A Neural Network Approach to Context-Sensitive Generation of Conversational Responses

We present a novel response generation system that can be trained end to end on large quantities of unstructured Twitter conversations. A neural network architecture is used to address sparsity issues that arise when integrating contextual information into classic statistical models, allowing the system to take into account previous dialog utterances. Our dynamic-context generative models show consistent gains over both context-sensitive and non-context-sensitive Machine Translation and Information Retrieval baselines.Comment: A. Sordoni, M. Galley, M. Auli, C. Brockett, Y. Ji, M. Mitchell, J.-Y. Nie, J. Gao, B. Dolan. 2015. A Neural Network Approach to Context-Sensitive Generation of Conversational Responses. In Proc. of NAACL-HLT. Pages 196-20

Nurturing the acorn: helping a small software company onto the CMM ladder

We report on an interaction between a University and a small software development company within the framework of a Teaching Company Scheme. By exploiting the peculiar environment offered by a TCS, the University was able to help the company introduce measures to improve their software development process. Not only have these measures moved the company from level 1 to level 2 of the Capability Maturity Model; they are doubtless also responsible, at least in part, for the company's survival. The fundamental features of the environment which supported this success are discussed, and it is suggested how the approach might be applied elsewhere, either within or independently of a funding framework such as TCS

Understanding the perception of very small software companies towards the adoption of process standards

This paper is concerned with understanding the issues that affect the adoption of software process standards by Very Small Entities (VSEs), there needs from process standards and there willingness to engage with the new ISO/IEC 29110 standard in particular. In order to achieve this goal, a series of industry data collection studies were undertaken with a collection of VSEs. A twin track approach of a qualitative data collection (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative data collection (questionnaire), with data analysis being completed separately and finally results merged, using the coding mechanisms of grounded theory. This paper serves as a roadmap for both researchers wishing to understand the issues of process standards adoption by very small companies and also for the software process standards community

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review

An M-Learning Maturity Model for the Educational Sector

Educational institutions are increasingly becoming interested in adopting alternative technologies as a mode for imparting education. Mobile technologies are considered to be the next frontier as they have the capability to provide high-quality learning experiences, and satisfy the increasing demand for mobility and flexibility. In view of the ubiquitous presence of mobile technology and the immense opportunities, there are favorable indications that the technology would be introduced as the next generation of learning platforms. The adoption of M-learning also has its challenges. A lack of a comprehensive assessment and evaluation methodology is seen as one of the major roadblocks in implementing the technology. The present paper has used the framework of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to design a model for M-learning within educational institutions. The objective is to identify key processes and maturity levels that would make the transition of learning processes from old to new, smooth and viable

SPICE 3: Facilitating organisational process improvement through good practice sharing

This paper describes the latest iteration of the SPICE research. SPICE 3 explains the process maturity framework to address the level III of the SPICE model. Building upon the developments of level II, SPICE 3 advocates establishment of a process improvement infrastructure to facilitate good practice sharing in construction organisations. To achieve SPICE level III process maturity, organisations should posses four key processes and five process enablers. The model developed helped the case study organisations to identify their process strengths and also areas requiring improvement