Enterprise Software Development Research Articles

Research on the System of Private Scientific and Technological Enterprise's Software Developers’ Survival State Evaluation - Based on Empirical Survey of Five Cities

The system of the private scientific and technological enterprise software developers survival state evaluation is relatively insufficient, with only a few records. For this reason, the paper sets up a dynamic model of private scientific and technological enterprise's software developers survival state evaluation by combining the career cycle with the static model of survival state evaluation, and investigates and evaluates 407 software developers of the private scientific and technological enterprise from five cities. Results show that, the evaluation model is more operational and practicable.

Research on Software Product Development Project Management

Project organization and management software development project management model is the best form of software development enterprises in China's understanding of software development project management has been greatly improved. Traditional software development projects have different characteristics, therefore how flexible application for software project management theory and strategies of the main research objectives of domestic software development project management. Our software in enterprise application software development project management, general shortcomings in implementation, this article on software research and development analysis and project management of implementation strategies.

Organizational learning networks that can increase the productivity of IT consulting companies. A case study for ERP consultants

This paper considers the use of social learning networks to increase the productivity of IT consulting companies. We advocate that using a carefully designed social learning network can reduce the learning time for enterprise software developers and consultants. By viewing learning as a social act, a consulting company can increase its productivity. Increased productivity is based on hastening the learning process. The focus of this paper is to identify the ways in which social networks catalyze the process of knowledge sharing in order to increase the productivity in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) consulting sector. We present a set of detailed practical results that were obtained from experiments with an original knowledge sharing method that was applied to training young software developers to enable them to work for some of the world’s most demanding IT companies. The experimental data were collected from 2004 to 2011 during 12 training sessions conducted by an IBM partner in conjunction with the Computer Science Department of a large Eastern European University. The main results of this study were: (1) designed a learning community that reduced the time needed to insert junior consultants into ERP projects; and (2) statistical data were generated that measured the increase in productivity that an ERP consulting company could obtain by employing organizational learning networks. We also discuss the positive impacts of social networks that can be established between private companies and universities.

Role of Innovation in the Development of ICT Software Enterprises in Palestine

The ICT sector in Palestine is growing in quantity and scope of works endorsed by the governmental institutions. ICT enterprises working on software development related works have started two decades ago. Some of these enterprises have scored success on national and regional levels. The ICT software development enterprises are so much important in the national innovation system as they are not only delivering goods but providing diversity of services and tools used in the process of knowledge generation and implementation and the knowledge-based-economy. In an effort of assessing the innovation levels in the Palestinian software development enterprises, the community innovation survey questionnaire has been translated, tailored and used on a representative sample. Analysis of the innovation survey questionnaire brings promising results that need to be carefully studied. It is found that most enterprises are innovators and having high potentials. However, potentials are found to be fragmented as national directive policies are not yet developed. For the development of the sector, public-private-academic partnership is needed.

In Search of Efficient Flexibility: Effects of Software Component Granularity on Development Effort, Defects, and Customization Effort

Simultaneously achieving efficiency and flexibility in enterprise software production has been a considerable challenge for firms. Newer software development paradigms such as component-based and model-driven development attempt to overcome this challenge by emphasizing modular design of complex systems. However, there is a paucity of rigorous empirical research on the use of such software methodologies and the associated extent to which trade-offs between efficiency and flexibility can be influenced. Addressing this gap, we investigate the performance outcomes of a model-driven, component-based software development methodology using data collected from an enterprise software development firm that deployed such a methodology for its product development processes. Examining the design, development, and implementation of 92 business software components of the firm's enterprise resource planning product, we discuss how the design of software components, specifically component granularity, affects development efficiency (development effort and defects) and flexibility (customization effort). Our results suggest that (a) components that are coarse grained are associated with higher flexibility (lower customization effort) but are also associated with lower development efficiency (more development effort and defects), and (b) defect proneness of a component plays a mediating role on the relationship between component granularity and flexibility. These findings present strong evidence for the existence of trade-offs between efficiency and flexibility in mass-customized software product life cycles. They establish component granularity as a key design dimension that needs to be managed judiciously to enable potential trade-off shifting mechanisms through the use of software methodologies that emphasize modular design approaches.

