A Process Framework for Semantics-aware Tourism Information Systems

The growing sophistication of user requirements in tourism due to the advent of new technologies such as the Semantic Web and mobile computing has imposed new possibilities for improved intelligence in Tourism Information Systems (TIS). Traditional software engineering and web engineering approaches cannot suffice, hence the need to find new product development approaches that would sufficiently enable the next generation of TIS. The next generation of TIS are expected among other things to: enable semantics-based information processing, exhibit natural language capabilities, facilitate inter-organization exchange of information in a seamless way, and evolve proactively in tandem with dynamic user requirements. In this paper, a product development approach called Product Line for Ontology-based Semantics-Aware Tourism Information Systems (PLOSATIS) which is a novel hybridization of software product line engineering, and Semantic Web engineering concepts is proposed. PLOSATIS is presented as potentially effective, predictable and amenable to software process improvement initiatives

Methodological approaches and techniques for designing ontologies in information systems requirements engineering

Programa doutoral em Information Systems and TechnologyThe way we interact with the world around us is changing as new challenges arise, embracing innovative business models, rethinking the organization and processes to maximize results, and evolving change management. Currently, and considering the projects executed, the methodologies used do not fully respond to the companies' needs. On the one hand, organizations are not familiar with the languages used in Information Systems, and on the other hand, they are often unable to validate requirements or business models. These are some of the difficulties encountered that lead us to think about formulating a new approach. Thus, the state of the art presented in this paper includes a study of the models involved in the software development process, where traditional methods and the rivalry of agile methods are present. In addition, a survey is made about Ontologies and what methods exist to conceive, transform, and represent them. Thus, after analyzing some of the various possibilities currently available, we began the process of evolving a method and developing an approach that would allow us to design ontologies. The method we evolved and adapted will allow us to derive terminologies from a specific domain, aggregating them in order to facilitate the construction of a catalog of terminologies. Next, the definition of an approach to designing ontologies will allow the construction of a domain-specific ontology. This approach allows in the first instance to integrate and store the data from different information systems of a given organization. In a second instance, the rules for mapping and building the ontology database are defined. Finally, a technological architecture is also proposed that will allow the mapping of an ontology through the construction of complex networks, allowing mapping and relating terminologies. This doctoral work encompasses numerous Research & Development (R&D) projects belonging to different domains such as Software Industry, Textile Industry, Robotic Industry and Smart Cities. Finally, a critical and descriptive analysis of the work done is performed, and we also point out perspectives for possible future work.A forma como interagimos com o mundo à nossa volta está a mudar à medida que novos desafios surgem, abraçando modelos empresariais inovadores, repensando a organização e os processos para maximizar os resultados, e evoluindo a gestão da mudança. Atualmente, e considerando os projetos executados, as metodologias utilizadas não respondem na totalidade às necessidades das empresas. Por um lado, as organizações não estão familiarizadas com as linguagens utilizadas nos Sistemas de Informação, por outro lado, são muitas vezes incapazes de validar requisitos ou modelos de negócio. Estas são algumas das dificuldades encontradas que nos levam a pensar na formulação de uma nova abordagem. Assim, o estado da arte apresentado neste documento inclui um estudo dos modelos envolvidos no processo de desenvolvimento de software, onde os métodos tradicionais e a rivalidade de métodos ágeis estão presentes. Além disso, é efetuado um levantamento sobre Ontologias e quais os métodos existentes para as conceber, transformar e representar. Assim, e após analisarmos algumas das várias possibilidades atualmente disponíveis, iniciou-se o processo de evolução de um método e desenvolvimento de uma abordagem que nos permitisse conceber ontologias. O método que evoluímos e adaptamos permitirá derivar terminologias de um domínio específico, agregando-as de forma a facilitar a construção de um catálogo de terminologias. Em seguida, a definição de uma abordagem para conceber ontologias permitirá a construção de uma ontologia de um domínio específico. Esta abordagem permite em primeira instância, integrar e armazenar os dados de diferentes sistemas de informação de uma determinada organização. Num segundo momento, são definidas as regras para o mapeamento e construção da base de dados ontológica. Finalmente, é também proposta uma arquitetura tecnológica que permitirá efetuar o mapeamento de uma ontologia através da construção de redes complexas, permitindo mapear e relacionar terminologias. Este trabalho de doutoramento engloba inúmeros projetos de Investigação & Desenvolvimento (I&D) pertencentes a diferentes domínios como por exemplo Indústria de Software, Indústria Têxtil, Indústria Robótica e Smart Cities. Finalmente, é realizada uma análise critica e descritiva do trabalho realizado, sendo que apontamos ainda perspetivas de possíveis trabalhos futuros

