Workshop Papers Research Articles

Influential Factors on the Awareness of Agile Software Development Methodology: A Systematic Literature Review

Agile software development methodology has been implemented by software industries over a decade ago and well accepted in the practitioner community. However, there is limited understanding on how agile practitioners aware towards implementation of agile practices in software development. Lack of awareness will lead to misunderstandings among agile practitioners and misuse the agile practices. In order to understand the awareness of agile practices, this paper aims to investigate the factors that affect awareness of agile practitioners in implementing agile practices. A systematic literature review (SLR)was conducted in order to classify and define the factors of awareness in agile software development methodology. The review was based on papers between 2002 and December 2014 from seven electronic databases. The relevant papers were included 20 journal articles, 24 conference papers,16 book chapters, 9 workshop papers. Consequently, 69 papers were identified that closely related with awareness in agile software development methodology. From the thematic analysis, 13 factors were classified from 42 elements. Based on the review result, understanding the influential factors on the awareness of agile practices will provide benefit to researchers and agile practitioners.

Rural America

This volume comprises five keynote addresses and sixteen selected workshop papers from the sixtieth annual conference of the German Association for American Studies, held in 2013 at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. A final section, an artistic appendix, reprints Stewart O'Nan's short story “Calling,” and a portfolio of images from the 2008 Heartlands: Sketches of Rural America project by the Austrian photographer Andreas Horvath. In their introduction, the editors Antje Kley and Heike Paul set up “five ways of thinking about rural America”: as the historical predecessor of the later urban nation; as a persistent allegorical image of America at large; as a collection of “culturally specific milieus contrasting with urban or metropolitan spaces”; as an aggregation of larger geographic regions; and as the subject of critical regionalist reflection (pp. 9, 5). Those categories are rich but even so cannot do justice to the array of suggestive work presented here. I learned from each of the essays not only because of what they said about their topics but also because of their varied methods and theoretical perspectives. In a brief review, it is not possible to give much detail. I especially recommend the pieces dealing with music (whether that of Johnny Cash or Kurt Weill); film (the western, the conservative agitprop piece Fire from the Heartland [2010] or The Horse Whisperer [1998]); and, more generally, those that take up a wide variety of textual works (from Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn [1799] to James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man [1912], with stops along the way at John Rollin Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta [1854], Henry David Thoreau's Walden [1854], and a sort of coda concerned with Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres [1991]). Even these glimpses fail to do justice to the collective richness.

Questions as data: illuminating the potential of learning analytics through questioning an emergent field

In providing a meta-analysis of a series of workshop papers and questions arising on the emergent field of learning analytics, this paper contributes to the ongoing formation of a shared research agenda. The first ICCE Learning Analytics workshop in 2014 demonstrated the effectiveness of a focused questioning session for collecting relevant data beyond the content of the papers themselves. In December 2014, approximately 40 participants attended the workshop held in Nara, Japan, and contributed to the collection of open research questions. Six papers were presented covering topics including scope; interoperability standards; privacy and control of individual data, extracting data from learning content and processes; and the development of conceptual frameworks. These papers established a base from which the group generated a set of questions that invite further investigation. Utilising the first stage of the Question Formulation Technique, a pedagogical approach designed to stimulate student inquiry, a prominent finding from the workshop that questions emerging from focused inquiry provide a useful set of data in their own right. With an explicit workshop focus on learning analytics interoperability, this paper reports on the emergent issues identified in the workshop and the kinds of questions associated with each issue in the context of current research in the field of learning analytics. The study considers the complexity arising from the fact that data associated with learning is itself becoming a digital learning resource while also enabling analysis of learner behaviours and systems usage.

Memory mutation testing

ContextThree decades of mutation testing development have given software testers a rich set of mutation operators, yet relatively few operators can target memory faults (as we demonstrate in this paper).ObjectiveTo address this shortcoming, we introduce Memory Mutation Testing, proposing 9 Memory Mutation Operators each of which targets common forms of memory fault. We compare Memory Mutation Operators with traditional Mutation Operators, while handling equivalent and duplicate mutants.MethodWe extend our previous workshop paper, which introduced Memory Mutation Testing, with a more extensive and precise analysis of 18 open source programs, including 2 large real-world programs, all of which come with well-designed unit test suites. Specifically, our empirical study makes use of recent results on Trivial Compiler Equivalence (TCE) to identify both equivalent and duplicate mutants. Though the literature on mutation testing has previously deployed various techniques to cater for equivalent mutants, no previous study has catered for duplicate mutants.ResultsCatering for such extraneous mutants improves the precision with which claims about mutation scores can be interpreted. We also report the results of a new empirical study that compares Memory Mutation Testing with traditional Mutation Testing, providing evidence to support the claim that traditional mutation testing inadequately captures memory faults; 2% of the memory mutants are TCE-duplicates of traditional mutants and average test suite effectiveness drops by 44% when the target shifts from traditional mutants to memory mutants.ConclusionsIntroducing Memory Mutation Operators will cost only a small portion of the overall testing effort, yet generate higher quality mutants compared with traditional operators. Moreover, TCE technique does not only help with reducing testing effort, but also improves the precision of assessment on test quality, therefore should be considered in other Mutation Testing studies.

Session details: Special Issue on Challenges in Software Performance

Software systems have become increasingly complex. Such complexity makes it extremely challenging to deliver systems that meet their performance requirements. In recent years, there have been several high profile instances of projects that failed due to performance-related issues, e.g., the rollout of the healthcare.gov Web site. This motivates the need for new approaches for software developers to address performance problems. This special issue presents 6 papers that address this theme. A brief summary of these papers follows. Gesvindr and Buhnova study the challenges of building Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud applications that meet their performance requirements. Using two case studies involving the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, the authors show that the use of a cloud platform in itself does not guarantee good performance and scalability. The authors then identify several best practices for ensuring the performance and scalability of PaaS applications. The work of Heinrich considers the problem of managing\ the performance of software systems composed of thirdparty cloud services. The lack of control over such thirdparty services can cause deviations from performance objectives that can be hard to foresee and manage. The author outlines a model-based framework called iObserve that can help a system adapt and evolve so as to address such problems. Li, O'Brien, and Kihl address the lack of standard methodologies for experimental performance evaluation of software systems. The paper outlines a method for defining domainspecific methodologies for performance evaluation in a way that is consistent across domains. The authors demonstrate the utility of their approach using a cloud services case study. The paper by Grottke et al. considers the problem of handling cyber attacks on networked computer systems andconnected industrial control systems supporting critical infrastructuresuch as energy, water, and gas. Using analytic models, the authors study the performance of various attack mitigation approaches. In particular, the model shows how parameters such as malware scanning rates, network topology, and types of infections impact the effective processing capacity of a system. Rehmann et al. describe the performance monitoring in SAP HANA's continuous integration process. They describe how performance regression tests have been integrated in the delivery process and what services are available to detect and report performance anomalies. Being an extended version of a previous workshop paper, this paper now also presents the reporting of performance test results and anomaly detection. Finally, Nambiar et al. examine issues and experience with software performance, and consider the shortcomings and potential benefits of modeling from the perspective of a potential industrial user. In particular, it considers why modeling is little used, and what conditions it would have to satisfy to fulfill its potential. We sincerely thank all authors for their work and contribution to this special issue. Additionally, we thank our reviewers Davide Arcelli, Danilo Ardagna, Alberto Avritzer, Steffen Becker, Ian Gorton, Andre van Hoorn, Raffaela Mirandola, Juan F. Perez, and Murray Woodside for their timely and constructive reviews as well as editor-in-chief Nidhi Hedge for her support.

Summary of 2nd International Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Testing (RET 2015)

The RET (Requirements Engineering and Testing) workshop series provides a meeting point for researchers and practitioners from the two separate fields of Requirements Engineering (RE) and Testing. The goal is to improve the connection and alignment of these two areas through an exchange of ideas, challenges, practices, experiences and results. The long term aim is to build a community and a body of knowledge within the intersection of RE and Testing, i.e. RET. The 2nd workshop was held in co-location with ICSE 2015 in Florence, Italy. The workshop continued in the same interactive vein as the 1st one and included a keynote, paper presentations with ample time for discussions, and a group exercise. For true impact and relevance this cross-cutting area requires contribution from both RE and Testing, and from both researchers and practitioners. A range of papers were presented from short experience papers to full research papers that cover connections between the two fields. One of the main outputs of the 2nd workshop was a categorization of the presented workshop papers according to an initial definition of the area of RET which identifies the aspects RE, Testing and coordination effect.

PSİKOLOJİK YARDIM HİZMETLERİ BAĞLAMINDA TÜRKİYE’DE DİNÎ DANIŞMA VE REHBERLİK

The history of psychological counseling in Turkey dates back to the 1950s. Psychological guidance and counseling, that is mostly takes place in a clinical setting, as well as education, justice, industry, social services, religious services, which spreads up day by day. In the future, people will need more psychological support, because of the changes experienced in the cultural codes, which are caused by globalization, multiculturalism, changing family and social structure, modern lifestyle, rapidly evolving technology. The efforts to keep pace with this rapid change in society increase the need for psychological supprt services. The psychological support is professionally supplied by psychiatrists, therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists, clinical psychologists, educators, consultants, guidance, counselors, and social workers in Turkey. Among these, the pastoral guidance and counseling, that is a recent study of field, need more academic attention in Turkey. The pastoral guidance and counseling issues, that arose in the context of the more religious services, have begun to be addressed by the master level studies, articles, the symposiums and workshop papers. The aim of this study is to answer the following questions: What are the major areas of psychological supprt, that is increasingly needed in the community? In the context of psychological guidance and counseling, the academic studies in Turkey, are at which stage? This study, tries to draw attention to the pastoral guidance and counseling, and its relations to other psychological support services. So that, it also aims to contribute to the process of enhancement of pastoral guidance and counseling in Turkey.

A systematic literature review of use case specifications research

ContextUse cases have been widely accepted and acknowledged as a specification tool for specifying the functional requirements of a software system. Many variations of use cases exist which tries to address the issues such as their completeness, degree of formalism, automated information extraction, usability, and pertinence. ObjectiveThe aim of this systematic review is to examine the existing literature for the evolution of the use cases, their applications, quality assessments, open issues, and the future directions. MethodWe perform keyword-based extensive search to identify the relevant studies related to use case specifications research reported in journal articles, conference papers, workshop papers, bulletins and book chapters. ResultsThe specified search process resulted 119 papers, which were published between 1992 and February 2014. This included, 54 journal articles, 42 conference papers, 2 ACM/IEEE bulletins, 12 book chapters, 6 workshop papers and 3 white papers. We found that as many as twenty use case templates have been proposed and applied for various software specification problems ranging from informal descriptions with paragraph-style text to more formal keyword-oriented templates. ConclusionUse cases have been evolved from initial plain, semi-formal textual descriptions to a more formal template structure facilitating automated information extraction in various software development life cycle activities such as requirement documentation, requirement analysis, requirement validation, domain modeling, test case generation, planning and estimation, and maintenance. The issues that remain to be sorted out are (1) the right degree of formalism, (2) the efficient change management, (3) the industrial relevance, and (4) assessment of the quality of the specification. Additionally, its synergy with other software models that are used in the development processes is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Book Review: New Media and Communication across Religions and Cultures, edited by Isaac Nahon-Serfaty and Rukhsana Ahmed

