Causal analysis procedure focused on small software development organizations

Very Small Entities (VSE) dedicated to software development lack of enough resources to adopt causal analysis practices, defined in models as CMMI, due to their complexity and costs. It is important to detect the generated defects in the development process, and to make a systematic analysis aimed at determining its causes. However, identifying those root causes is an arduous task, and failing to do so leads to wrong decisions that either fail to solve the problem or even make it worse. On this basis, this paper proposes a causal analysis procedure focused on small organizations PAC-DS (according to its initials in Spanish), which includes activities aimed at identifying the defects causes. After its evaluation in a preliminary case study, the utility of the procedure was evidenced

Applying Machine Learning to Root Cause Analysis in Agile CI/CD Software Testing Environments

This thesis evaluates machine learning classification and clustering algorithms with the aim of automating the root cause analysis of failed tests in agile software testing environments. The inefficiency of manually categorizing the root causes in terms of time and human resources motivates this work. The development and testing environments of an agile team at Ericsson Finland are used as this work's framework. The author of the thesis extracts relevant features from the raw log data after interviewing the team's testing engineers (human experts). The author puts his initial efforts into clustering the unlabeled data, and despite obtaining qualitative correlations between several clusters and failure root causes, the vagueness in the rest of the clusters leads to the consideration of labeling. The author then carries out a new round of interviews with the testing engineers, which leads to the conceptualization of ground-truth categories for the test failures. With these, the human experts label the dataset accordingly. A collection of artificial neural networks that either classify the data or pre-process it for clustering is then optimized by the author. The best solution comes in the form of a classification multilayer perceptron that correctly assigns the failure category to new examples, on average, 88.9\% of the time. The primary outcome of this thesis comes in the form of a methodology for the extraction of expert knowledge and its adaptation to machine learning techniques for test failure root cause analysis using test log data. The proposed methodology constitutes a prototype or baseline approach towards achieving this objective in a corporate environment

On the enhancement of data quality in security incident response investigations

Security incidents detected by information technology-dependent organisations are escalating in both scale and complexity. As a result, security incident response has become a critical mechanism for organisations in an effort to minimise the damage from security incidents. To help organisations develop security incident response capabilities, several security incident response approaches and best practice guidelines have been published in both industry and academia. The final phase within many of these approaches and best practices is the ‘feedback’ or ‘follow-up’ phase. Within this phase, it is expected that an organisation will learn from a security incident and use this information to improve its overall information security posture. However, researchers have argued that many organisations tend to focus on eradication and recovery instead of learning from a security incident. An exploratory case study was undertaken in a Fortune 500 Organisation to investigate security incident learning in practice within organisations. At a high-level, the challenges and problems identified from the case study suggests that security incident response could benefit from improving the quality of data generated from and during security investigations. Therefore, the objective of this research was to improve the quality of data in security incident response, so that organisations can develop deeper insights into security incident causes and to assist with security incident learning. A supplementary challenge identified was the need to minimise the time-cost associated with any changes to organisational processes. Therefore, several lightweight measures were created and implemented within the case study organisation. These measures were evaluated in a series of longitudinal studies that collected both quantitative and qualitative data from the case study organisation

Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Summer Conference. NASA/USRA: University Advanced Design Program

The Advanced Design Program (ADP) is a unique program that brings together students and faculty from U.S. engineering schools with engineers from the NASA centers through integration of current and future NASA space and aeronautics projects into university engineering design curriculum. The Advanced Space Design Program study topics cover a broad range of projects that could be undertaken during a 20-30 year period beginning with the deployment of the Space Station Freedom. The Advanced Aeronautics Design Program study topics typically focus on nearer-term projects of interest to NASA, covering from small, slow-speed vehicles through large, supersonic passenger transports and on through hypersonic research vehicles. Student work accomplished during the 1990-91 academic year and reported at the 7th Annual Summer Conference is presented

A DMAIC Framework for Improving Software Quality in Organizations: Case Study at RK Company

Managing quality is a vital aspect in software development world, especially in the current business competition for fast delivery of feature rich products with high quality. For an organization to meet its intended level of excellence in order to ensure its success, a culture of quality should be built where every individual is responsible of quality and not just the software testing team. However, delivering software products with very few bugs is a challenging constraint that is usually sacrificed in order for a company to meet other management constraints such as cost, scope and scheduling. The purpose of this thesis is to apply six sigma DMAIC framework on 'RK’ company (name anonymized) in order to help software organizations focus on improving the quality of their software products. Different phases of DMAIC methodology are applied to one of the largest software applications for ‘RK’ company where critical to quality aspects were identified, production bugs were classified and measured, the causes of the large number of production bugs were specified leading to different improvement suggestions. Several metrics were proposed to help ‘RK’ company control its software development process to ensure the success of the project under study

Biopolymers in Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine

Biopolymers including natural (e.g., polysaccharides, proteins, gums, natural rubbers, bacterial polymers), synthetic (e.g., aliphatic polyesters and polyphosphoester), and biocomposites are of paramount interest in regenerative medicine, due to their availability, processability, and low toxicity. Moreover, the structuration of biopolymer-based materials at the nano- and microscale along with their chemical properties are crucial in the engineering of advanced carriers for drug products. Finally, combination products including or based on biopolymers for controlled drug release offer a powerful solution to improve the tissue integration and biological response of these materials. Understanding the drug delivery mechanisms, efficiency, and toxicity of such systems may be useful for regenerative medicine and pharmaceutical technology. The main aim of the Special Issue on “Biopolymers in Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine” is to gather recent findings and current advances on biopolymer research for biomedical applications, particularly in regenerative medicine, wound healing, and drug delivery. Contributions to this issue can be as original research or review articles and may cover all aspects of biopolymer research, ranging from the chemical synthesis and characterization of modified biopolymers, their processing in different morphologies and hierarchical structures, as well as their assessment for biomedical uses

Strategic investment of embodied energy during the architectural planning process

Building industry impacts natural cycles and has potential for optimization. While impairment on nature reached a new dimension already some three centuries ago the building industry started to realize the dependency in the second half of the 20th century. With LCA method all life cycle phases can be monitored and the environmental impact of each can be quantified. The energy consuming and emission generating components in the building context can be distinguished in the groups transport, operation and material. An architect deals with the operational energy and the building substance. With nearly zero (not renewable) energy for operation an ecological building is defined by the building substance. Evaluation of the building substance While the building structure accounts for the highest share of embodied energy and GWP, the facade offers high potential for optimisation. This potential is even higher when considering a long (50-100 years) usage life span; the building structure remains while the (non load-bearing) facade is object to exchange cycles. Findings and their integration into the architectural planning process The city is a depot for resources and we (it involves a variety of professions) need to learn how to organize it. Modularity, light construction, the use of renewable materials and mono materials are also interesting fields which are looked at from a different point of view. They are relevant for all building elements. Although they are not initially invented to reduce the ecological impact of the built environment, they show potential to do so. The facade is the essential parameter for the resource-efficiency of a building as it is exchanged and binds relevant amounts of material. Impact can be made within this element due to its high variation in construction and materialization. The material cycles need to become smaller and the gaps – landfill or downcycling need to be closed. The use of resources will increasingly develop impact on architecture and by that resource efficiency is a successor of energy efficiency