Traditional Development Environments Research Articles

Herramientas y buenas prácticas para el aseguramiento de calidad de software con metodologías ágiles

La gestión de la calidad en aquellas empresas que se dedican al desarrollo de proyectos de software, ofrece una ventaja competitiva puesto que de esta forma aseguran que sus productos sean de calidad. Las metodologías ágiles surgen para aplicarse principalmente en proyectos cuya naturaleza sea cambiante o donde se hace necesario obtener pronto retorno de la inversión. Las organizaciones que optan por el cambio hacia las metodologías ágiles enfrentan retos como el aseguramiento de la calidad tanto del producto como del proyecto. Modelos como Capability Maturity Model Integration e ISO 25010, son conocidos y funcionan bien en entornos de desarrollo tradicionales. Para metodologías ágiles hay algunas propuestas menos populares, entre ellas se puede mencionar el Desarrollo Dirigido por Pruebas, la Integración Continua y la métrica Product Backlog Rating. Éstas, aunque en la literatura reportan buenos resultados, no están lo suficientemente documentadas para ser empleadas en cualquier proyecto ágil. Este trabajo hace un análisis sobre las propuestas que apuntan a mejorar la calidad en los productos realizados con metodologías ágiles, recopilando herramientas y buenas prácticas con los que se pretende diseñar una serie de recomendaciones en cuanto a gestión de calidad en los proyectos de software.

IDARE—a reference architecture for integrated software environments

SUMMARYTraditionally, software development environments have tended to treat a system's development‐time activities separately from its run‐time. After a system is in operation, it frequently needs to be maintained and evolved. In traditional environments, this results in frequent relocations of a system between the disjoint development and run‐time environments, which is undesirable for several reasons. A more effective solution is to couple the development and run‐time environments to directly monitor and adapt running systems. Given the growing need for interaction between development‐time and run‐time aspects of modern software systems, it is important to understand development and run‐time environments, and their relationship. To this end, we study and classify a wide range of software development environments on the basis of their level of interaction with the corresponding run‐time environments. Particularly, we identify, study, and characterize Self‐Adaptive Life‐cycle Environments (SALEs), an emerging class of modern development environments that are tightly integrated with run‐time environments. We reify our study of the development environments into a novel reference architecture, iDARE, that captures and differentiates the architectures of software environments – from those, such as traditional development environments, that have no interaction with the run‐time environments, to the ones, such as SALEs, that are tightly integrated with the run‐time environments. We use iDARE to highlight several shortcomings of existing SALEs. Adherence to iDARE has the potential to improve certain quality properties of the integrated development and run‐time environments, such as adaptability, fault‐tolerance, robustness, availability, and resource consumption. We identify a number of opportunities for future research. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

LambdaMDE: Embedded development environment based on model

Recently the development tools of embedded-oriented software are developing from the code-based traditional development environment to model-based development environment.Therefore,the authors studied a model development environment for embedded software called LambdaMDE,which integrated some model development tools such as OSATE and Simulink and other correlative tools by LambdaPro,and hence,it covered the entire development process of embedded software,such as modeling,simulation,verification,code generation and testing.It is consistent with the development trend of embedded software tools,and also has the corresponding theoretical,technique and product foundations.

A Quantitative Study of a Software Tool that Supports a Part-Complete Solution Method on Learning Outcomes

This paper reports on the findings from a quantitative research study into the use of a software tool that was built to support a part-complete solution method (PCSM) for the learning of computer programming. The use of part-complete solutions to programming problems is one of the methods that can be used to reduce the cognitive load that students experience during their learning. The tool that was built is a code restructuring tool known as CORT. It permits the display of a part-complete solution to a programming task together with a set of possible lines of code that can be used to fill-in the solution. Students can then easily manipulate the programming lines within CORT and then test their solutions within a traditional development environment such as Microsoft's Visual Studio. An inquiry into CORT's effect on student learning outcomes took place over a period of 14 weeks at an Australian university. Two student groups participated in an introductory programming unit, one of which utilized the CORT system whilst the other acted as a control group. Data were collected on student background, time taken to complete programming tasks, the amount of help that students required, and student learning outcomes. The data were analysed using a statistical package, and it was found that there was no significant difference in the relative levels of achievement between students in the two groups. However the results did indicate that students in the CORT group spent significantly less time and required significantly less help than the students in the control group. This suggests that if the CORT students had spent extra time on further programming tasks such that their overall time had been equal to that of the non-CORT students, then they may have achieved higher learning outcomes. Also the fact that the CORT students required less help than the control group suggests that the use of CORT might be beneficial to students studying programming in external mode where access to tutor help is more problematic.

Evaluating the performance of open source software projects using data envelopment analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the relative performance of open source software (OSS) projects.Design/methodology/approachThis paper evaluates the relative performance of OSS projects by evaluating multiple project inputs and multiple project outputs by using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. The DEA model produces an efficiency score for each project based on project inputs and outputs. The method of producing an efficiency score is based on the convex envelopment technology structure. The efficiency measure quantifies a “distance” to an efficient frontier.FindingsThe DEA model produced an index of corresponding intensities linking an inefficient project to its benchmark efficient project(s). The inefficiency measures produced an ordering of inefficient projects. Eight projects were found to be “efficient” and used as benchmarking projects.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited to only security‐based OSS projects. Future research on other areas of OSS projects is warranted.Practical implicationsThe result of this research is a practical model that can be used by OSS project developers to evaluate the relative performance of their projects and make resource decisions.Originality/valueThis research extends the work of previous studies that have examined the relative performance of software development projects in a traditional development environment. As a result of this research, OSS projects can now be adequately benchmarked and evaluated according to project performance. An OSS project manger can effectively use these results to critically evaluate resources for their project and judge the relative efficiency of the resources.

TToSA : 제품계열공학으로의 전이를 위한 임베디드 소프트웨어의 모델 기반 아키텍처 변환기

Along with the enlargement of application scope, the growth of requirements complexity, and the fast development of product for embedded system, lots of industries developing embedded software try to evolve their traditional development environment into the new paradigm such as product line engineering approach. In order to sufficiently support the evolution, software architecture is essentially required to develop the embedded software. In this paper, we propose a tool, named TToSA which translates the conventional software models to software architecture models. Our TToSA is developed with the critical implication about that an industry can approach toward the new development paradigm without the big change of the existing software development method.