lifecycle. The outcome of such unidirectional transformation is the new software development process, which corresponds to the model-driven software development process. The generated target model is SPEM compliant, and can be imported into the external tool supporting SPEM models in Ecore.

Strengthening OV-6a Semantics With Rule-Based Meta-Models in DEVS/DoDAF Based Life-Cycle Development for Enterprise-Service Architectures

The development of a distributed testing environment would have to comply with recent DoD mandates requiring that the DoD Architectural Framework (DoDAF) be adopted to express high level system and operational requirements and architectures Unfortunately, DoDAF and DoD net-centric mandates pose significant challenges to testing and evaluation since DoDAF specifications must be evaluated to see if they meet requirements and objectives, yet they are not expressed in a form that is amenable to such evaluation. DoDAF is the basis for integrated architectures and provides broad levels of specification related to operational, system, and technical views. In our earlier work, we described an approach to support specification of DoDAF architectures within a development environment based on DEVS (Discrete Event System Specification) for semi-automated construction of the needed simulation models. The result is an enhanced system lifecycle development process that includes both development and testing in an integral manner. We also developed automated model generation using XML which paves the way for OVs to become service-providing components in the Web Services architecture. In this paper we present the semantic structure for one of the Operational View documents OV-6a that would aid the development of these semi-automated models. We will describe how OV-6a can be structured in a more generalized meta-model framework such that every rule is reducible to meaningful code which is automatedly constructed through Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods and further be reduced to DEVS based models. The paper also presents an overview of the Life-cycle development methodology for these enterprise architectures and how a common enterprise domain-model can be used in customized business/domain-specific rules and policy structures.

Secure Coding: Building Security into the Software Development Life Cycle

Many of the security properties that are outlined repeatedly in the newer regulations and standards can easily be side-stepped. Too often the culprits are unsophisticated software development techniques, a lack of security- focused quality assurance, and scarce security training for software developers, software architects, and project managers. To meet future needs, opportunities, and threats associated with information security, security needs to be “baked in” to the overall systems development life-cycle process.

Building more secure software with improved development processes

The author draws on experiences gained as a member of Microsoft's central security team to outline some basic best practices for the software development process. These practices benefitted Microsoft products released since the inception of its Trustworthy Computing initiative in 2002. The points are a subset of the security development lifecycle process implemented at Microsoft.

An empirical evaluation of factors influencing expert systems effectiveness

This study explores expert system effectiveness by testing an expert system development model and analyzing the life cycle development process. The objective is to determine the nature of the interactions within the expert system development process and how the process affects expert system effectiveness. The results suggest that life cycle development stages critically impact the overall perception of system effectiveness.

Measuring the quality of the development lifecycle process

This paper proposes an approach to measuring the efficacy of the development process in terms of its ability to discover defects, and shows the metrics and forms of analysis which can be used to demonstrate this. Every activity in the development process has the capacity to both introduce and reveal defects. The efficacy of the process can be defined in terms of how soon after their introduction defects are discovered. To measure this, defects reported during each step are analysed to determine in which step the defect was introduced. A comparison of this defect distribution by introduction and detection step with the expected distribution indicates which aspects of the process are failing.

Beyond the Bounds of the Human Factors Tool Kit: Computer-Human Interface Design in a Complex System

To achieve the potential of human factors involvement in computer-human interface design, human factors engineers must transition from being isolated specialists to integrated components of the mainstream life-cycle development process. A fundamental obstacle to this transition has been the limitations associated with traditional human factors methods. The search for better methods has resulted in a recent evolution in the human factors tool kit. While this evolution has increased tool kit utility, it is not yet as robust as needed for the development of complex systems. For the past several years the human factor team at Loral Federal Systems Company has been the central focus of system design and development activities for the Tower Control Computer Complex (TCCC). The TCCC will replace most Federal Aviation Administration airport tower cab equipment with advanced workstations and software. At least five limitations have been encountered with the traditional human factors tool kit due to the complexity of the TCCC and the environment in which it will be used. This paper describes these limitations, and the alternatives that have been successfully employed to produce an operationally suitable computer-human interface as part of an integrated life-cycle effort. At the heart of these remedies were the use of a dedicated team of representative end-users and a variety of non-traditional design evaluation techniques, throughout the project life-cycle. Among these techniques was the evaluation of laboratory prototypes using a “hands-off” intellectual review process and electronically supported group-based evaluations.

Forming telecommunications software specifications from a service-driven model using enhanced software tools

Increasing diversity and sophistication among telecommunications customers has led to pressure on the telecommunications industry to give customer groups the capability to customize aspects of offered telecommunications services for their own particular needs. To offer such user-customizable services correctly, quickly, and cheaply, the telecommunications industry needs adequate techniques for transforming user requirements into software specifications and for realizing these software specifications with application code. In today's environment, several well-known software development life cycle processes exist for realizing software specifications; however, analogous techniques for transforming user requirements into explicit software specifications do not.

Software safety analysis: The characteristics of efficient technical walkthroughs

Software safety is a relatively new concept in the software reliability and quality assurance disciplines. Several techniques for conducting software safety analysis are available, and include the following: Peer Circuit Analysis, Software Fault Trees, Nuclear Safety Cross-Check and Petri Nets. This paper puts forward Technical Walkthroughs as an effective method of the Peer Circuit Analysis technique. The paper emphasizes the characteristics of efficient technical walkthroughs that improve the safety and quality assurance function of software in each phase of its life cycle development process. The paper identifies walkthroughs objectives, responsibilities, participants, rules agendas and feedback protocols.

Computer-aided software development process design

The authors describe an intelligent tool designed to aid managers of software development projects in planning, managing, and controlling the development process of medium- to large-scale software projects. Its purpose is to reduce uncertainties in the budget, personnel, and schedule planning of software development projects. It is based on dynamic models for the software development and maintenance life-cycle process. This dynamic process is composed of a number of time-varying, interacting developmental phases, each characterized by its intended functions and requirements. System dynamics is used as a modeling methodology. The resulting software life-cycle simulator (SLICS) and the hybrid expert simulation system of which it is a subsystem are described.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Hybrid Expert Simulation System (HESS)

Abstract: The integration of a simulation model with two expert systems is described. The first expert system is the front end of the Hybrid Expert Simulation System (HESS) and is designed to check the consistency of the input variables which are provided to the simulation model by the end user. The second expert system is the back end of HESS and is designed to make recommendations based on experimentations with the simulation model. A case study for a software development life cycle process is described.