An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (2002-2006)

This paper summarizes a survey of publications in the field of systems and software engineering from 2002 to 2006. The survey is an ongoing, annual event that identifies the top 15 scholars and institutions over a 5-year period. The rankings are calculated based on the number of papers published in TSE, TOSEM, JSS, SPE, EMSE, IST, and Software. The top-ranked institution is Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, and the top-ranked scholar is Magne Jørgensen of Simula Research Laboratory, Norway. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.postprin

An assessment of systems and software engineering scholars and institutions (2001-2005)

This paper presents the findings of a five-year study of the top scholars and institutions in the systems and software engineering field, as measured by the quantity of papers published in the journals of the field in 2001-2005. The top scholar is Magne Jørgensen of Simula Research Laboratory, Norway, and the top institution is Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea. This paper is part of an ongoing study, conducted annually, that identifies the top 15 scholars and institutions in the most recent five-year period. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.postprin

A Six Sigma and DMAIC application for the reduction of defects in a rubber gloves manufacturing process

Purpose: In this era of globalisation, as competition intensifies, providing quality products and services has become a competitive advantage and a need to ensure survival. The Six Sigma's problem-solving methodology DMAIC has been one of the several techniques used by organisations to improve the quality of their products and services. This paper aims to demonstrate the empirical application of Six Sigma and DMAIC to reduce product defects within a rubber gloves manufacturing organisation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper follows the DMAIC methodology to systematically investigate the root cause of defects and provide a solution to reduce/eliminate them. In particular, the design of experiments, hypothesis testing and two-way analysis of variance techniques were combined to statistically determine whether two key process variables, oven's temperature and conveyor's speed, had an impact on the number of defects produced, as well as to define their optimum values needed to reduce/eliminate the defects. Findings: The analysis from employing Six Sigma and DMAIC indicated that the oven's temperature and conveyor's speed influenced the amount of defective gloves produced. After optimising these two process variables, a reduction of about 50 per cent in the “leaking” gloves defect was achieved, which helped the organisation studied to reduce its defects per million opportunities from 195,095 to 83,750 and thus improve its sigma level from 2.4 to 2.9. Practical implications: This paper can be used as a guiding reference for managers and engineers to undertake specific process improvement projects, in their organisations, similar to the one presented in this paper. Originality/value: This study presents an industrial case which demonstrates how the application of Six Sigma and DMAIC can help manufacturing organisations to achieve quality improvements in their processes and thus contribute to their search for process excellence

A Dialog Control Framework for Hypertext-Based Applications

Hypertext-based user interfaces have become attractive for many distributed applications today, but they do not reach the usability level of window-based UIs. Because of insufficient dialog control logic, they cannot manage nested and hierarchical dialog structures that users have come to expect from window-based UIs. We therefore present a framework that implements a dialog control logic capable of handling complex, nested dialog structures, and introduce a notation and an XML-based language for specifying such dialog structures. Key concepts are the encapsulation of multiple dialog steps in context-independent dialog modules that can be nested arbitrarily, and the specification of multiple devicespecific interaction patterns for a single deviceindependent application logic. The framework allows black box reuse, leaving only the implementation of the application logic, the design of the user interface and the specification of the dialog flow to application developers

Evaluation and Measurement of Software Process Improvement -- A Systematic Literature Review

BACKGROUND: Software Process Improvement (SPI) is a systematic approach to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a software development organization and to enhance software products. OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to identify and characterize evaluation strategies and measurements used to assess the impact of different SPI initiatives. METHOD: The systematic literature review includes 148 papers published between 1991 and 2008. The selected papers were classified according to SPI initiative, applied evaluation strategies, and measurement perspectives. Potential confounding factors interfering with the evaluation of the improvement effort were assessed. RESULTS: Seven distinct evaluation strategies were identified, wherein the most common one, "Pre-Post Comparison" was applied in 49 percent of the inspected papers. Quality was the most measured attribute (62 percent), followed by Cost (41 percent), and Schedule (18 percent). Looking at measurement perspectives, "Project" represents the majority with 66 percent. CONCLUSION: The evaluation validity of SPI initiatives is challenged by the scarce consideration of potential confounding factors, particularly given that "Pre-Post Comparison" was identified as the most common evaluation strategy, and the inaccurate descriptions of the evaluation context. Measurements to assess the short and mid-term impact of SPI initiatives prevail, whereas long-term measurements in terms of customer satisfaction and return on investment tend to be less used

A conceptual framework for SPI evaluation

Software Process Improvement (SPI) encompasses the analysis and modification of the processes within software development, aimed at improving key areas that contribute to the organizations' goals. The task of evaluating whether the selected improvement path meets these goals is challenging. On the basis of the results of a systematic literature review on SPI measurement and evaluation practices, we developed a framework (SPI Measurement and Evaluation Framework (SPI-MEF)) that supports the planning and implementation of SPI evaluations. SPI-MEF guides the practitioner in scoping the evaluation, determining measures, and performing the assessment. SPI-MEF does not assume a specific approach to process improvement and can be integrated in existing measurement programs, refocusing the assessment on evaluating the improvement initiative's outcome. Sixteen industry and academic experts evaluated the framework's usability and capability to support practitioners, providing additional insights that were integrated in the application guidelines of the framework