Software Development Knowledge Research Articles

Origin Story: Denise Kuo

Attending college in the 1990s, my focus was financial independence and the possibility of travel funded by my employer. I believed the best route to both was in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and therefore I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. Entering the workforce in 1994 with knowledge and skills in software development worked out well. While working for consulting firms that specialized in custom software development and traveling weekly to some fun locations (Toronto, ON, Canada) and some less-fun locations (Warsaw, IN, USA), I also relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, USA. Most of the friendships I developed while living in Jackson were with people I met through my spouse, and most of them worked at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), including Gerry McAlpin.1 In 2003, when my software consulting job ceased to exist,* Gerry had an idea for my next position. In her role as the managing editor of Hypertension, an American Heart Association (AHA) journal, Gerry was in the midst of a transition to use BenchPress for online peer review. Gerry made the case to the Editor-in-chief, Dr. John Hall, that someone with strong computer skills was just what the journal needed to develop and maintain the configurable letter templates. It only took a couple of weeks working part-time to set up the templates, and then Gerry was eager for help in clearing the backlog of email in the journal inbox. Answering email was surprisingly satisfying. Problem-solving and strong communication skills acquired in my […]

Verification of TRANSPORT Simulation Environment coupling with PHREEQC for reactive transport modelling

Abstract. Many types of geologic subsurface utilisation are associated with fluid and heat flow as well as simultaneously occurring chemical reactions. For that reason, reactive transport models are required to understand and reproduce the governing processes. In this regard, reactive transport codes must be highly flexible to cover a wide range of applications, while being applicable by users without extensive programming skills at the same time. In this context, we present an extension of the Open Source and Open Access TRANSPORT Simulation Environment, which has been coupled with the geochemical reaction module PHREEQC, and thus provides multiple new features that make it applicable to complex reactive transport problems in various geoscientific fields. Code readability is ensured by the applied high-level programming language Python which is relatively easy to learn compared to low-level programming languages such as C, C++ and FORTRAN. Thus, also users with limited software development knowledge can benefit from the presented simulation environment due to the low entry-level programming skill requirements. In the present study, common geochemical benchmarks are used to verify the numerical code implementation. Currently, the coupled simulator can be used to investigate 3D single-phase fluid and heat flow as well as multicomponent solute transport in porous media. In addition to that, a wide range of equilibrium and nonequilibrium reactions can be considered. Chemical feedback on fluid flow is provided by adapting porosity and permeability of the porous media as well as fluid properties. Thereby, users are in full control of the underlying functions in terms of fluid and rock equations of state, coupled geochemical modules used for reactive transport, dynamic boundary conditions and mass balance calculations. Both, the solution of the system of partial differential equations and the PHREEQC module, can be easily parallelised to increase computational efficiency. The benchmarks used in the present study include density-driven flow as well as advective, diffusive and dispersive reactive transport of solutes. Furthermore, porosity and permeability changes caused by kinetically controlled dissolution-precipitation reactions are considered to verify the main features of our reactive transport code. In future, the code implementation can be used to quantify processes encountered in different types of subsurface utilisation, such as water resource management as well as geothermal energy production, as well as geological energy, CO2 and nuclear waste storage.

OntoSuSD: Software engineering approaches integration ontology for sustainable software development

AbstractDifferent software development approaches (SDAs) are developed with broad portfolios of development processes. Each of the approaches has certain exclusive principles, practices, thinking, and values, which are informally represented, implemented, and improperly institutionalized. Ontologies are developed for the representation, assessment, and adaptation of SDAs separately without having a shared terminology which may lead to terminological conflict and confusion affecting the simultaneous representation and implementation in software development industry and academia. The software engineering approaches does not consider and support sustainability as priority concern. However, the approaches have capabilities of supporting sustainable software development in different sustainability aspects. This research article aims for the designing and development of an integrated ontology of software engineering approaches (i.e., agile, lean, and green) named OntoSuSD (ontology for sustainable software development) to support sustainable software development knowledge, awareness, and implementation. The goal of OntoSuSD is to propose, design and develop a formal, generic, consistent, and shared knowledge base containing semantic terminology and description of concepts and relationships generated around the representation and implementation of lean, agile, and green approaches in software development processes, which will facilitate their simultaneous implementation and assessment for sustainable software development. The OntoSuSD is developed using practical ontology engineering methodology by reusing relevant ontologies and explicit concepts and properties are defined to fulfill knowledge requirements and representations of the domain. The OntoSuSD is evaluated, and results infer OntoSuSD has high ontological design, good domain coverage, potential applications and achieves purpose of the ontology development.

