230 research outputs found

    Using Agile Software Development Practices in a Research Oriented Distributed Simulation

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    Although sometimes controversial, agile methodologies have proven to be a viable choice for some software development projects. Projects suited to agile methodologies are those that involve new technology, have requirements that change rapidly, and are controlled by small, talented teams. Much literature about agile software development leans towards business products and non-government entities. Only a handful of literature resources mention agile software development being used in government contracts and even fewer resources mention research projects. NASA\u27s Airspace and Traffic Operations Simulation (ATOS) is a research oriented simulation that doesn\u27t follow the traditional business project mold. In an effort to gain a better understanding if agile could be used effectively in a NASA contract for a research oriented simulation project, this research looked at what agile practices could be effectively used to help gain simulation reliability while simultaneously allowing routine maintenance, current experiment support, new modeling additions, and comprehensive architectural changes

    Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on software process education, training and professionalism (SPETP 2015)

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    These Proceedings contain the papers accepted for publication and presentation at the first 1st International Workshop on Software Process Education, Training and Professionalism (SPETP 2015) held in conjunction with the 15th International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE 2015), Gothenburg, Sweden, during June 15-17, 2015. During the 14th International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE 2014) held in Vilnius, Lithuania, at a post conference dinner, a group of key individuals from education and industry started to discuss the challenges faced for software process education, training and professionalism, especially with the background of the new modes of learning and teaching in higher education. Further discussions held post conference with key players in the relevant professional and personal certification fields led to a consensus that it is time for the industry to rise to the new challenges and set out in a manifesto a common vision for educators and trainers together with a set of recommendations to address the challenges faced. It was therefore agreed co-located the 1st International Workshop on Software Process Education, Training and Professionalism with the 15th International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination. This workshop focused on the new challenges for and best practices in software process education, training and professionalism. The foundation for learning of software process should be part of a university or college education however software process is often treated as ‘add one’ module to the core curriculum. In a professional context, whilst there have been a number of initiatives focused on the certification related to the software process professional these have had little success for numerous reasons. Cooperation in education between industry, academia and professional bodies is paramount, together with the recognition of how the education world is changing and how education is resourced, delivered (with online and open learning) and taken up. Over the next 10 years on-line learning is projected to grow fifteen fold, accounting for 30% of all education provision, according to the recent report to the European Commission on New modes of learning and teaching in higher education. It is a great pleasure to see the varied contributions to this 1st International Workshop on Software Process Education, Training and Professionalism and we hope that our joint dedication, passion and innovation will lead to success for the profession through the publication of the manifesto as a key outcome from the workshop. On behalf of the SPETP 2015 conference Organizing Committee, we would like to thank all participants. Firstly all the authors, whose quality work is the essence of the conference, and the members of the Program Committee, who helped us with their expertise and diligence in reviewing all of the submissions. As we all know, organizing a conference requires the effort of many individuals. We wish to thank also all the members of our Organizing Committee, whose work and commitment were invaluable

    The Computational Intelligence of MoGo Revealed in Taiwan's Computer Go Tournaments

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    International audienceTHE AUTHORS ARE EXTREMELY GRATEFUL TO GRID5000 for helping in designing and experimenting around Monte-Carlo Tree Search. In order to promote computer Go and stimulate further development and research in the field, the event activities, "Computational Intelligence Forum" and "World 99 Computer Go Championship," were held in Taiwan. This study focuses on the invited games played in the tournament, "Taiwanese Go players versus the computer program MoGo," held at National University of Tainan (NUTN). Several Taiwanese Go players, including one 9-Dan professional Go player and eight amateur Go players, were invited by NUTN to play against MoGo from August 26 to October 4, 2008. The MoGo program combines All Moves As First (AMAF)/Rapid Action Value Estimation (RAVE) values, online "UCT-like" values, offline values extracted from databases, and expert rules. Additionally, four properties of MoGo are analyzed including: (1) the weakness in corners, (2) the scaling over time, (3) the behavior in handicap games, and (4) the main strength of MoGo in contact fights. The results reveal that MoGo can reach the level of 3 Dan with, (1) good skills for fights, (2) weaknesses in corners, in particular for "semeai" situations, and (3) weaknesses in favorable situations such as handicap games. It is hoped that the advances in artificial intelligence and computational power will enable considerable progress in the field of computer Go, with the aim of achieving the same levels as computer chess or Chinese chess in the future

