International conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering: Session chair

The Thirtieth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2018) will be held at the Hotel Pullman, San Francisco Bay, USA, from July 1 to July 3, 2018. SEKE2018 will also be dedicated in memory of Professor Lofti Zadeh, a great scholar, pioneer and leader in fuzzy sets theory and soft computing. The conference aims at bringing together experts in software engineering and knowledge engineering to discuss on relevant results in either software engineering or knowledge engineering or both. Special emphasis will be put on the transference of methods between both domains. The theme this year is soft computing in software engineering & knowledge engineering. Submission of papers and demos are both welcome

Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects. Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. Method: The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. Results: The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. Conclusion: It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Distributed software development in a financial services organisation

The outsourcing of IS functionality to offshore development firms has been a growth industry that has blossomed over the last 10 years. This is as a result of organisations, seeking to optimise costs, mitigate risks, and achieve greater return on shareholder value by delegating the delivery of business information systems and applications to third party vendors. At the same time, distributed approaches to software development has arisen, there has been a growing interest in the applicability of lightweight or Agile development methodologies. As such, this paper this paper discusses experiences of a European Financial Services firm in outsourcing, and subsequently offshoring, two of its IT projects to vendor firms in India, where Agile approaches were used. The authors provide a model of the financial firm’s critical success factors presented as a frame of reference for others interested and involved in this topical area

Walking Through the Method Zoo: Does Higher Education Really Meet Software Industry Demands?

Software engineering educators are continually challenged by rapidly evolving concepts, technologies, and industry demands. Due to the omnipresence of software in a digitalized society, higher education institutions (HEIs) have to educate the students such that they learn how to learn, and that they are equipped with a profound basic knowledge and with latest knowledge about modern software and system development. Since industry demands change constantly, HEIs are challenged in meeting such current and future demands in a timely manner. This paper analyzes the current state of practice in software engineering education. Specifically, we want to compare contemporary education with industrial practice to understand if frameworks, methods and practices for software and system development taught at HEIs reflect industrial practice. For this, we conducted an online survey and collected information about 67 software engineering courses. Our findings show that development approaches taught at HEIs quite closely reflect industrial practice. We also found that the choice of what process to teach is sometimes driven by the wish to make a course successful. Especially when this happens for project courses, it could be beneficial to put more emphasis on building learning sequences with other courses

Designing a consulting services architecture model

textDuring my years of experience in the technology industry, it has become obvious that standard processes and methodologies within the engineering discipline are at a mature state. The realization though is that software engineering specifically lags behind. Most software engineering methodologies that I have studied focus on the mission of software development. It is this realization and the need for structure that led me to review existing methodologies used within my company's software services organization. The definition of what a successful software services methodology entails is rather limited. This report will provide a history of existing software engineering methodologies that I have studied, describe an initial services method that was being developed within my organization, develop a new model that addresses previous shortcomings and identify additional components required to further define a strong software services-oriented delivery methodology.Electrical and Computer Engineerin