Construction of Intelligent Textbook Courseware Management System Based on Artificial Intelligence Technology

On the one hand, the lack of specialized knowledge and knowledge of software development is serious. Second, the development process takes a lot of time, and the development cost is high. Shortening the development time, reducing the development cost, and reducing the dependence on artificial intelligence can be realized by developing an intelligent courseware writing system. The research of intelligent teaching system based on Web and multiagent technology in this paper will surely promote the continuous development and progress of intelligent teaching and related disciplines, which has profound theoretical and practical significance. The design of the model may need to be emphasized and improved in the understanding and reform of classroom management concepts. The comprehensive improvement has an increase of 86.3%, which is of great significance for courseware management. In terms of courseware management, due to the model design, it is also well reflected in personalization, and the improvement of management is 74.6%.

Goal-Oriented Software Design Reviews

Some software requirements are omitted or ambiguous depending on the design context, although these requirements would not necessarily be omitted or ambiguous when viewed as requirements alone. The design context sometimes causes inconsistencies among implementations that realize the same requirement. Existing detection and analysis methods do not limit evaluation of review materials to implementations of context-dependent design. An evaluation technique that limits the evaluated parts to the parts describing context-dependent design implementations is expected to be efficient. This paper proposes a method for detecting inconsistent implementations (context-dependent requirement defects) caused by context-dependent requirement omissions and ambiguities in design reviews. The proposed method defines goal-oriented check items for design review using a goal tree obtained by goal-oriented requirements analysis. Reviewers use the goal-oriented check items to detect inconsistent implementations that realize the same requirement. This paper also evaluates the proposed method through a case study. The results of the case study showed that the proposed method defined five goal-oriented check items and that reviewers detected 24 context-dependent requirement defects with goal-oriented check items. The results also showed that the sum of the estimated additional effort to define goal-oriented check items and perform design reviews with goal-oriented check items was 19.6 person-hours. Furthermore, the results showed that an engineer with general skills and knowledge of software development but without system-specific skills and knowledge could define a goal tree and the corresponding goal-oriented check items.

A Systematic Literature Review of The Role of Ontology in Modeling Knowledge in Software Development Processes

Ontology in software development is explained as presenting the properties of things within a domain knowledge and how they are interrelated to each other by defining a set of notions and taxonomies that exemplify the knowledge. It is used to deter- mine the ambiguity in the software requirements specification. Though averred to be useful, the software engineering communities are still unfamiliar with the role of Ontology in modeling knowledge in software development processes. Moreover, not much has been known about the role of Ontology in software engineering processes. The objective is to map and explain the substantiation about the role of Ontology in Modelling Knowledge and the challenge faced by the software engineering team to understand how far ontology can help them determine the ambiguity in model- ing and software development processes. We have carried out a methodical review of the literature issued between 2012 and 2021 and recognized 150 publications that talk over the role of ontology in modeling knowledge in software development pro- cesses. This study conveyed and employed particular inclusion and exclusion criteria in bi-rounds to establish the utmost pertinent publications for our research objec- tive. The review acknowledged 22 applications that explain ontologies’ primary role in software development processes. However, our findings suggest ontology’s role in software engineering as a investigation background requires extra consideration. A further experimental result I needed to better understand the role of ontology in modeling knowledge in software development with quality requirements as well as self-organizing groups.

Teaching university students co-creation and living lab methodologies through experiential learning activities and preparing them for RRI.

During the last decade, the living lab and co-creation concepts have started being blended with the Responsible Research and Innovation approach, aiming to evaluate potential societal anticipations toward fostering an inclusive RRI behavior. Teaching co-creation concept and living lab methodologies to university students has started been considered as valuable for future researchers along with the demand of companies and public sectors which turn toward user-center techniques for inspiration to develop innovative and services. To this end, the scientific publications presenting work on teaching co-creation and living lab methodologies are not so many while there are no published research studies on experiential learning activities for teaching co-creation and living lab approaches to university students. This study presents a course based on living labs and co-creation methodologies through experiential learning activities, consisted of four different lectures and an open event. The study involves stakeholders from the academia, the citizens, and the public sector. The results show that lectures with the participation of end-users were the most enjoyable. Furthermore, students thought that they learned the most when they first met the end-users. This lecture was perceived as a successful way to gain methodical knowledge for user-centered design and software development.