Improving the evaluation of software development methodology adoption and its impact on enterprise performance

Although the literature studying software development methodologies (SDMs) lists several significant positive effects of the deployment of SDMs, investments into SDMs by the enterprises remain relatively limited. Strategic investments decisions, such as SDMs investments, are mostly taken with the goal of improving enterprise performance. In this paper a model for evaluation of the adoption of SDMs that focuses on the abovementioned SDMs impact on enterprise performance is proposed. The model was empirically tested in four case studies in software development small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Slovenia. The case studies confirmed that the use of the proposed model enabled SMEs to improve SDMs related investment and adoption decisions and enabled SMEs to invest their limited resources in the most productive and competitive way. The case study experience with the proposed model suggests that its use would also bring similar benefits to larger software development enterprises.

The value of software sizing

Context One of the difficulties faced by software development Project Managers is estimating the cost and schedule for new projects. Previous industry surveys have concluded that software size and cost estimation is a significant technical area of concern. In order to estimate cost and schedule it is important to have a good understanding of the size of the software product to be developed. There are a number of techniques used to derive software size, with function points being amongst the most documented. Objective In this paper we explore the utility of function point software sizing techniques when applied to two levels of software requirements documentation in a commercial software development organisation. The goal of the research is to appraise the value (cost/benefit) which functional sizing techniques can bring to the project planning and management of software projects within a small-to-medium sized software development enterprise (SME). Method Functional counts were made at the bid and detailed functional specification stages for each of five commercial projects used in the research. Three variants of the NESMA method were used to determine these function counts. Through a structured interview session, feedback on the sizing results was obtained to evaluate its feasibility and potential future contribution to the company. Results The results of our research suggest there is value in performing size estimates at two appropriate stages in the software development lifecycle, with simplified methods providing the optimal return on effort expended. Conclusion The ‘Estimated NESMA’ is the most appropriate tool for use in size estimation for the company studied. The use of software sizing provides a valuable contribution which would augment, but not replace, the company’s existing cost estimation approach.

Unleashing the Potential Impact of Nonessential Self-contained Software Units and Flexible Precedence Relations upon the Value of Software

This paper evaluates the impact of nonessential minimum marketable features modules (NMMF) and nonessential architectural elements (NAEs) on software projects; shows that the value-creation path of these selfcontained software units may be quite different from that of essential software units; and discusses the impact of early NMMF and NAE identification on the value of software projects to business and the deployment of business strategy. Moreover, the paper demonstrates that the existence of flexible precedence relations among MMFs and AEs may also be exploited to further increase the value of software development initiatives.

A comparative study of proprietary ERP and open source ERP modules on the value chain

There have been many successful outcomes from open-source software (OSS) development, such as Firefox web browser, Apache server application, Linux operating system, etc. Due to time and cost constraints, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) cannot afford proprietary enterprise software. Therefore, there is an increased demand for open-source development of enterprise software from SMBs. Many studies have been done on implementation of large scale proprietary enterprise software, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM). However, open-source enterprise software implementation has not received much spotlight yet, in spite of its potentials as a disruptive innovation. In this study, we investigate types of ERP modules developed by an OSS community, SourceForge.net (SF). We classified 447 the most popular ERP projects of SF into 14 categories of proprietary ERP software used in previous studies. When we analysed (by a qualitative method) the contents of each category, we found that SMBs are using OSS for different ERP modules developed and provided by commercial vendors.

Incorporating AOSD to Enhance Model Driven Architecture

Various software development approaches in the present scenario are best suited for a specific application. The software development strategies include both merits and demerits when talked in terms of generalization. The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) describes software development based on models on various levels of abstraction. The model driven software development process consists of sequence of model transformations between various models. This paper presents incorporation of the merits of Aspect Oriented Software Development (AOSD) like modularization, reusability and reduced complexity into Model Driven Architecture (MDA) software development strategy. The proposed Model Driven Software Development approach which combines the merits of MDA and AOSD meets the ever changing and challenging demand of the enterprise software development.

