Determination of Project Management Technique using AHP Decision-Making in Projects

This study presents the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a potential decision-making method of project management techniques in international trade project management. Forms created by AHP method with the involvement of 7 employees, including administrative and technical project managers and project planning supervisors working in the Project Management Organization of a leading engineering and technology company in Turkey, were collected by in-depth interview technique. After the consistency analysis, the final project management technique analysis was made. According to the findings obtained in the study, Result Orientation, Delivery Performance Competence and Installation Cost Efficiency were evaluated as the 3 most important criteria when deciding on the project management technique; that, the decision makers will apply in project management. It is possible to mention that AGILE project management is the most preferred technique. In future studies, the effect of creating an ideal project management technique framework in project management organizations can be examined based on the sequence of techniques revealed in this study and their superiorities

Toward a More Accurate Web Service Selection Using Modified Interval DEA Models with Undesirable Outputs

With the growing number of Web services on the internet, there is a challenge to select the best Web service which can offer more quality-of-service (QoS) values at the lowest price. Another challenge is the uncertainty of QoS values over time due to the unpredictable nature of the internet. In this paper, we modify the interval data envelopment analysis (DEA) models [Wang, Greatbanks and Yang (2005)] for QoS-aware Web service selection considering the uncertainty of QoS attributes in the presence of desirable and undesirable factors. We conduct a set of experiments using a synthesized dataset to show the capabilities of the proposed models. The experimental results show that the correlation between the proposed models and the interval DEA models is significant. Also, the proposed models provide almost robust results and represent more stable behavior than the interval DEA models against QoS variations. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed models for QoS-aware Web service composition. Experimental results indicate that the proposed models significantly improve the fitness of the resultant compositions when they filter out unsatisfactory candidate services for each abstract service in the preprocessing phase. These models help users to select the best possible cloud service considering the dynamic internet environment and they help service providers to improve their Web services in the marke

Jolie Microservices: An Experiment

Os microsserviços estão cada vez mais presentes no mundo das tecnologias de informação, por providenciarem uma nova forma construir sistemas mais escaláveis, ágeis e flexíveis. Apesar disto, estes trazem consigo o problema da complexidade de comunicação entre microsserviços, fazendo com que o sistema seja difícil de manter e de se perceber. Linguagens de programação específicas a microsserviços como Jolie entram em cena para tentar resolver este problema e simplificar a construção de sistemas com arquiteturas de microsserviços. Este trabalho fornece uma visão ampla do estado da arte da linguagem de programação Jolie onde é primeiramente detalhado o porquê de surgirem linguagens específicas a microsserviços e como a linguagem Jolie está construída de maneira a coincidir com as arquiteturas de microsserviços através de recursos nativos. Para demonstrar todas as vantagens de usar esta linguagem em comparação com as abordagens mais mainstream é pensado um experimento de desenvolvimento de um sistema de microsserviços no âmbito de uma aplicação de e-commerce. Este sistema é construído de forma igual usando duas bases tecnológicas – Jolie e Spring Boot. O Spring Boot é considerado a tecnologia mais usada para desenvolver sistemas de microsserviços sendo o candidato ideal para comparação. É pensada toda a análise e design deste experimento. Em seguida, a implementação da solução é detalhada a partir das configurações do sistema, escolhas arquitetónicas e como elas são implementadas. Componentes como API gateway, mediadores de mensagens, bases de dados, orquestração de microsserviços, e conteinerização para cada microsserviço e outros componentes do sistema. Pol último as soluções são comparadas e analisadas com base na abordagem Goals, Questions, Metrics (GQM). São analisadas relativamente a atributos de qualidade como manutenção, escalabilidade, desempenho e testabilidade. Após esta análise pode-se concluir que a solução construída com Jolie apresenta diferenças na manutenção sendo significativamente superior à solução baseada em Spring Boot e apresenta diferenças em termos de performance sendo ligeiramente inferior à solução construída com Spring Boot. O trabalho termina com a indicação das conquistas, dificuldades, ameaças à validade, possíveis trabalhos futuros e observações finais.Microservices are increasingly present in the world of information technologies, as they provide a new way to build more scalable, agile, and flexible systems. Despite this, they bring with them the problem of communication complexity between microservices, making the system difficult to maintain and understand. Microservices-specific programming languages like Jolie come into play to try to solve this problem and simplify the construction of systems with microservices architectures. This work provides a broad view of the State of Art of the Jolie programming language, where it is first detailed why microservices-specific languages emerge and how the Jolie language is built to match microservices architectures through native resources. To demonstrate all the advantages of using this language compared to more mainstream approaches, an experiment is designed to develop a microservices system within an e-commerce application. This system is built equally using two technological foundations – Jolie and Spring Boot. Spring Boot is considered the most used technology to develop microservices systems and is an ideal candidate for comparison. The entire analysis and design of this experiment are thought through. Then the implementation of the solution is detailed from system configurations, architectural choices, and how they are implemented. Components such as API gateway, message brokers, databases, microservices orchestration, and containerization for each microservice and other components of the system. Finally, the solutions are compared and analyzed based on the Goals, Questions, Metrics (GQM) approach. They are analyzed for quality attributes such as maintainability, scalability, performance, and testability. After this analysis, it can be concluded that the solution built with Jolie presents differences in maintenance being significant superior to the solution based on Spring Boot, and it presents differences in terms of performance being slightly inferior to the solution built with Spring Boot. The work ends with an indication of the achievements, difficulties, threats to validity, possible future work, and final observations

Integration of TLS-derived Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM) with a Decision Support System (DSS) for digital twinning and asset management of bridge infrastructures

In the current modern era of information and technology, the concept of Building Information Modeling (BIM), has made revolutionary changes in different aspects of engineering design, construction, monitoring, and management of infrastructure assets, especially bridges. In the field of bridge engineering, Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM), as a specific form of BIM, includes digital twinning of bridge assets associated with geometrical information and non-geometrical inspection data. BrIM has demonstrated tremendous potential in substituting traditional paper-based documentation and handwritten reports with digital bridge documentation/trans-formation, allowing professionals and managers to execute bridge management more efficiently and effectively. However, concerns remain about the quality of the acquired data in BrIM development, as well as lack of research on utilizing these information for remedial actions/decisions in a reliable Bridge Management System (BMS), which are mainly reliant on the knowledge and experience of the involved inspectors, or asset managers, and are susceptible to a certain degree of subjectivity. To address these concerns, this research paper presents a comprehensive methodology as an advanced asset management system that employs BrIM data to improve and facilitate the BMS. This innovative BMS is comprised of a precise Terrestrial Laser Scan (TLS)-derived BrIM as a qualitative digital replica of the existing bridge, incorporating geometrical and non-geometrical information of the bridge elements, and equipped with a requirement-driven framework in a redeveloped condition assessment model for priority ranking of bridge elements based on their health condition. In another step ahead, the proposed BMS integrates a Decision Support System (DSS) to score the feasible remedial strategies and provide more objective decisions for optimal budget allocation and remedial planning. This methodology was further implemented via a developed BrIM-oriented BMS plugin and validated through a real case study on the Werrington Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge in New South Wales, Australia. The finding of this research confirms the reliability of BrIM-oriented BMS implementation and the integration of proposed DSS for priority ranking of bridge elements that require more attention based on their structural importance and material vulnerability, as well as optimizing remedial actions in a practical way while preserving the bridge in a safe and healthy condition