Knowledge reuse in software projects: Retrieving software development Q&A posts based on project task similarity.

Software developers need to cope with a massive amount of knowledge throughout the typical life cycle of modern projects. This knowledge includes expertise related to the software development phases (e.g., programming, testing) using a wide variety of methods and tools, including development methodologies (e.g., waterfall, agile), software tools (e.g., Eclipse), programming languages (e.g., Java, SQL), and deployment strategies (e.g., Docker, Jenkins). However, there is no explicit integration of these various types of knowledge with software development projects so that developers can avoid having to search over and over for similar and recurrent solutions to tasks and reuse this knowledge. Specifically, Q&A sites such as Stack Overflow are used by developers to share software development knowledge through posts published in several categories, but there is no link between these posts and the tasks developers perform. In this paper, we present an approach that (i) allows developers to associate project tasks with Stack Overflow posts, and (ii) recommends which Stack Overflow posts might be reused based on task similarity. We analyze an industry dataset, which contains project tasks associated with Stack Overflow posts, looking for the similarity of project tasks that reuse a Stack Overflow post. The approach indicates that when a software developer is performing a task, and this task is similar to another task that has been associated with a post, the same post can be recommended to the developer and possibly reused. We believe that this approach can significantly advance the state of the art of software knowledge reuse by supporting novel knowledge-project associations.

The Development and Evaluation of Experience-Based Factory Model for Software Development Process

Knowledge, and experiences in software development have been accumulated over time throughout the project lifecycle. Previous studies have shown that the management of knowledge and experiences in software development has always been an issue. Therefore, the knowledge transfer and information flow are inefficient, misinterpretation, and inconsistencies always occur between individuals or teams, and the organization fails to learn from past projects. It is understood that efficient knowledge and experience management for software development organizations is crucial for the purpose of sharing and future reuse. This paper discusses the prototype development for a proposed model, which is based on the experience factory approach, to manage knowledge and experiences for the software development process. Discussions include the system functionalities and design, infrastructure requirements, and implementation approach. The efficiency and effectiveness of the prototype are evaluated as survey research based on Jennex & Olfman knowledge management success model. Rasch analysis is used for data reliability and validity. Results show positive feedback on the model’s efficiency and effectiveness. Additionally, as agreed by most respondents, the top three of the model contributions are: to encourage learning organization, to prevent knowledge loss and to aid in decision making.

Combining Augmented Reality and 3D Printing to Display Patient Models on a Smartphone.

Augmented reality (AR) has great potential in education, training, and surgical guidance in the medical field. Its combination with three-dimensional (3D) printing (3DP) opens new possibilities in clinical applications. Although these technologies have grown exponentially in recent years, their adoption by physicians is still limited, since they require extensive knowledge of engineering and software development. Therefore, the purpose of this protocol is to describe a step-by-step methodology enabling inexperienced users to create a smartphone app, which combines AR and 3DP for the visualization of anatomical 3D models of patients with a 3D-printed reference marker. The protocol describes how to create 3D virtual models of a patient's anatomy derived from 3D medical images. It then explains how to perform positioning of the 3D models with respect to marker references. Also provided are instructions for how to 3D print the required tools and models. Finally, steps to deploy the app are provided. The protocol is based on free and multi-platform software and can be applied to any medical imaging modality or patient. An alternative approach is described to provide automatic registration between a 3D-printed model created from a patient's anatomy and the projected holograms. As an example, a clinical case of a patient suffering from distal leg sarcoma is provided to illustrate the methodology. It is expected that this protocol will accelerate the adoption of AR and 3DP technologies by medical professionals.

