Towards guidelines for building a business case and gathering evidence of software reference architectures in industry

Background: Software reference architectures are becoming widely adopted by organizations that need to support the design and maintenance of software applications of a shared domain. For organizations that plan to adopt this architecture-centric approach, it becomes fundamental to know the return on investment and to understand how software reference architectures are designed, maintained, and used. Unfortunately, there is little evidence-based support to help organizations with these challenges. Methods: We have conducted action research in an industry-academia collaboration between the GESSI research group and everis, a multinational IT consulting firm based in Spain. Results: The results from such collaboration are being packaged in order to create guidelines that could be used in similar contexts as the one of everis. The main result of this paper is the construction of empirically-grounded guidelines that support organizations to decide on the adoption of software reference architectures and to gather evidence to improve RA-related practices. Conclusions: The created guidelines could be used by other organizations outside of our industry-academia collaboration. With this goal in mind, we describe the guidelines in detail for their use.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Insiders and Outsiders: What the American Law Institute Has Done for Gay and Lesbian Families

Detta arbete handlar om ett elevperspektiv på lärande och motivation gällande ett besök på temat ”Luft och flyg” på Flygvapenmuseum i Linköping. Deltagarna i denna studie består av grundskolelever i årskurs ett och två. Undersökningens genomförande består av två delar. I den första delen har eleverna före besöket skriftligt fått svara på en fråga. Den andra delen består av fokusgruppsintervjuer som genomförts efter besöket. Sammanlagt har 41 elever intervjuats och dessa är indelade i sju fokusgrupper.   Två huvudresultat återfinns: ”I och utanför skolan”, kopplat till studiens första frågeställning samt ”Yttre miljö för den inre motivationen”, kopplat till studiens andra frågeställning. Det första resultatet visar att eleverna under besöket fått förstahandserfarenheter, vilka bidragit till deras lärande. Dessa erfarenheter är något som enligt eleverna inte går att få i klassrummet. Det andra resultatet handlar främst om att eleverna blivit motiverade till att vilja lära sig mer gällande de aktuella ämnena. Även här spelar erfarenheterna de fått på museet en viktig roll. Besöket på Flygvapenmuseum har påverkat deras inre motivation. Det konstateras också att lärande och motivation är svåra att skilja åt.   Resultatens innebörd diskuteras i relation till slutsatser som dels rör hur pass väl besöket genomförs med avseende på efterarbetet i skolan och dels hur viktigt det är att skolan samarbetar med externa resursmiljöer.   Till syvende och sist handlar det om att involvera eleverna i meningsfulla kontexter. Det finns en vinning i, för både elevers lärande och motivation, att de naturvetenskapliga ämnena presenteras i en kontext som är begriplig för eleverna där de också får bli delaktiga

Role of product characteristics for the adoption of fruit and fruit product innovations

The aim of this study was the identification of those product characteristics that are important for the adoption of fruit and fruit product innovations by consumers. Sixteen focus group discussions were held in four European countries (Greece, The Netherlands, Poland, and Spain). Different aspects of six innovative fruit products were discussed, revealing those characteristics that were important for the adoption of each of them. It was observed that the participants did not perceive fruit innovations as a homogenous group, but assigned them to different groups, which led to a number of categories of fruit innovation. Three categories concerned the level of preparation of fruit. These were fresh, prepared, and processed fruit product innovations. Another two categories, radical and evolutionary innovations, related to the level of novelty of the fruit innovation. Characteristics important for the adoption of each of these categories are given.The results will be used for further, more quantitative, research

Sustainable tea production : an assessment of farmer field schools in Kenya

This report presents the results of the KTDA/Lipton Sustainable Agriculture Project. The aim of the KTDA/Lipton Sustainable Agriculture Project is to increase the sustainability of tea production by increasing the rate of adoption of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and thereby directly improve profitability. In 2006 the Kenya Tea Development Agency and Lipton started four pilot Farmer Field Schools (FFS). The results of the four pilot FFS are encouraging. Although no quantitative increase in tea production per acre due to the FFS could be observed, overwhelming evidence has been gathered about the increase of knowledge on and implementation of GAPs. This will have short and long-term benefits for smallholders engaged in FFS. Indirect effects of the FFS were better group cohesion and strengthened learning capacities. The pilot suggests that FFS are a more efficient way of extending production management techniques than the traditional extension methodolog

Dynamics of banking technology adoption: an application to internet banking

This paper is concerned with examining behaviour of firms (banks) and consumers (banks’ customers) in the event of a new technology (internet banking) introduction. The determinants of consumer adoption of internet banking are characterised using survey data from Korea in both static and dynamic framework. I find evidence that adoption of internet banking is influenced by sex, age, marital status, degree of exposure to internet banking, and the characteristics of the banks. A duration analysis shows no evidence of first mover advantage (order effects) in internet banking whilst the largest bank (rank effects) in commercial banking remains dominant in internet banking. The results imply that the internet banking adoption is dominated by social norm effects

Adoption and motivational factors for online grocery shopping in the UK

Following upon the results of previous qualitative research (Authors, 2005), the objective of this paper is to confirm the role of situational variables in the adoption process of online grocery shopping. Situational variables and life events in particular (e.g. having a baby, health problems) emerge as the trigger for starting online grocery shopping for two clusters. However, the adoption of e-grocery shopping seems to be re-evaluated frequently and consequently post-adoption evaluation appears crucial to the decision of whether to continue with or to drop internet grocery shopping

Composition and Self-Adaptation of Service-Based Systems with Feature Models

The adoption of mechanisms for reusing software in pervasive systems has not yet become standard practice. This is because the use of pre-existing software requires the selection, composition and adaptation of prefabricated software parts, as well as the management of some complex problems such as guaranteeing high levels of efficiency and safety in critical domains. In addition to the wide variety of services, pervasive systems are composed of many networked heterogeneous devices with embedded software. In this work, we promote the safe reuse of services in service-based systems using two complementary technologies, Service-Oriented Architecture and Software Product Lines. In order to do this, we extend both the service discovery and composition processes defined in the DAMASCo framework, which currently does not deal with the service variability that constitutes pervasive systems. We use feature models to represent the variability and to self-adapt the services during the composition in a safe way taking context changes into consideration. We illustrate our proposal with a case study related to the driving domain of an Intelligent Transportation System, handling the context information of the environment.Work partially supported by the projects TIN2008-05932, TIN2008-01942, TIN2012-35669, TIN2012-34840 and CSD2007-0004 funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER; P09-TIC-05231 and P11-TIC-7659 funded by Andalusian Government; and FP7-317731 funded by EU. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec