A knowledge-based perspective for software process modeling

As the acquisition and sharing of knowledge form the backbone of the software development process, it is important to identify knowledge discrepancies between the process elements. Explicit representation of the knowledge components within a software process model can provide a means to expose these discrepancies. This paper presents an extension of the Software and System Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM), to be used as a new knowledge modeling layer. The approach, which is based on ontologies for knowledge representation, constitutes an explicit method for representing knowledge within process models. A concept matching indicator shows the state of the process model in terms of the concept gaps for each task within the process. This indicator could lead to more informed decision making and better management of the associated risks, in terms of team competency, documentation quality, and the training required to mitigate them

Distributed product development approaches and system for achieving optimal design.

The research in this dissertation attempts to provide theoretic approaches and design systems to support engineers who are located in different places and belong to different teams or companies to work collaboratively to perform product development.The second challenge is addressed by developing a collaborative design process modeling technique based on Petri-net. Petri-net is used to describe complex design processes and to construct different design process alternatives. These alternative Petri-net models are then analyzed to evaluate design process alternatives and to select the appropriate process.In this dissertation, three major challenges are identified in realization of a collaborative design paradigm: (i) development of design method that supports multidisciplinary xi design teams to collaboratively solve coupled design problems, (ii) development of process modeling techniques to support representation and improve complex collaborative design process, and (iii) implementation of a testbed system that demonstrates the feasibility of enhancing current design system to satisfy with the needs of organizing collaborative design process for collaborative decision making and associated design activities.New paradigms, along with accompanying approaches and software systems are necessary to support collaborative design work, in a distributed design environment, of multidisciplinary engineering teams who have different knowledge, experience, and skills. Current research generally focuses on the development of online collaborative tools, and software frameworks that integrate and coordinate these tools. However, a gap exists between the needs of a distributed collaborative design paradigm and current collaborative design tools. On one side, design methodologies facilitating engineering teams' decision making is not well developed. In a distributed collaborative design paradigm, each team holds its own perspective towards the product realization problem, and each team seeks design decisions that can maximize the design performance in its own discipline. Design methodologies that coordinate the separate design decisions are essential to achieve successful collaboration. On the other side, design of products is becoming more complex. Organizing a complex design process is a major obstacle in the application of a distributed collaborative design paradigm in practice. Therefore, the principal research goal in this dissertation is to develop a collaborative multidisciplinary decision making methodology and design process modeling technique that bridges the gap between a collaborative design paradigm and current collaborative design systems.To overcome the first challenge, decision templates are constructed to exchange design information among interacting disciplines. Three game protocols from game theory are utilized to categorize the collaboration in decision makings. Design formulations are used to capture the design freedom among coupled design activities.The third challenge, implementation of collaborative design testbed, is addressed by integration of existing Petri-net modeling tools into the design system. The testbed incorporates optimization software, collaborative design tools, and management software for product and process design to support group design activities.Two product realization examples are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the research and collaborative testbed. A simplified manipulator design example is used for explanation of collaborative decision making and design process organization. And a reverse engineering design example is introduced to verify the application of collaborative design paradigm with design support systems in practice

Software Support for Business Processes Reconfiguration

Import 04/11/2015Cílem práce je analyzovat, navrhnout a implementovat nástroj, který na platformě .NET umožní modelovat a konfigurovat existující softwarové procesy, konkrétně behaviorální perspektivu softwarového procesu pomocí aktivitního diagramu UML. Samotný softwarový proces je zachycen v metamodelu, který vychází ze stávajícího výzkumu na Fakultě elektrotechniky a informatiky při VŠB-TUO. V teoretické části jsou zmíněny podstatné oblasti, ze kterých má práce vychází - softwarový proces, XML, OWL, metamodely SP a aktivitní diagram UML. V praktické části je práce zaměřena na implementaci nástroje, který umožňuje graficky modelovat behaviorální perspektivu existujícího softwarového procesu pomocí notace aktivitního diagramu UML v prostředí .NET WPF. Vstupem je OWL/XML znalostní báze obsahující konkrétní model procesu vytvořený v programu Protége 5.0. Je popsáno řešení pomocí knihovny pro vykreslování diagramů v .NET WPF GoXam od společnosti Northwoods Software a také popsána práce s OWL API jakožto rozhraním pro získávání informací z OWL/XML formátu.The goal of this work is an analysis, design and implementation of a software product for .NET platform for modeling and reconfiguration of existing software processes, namely behavioral perspective of the software process using UML activity diagram. Software process itself is represented in a metamodel based on existing research of Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VŠB-TUO. Theoretical part covers essential theoretical concepts of software process metamodels, UML activity diagrams, and XML. The practical part is focused on implementation of a software product that allows users to graphically model the behavioral perspective of a particular software process using UML activity diagram notation. Implementation platform is .NET, namely .NET WPF. Input for this software product is an OWL/XML knowledge base containing concrete software process model created with Protége 5.0. A brief description of Northwoods Software library for diagram drawing in .NET WPF ‘GoXam’ and an OWL/XML data mining interface ‘OWL API’ by the University of Manchester is also included.460 - Katedra informatikyvýborn