New Media and Communication across Religions and Cultures. Isaac Nahon-Serfaty and Rukhsana Ahmed, eds. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2014. xxi + 304 pp. $195 hbk.In October 2009, three dozen scholars, media professionals, and community activists from North America, South America, and Europe gathered for a daylong workshop at the University of Ottawa to examine normative issues at the crossroads of communication and religion. Representing disciplines from art, communication studies, and political science to philosophy, religion, and semiotics, the participants scrutinized interfaith practices of religious groups and cultures and religious dimensions of media organizations and productions. For this anthology, University of Ottawa associate professors of communication Isaac Nahon-Serfaty and Rukhsana Ahmed selected nine of the workshop papers and solicited five others. result is a multi-disciplinary collection of papers that highlight ongoing concerns about public dimensions of religion.A few of the chapters stand out. Cult Wars on the Internet by Susan Palmer, a professor of religious studies at Dawson College in Montreal, explains how new religious movements (NRMs) experience cyberspace as both a weapon and a shield. Bypassing commercial media not only allows NRMs to define themselves, but it also makes NRMs vulnerable to secularists who depict them as harmful and to religious opponents who depict them as heretical. Using examples from the Raelians, the Church of Scientology, Hare Krishna, and Falun Gong, Palmer shows how NRM leaders struggle to correct media rumors, to create and maintain evenhanded Wikipedia entries, and to block attacks on their websites. Online challenges increasingly come from dissident members who, as Palmer points out, are sometimes able to instigate reforms within NRMs.Another notable chapter is by Ronald I. Cohen, the National Chair of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) from 1993 until 2011, who explains how the CBSC has responded to complaints about television and radio broadcasts related to religion. A complaint about the short-lived network program, Dieu recoit (God Receives), resulted in the CBSC finding that the show was neither anti-Catholic nor disdainful of any individual believer despite its irreverent depiction of God as a scrawny, mustachioed, bespectacled administrator who viewed the past, present, and future on his oracle viewing screen. By contrast, the CBSC upheld a complaint about an R. W. Schambach sermon on Power Today in which the evangelist called homosexuals devils and demon possessed. According to Cohen, The right to speak freely does not, in the view of the CBSC, supersede the right of identifiable groups to be free from abusive or unduly discriminatory comment on the basis of, among other things, their religion. …

Reinforcement learning agents providing advice in complex video games

This article introduces a teacher–student framework for reinforcement learning, synthesising and extending material that appeared in conference proceedings [Torrey, L., & Taylor, M. E. (2013)]. Teaching on a budget: Agents advising agents in reinforcement learning. {Proceedings of the international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems}] and in a non-archival workshop paper [Carboni, N., &Taylor, M. E. (2013, May)]. Preliminary results for 1 vs. 1 tactics in StarCraft. {Proceedings of the adaptive and learning agents workshop (at AAMAS-13)}]. In this framework, a teacher agent instructs a student agent by suggesting actions the student should take as it learns. However, the teacher may only give such advice a limited number of times. We present several novel algorithms that teachers can use to budget their advice effectively, and we evaluate them in two complex video games: StarCraft and Pac-Man. Our results show that the same amount of advice, given at different moments, can have different effects on student learning, and that teachers can significantly affect student learning even when students use different learning methods and state representations.

Special Issue on the 2013 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium & Workshop [Guest Editorial

The 2013 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IEEE-IV-13) was held in the City of Gold Coast, Australia, from 23 June to 26 June 2013. The Intelligent Vehicles Workshop sessions were also part of the Symposium and were held on 22 June 2013. The Symposium, together with its Workshops, attracted 320 paper submissions (288 submissions to the Symposium and 32 submissions to Workshops). A total of 232 papers were accepted and included in the Symposium program (206 Symposium papers and 26 Workshop papers). In recognition of the quality of its papers, the Symposium was invited to this Special Issue of the ITS Magazine. After the Symposium, eight symposium and workshop papers were initially invited to this Special Issue based on the scores obtained and comments received from the IEEE-IV-13 Reviewers, and the Best Paper Award Committee members. The authors of each of those eight papers were requested to submit extended versions of their papers within the given time frame. Seven symposium and workshop papers were then received and all underwent a rigorous review and revision process conducted by the Special Issue Editors and their reviewers. Finally, five papers met the paper review criteria within the given time frame as set by the Magazine Publisher. These five papers are therefore included in this special issue and are co-authored by researchers from Australia, Germany and Spain. A brief overview of the papers is presented.