Technical Challenges of Microservices Migration

The microservices architecture is a recent trend in the software engineering community, with the number of research articles in the field increasing, and more companies adopting the architectural style every year. However, the migration of a monolith to the microservices architecture is an error-prone process with a lack of guidelines for its execution. Also, microservices introduce a lot of different challenges that are not faced when following a monolithic architecture. This work aims to fill some gaps in current microservices research by providing a catalogue of the currently most common challenges of adopting this architectural style, and possible solutions for them. For this reason, a systematic mapping study was executed analysing 54 different articles. Also, 30 industry professionals participated in a questionnaire regarding the topic. Furthermore, a participant observation experiment was performed to retrieve additional industry data. Moreover, one of the identified challenges – distributed transactions management – was further detailed and a solution implemented using the choreographed saga pattern. The solution is publicly available as an open-source project. Finally, multiple experts in the microservices field validated the results of the research and the distributed transactions solution and provided insights regarding the value of this work.A arquitetura de microserviços é uma tendência recente na comunidade de engenharia de software, com o número de artigos publicados sobre o tema a aumentar, assim como o número de empresas a adoptar o estilo arquitetural todos os anos. No entanto, o processo de migração de um monolito para uma arquitetura orientada a microserviços tem um alto potencial de erros, uma vez que existe falta de orientações sobre como conduzir o processo corretamente. Para além disso, os microserviços introduzem muitos desafios diferentes que não são enfrentados no desenvolvimento de um sistema monolitico. Este trabalho pretende preencher algumas destas lacunas na investigação da arquitetura de microserviços através da construção de um catalogo dos principais desafios enfrentados ao adoptar o estilo arquitetural e soluções possíveis para estes. Por este motivo, um systematic mapping study foi desenvolvido, analisando 54 artigos diferentes. Para além disso, 30 profissionais da industria responderam a questionario sobre o tema. Finalmente, para obter dados adicionais da indústria, uma experiência de migração foi realizada e observada de forma ativa. Ainda, um dos desafios identificados – gestão de transações distribuídas – foi detalhado e uma solução implementada usando o padrão de sagas coreografadas. A solução está publicamente disponível como um projecto open-source. Finalmente, vários peritos em microserviços avaliaram os resultados deste trabalho, incluindo a solução desenvolvida para gestão de transações distribuídas, e deram feedback relativamente ao valor deste trabalho

Building and monitoring an event-driven microservices ecosystem

Throughout the years, software architectures have evolved deeply to attempt to address the main issues that have been emerging, mainly due to the ever-changing market needs. The need to provide a way for organizations and teams to build applications independently and with greater agility and speed led to the adoption of microservices, particularly endorsing an asynchronous methodology of communication between them via events. Moreover, the evergrowing demands for high-quality resilient and highly available systems helped pave the path towards a greater focus on strict quality measures, particularly monitoring and other means of assuring the well-functioning of components in production in real-time. Although techniques like logging, monitoring, and alerting are essential to be employed for each microservice, it may not be enough considering an event-driven architecture. Studies have shown that although organizations have been adopting this type of software architecture, they still struggle with the lack of visibility into end-to-end business processes that span multiple microservices. This thesis explores how to guarantee observability over such architecture, thus keeping track of the business processes. It shall do so by providing a tool that facilitates the analysis of the current situation of the ecosystem, as well as allow to view and possibly act upon the data. Two solutions have been explored and are therefore presented thoroughly, alongside a detailed comparison with the purpose of drawing conclusions and providing some guidance to the readers. These outcomes that were produced by the thesis resulted in a paper published and registered to be presented at this year’s edition of the SEI hosted at ISEP.Ao longo dos últimos anos, as arquiteturas de software têm evoluído significativamente de forma a tentar resolver os principais problemas que têm surgindo, principalmente derivados nas necessidades do mercado que estão em constante mudança. A necessidade de providenciar uma forma das organizações e suas equipas construírem aplicações independentemente e com uma maior agilidade e rapidez levou à adoção de microserviços, geralmente aplicando uma metodologia de comunicação assíncrona através de eventos. Para além disso, a constante evolução da necessidade de ter sistemas de qualidade e altamente resilientes e disponíveis, ajudou a direcionar um maior foco para padrões de qualidade mais rigorosos, particularmente no que toca a monitorização e outros meios para assegurar o correto funcionamento de componentes em produção em tempo-real. Embora técnicas como a produção de logs, monitorização e alarmística sejam essenciais para ser aplicadas a cada microserviço, poderá não ser suficiente quando consideramos uma arquitetura baseada em eventos. Estudos recentes apontam para que organizações, apesar de estarem a adotar cada vez mais este tipo de arquiteturas de software, ainda encontram bastantes dificuldades devido à falta de visibilidade que possuem dos processos de negócio que envolvem e se propagam por diversos microserviços. Esta tese explora como garantir visibilidade sobre uma arquitetura como a descrita, e assim conseguir seguir os processos de negócio. O resultado da mesma deverá atender a isso providenciando uma ferramenta que facilita a análise da situação atual do ecossistema, e que possibilita a visualização e a intervenção sobre os dados que são disponibilizados. Foram desenvolvidas duas soluções que serão apresentadas detalhadamente juntamente com uma comparação entre as duas com o propósito de tirar mais conclusões e providenciar alguma orientação ao leitor. A tese originou a criação de um artigo submetido para ser apresentado na edição deste ano do SEI

Developing the Business Process Management Performance of an Information System Using the Delphi Study Technique

Information systems are used to manage an organisation’s business process management (BPM), its operations and performance. Thus, organisations will benefit from systematic processes for evaluating their business information systems with the aim of developing BPM and business information systems performance. The Delphi Study Technique (DST) is a structured business study technique that can be used as a systematic and interactive assessment process based on controlled feedback from business experts, professionals, or others with relevant experience. The Delphi study technique (also known as the Delphi method) has produced significant achievements in evaluating and improving BPM through identifying BPM values to be used as key indicators. This paper describes the essential stages for measuring the performance of an information system by combining the Delphi method and BPM values to improve an organisation’s business performance. The paper provides examples of the use of DST and discusses empirical results from the published literature

Implementação de Processos RH em SAP

Nowadays, HR management is a vital element for any business area in the world. For large scale companies, having a central tool to execute and approve all personnel data changes (including hiring and transferring employees) allows them to easily keep data up to date and reduce costs; all of this by using a global standard process. The purpose of this dissertation is to prove how SAP HCM Processes & Forms (HCM P&F) can be used to create an interactive web application to manage all HR processes within a company (supporting any technology in the front-end) and how it compares to legacy applications that hold their own business logic instead of leveraging SAP ERP rules and functionalities. Consequently, this document will describe in detail an implementation of HCM P&F developed by Konkconsulting, to show how it stands out in comparison to other application models. This implementation is currently used by a multinational corporation and supports over 10 types of HR processes with 200 fields.Hoje em dia, a gestão de Recursos Humanos é um elemento fundamental para qualquer negócio no mundo. Empresas de média-grande magnitude necessitam de ferramentas centrais para gerir inúmeros processos (por exemplo: contratações, transferências e promoções), bem como facilitar as alterações de dados aos seus colaboradores. O facto de ter estes processos bem definidos permite comunicação rápida entre colaboradores, redução de burocracia e consequentemente, redução de custos. Este documento descreve um modelo de desenvolvimento, orientado a SAP, para a criação de uma aplicação MSS/ESS que permita atingir os objectivos enunciados acima. Para isto, será apresentada a framework SAP HCM Processes & Forms (HCM P&F) e demonstrado como esta pode ser utilizada para criar uma aplicação interactiva, que tire partido de todas as regras de negócio do ERP SAP – uma vantagem evidente sobre outros modelos de desenvolvimento. A solução apresentada está também preparada para suportar qualquer tecnologia de apresentação. A implementação deste modelo foi levada a cabo pela Konkconsulting para uma multinacional com um modelo de Recursos Humanos complexo. A aplicação é neste momento utilizada por milhares de utilizadores e suporta mais de 10 tipos de processos

A Review on Framework and Quality of Service Based Web Services Discovery

Selection of Web services (WSs) is one of the most important steps in the application of different types of WSs such as WS composition systems and the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) registries. The more available these WSs on the Internet are, the wider the number of these services whose functions match the various service requests is. Selecting WSs with higher quality largely depends on the quality of service (QoS) since it plays a significant role in selecting such services. In achieving this selection of the best WSs, the potential WSs are ranked according to the user’s necessities on service quality. In many cases, the value of QoS ontology is realized by its support for nonfunctional features of WSs. This ontology is also capable of providing solutions to the interoperability of QoS description. Moreover, based on the QoS ontology, it becomes more possible to develop a framework of semantic WS discovery. The framework enhances the automatic discovery of WSs and can improve the users’ efficiency in finding the best web services. Thus, Web Services are software functionalities publish and accessible through the Internet. Different protocols and web mechanism have been defined to access these Services