Data Mining based Software Development Communication Pattern Discovery

Smaller time loss and smoother communication pattern is the urgent pursuit in the software development enterprise. However, communication is difficult to control and manage and demands on technical support, due to the uncertainty and complex structure of data appeared in communication. Data mining is a well established framework aiming at intelligently discovering knowledge and principles hidden in massive amounts of original data. Data mining technology together with shared repositories results in an intelligent way to analyze data of communication in software development environment. We propose a data mining based algorithm to tackle the problem, adopting a co-training styled algorithm to discover pattern in software development environment. Decision tree is trained as based learners and a majority voting procedure is then launched to determine labels of unlabeled data. Based learners are then trained again with newly labeled data and such iteration stops when a consistent state is reached. Our method is naturally semi-supervised which can improve generalization ability by making use of unlabeled data. Experimental results on data set gathered from productive environment indicate that the proposed algorithm is effective and outperforms traditional supervised algorithms.

Software Process Improvement in Small and Medium Software Organisations of India

The challenge for software development enterprises is to find a path to apply Software Process Improvement (SPI) technologies to realize their company's improvement goals. The most pressing requirements for improvement paradigms are that these SPI technologies are not only effective but also realize tangible results quickly, which can be implemented incrementally. This paper focuses on the key issues in Software Process Improvement paradigm, in comparison to the current process in India to those of the standard models used internationally. This research also suggests a software process practices model for Indian small and medium software companies that require collaboration and strengthening to transform their current perspective into inseparable global IT scenario. This paper also gives a quantitative study and is based on questionnaires and interviews of Indian small and medium software organizations.

10 Quick, Dirty, and Cheap Things to Improve Enterprise Security

As software security has increasingly become an important part of information security programs, there have been some notable trends and successes of various tools, processes, and models. Because "building security in" is so different from how enterprise software has historically been developed, the changes might seem revolutionary. In the enterprise, revolutionary changes involve cost and complexity, as organizations figure out how to incorporate new techniques, processes, and technology. The paper shows an informal list that doesn't say, "simply reboot your entire enterprise software development and you are ready to begin secure coding." Instead, it describes how people with limited budgets and/or authority can make potentially big changes in their enterprise software's overall security. 10 low or no-cost ideas were discussed in this paper.

Investigating the role of CMMI with expanding company size for small- to medium-sized enterprises

In this article we show how the results from software process appraisals of ten small- to medium-sized software development enterprises demonstrate that as companies become larger they naturally use an increasing number of practices within the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®). The companies involved in this study had no CMMI® experience prior to this work. We identify those practices that tend to be best followed by both small- and medium-sized enterprises and those that tend to be introduced as the company size increases from small to medium. We conclude that the CMMI® appears to have an inherent roadmap for process improvement, buried within its explicit structure of capability levels that is driven by company expansion. The results of this study can be used by organisations to plan process improvement as they expand in size and staff complement. We further show how our results are consistent with the European Union's definition of a ‘Small’ and a ‘Medium’ sized enterprise. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Investigating the role of CMMI with expanding company size for small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises

AbstractIn this article we show how the results from software process appraisals of ten small‐ to medium‐sized software development enterprises demonstrate that as companies become larger they naturally use an increasing number of practices within the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®). The companies involved in this study had no CMMI® experience prior to this work. We identify those practices that tend to be best followed by both small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises and those that tend to be introduced as the company size increases from small to medium. We conclude that the CMMI® appears to have an inherent roadmap for process improvement, buried within its explicit structure of capability levels that is driven by company expansion. The results of this study can be used by organisations to plan process improvement as they expand in size and staff complement. We further show how our results are consistent with the European Union's definition of a ‘Small’ and a ‘Medium’ sized enterprise. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Enterprise Web 2.0 with EGL

This book shows a way forward in the development of secure enterprise software. The authors describe the business implications of Web 2.0---a set of techniques for user collaboration on the Web---and describe how the computer language EGL makes developers more productive, protects a company's investment in existing software, and facilitates use of Rich Internet Applications. In addition, the book provides an overview of Web security. Enterprise Web 2.0 with EGL: o Introduces a variety of concepts that are essential for understanding modern computing, including service-oriented architecture, cloud computing, and agile development o Demonstrates how EGL handles widespread requirements such as service creation, database access, and reporting o Outlines the runtime technologies supported by EGL, including Java Enterprise Edition, Windows, IBM i, UNIX, and the mainframe environments CICS, IMS, and z/OS batch Enterprise Web 2.0 with EGL is useful for: o Executives, managers, and architects who seek a creative, long-term response to the complexity of application development o Traditional developers who need to access the latest runtime technologies o Students of information technology