Multi-perspective requirements engineering for networked business systems: a framework for pattern composition

How business and software analysts explore, document, and negotiate requirements for enterprise systems is critical to the benefits their organizations will eventually derive. In this paper, we present a framework for analysis and redesign of networked business systems. It is based on libraries of patterns which are derived from existing Internet businesses. The framework includes three perspectives: Economic value, Business processes, and Application communication, each of which applies a goal-oriented method to compose patterns. By means of consistency relationships between perspectives, we demonstrate the usefulness of the patterns as a light-weight approach to exploration of business ideas

Semantic business process management: a vision towards using semantic web services for business process management

Business process management (BPM) is the approach to manage the execution of IT-supported business operations from a business expert's view rather than from a technical perspective. However, the degree of mechanization in BPM is still very limited, creating inertia in the necessary evolution and dynamics of business processes, and BPM does not provide a truly unified view on the process space of an organization. We trace back the problem of mechanization of BPM to an ontological one, i.e. the lack of machine-accessible semantics, and argue that the modeling constructs of semantic Web services frameworks, especially WSMO, are a natural fit to creating such a representation. As a consequence, we propose to combine SWS and BPM and create one consolidated technology, which we call semantic business process management (SBPM

Tasks, cognitive agents, and KB-DSS in workflow and process management

The purpose of this paper is to propose a nonparametric interest rate term structure model and investigate its implications on term structure dynamics and prices of interest rate derivative securities. The nonparametric spot interest rate process is estimated from the observed short-term interest rates following a robust estimation procedure and the market price of interest rate risk is estimated as implied from the historical term structure data. That is, instead of imposing a priori restrictions on the model, data are allowed to speak for themselves, and at the same time the model retains a parsimonious structure and the computational tractability. The model is implemented using historical Canadian interest rate term structure data. The parametric models with closed form solutions for bond and bond option prices, namely the Vasicek (1977) and CIR (1985) models, are also estimated for comparison purpose. The empirical results not only provide strong evidence that the traditional spot interest rate models and market prices of interest rate risk are severely misspecified but also suggest that different model specifications have significant impact on term structure dynamics and prices of interest rate derivative securities.

Incremental Consistency Checking in Delta-oriented UML-Models for Automation Systems

Automation systems exist in many variants and may evolve over time in order to deal with different environment contexts or to fulfill changing customer requirements. This induces an increased complexity during design-time as well as tedious maintenance efforts. We already proposed a multi-perspective modeling approach to improve the development of such systems. It operates on different levels of abstraction by using well-known UML-models with activity, composite structure and state chart models. Each perspective was enriched with delta modeling to manage variability and evolution. As an extension, we now focus on the development of an efficient consistency checking method at several levels to ensure valid variants of the automation system. Consistency checking must be provided for each perspective in isolation, in-between the perspectives as well as after the application of a delta.Comment: In Proceedings FMSPLE 2016, arXiv:1603.0857

Rationale Management Challenges in Requirements Engineering

Rationale and rationale management have been playing an increasingly prominent role in software system development mainly due to the knowledge demand during system evaluation, maintenance, and evolution, especially for large and complex systems. The rationale management for requirements engineering, as a commencing and critical phase in software development life cycle, is still under-exploited. In this paper, we first survey briefly the state-of-the-art on rationale employment and applications in requirements engineering. Secondly, we identify the challenges in integrating rationale management in requirements engineering activities in order to promote further investigations and define a research agenda on rationale management in requirements engineering.