An Assessment of the Quality of the Romanian Urban Web Sites

The local authorities are giving increasing prominence to provision of information online through websites. Seen in a wider perspective, the urban web sites play a key role in allowing every citizen to achieve their full potential and to participate fully in society. Conversely, citizens' awareness and expectations of Internet based online public services have also increased. Although the numbers of the different urban web portals have increased rapidly in the last years, the success of these sites will largely depend on their accessibility and quality. The purpose of this report is to present the results from a comprehensive assessment of the urban web sites across Romania. An instrument has been developed for evaluating the quality of the websites. It is based upon approaches to evaluation that have been documented in the published literature, interviews of people responsible for websites, and testing of websites at different levels of local government. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these urban web sites, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make these sites examples of "best practice" e-Government services. The overall picture shows that there is still much work to be done, but the study identifies key areas of concern which, if dealt with, would lead to the situation improving significantly.urban web sites, e-government, quality

Effort Estimation Development Model for Web-Based Mobile Application Using Fuzzy Logic

Effort estimation becomes a crucial part in software development process because false effort estimation result can lead to delayed project and affect the successful of a project. This research proposes a model of effort estimation for web-based mobile application developed using object oriented approach. In the proposed model, functional size measurement of object oriented based web application named OOmFPWeb, web metric and mobile characteristic for web-based mobile application size measurement are combnined. The estimation process is done by using mamdani fuzzy logic method. To evaluate the proposed model, the comparison between OOmFPWeb as the variable that affect effort estimation for web-based mobile application and the proposed model are performed. The evaluation result shows that effort estimation for web-based mobile application with the proposed model is better than just using OOmFPWeb

Web Framework Points: an Effort Estimation Methodology for Web Application Development

Software effort estimation is one of the most critical components of a successful software project: completing the project on time and within budget is the classic challenge for all project managers. However, predictions made by project managers about their project are often inexact: software projects need, on average, 30-40% more effort than estimated. Research on software development effort and cost estimation has been abundant and diversified since the end of the Seventies. The topic is still very much alive, as shown by the numerous works existing in the literature. During these three years of research activity, I had the opportunity to go into the knowledge and to experiment some of the main software effort estimation methodologies existing in literature. In particular, I focused my research on Web effort estimation. As stated by many authors, the existing models for classic software applications are not well suited to measure the effort of Web applications, that unfortunately are not exempt from cost and time overruns, as traditional software projects. Initially, I compared the effectiveness of Albrecht's classic Function Points (FP) and Reifer's Web Objects (WO) metrics in estimating development effort for Web applications, in the context of an Italian software company. I tested these metrics on a dataset made of 24 projects provided by the software company between 2003 and 2010. I compared the estimate data with the real effort of each project completely developed, using the MRE (Magnitude of Relative Error) method. The experimental results showed a high error in estimates when using WO metric, which proved to be more effective than the FP metric in only two occurrences. In the context of this first work, it appeared evident that effort estimation depends not only on functional size measures, but other factors had to be considered, such as model accuracy and other challenges specific to Web applications; though the former represent the input that influences most the final results. For this reason, I revised the WO methodology, creating the RWO methodology. I applied this methodology to the same dataset of projects, comparing the results to those gathered by applying the FP and WO methods. The experimental results showed that the RWO method reached effort prediction results that are comparable to – and in 4 cases even better than – the FP method. Motivated by the dominant use of Content Management Framework (CMF) in Web application development and the inadequacy of the RWO method when used with the latest Web application development tools, I finally chose to focus my research on the study of a new Web effort estimation methodology for Web applications developed with a CMF. I proposed a new methodology for effort estimation: the Web CMF Objects one. In this methodology, new key elements for analysis and planning were identified; they allow to define every important step in the development of a Web application using a CMF. Following the RWO method approach, the estimated effort of a Web project stems from the sum of all elements, each of them weighted with its own complexity. I tested the whole methodology on 9 projects provided by three different Italian software companies, comparing the value of the effort estimate to the actual, final effort of each project, in man-days. I then compared the effort estimate both with values obtained from the Web CMF Objects methodology and with those obtained from the respective effort estimation methodologies of the three companies, getting excellent results: a value of Pred(0.25) equal to 100% for the Web CMF Objects methodology. Recently, I completed the presentation and assessment of Web CMF Objects methodology, upgrading the cost model for the calculation of effort estimation. I named it again Web Framework Points methodology. I tested the updated methodology on 19 projects provided by three software companies, getting good results: a value of Pred(0.25) equal to 79%. The aim of my research is to contribute to reducing the estimation error in software development projects developed through Content Management Frameworks, with the purpose to make the Web Framework Points methodology a useful tool for software companies

Modelo de calidad para el software orientado a objetos

El software ha obtenido en la actualidad una gran importancia en todos los ámbitos de la vida cotidiana. Es indudable que la calidad del software juega un papel fundamental en todo desarrollo informático, aunque en ocasiones no se le presta la suficiente atención, quizás debido a los relativamente escasos trabajos relacionados con este tema desarrollados hasta la fecha. En el presente trabajo, se plantea la necesidad de un modelo de calidad completo. Para cubrir esta necesidad se presenta un nuevo modelo de calidad, obtenido tras un estudio pormenorizado de los modelos de calidad existentes, centrado en el paradigma orientado a objetos. Este modelo de calidad muestra cómo la calidad del software se descompone en una serie de factores y éstos, a su vez, se descomponen en un conjunto de criterios medibles utilizando medidas. El modelo incluye un amplio conjunto de medidas, diseñadas especialmente para su aplicación dentro del paradigma orientado a objetos. Para completar el modelo, se ha diseñado un sencillo método de aplicación de este modelo de calidad para que pueda ser utilizado de una forma simple por los desarrolladores de sistemas informáticos orientados a objetos. El modelo de calidad definido se ha validado realizando un juego de experimentos. Estos experimentos han consistido en la aplicación del modelo sobre una serie de desarrollos orientados a objetos. Los resultados obtenidos han demostrado su utilidad práctica para determinar tanto la calidad global de los sistemas, como para identificar aquellas partes del sistema susceptibles de ser mejoradas. Con este trabajo, se llena un importante hueco existente en esta área, pues, en primer lugar, no existen modelos de calidad completos para la orientación a objetos. En segundo lugar, aunque hay medidas para la orientación a objetos, no se han asociado a los atributos que determinan la calidad del software, por lo que su utilidad, tal cual fueron definidas, resulta bastante cuestionable. Para finalizar, nunca se ha asociado un modelo de calidad con una método de aplicación, por lo que su utilidad quedaba considerablemente mermada, quedando a expensas de la habilidad y experiencia del Ingeniero del Software que lo utilizara