AdaptiveVLE: An Integrated Framework for Personalized Online Education Using MPS JetBrains Domain-Specific Modeling Environment

This article contains the design and development of an Adaptive Virtual Learning Environment (AdaptiveVLE) framework to assist educators of all disciplines with creating adaptive VLEs tailored to their needs and to contribute towards the creation of a more generic framework for adaptive systems. Fully online education is a major trend in education technology of our times. However, it has been criticised for its lack of personalisation and therefore not adequately addressing individual students’ needs. Adaptivity and intelligence are elements that could substantially improve the student experience and enhance the learning taking place. There are several attempts in academia and in industry to provide adaptive VLEs and therefore personalise educational provision. All these attempts require a multiple-domain (multi-disciplinary) approach from education professionals, software developers, data scientists to cover all aspects of the system. An integrated environment that can be used by all the multiple-domain users mentioned above and will allow for quick experimentation of different approaches is currently missing. Specifically, a transparent approach that will enable the educator to configure the data collected and the way it is processed without any knowledge of software development and/or data science algorithms implementation details is required. In our proposed work, we developed a new language/framework using MPS JetBrains Domain-Specific Language (DSL) development environment to address this problem. Our work consists of the following stages: data collection configuration by the educator, implementation of the adaptive VLE, data processing, adaptation of the learning path. These stages correspond to the adaptivity stages of all adaptive systems such as monitoring, processing and adaptation. The extension of our framework to include other application areas such as business analytics, health analytics, etc. so that it becomes a generic framework for adaptive systems as well as more usability testing for all applications will be part of our future work.

Proposal of a Privacy Knowledge Base for Supporting Development of Privacy Friendly Software

Abstract With the spread of highly functional mobile devices, anyone can send messages in a simple manner. On the other hand, risks regarding the leakage of privacy information have increased in number. Software engineers must prevent the leakage of privacy information caused by problems of software systems. The need to tackle privacy issues in the early stage of the software development cycle is called Privacy by Design (PbD). However, a body of knowledge for privacy friendly software development has not been built. Since software developers are not always privacy experts, to provide such a body of knowledge is significant. This paper proposes a metamodel that manages knowledge for development of privacy friendly software and presents a knowledge base that embodies the metamodel by the already known knowledge. We also show an example using the knowledge base to present its usefulness.

The Role of Model-View Controller in Object Oriented Software Development

Object Oriented Software Development (OOSD) is a design technique that is used before the development and design of a software. This design method makes the system appears as a collection of objects to communicate with other objects by passing messages. The Model-View-Controller (MVC) has been inherited from Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with the integration of Graphical User Interface (GUI) and interactive program execution. The MVC is very useful for developing Interactive and Dynamic Web Applications and iOS. With MVC, developers can trust on design patterns that are widely accepted as solutions for recurring problems. MVC can be used to develop flexible, reusable and modular Software. Applying the MVC design pattern in object-oriented Software development a flexible, reliable, modular and scalable website can be built. So, it’s necessary for every developer to have the knowledge of software development using MVC design pattern.

Conceptual Framework of Dynamic Scrum Model and Knowledge Management for Software Product Management

Software development methodologies and knowledge management (KM) are a dynamic part of core challenge of the organization in order to deliver on time with less effort and efficient software product. Scrum model is widely known as one of the best common software development methodologies and this paper has conducted a survey on how to transfer the knowledge between team members. Moreover, the Scrum model relies on daily stand-up meeting or daily scrum meeting for capture and share knowledge. Thus, this paper investigates Scrum model and knowledge management process on how to improve the proficiency of knowledge sharing among the software practitioners with less time and effort. It also proposes a conceptual framework where it stores and retrieves the tacit knowledge via Scrum model for software product management. This proposed conceptual framework is used to store and retrieve the tacit knowledge via Scrum process for software product management to save a time consuming and effort.

Analysis and Evaluation for the Effects of Experience-based Learning Method of Software Development Applying PBL Approach

Education of software development at universities is required at the level of industry-ready engineers. However, tasks of university lectures and exercises are individually practiced, and assignments are very fundamental exercises or somewhat applicative ones. But in the real field, they are very complicated and integrative software. Therefore, it is difficult for new employees to become industry-ready engineers. Most of university students cannot develop software on a group work basis. They passively study given tasks in university class and they cannot experience full development process of software. To solve above problems, master development technologies of software and improve skill of collaborative work and necessary skill for development of software, several papers proposed PBL-based method for software and they showed its effectiveness. This paper clarifies purely effectiveness of PBL-based method and analyzes which points of knowledge and skills of software development are improved.

Non-technical individual skills are weakly connected to the maturity of agile practices

Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical individual skills are especially important in agile software development.Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual skills can predict the use of agile practices.Method: Through creating a set of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in relation to agile practices.Results: The results show that there is surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict (i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software development.Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile practices.

Challenges in the development of green and sustainable software for software multisourcing vendors: Findings from a systematic literature review and industrial survey

AbstractGreen and sustainable software development has emerged in recent years, and vendors are constantly striving to develop software that has a less hazardous impact on the environment, economy, and human beings. However, developing green software in the context of software multisourcing is not a risk‐free activity, and vendors are exposed to several challenges. The authors have conducted both a systematic literature review and an industrial survey to identify the challenges faced by multisourcing vendors in the development of green and sustainable software. The final publication sample for the systematic literature review is composed of 54 research papers. Similarly, the final sample of the industrial survey is composed of 108 relevant experts. The authors have identified a list of 14 challenges. Of these challenges/risk factors, 8 have been tagged as critical risk factors. These critical risk factors are “lack of green RE practices,” “high power consumption,” “high carbon emission throughout the software development,” “poor software design (architectural, logical, physical, and user interface),” “lack of ICTs for coordination and communication,” “high resource requirements,” “lack of coding standards,” and “lack of green software development knowledge.”

A Programming Toolkit for Automating Biophysics Experiments with Microorganism Swarms

Collecting data for a biophysics experiment is currently challenging and time consuming even for experts in the field, as setting up a robust experiment can require knowledge of biotechnology, hardware design, and software development in addition to continuous access to reliable and responsive biological materials. We have therefore developed a JavaScript-based web toolkit enabling rapid programming of biophysical experiments with microorganism swarms. The toolkit allows users to script experiments with swarms on Euglena gracilis housed in a remote wet lab. Users can program event-based manipulations of organism stimuli and track position, velocity, acceleration, and rotation for all Euglena in the microfluidic chamber. We evaluated the tool with both biophysics experts and casual programmers, who all created a variety of experiments. Hence this toolkit can be used to quickly automate biophysics experiments with Euglena, thereby lowering access barriers for interdisciplinary education, i.e. students studying biology, physics, and computer science in tandem.

Toward a Customer Knowledge Management Model for Enhancing Enterprise Software Quality

Many previous research studies on software quality enhancement have only focused on the technical aspects of software quality, such as reliability, maintainability and functionality. However, the nature of enterprise software requires additional focus on transferring and integration of customer knowledge, for customization, enhancement, maintenance and training. As customers are seen as one of the most important stakeholders in software projects, it would appear that the current use of customer knowledge in software development is insufficient. This study concentrates on investigating Human, Organizational and Technological factors of customer knowledge management (CKM) in order to enhance the quality of enterprise software within software companies. After investigating CKM factors in the literature, a Technique for the Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used to rank these factors regarding the importance of CKM development in enterprise software companies, in order to improve software product quality. The weight and priority of the factors were determined by 31 software development company experts. Based on the highest priority factors, a theoretical model was developed. This study proposes a fundamental model that can be used as a guideline for successful CKM applications, within enterprise software development companies, to improve software quality.

The labour of communicating publics: Participatory platforms, socio-technical intermediaries and pluralistic expertise

Kolorob is a participatory platform connecting informal settlement communities with services and informal jobs in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Alongside technological systems, expertise from community, non-government, private-sector, volunteer and academic fields has been integral to the platform’s development. These socio-technical connections and networks, manifest through participatory design, agile software development and collaborative knowledge practices, have become productively entangled in the labour of platform production. We introduce a framework, participatory platform analysis, through which distinct layers – in the form of audiences, intermediaries, interfaces and databases – of this labour can be distinguished and examined. Our analysis draws upon focus group discussions, conducted in Mirpur in 2016 with emergent experts: youth facilitators, field officers and developers. We argue that the interests and tensions of co-designing participatory platforms relating to matters of public concern in South Asian mega-cities are reflective of the rising hybridity of expertise, generated through both institutional training and grass-roots practice, in contemporary urban life. The ‘narrative of expertise in the future’ compels us to recode knowledge production in the here and now: how we are making participatory platforms, the role of socio-technical expertise and the labour of communicating publics.