A CMMI-based approach for medical software project life cycle study

In terms of medical techniques, Taiwan has gained international recognition in recent years. However, the medical information system industry in Taiwan is still at a developing stage compared with the software industries in other nations. In addition, systematic development processes are indispensable elements of software development. They can help developers increase their productivity and efficiency and also avoid unnecessary risks arising during the development process. Thus, this paper presents an application of Light-Weight Capability Maturity Model Integration (LW-CMMI) to Chang Gung Medical Research Project (CMRP) in the Nuclear medicine field. This application was intended to integrate user requirements, system design and testing of software development processes into three layers (Domain, Concept and Instance) model. Then, expressing in structural System Modeling Language (SysML) diagrams and converts part of the manual effort necessary for project management maintenance into computational effort, for example: (semi-) automatic delivery of traceability management. In this application, it supports establishing artifacts of “requirement specification document”, “project execution plan document”, “system design document” and “system test document”, and can deliver a prototype of lightweight project management tool on the Nuclear Medicine software project. The results of this application can be a reference for other medical institutions in developing medical information systems and support of project management to achieve the aim of patient safety. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2193-1801-2-266) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Maturity model for configuration management

The Configuration Management process is a support process that helps organizations have a better management of their infrastructure. This process is being implemented in a haphazard way, not producing the benefits that it should produce. In an environment where the success depends on the client’s wills, have allowed a significant advance in IT domain, granting a substantial evolution in IT services. However, with all the frameworks provided, many of the organizations have challenges to implement several processes and to design an improvement plan. Maturity Models can be seen as support tools for this kind of task. The main objective of maturity models is to evaluate and improve the organization’s practices by creating an improvement roadmap. Nevertheless, the importance of the conjunction of both concepts, Configuration Management and Maturity Models, has not been justified and developed. The practices overlap, recommended by the Information Technology frameworks, has been a problem for the organizations due to the fact of several enterprises require to have to implement diverse frameworks, bringing an increase of cost and unnecessary redundancy. In this research, with the need of the organizations evaluate their Configuration Management process, was developed an overlapless Maturity Model for the Configuration Management by combining several frameworks, with the support of the Systematic Literature Review method and the Design Science research methodology.O processo de Gestão de Configurações é um processo de suporte que ajuda as organizações a terem uma melhor gestão da sua infraestrutura. É um processo que está a ser implementado de forma aleatória, não produzindo os benefícios que deveria produzir. Num ambiente onde o sucesso depende das vontades dos clientes, permitiu um avanço significativo no domínio das TI, garantindo uma substantiva evolução nos serviços das TI. Contudo, com todas as frameworks fornecidas, muitas das organizações da área das TI têm dificuldades em implementar vários processos e em desenhar um plano de melhoramento. Os Modelos de Maturidade permitem o suporte para este tipo de tarefa. O objetivo principal desta ferramenta é avaliar e melhorar as práticas das organizações, criando um plano de melhoramento e avaliando o estado as-is do processo. Mesmo assim, a importância da conjunção entre estes dois conceitos, Gestão de Configurações e Modelos de Maturidade, nunca foi justificado nem desenvolvido. A sobreposição das práticas, recomendadas pelas frameworks das TI, tem vindo a ser um problema para as organizações. Esta sobreposição traz um acréscimo de despesa e redundância desnecessária, uma vez que as organizações necessitam de implementar diversas frameworks. Nesta investigação, com a necessidade de as organizações das TI avaliarem o seu processo de Gestão de Configurações, foi desenvolvido um Modelo de Maturidade sem sobreposição para Gestão de Configurações combinando diversas frameworks, com o suporte do método Revisão Sistemática da Literatura e da metodologia de investigação Design Science Research

DevOps Ontology - An ontology to support the understanding of DevOps in the academy and the software industry