    Solving Markov decision processes for network-level post-hazard recovery via simulation optimization and rollout

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    Computation of optimal recovery decisions for community resilience assurance post-hazard is a combinatorial decision-making problem under uncertainty. It involves solving a large-scale optimization problem, which is significantly aggravated by the introduction of uncertainty. In this paper, we draw upon established tools from multiple research communities to provide an effective solution to this challenging problem. We provide a stochastic model of damage to the water network (WN) within a testbed community following a severe earthquake and compute near-optimal recovery actions for restoration of the water network. We formulate this stochastic decision-making problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), and solve it using a popular class of heuristic algorithms known as rollout. A simulation-based representation of MDPs is utilized in conjunction with rollout and the Optimal Computing Budget Allocation (OCBA) algorithm to address the resulting stochastic simulation optimization problem. Our method employs non-myopic planning with efficient use of simulation budget. We show, through simulation results, that rollout fused with OCBA performs competitively with respect to rollout with total equal allocation (TEA) at a meagre simulation budget of 5-10% of rollout with TEA, which is a crucial step towards addressing large-scale community recovery problems following natural disasters.Comment: Submitted to Simulation Optimization for Cyber Physical Energy Systems (Special Session) in 14th IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineerin

    Qualitative and semi-quantitative modelling and simulation of the software engineering processes

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    Software process modelling has been identified as being a vehicle for understanding development processes, controlling development costs, duration, and achieving product quality. In recent years, software process simulation has been becoming one of the essential techniques for effectively investigating and managing software development processes. Till now, most researches focus on the quantitative aspects of process simulation and modelling. Nevertheless, purely quantitative process modelling requires a very detailed understanding and accurate measurement of the software process, which relies on reliable and precise historical data. When such data are lacking or the quality is dubious, quantitative models have to impose severe constraints that restrict the model's value. Unfortunately, these data are not readily available in most cases, especially in the organisations at low process maturity levels. In addition, software development is a highly complex, human-centred endeavour, which involves many uncertain factors in the course of development process. Facing the inherent uncertainty and contingency, though quantitative modelling employs statistic techniques, its conditional capability and underlying assumptions limit its performance on large scale problems. As the alternatives of quantitative approaches, qualitative modelling can cope with a lack of complete knowledge, and predicts qualitative process behaviours. Furthermore, semi-quantitative modelling offers the capability of handling process uncertainty with limited knowledge, and achieves tradeoff between quantitative and qualitative approaches. However, most previous researches omitted these approaches, and the associated methods and applications are far from developed. The main contribution of this research lies in the pioneering work on the models, methods, and applications of qualitative and semi-quantitative software process modelling and simulation, and their relations with the conventional, quantitative modelling approaches. This dissertation produces its novelty from twofold research. Firstly, it explores methods and techniques to qualitatively and semi-quantitatively model and simulate software processes at different levels, i.e. project, portion of development process, and product evolution. Secondly, Some exclusive applications of these modelling approaches are also developed for aspects of software engineering practice. Moreover, a proposed framework integrates these approaches with typical quantitative paradigms to guide the adoption of process simulation modelling in software organisations. As a comprehensive reflection of state-of-the-art of software process simulation modelling, a systematic review is reported in this dissertation as well

    Agent-Based Modelling: Parallel and Distributed Simulation of Product Development Team

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    The successful collaboration of team members plays a crucial role in product development. Research of different teamwork factors may help understand the process, and computer simulation can be a suitable method of achieving this goal. This work aims to give an overview of agent-based modelling of product development teams and survey existing models that tackle this problem. Some tools and frameworks for agent-based modelling will be described with an emphasis on parallel and distributed architectures which are used to improve performance and enable very big and complex simulations

    OMB Circular A-133 Reports For the year ended June 30, 2013

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