Assessing Nigeria’s Journey towards IFRS Adoption

Recently the global corporate financial reporting scene has experienced a tremendous transformation with an unprecedented number of countries and enterprises around the world adopting IFRS as a basis in preparing financial statements. In Nigeria, the journey towards adoption of IFRS started in December 2010 and thus an implementation roadmap was designed which was broken down into three phases. Based on the above affirmation, the study assesses the achievements recorded so far, challenges being encountered, and measure taken in order to ensure a smooth and successful implementation of the three phases. Hence, the study is predominantly based on review of various journals, research papers, newspaper articles, periodicals and other documentary materials of professional accounting bodies as well as conferences, seminars and workshop papers. Consequently, the study found that most publicly quoted companies listed on the Nigerian stock exchange (NSE) were still far behind in their implementation process. Thus, the reason for the delay is attributed to several factors which ranges from challenge with amendment of the existing tax laws, the level of awareness among various stakeholders, weak compliance and enforcement mechanisms, the education level and experience, insufficient technical capacity, inadequate planning on the part of companies’ management as well as inadequate private sector participation. Accordingly, suggestions were made on how to forestall these challenges and ensure a smooth and successful implementation of the next phases.

Effects of Advances in ICT on Total Factor Productivity: Analyzing Productivity Gains and Future Trends

This is a workshop paper for the Asia Productivity Organization workshop entitled Effects of Advances in ICT on Total Factor Productivity: Analyzing Productivity Gains and Future Trends on 3-6 September 2013 in Seoul, South Korea. This paper answers three questions in the context of Singapore: ICT developments and its application to service and manufacturing sectors; Initiatives and measures taken by the government to promote ICT applications; Status of productivity measurement including TFP.

From requirements to UML models and back: how automatic processing of text can support requirements engineering

Software engineering is supposed to be a structured process, but manual tasks leave much leeway. Ideally, these tasks lie in the hands of skilled analysts and software engineers. This includes creating the textual specification of the envisioned system as well as creating models for the software engineers. Usually, there is quite a bit of erosion during the process due to requirement changes, implementation decisions, etc. To deliver the software as specified, textual requirements, models, and the actual software need to be synchronized. However, in practice, the cost of manually maintaining consistency is too high. Our requirements engineering feedback system automates the process of keeping textual specification and models consistent when the models change. To improve overall processing of natural language specifications, our approach finds flaws in natural language specifications. In addition to the already published workshop paper, we show how well our tools support even non-software-engineers in improving texts. The case studies show that we can speed up the process of creation texts with fewer flaws significantly.

Early Towns and Artisan Production in the Low Countries (500-1200). An Introduction to a Series of Workshop Papers

Early Towns and Artisan Production in the Low Countries (500-1200). An Introduction to a Series of Workshop Papers

Actors of Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Romania

The new trends in the cultural and creative industries (CCI) that were theorized in the second half of the 20th century, simultaneously with the rapid development of technology, have created in post-communist Romania the premises of developing a new model of creative entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the digitization of society and general strategic projects are not enough to create a catalyst for the explosion of entrepreneurial creativity. The unstable political climate and the lack of predictability have prompted the insecurity of the new business of anonymous creators - those who are not seen, those who are at the heart of cultural and creative industries - small and medium enterprises (SME), licensing individuals (PFA), family associations (AF). The Western models long described in the motivational literature published in Romania, as well as some notorious Romanian examples intensely publicized as the Romanian counterpart of Western companies, do not help and do not solve the generation of daily solutions or, more than that, Strategic Creative Solutions for grassroots companies. The present paper tries to define the terms necessary for the creative area and to analyze the situation today in Romania, presenting shortly, for comparison, the Western models, the Romanian models of notoriety, but also four examples of “anonymous” actors in the creative industries area: a floral workshop paper, an IT service company, a graphic design agency and a printing house. The conclusions of this punctual analysis are of an empirical nature, but they provide a picture of the fragility of the business environment in the area of cultural and creative industries, amid a timid and fragile but steady market growth.

Introduction: Nutrient and Water Management Practices for Improving Crop Growth, Yield, and Quality Workshop

P lant nutrient management and irrigation practices are crucial in helping achieve optimal crop growth, yield, quality, and grower profitability (Mikkelsen, 2011). As the availability of suitable land for crop production decreases and the concern for adequate water increases, more efficient methods of irrigation are needed (De Pascale et al., 2011). To improve agricultural sustainability in Hawaii, growers need to rely more on locally produced amendments and less on out-of-state inputs in their fertility program. Common organic amendments that can be used in conventional and organic vegetable production directly affect soil characteristics, nutrition, and biological properties, and as such, their nutrient contribution needs to be calculated. The objective of this workshop was to have a forum to exchange ideas and information on plant nutrient and water management. These workshop papers provide a diverse range of topics in nutrient and water management with insights into some key Hawaii and Florida practices, sites of the current and future ASHS conferences. The papers cover rootstock and irrigation effects on ‘Gala’ apple mineral nutrition, growth, fruit quality, and yield in Idaho; use of locally produced inputs to improve crop growth, quality, and grower profitability in Hawaii; and a fertility program for vegetables with organic amendments and inorganic fertilizers in Florida. The paper on rootstock and irrigation integrates irrigation methods and rootstock vigor as they affect mineral nutrients and apple tree growth, fruit yield, and quality. The relationships between tree growth, fruit quality attributes, yield, and mineral nutrients are detailed. In the paper on locally produced inputs in Hawaii, factors that influence the quality, application, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of locally produced composts, vermicomposts, rendered animal products, and algae are discussed. Aqueous extracts of vermicomposts and thermophilic composts can effectively improve crop growth and reduce costs associated with the use of these inputs. The vegetable fertility program paper looks at organic amendments used in conventional and organic vegetable production in Florida, including cover crops, compost, and animal manure, and how they affect soil properties, nutrients, and microbial biomass. When considered as part of nutrient sources in a fertility program, their nutrient contributions should be considered. The papers from this workshop highlight some leading research and practices and help provide insights into further research and studies.

Preface to Special Issue on 3DOR 2011

This Special Issue of The Visual Computer Journal presents four papers that were selected among those presented at the 4th Eurographics Workshop on 3D Object Retrieval, held in Llandudno, UK, on April 04, 2011. All authors of full workshop papers were invited to submit revised and substantially extended versions of their contribution. These underwent a new review process, involving original workshop reviewers, as well as new reviewers. The Eurographics Workshop on 3D Object Retrieval series, founded in 2008, provides a forum for state-of-the-art research in this exciting field at the intersection of Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Machine Learning, and Human–Computer Interaction. The 3DOR series has gathered momentum and enthusiasm from the research communities addressed, and the 6th Workshop is already planned as a co-event of Eurographics 2013 in Girona, Spain. 3D ob-

Workshop 3A: Governance, contracting, ownership and competition issues in public transport: Looking up not down

Workshop 3A focussed on matters of institutional design that seem likely to improve public transport outcomes. It started by defining high level outcome goals, as measures of ultimate public transport success, and then identified the major societal issues that public transport systems can help to resolve. These issues were separately defined for Southern African and western settings. The importance of taking an integrated approach to transport, particularly land use/transport integration, was seen as fundamental to goal achievement. Workshop papers provided many and varied examples of this importance, ranging from PPPs for major public transport projects to system design issues and contracting out of services. The Workshop included detailed discussion on paratransit development in Southern Africa, where relationship management is proving to be critical, in-line with much previous Thredbo discussion about the important role of trusting partnerships. Parallels and contrasts were drawn with paratransit in western settings. Competition in passenger rail was also a focus, with some questioning of the benefits of franchising. Discussion concluded by proposing recommendations for policy and research and suggesting agenda items for future Thredbo Conferences.

Focus on Authors

Focus on Authors