Currently, the degree of knowledge about what DevOps really means and what it entails is still limited. This can result in an informal and even incorrect implementation in many cases. Although several proposals related to DevOps adoption can be found, confusion is not uncommon and terminology conflict between the proposals is still evident. This article proposes DevOps Ontology, a semi-formal ontology that proposes a generic, consistent, and clear language to enable the dissemination of information related to implementing DevOps in software development. The ontology presented in this article facilitates the understanding of DevOps by identifying the relationships between software process elements and the agile principles/values that may be related to them. The DevOps Ontology has been defined considering the following aspects: the REFSENO formalism that uses the representation in UML was used and the language OWL language using Prótegé and HermiT Reasoner to evaluate the consistency of its structure. Likewise, it was satisfactorily evaluated in three application cases: a theoretical validation; instantiation of the continuous integration and deployment practices proposed by the company GitLab. Furthermore, a mobile app was created to retrieve information from the DevOps Ontology using the SPARQL protocol and RDF language. The app also evaluated the Ontology’s proficiency in responding to knowledge-based questions using SPARQL. The results showed that DevOps Ontology is consistent, complete, and concise, i.e.: to say: the consistency could be observed in the ability to be able to infer knowledge from the ontology, ensuring that the ontology is complete by checking for any incompleteness and verifying that all necessary definitions and inferences are well-established. Additionally, the ontology was assessed for conciseness to ensure that it doesn't contain redundant or unnecessary definitions. Furthermore, it has the potential for improvement by incorporating new concepts and relationships as needed. The newly suggested ontology creates a set of terms that provide a systematic and structured approach to organizing the existing knowledge in the field. This helps to minimize the confusion, inconsistency, and heterogeneity of the terminologies and concepts in the area of interest

A CMMI-compliant requirements management and development process

Requirements Engineering has been acknowledged an essential discipline for Software Quality. Poorly-defined processes for eliciting, analyzing, specifying and validating requirements can lead to unclear issues or misunderstandings on business needs and project’s scope. These typically result in customers’ non-satisfaction with either the products’ quality or the increase of the project’s budget and duration. Maturity models allow an organization to measure the quality of its processes and improve them according to an evolutionary path based on levels. The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) addresses the aforementioned Requirements Engineering issues. CMMI defines a set of best practices for process improvement that are divided into several process areas. Requirements Management and Requirements Development are the process areas concerned with Requirements Engineering maturity. Altran Portugal is a consulting company concerned with the quality of its software. In 2012, the Solution Center department has developed and applied successfully a set of processes aligned with CMMI-DEV v1.3, what granted them a Level 2 maturity certification. For 2015, they defined an organizational goal of addressing CMMI-DEV maturity level 3. This MSc dissertation is part of this organization effort. In particular, it is concerned with the required process areas that address the activities of Requirements Engineering. Our main goal is to contribute for the development of Altran’s internal engineering processes to conform to the guidelines of the Requirements Development process area. Throughout this dissertation, we started with an evaluation method based on CMMI and conducted a compliance assessment of Altran’s current processes. This allowed demonstrating their alignment with the CMMI Requirements Management process area and to highlight the improvements needed to conform to the Requirements Development process area. Based on the study of alternative solutions for the gaps found, we proposed a new Requirements Management and Development process that was later validated using three different approaches. The main contribution of this dissertation is the new process developed for Altran Portugal. However, given that studies on these topics are not abundant in the literature, we also expect to contribute with useful evidences to the existing body of knowledge with a survey on CMMI and requirements engineering trends. Most importantly, we hope that the implementation of the proposed processes’ improvements will minimize the risks of mishandled requirements, increasing Altran’s performance and taking them one step further to the desired maturity level

Bridging the Gap between Security/Risk and Quality

An IT security vulnerability can be considered as an inherent weakness in a target system that could be exploited by a threat source. The underlying hypothesis in our proposal is that each identified attribute associated with the target entity to be controlled should show the highest quality satisfaction level as an elementary indicator. The higher the quality indicator value achieved per each attribute, the lower the vulnerability indicator value and therefore the potential impact from the risk standpoint. In the present work, we discuss the added value of supporting the IT security and risk assessment areas with measurement and evaluation (M&E) methods and strategy, which are based on metrics and indicators. Also we illustrate excerpts of an M&E case study for characteristics and attributes of Security, and their potential risk assessment.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO