Traditional Software Engineering Research Articles

A Guidance Based Approach for Enhancing the e-Government Interoperability

Developing e-Government interoperability in the government context is a complex task. As interoperability in government context is associated and hindered by many challenges and barriers connected to government nature of complexity. Interoperability is generally defined as the ability for two (or more) systems to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. In this paper, we focus on computing systems interoperability across government ministries to achieve interoperable e-Government IT based solutions. In order to achieve e-Government interoperability in an organised and efficient way, this paper establishes a guidance-based approach for enhancing the e-Government Interoperability. This contribution is motivated by the limitations of the traditional software engineering methodologies in terms of analysis, design and development frameworks to a point that they can hardly cope with the growing issues of e-Government services interoperability.

Software Engineering for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems

Smart Cyber--Physical Systems (sCPS) are modern CPS systems that are engineered to seamlessly integrate a large number of computation and physical components; they need to control entities in their environment in a smart and collective way to achieve a high degree of effectiveness and efficiency. At the same time, these systems are supposed to be safe and secure, deal with environment dynamicity and uncertainty, cope with external threats, and optimize their behavior to achieve the best possible outcome. This "smartness" typically stems from highly cooperative behavior, self--awareness, self--adaptation, and selfoptimization. Most of the "smartness" is implemented in software, which makes the software one of the most complex and most critical constituents of sCPS. As the specifics of sCPS render traditional software engineering approaches not directly applicable, new and innovative approaches to software engineering of sCPS need to be sought. This paper reports on the results of the Second International Workshop on Software Engineering for Smart Cyber--Physical Systems (SEsCPS 2016), which specifically focuses on challenges and promising solutions in the area of software engineering for sCPS.

Infusing sustainability into software engineering education: Lessons learned from capstone projects

Sustainable development (SD) has become a millennium challenge for humanity. It has boosted the integration of sustainable, sound practices across different fields (e.g. e-participation, smart transportation, sustainable agriculture). Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have strongly supported social transitions in becoming more sustainable and participative over the last two decades. Integrating multi-disciplinary sustainability concepts into the higher education of computer scientists is important in that this ensures that future ICT endeavours will take sustainability concerns into account. This article describes four capstone projects developed by students from the Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Pervasive Computing and Communications for Sustainable Development (PERCCOM), who were enrolled alongside regular students in a traditional software engineering course held at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. The coursework was part of a research project called Green.Citizen@ICT, which aims at investigating the use of ICT and software services for infusing sustainable habits in citizens through the development of applications for SD. This study demonstrates how a sustainable development focus can be integrated into a traditional software engineering course. The goal of this article is to enhance understanding of the integration of sustainability into software engineering education, by providing a detailed example of a master course in which this took place. This course supported the development of ICT competences for building cleaner, greener, and more resource- and energy-efficient cyber-physical systems, while addressing the social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

Software engineering practices and Simulink: bridging the gap

Although widely used in embedded systems design, Matlab/Simulink is not considered a state-of-the-art design environment by the software engineering community. This paper is aimed at improving design with Simulink from the software engineering perspective by developing automated support for the application of some traditional software engineering principles when developing with Simulink. We present four tools: the Signature Tool, the Reach/Coreach Tool, the Data Store Rescope Tool, and the Auto Layout Tool. The Signature Tool extracts the interface of a Simulink subsystem, enabling developers to better understand the implicit data flow in Simulink models and use it more effectively, while also producing useful documentation. The Data Store Rescope Tool improves modularity of Simulink models by properly scoping data stores, the Simulink equivalent of variables in traditional languages. The Reach/Coreach Tool highlights data and control dependencies in Simulink models, making them easier to understand. Also, the tool supports debugging, reverse-engineering, refactoring, and static analysis of the models. Finally, the Auto Layout Tool automatically improves the layout of Simulink models, reducing the effort developers invest in graphical layout to comply with modeling guidelines and improve readability of their models.

Making Money Using Math

A big difference between human-written code and learned models is that the latter are usually not represented by text and hence are not understandable by human developers or manipulable by existing tools. The consequence is that none of the traditional software engineering techniques for conventional programs (such as code reviews, source control, and debugging) are applicable anymore. Since incomprehensibility is not unique to learned code, these aspects are not of concern here.

User-centered design improves the usability of drug-drug interaction alerts: Experimental comparison of interfaces

Clinical Decision Support Systems can alert health professionals about drug interactions when they prescribe medications. The Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires in Argentina developed an electronic health record with drug-drug interaction alerts, using traditional software engineering techniques and requirements. Despite enhancing the drug-drug interaction knowledge database, the alert override rate of this system was very high. We redesigned the alert system using user-centered design (UCD) and participatory design techniques to enhance the drug-drug interaction alert interface. This paper describes the methodology of our UCD. We used crossover method with realistic, clinical vignettes to compare usability of the standard and new software versions in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction. Our study showed that, compared to the traditional alert system, the UCD alert system was more efficient (alerts faster resolution), more effective (tasks completed with fewer errors), and more satisfying. These results indicate that UCD techniques that follow ISO 9241-210 can generate more usable alerts than traditional design.

Global Monitoring and Control: A Process Improvement Framework for Globally Distributed Software Development Teams

ABSTRACTGlobal software development (GSD), a fundamentally different paradigm from traditional software engineering, has observed continuous growth and lot of acceptance in the last few years. Organizations gain many advantages of GSD, but face additional challenges not observed in collocated teams’ environment. Literature reveals that existing process improvement frameworks do not explicitly accommodate the complex and challenging needs of GSD. In literature, it is found that one of the major challenges is weak monitoring and controlling of distributed teams. In this study, therefore, we developed a process improvement framework to improve the monitoring and controlling of distributed teams in a GSD environment. The proposed framework is constructed by using grounded theory methodology, and it is validated by using the methods of face validity, content validity, construct validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. The detailed analysis depicts that the proposed framework is a valid framework for global monitoring and control in a GSD environment.

Risk-Based Software Development Practices for CREATE Multiphysics HPC Software Applications

The January/February 2016 issue of this magazine presented descriptions of the US Defense Department's Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) program and the software engineering approach for managing its programmatic risks. This article describes the software engineering methodology deployed to manage the development risks faced by CREATE, that is, the risks arising in the product development cycle and environment. The approach here is similar to the one for the management of CREATE programmatic risks and is based on a set of shared development practices. The management of these risks is especially challenging in the environment of distributed teams developing physics-based, system-of-systems, high-performance computing software anchored in the three military departments. The CREATE experience provides a concrete example of successful implementation of best software engineering practices in a computational science and engineering milieu that has historically questioned the value of traditional software engineering wisdom and has resisted the adoption of plan-centered software engineering processes. It has allowed CREATE to adopt important software engineering practices such as use case-centered requirements management, use of pilot projects to align customer and developer expectations, continuous code integration of modular components, and scalable product support models, among others.

Software Climate Change and its Disruptive Weather: A Potential Shift from “Software Engineering” to Vibrant/Dynamic Softology

Like natural climate change on the planet earth, the climate in software development environments is also changing (fast). Like the natural weather, the software environment is also disruptive. As the climate experts alert and suggest taking necessary measures to overcome certain challenges to make this earth a safer and comfortable living place, likewise this article also alerts the relevant stakeholders of software craftsmanship about the dynamic challenges that traditional Software Engineering (SE) with purely “Engineering mind-set” is not capable to respond. Hence, some new thoughts to overcome such challenges are shared. Fundamentally, based on the historical evidences, this article presents the authors’ observation about continuous shift from traditional “Engineering-based” software development approaches to disruptive approaches – “Vibrant Softology”. The authors see the cause of this shift as disruptive transformational force, which is so powerful that it is uncontrollably diminishing the “Engineering-based” approach from software development environments. The authors align it with climate change analogy. Based on this analogy, the authors feel the need to theoretically re-coin the notion of SE to some new term; perhaps Vibrant/Dynamic Softology (VS or DS). Hence, the authors suggest “a new (disruptive and dynamic) way of thinking is required to develop software”. It is worth mentioning that the purpose of article and this new theory is not to disparage the notion of software engineering altogether, rather the aim is to highlight the importance of transformation from SE to its next level (perhaps VS/DS) due to the emerging needs in the software craftsmanship environment.

Is an Athletic Approach the Future of Software Engineering Education?

Traditional software engineering education approaches--in-class lectures, unsupervised homework assignments, and occasional projects--create many opportunities for distraction. To address this problem, the authors have employed an approach that treats software engineering education more like athletic training.

Software Engineering for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems -- Towards a Research Agenda

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are large interconnected softwareintensive systems that influence, by sensing and actuating, the physical world. Examples are traffic management and power grids. One of the trends we observe is the need to endow such systems with the "smart" capabilities, typically in the form of selfawareness and self-adaptation, along with the traditional qualities of safety and dependability. These requirements combined with specifics of the domain of smart CPS -- such as large scale, the role of end-users, uncertainty, and open-endedness -- render traditional software engineering (SE) techniques not directly applicable; making systematic SE of smart CPS a challenging task. This paper reports on the results of the First International Workshop on Software Engineering of Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (SEsCPS 2015), where participants discussed characteristics, challenges and opportunities of SE for smart CPS, with the aim to outline an agenda for future research in this important area.

Characteristics of Agile Teams– A Discussion on Technology and Culture

Agile methodologies offer an alternative to traditional software engineering processes for developing software products and systems. They focus on integrating behavioral and social factors into software development. The focus on people is a very important factor in the implementation of agile methodologies in the workplace. The focus on agile teams for developing software systems and products using agile software development methodologies predisposes the emphasis on the analysis of the key components of agile teams which are important to ensure that the characteristics of agile teams are factored appropriately in the organization so that the teams are having the pre-requisite environment setup for successfully developing software systems.This paper investigates the various components and social processes that contribute to the characteristics of agile. The paper aims at highlighting a framework made up of various components that focus on the critical attributes of an agile team and if these attributes are present in an agile team, then the probability for the team to work as a high performance agile team and deliver successful software products in the market place is increased considerably.

Usability Integration in Agile Development Processes: A Practice-Oriented Best Practice Approach

Abstract Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) increasingly rely on agile software development. However, the majority of established usability methods have been developed with traditional software engineering principles in mind. So, one might assume that these methods and tools might not be applicable to agile development projects. In this paper, a possible approach to systematically adapting traditional usability methods to application in agile projects is introduced and documented as best practices. These best practices can be quickly and dynamically employed by agile development team members and can thus contribute to higher quality of software development outputs. The approach described in this paper was developed in the context of a German research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and conducted by one research institute and three software-developing enterprises and will be evaluated throughout the further course of the project. For this purpose, a number of best practices have been adapted to the context of agile software development and described in detail in order to allow inexperienced software developers of small and medium-sized enterprises to successfully apply these best practices. As two examples of these best practices, we illustrate the best practices ‘Contextual Inquiry’ and ‘Template-Based UI Design’ in this paper.

A Review of Value Based Software Engineering and its Impacts

Profitability is the main goal of every software organization. Software companies develop products to capture greater market place and gain the attention of targeted customers or stakeholder. In the past the software engineering field was not able to determine the stakeholder’s value of the developing product as mostly systems were based on value neutral setting. With the emergence of Value based software engineering (VBSE) the traditional software engineering discipline is vastly changed as during product development the stakeholder’s value proposition plays an important part and the development is done accordingly. In this article I cover some important aspects of value based software engineering regarding their impact in software reusability and quality. Different value based pricing criteria are discussed. Empirical research and value based selection of best suitable automated tools and existing Component off the shelf (COTS) and conflicts between different stakeholders of the same system are also taken into account. In the 3rd section Critical review of the all papers is performed and their plus and negative points are mentioned. At last the Conclusion and future work in value based software engineering field is presented.

Semantic-Based Requirements Content Management for Cloud Software

Cloud Software is a software complex system whose topology and behavior can evolve dynamically in Cloud-computing environments. Given the unpredictable, dynamic, elasticity, and on-demand nature of the Cloud, it would be unrealistic to assume that traditional software engineering can “cleanly” satisfy the behavioral requirements of Cloud Software. In particular, the majority of traditional requirements managements take document-centric approaches, which have low degree of automation, coarse-grained management, and limited support for requirements modeling activities. Facing the challenges, based on metamodeling frame called RGPS (Role-Goal-Process-Service) international standard, this paper firstly presents a hierarchical framework of semantic-based requirements content management for Cloud Software. And then, it focuses on some of the important management techniques in this framework, such as the native storage scheme, an ordered index with keywords, requirements instances classification based linear conditional random fields (CRFs), and breadth-first search algorithm for associated instances. Finally, a prototype tool called RGPS-RM for semantic-based requirements content management is implemented to provide supporting services for open requirements process of Cloud Software. The proposed framework applied to the Cloud Software development is demonstrated to show the validity and applicability. RGPS-RM also displays effect of fine-grained retrieval and breadth-first search algorithm for associated instance in visualization.

Optimising agile development practices for the maintenance operation: nine heuristics

Agile methods are widely used and successful in many development situations and beginning to attract attention amongst the software maintenance community – both researchers and practitioners. However, it should not be assumed that implementing a well-known agile method for a maintenance department is therefore a trivial endeavour - the maintenance operation differs in some, important respects from development work. Classical accounts of software maintenance emphasise more traditional software engineering processes, whereas recent research accounts of agile maintenance efforts uncritically focus on benefits. In an action research project at Aveva in Denmark we assisted with the optimisation of SCRUM, tailoring the standard process to the immediate needs of the developers. We draw on both theoretical and empirical learning to formulate seven heuristics for maintenance practitioners wishing to go agile.

A Software Engineering Method Based on Bionic Components

With the development of Information Technology, the traditional software engineering method is no longer fully meet the needs of software development. Thesis, according to the point of view of bionics, combined with the analysis of animal architecture, presents the concept of bionic components characteristic of animal body organs and the software engineering method which uses bionic components as the basic unit, based on bionic component method for short. In this paper, the bionic component model, the process model based on bionic component method and the life cycle model based on bionic component method are studied. And on the basis of these models, detailed describes the software development method based on bionic components.

Achieving agility through BRIDGE process model: an approach to integrate the agile and disciplined software development

Despite of many criticisms, agile software development (Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org, [1]) philosophy has been proved to be quite successful to increase the project success rate up to a significant extent. The primary reasons behind the criticism of agile are the strong violation of the traditional disciplined software engineering theories, principles and practices. The goal of this research paper is to establish the fact that agility may also be achieved by following traditional process models especially with BRIDGE (Mandal, 2009 IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC 2009) Patiala, India, [2]) process model. Hence, the aim of this paper is to integrate the agile and traditional disciplined software development process models and establish the compatibility between both the approaches. At the beginning, we have explored the objectives and principles of agile software development. Next, we briefly discussed the BRIDGE process model and further justified that--following BRIDGE process model, the philosophy of agile may also be achieved and conclude that BRIDGE model has both the capability of traditional software development process model as well as of the agile process.

Using security robustness analysis for early-stage validation of functional security requirements

Security is nowadays an indispensable requirement in software systems. Traditional software engineering processes focus primarily on business requirements, leaving security as an afterthought to be addressed via generic “patched-on” defensive mechanisms. This approach is insufficient, and software systems need to have security functionality engineered within in a similar fashion as ordinary business functional requirements. Functional security requirements need to be elicited, analyzed, specified and validated at the early stages of the development life cycle. If the functional security requirements were not properly validated, then there is a risk of developing a system that is insecure, deeming it unusable. Acceptance testing is an effective technique to validate requirements. However, an ad hoc approach to develop acceptance tests will suffer the omission of important tests. This paper presents a systematic approach to develop executable acceptance tests that is specifically geared for model-based secure software engineering processes. The approach utilizes early-stage artifacts, namely misuse case and domain models, and robustness diagrams. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by applying it to a real-world system. The results show that a comprehensive set of security acceptance tests can be developed based upon misuse case models for early-stage validation of functional security requirements.

Implementation decision making for internetware driven by quality requirements

Internetware is an emerging software paradigm in the open, dynamic and ever-changing Internet environment. A successful internetware must demonstrate acceptable degree of quality when carrying out its functionality. Hence, when internetware is being dynamically constructed, making implementation decisions to satisfice the quality requirements becomes a critical issue. In the traditional software engineering, quality requirements are usually refined stepwise by sub-requirements utilizing goal modeling perspective, until some potential functional design alternatives are identified. The goal-oriented paradigms have adopted graphical goal models to reason about quality requirements and proposed qualitative or quantitative reasoning schemas. However, these techniques may become unviable due to the ever-changing operating environment and demands for run-time decision making. In this paper, we propose an approach for implementation decision making driven by quality requirements for internetware. It focuses on the symbolic formula representation of requirements goal models with the tree structure, which is of well-defined syntax and clear traceability. Furthermore, we explore some reasoning rules which effectively automate each reasoning action on the formulae. This supports multiple-factor decision making. A case study is also provided to illustrate our proposed approach. We have developed a supporting tool based on our theoretical approach that we also present in this paper.