From business process models to process-oriented software systems

Several methods for enterprise systems analysis rely on flow-oriented representations of business operations, otherwise known as business process models. The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a standard for capturing such models. BPMN models facilitate communication between domain experts and analysts and provide input to software development projects. Meanwhile, there is an emergence of methods for enterprise software development that rely on detailed process definitions that are executed by process engines. These process definitions refine their counterpart BPMN models by introducing data manipulation, application binding, and other implementation details. The de facto standard for defining executable processes is the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). Accordingly, a standards-based method for developing process-oriented systems is to start with BPMN models and to translate these models into BPEL definitions for subsequent refinement. However, instrumenting this method is challenging because BPMN models and BPEL definitions are structurally very different. Existing techniques for translating BPMN to BPEL only work for limited classes of BPMN models. This article proposes a translation technique that does not impose structural restrictions on the source BPMN model. At the same time, the technique emphasizes the generation of readable (block-structured) BPEL code. An empirical evaluation conducted over a large collection of process models shows that the resulting BPEL definitions are largely block-structured. Beyond its direct relevance in the context of BPMN and BPEL, the technique presented in this article addresses issues that arise when translating from graph-oriented to block-structure flow definition languages.

미들웨어 소프트웨어의 시험사례 연구

Recently raising the recognition and it joins in about software quality evaluation and authentication and the recognition is augmented in about importance of the high quality security which leads a quality investment from the software development enterprise. The quality investor do to become accomplished but substantially from which degree level, quality investment it leads and the verification of software quality improvement does not become accomplished substantially and with without being it does and wants the enterprises where are clear the quality improvement which leads a quality investment does not set the direction where the problem occurs. From the research which it sees international ISO/IEC 9126 where it is standard and in about software test ISO/IEC 12119 where it is a guide it constructed the metric in base and software tentative instance it led and is accumulated and the defect data which it analyzed. result escape it investigated/to analyze quality level and it analyzed is weak from development process part and a defect level and the quality rating instance of Middleware] software and escape a disposal plan it investigated. The research which it sees it leads and it induces it is quantitative/that there is a possibility of being sufficient it sees the quality increase of Middleware software and the demand which is qualitative.

Patterns-based evaluation of open source BPM systems: The cases of jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark

In keeping with the proliferation of free software development initiatives and the increased interest in the business process management domain, many open source workflow and business process management systems have appeared during the last few years and are now under active development. This upsurge gives rise to two important questions: What are the capabilities of these systems? and How do they compare to each other and to their closed source counterparts? In other words: What is the state-of-the-art in the area?. To gain an insight into these questions, we have conducted an in-depth analysis of three of the major open source workflow management systems – jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark, the results of which are reported here. This analysis is based on the workflow patterns framework and provides a continuation of the series of evaluations performed using the same framework on closed source systems, business process modelling languages, and web-service composition standards. The results from evaluations of the three open source systems are compared with each other and also with the results from evaluations of three representative closed source systems: Staffware, WebSphere MQ, and Oracle BPEL PM. The overall conclusion is that open source systems are targeted more toward developers rather than business analysts. They generally provide less support for the patterns than closed source systems, particularly with respect to the resource perspective, i.e. the various ways in which work is distributed amongst business users and managed through to completion.

Question framework for architectural description quality evaluation

The challenges of architectural descriptions (AD), processes and practices have become increasingly important for enterprise information system and software developers. As the development and efficient usage of different architectures are highly dependent on the quality of their documentation, there is an evident need for practical means for AD evaluation. In this paper, we introduce a question framework for AD quality evaluation. The framework was developed in a joint study with industry and validated by the industry experts. This framework can be used as a practical tool for evaluating and further developing the quality of the AD within organisations.