Real-life Software Projects Research Articles

A comparative study of modeling and solution approaches for the multi-mode resource-constrained discrete time–cost trade-off problem: Case study of an ERP implementation project

Most knowledge-intensive industries, especially companies developing software engineering projects such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation projects, generally necessitate finding the optimal trade-off between the project duration and total usage cost of the renewable resource costs (e.g., human resource expertise costs). Therefore, the MRC-DTCTP, which integrates classical multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling (MRCPSP) and discrete time–cost trade-off problems (DTCTP), can be seen as a more applicable problem since it better reflects the objectives and requirements of today’s real-life software project applications. The MRC-DTCTP is a much more complex variant of the MRCPSP since it aims to minimize total direct/indirect costs of the resources simultaneously under a pre-specified project deadline. Based on this motivation, a new explicit integer-linear programming (ILP) model of the MRC-DTCTP was first developed based on the implicit non-linear programming model of Wuliang and Chengen (2009). Due to its NP-hard nature, we also proposed a constraint programming (CP) model that includes several search strategies to solve large-sized problem instances within reasonable computation time. In addition, a genetic algorithm (GA) approach in combination with a Modified Serial Schedule Generation scheme (SSGS) is implemented to make further comparisons on several benchmark instances, which are generated based on the existing MRCPSP data sets taken from the project scheduling problem library (PSPLIB) by considering additional problem characteristics. A comprehensive experimental study has shown that the proposed CP model and GA approach can provide superior results in shorter run times for large-sized benchmark instances. Finally, an international Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software Company’s real-life application is presented. The ERP projects generally necessitate finding the optimal trade-off between project makespan and human resource costs, making the MRC-DTCTP much more difficult than classical MRCPSPs & DTCTPs. For further analysis, time–cost trade-off curves under different human resource availabilities and project deadlines are drawn to provide managerial insights to ERP project managers.

A methodological approach for checking safety-critical systems software

The complexity of modern safety-critical systems together with the absence of appropriate software verification tools is one reason for the large number of errors in the design and implementation of these systems. A methodological approach named formal compositional verification approach that uses model checking techniques to verify safety-critical systems software is presented. This approach facilitates decomposition of complex safety-critical systems software into independently verified individual software components, and establishes a compositional method to verify these systems using state-of-the-art model checkers. Our objective in this paper is to facilitate the description of a safety-critical system software as a collection of verified software components, allowing the software verification of complex safety-critical systems. An application on a real-life software project in the field of mobile phone communication is discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.

A methodological approach for checking safety-critical systems software

The complexity of modern safety-critical systems together with the absence of appropriate software verification tools is one reason for the large number of errors in the design and implementation of these systems. A methodological approach named formal compositional verification approach that uses model checking techniques to verify safety-critical systems software is presented. This approach facilitates decomposition of complex safety-critical systems software into independently verified individual software components, and establishes a compositional method to verify these systems using state-of-the-art model checkers. Our objective in this paper is to facilitate the description of a safety-critical system software as a collection of verified software components, allowing the software verification of complex safety-critical systems. An application on a real-life software project in the field of mobile phone communication is discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.

Measuring Flexibility in Software Project Schedules

The complexity of software projects is growing with the increasing complexity of software systems. The pressure to fit schedules within shorter periods of time leads to initial project schedules with a complex logic. These schedules are often highly susceptible to any subsequent delays in project activities. Thus, techniques need to be developed to determine the quality of a software project schedule. Most of the existing measures of schedule quality define the goodness of a schedule in terms of its network complexity. However, these measures fail to estimate the flexibility of a schedule, that is, the extent to which a schedule can withstand delays without requiring extensive changes. The relatively few schedule flexibility measures that exist in literature suffer from several drawbacks such as lack of a theoretical foundation, not having a definite scale and not being able to distinguish between schedules with similar network topologies. In this paper, we address these issues by defining two flexibility measures for software project schedules, namely path shift and value shift, which, respectively, predict the impact of changes in activity durations on the critical paths and the critical value of a schedule. Inspired by the notion of betweenness centrality, these measures are theoretically sound, have a well-defined scale, and require little computational effort. Furthermore, by several examples and two real-life software project case studies, we demonstrate that these measures outperform the existing flexibility measures in clearly discriminating between the flexibility of software project schedules having very similar topologies.

PTBL

With software projects are becoming increasingly complicated, soft skills such as collaboration, effective communication, rhetoric, socio-cultural, accountabilities and collision resolution in real-life software projects, as well as computer programming are badly required for team members to cooperate and finish the strenuous projects. Therefore it is fundamental for software engineering students to improve such skills, if they want to accelerate the success of teamwork. Nowadays, the ability of effective cooperation and communication is much more important than raw programming talent. Teams with average programmers who communicate well are more likely to success than those with superstars but not good at communication. At the same time, these soft skills are just difficult to teach and learn which require true collaboration and communication between students. The traditional learning activities for training soft skills are insufficient based on the facts that teachers and mentors pay too much attention on professional and technical abilities instead of soft skills. In this paper, a novel learning model called Problem and Task Based Learning is proposed which includes Problem-Based Learning, Task-Based Learning, and Web3D technologies. This new model could elevate the teamwork skills in software engineering and overcome the common limitations of the traditional course. This paper also presents two courses using this learning model-a Task-game course and a virtual 3D meeting, as well as some experimental results obtained from the students and the teachers who have participated in the two case studies. Both students and teachers are from Software Engineering Department of Tsinghua University.

A UNIFIED APPROACH FOR DEVELOPING SOFTWARE RELIABILITY GROWTH MODEL USING INFINITE SERVER QUEUING MODEL

In the past 35 years numerous software reliability growth models (SRGMs) have been proposed under diverse testing and debugging (T&D) environments and applied successfully in many real life software projects but no SRGM can claim to be the best in general as the physical interpretation of the T&D is not general. Unified modeling approach proves to be very successful in this regard and provides an excellent platform for obtaining several existing SRGM following single methodology. It forms the main focus of this paper; here we propose a unification modeling approach applying the infinite server queuing theory based on the basic assumptions of an SRGM defining three level of complexity of faults. Our unification methodology can be used to obtain several existing and new SRGMs which consider testing a one stage process with no fault categorization, two/three stage process with random delay functions and hence categorize faults in two/three level complexity. We have also provided data analysis based on two actual T&D data set for some of the models discussed and proposed in the paper.

Learning teamwork skills in university programming courses

University courses about computer programming usually seek to provide students not only with technical knowledge, but also with the skills required to work in real-life software projects. Nowadays, the development of software applications requires the coordinated efforts of the members of one or more teams. Therefore, it is important for software professionals to master the sort of skills that assure the success of teamwork, such as communication, leadership, negotiation, or team management. However, these abilities are difficult to teach, one of the reasons being that they require true commitment from the students. However, today students are taking a more and more passive role in their own education, two of the more evident consequences being the increase in dropout rates and the decrease in marks obtained in exams. The NUCLEO e-learning framework has been designed to promote the effective acquisition of teamwork skills and, at the same time, to promote the more active participation of the students in their own learning process. NUCLEO adopts a socio-constructivist pedagogical approach that pursues the development of communities of practice for Problem Based Learning. Our research has rooted the design decisions of NUCLEO in the analysis of its socio-cultural environment with Activity Theory, which considers conflicts within groups as the impetus of their evolution and the forges of their environments. This paper presents the analysis of the main features of NUCLEO according to Activity Theory, as well as the experimental results obtained with the framework in three different case studies in university courses.

Assessing the validity of one-part software reliability models using likelihood ratio and early detection tests

To achieve higher accuracy in software failure rate estimates in a field environment, software reliability models that were fit from failure data collected during the test interval are often refit using the combined test interval and field interval data. The validity of this analysis depends on the test and field environments being compatible with respect to the manner in which the software is used. In this paper, we formulate the hypothesis of compatible test and field environments in terms of a statistical hypothesis and develop an appropriate test procedure. The test procedure is illustrated by applying it to a real-life software project.

Neuro-genetic prediction of software development effort

Prediction of resource requirements of a software project is crucial for the timely delivery of quality-assured software within a reasonable timeframe. Many conventional (model-based) and AI-oriented (model-free) resource estimators have been proposed in the recent past. This paper presents a novel genetically trained neural network (NN) predictor trained on historical data. We demonstrate substantial improvement in prediction accuracy by the neuro-genetic approach as compared to both a regression-tree-based conventional approach, as well as backpropagation-trained NN approach reported recently. The superiority of this new predictor is established using n-fold cross validation and Student's t-test on various partitions of merged Cocomo and Kemerer data sets incorporating data from 78 real-life software projects.

Real-life software projects as Software Engineering Laboratory exercises

The Software Engineering Laboratory is a one-academic-year course required for the Master of Software Engineering degree at Seattle University. It is designed to simulate a real-life software devel...

Real-life software projects as Software Engineering Laboratory exercises

The Software Engineering Laboratory is a one-academic-year course required for the Master of Software Engineering degree at Seattle University. It is designed to simulate a real-life software development project environment, providing equal focus on technical and managerial considerations. The output of the laboratory must be a software product of marketable quality.This paper describes the experience gained from the laboratory projects and discusses directions for future projects.