Proceso marco orientado a aspectos en las etapas tempranas del ciclo de vida del desarrollo de software para una transición en la industria

Por una parte, se halló evidencia de la escasa presencia del paradigma de aspectos en la industria, pero, por otro lado, también se observó que sus beneficios, largamente mencionados en la literatura, sí se pudieron alcanzar en aquellos casos en los que se utilizó la orientación a aspectos en el mundo real, más allá de los ámbitos académicos. Al mismo tiempo, esa evidencia también mostró que las propuestas existentes son incompletas y muy pocas llegan a cubrir tan solo dos fases del ciclo de vida del desarrollo de software (en adelante, SDLC). Por esto es que surgió la motivación de elaborar una alternativa metodológica que permitiera su aplicación de inmediato en proyectos e iniciativas en el mundo real. Así, el objetivo de nuestro trabajo consistió en definir un proceso marco para las etapas tempranas del ciclo de vida del desarrollo de software, desde el modelo de negocios hasta la especificación completa de requisitos de software y empleando el paradigma de la orientación a aspectos. A la vez, se buscó propiciar el empleo en la industria de este paradigma para obtener sus beneficios, al aprovechar las herramientas y técnicas estándares disponibles actualmente en el mercado, mientras se siguen desarrollando otras específicas y alcanzan la madurez suficiente. Por tal razón, se decidió llamar a esta propuesta AOP4ST, sigla derivada de Aspect-Oriented Process for a Smooth Transition. Se trata de un proceso marco, no específico, de modo de permitir su empleo con diferentes modelos del ciclo de vida del desarrollo de software a lo largo de sus etapas tempranas y hasta obtener una especificación de requisitos completa y coherente, incluyendo tres vistas: funcional, estática y de estados. Este proceso emplea herramientas y técnicas estándares, de amplia difusión en la industria, para facilitar su adopción inmediata y, también, utiliza notaciones estándares, para permitir elaborar modelos y especificaciones comprensibles y no ambiguas, que puedan contar con el soporte de las herramientas de software actualmente disponibles en el mercado. Se procura que esta alternativa sea completamente orientada a aspectos, que facilite la obtención de las incumbencias en forma progresiva a lo largo de todos los modelos y, al mismo tiempo, las mantenga siempre separadas y asegurando la trazabilidad bidireccional entre ellas. Estas incumbencias deben obtenerse en forma natural a lo largo de todos los modelos, de manera de no afectar los objetivos propios de cada uno de ellos y, de este modo, potenciar los beneficios que se esperan en cada modelo mediante el empleo del paradigma de aspectos. En la sección 2 se presenta la motivación de este trabajo, incluyendo el estado de la cuestión y la problemática que se pretende resolver, en la sección 3 se describe la solución diseñada para dar solución a los inconvenientes mencionados y los aportes a la disciplina y, finalmente, la sección 4 presenta las líneas de investigación que quedan abiertas a partir de este trabajo.Eje: Tesis de Doctorado.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Coping with the inheritance of COVID-19: the role of new interactive technologies to enhance user experience in different contexts of use

The COVID-19 pandemic has upset the habits of people and various sectors of society, including training, entertainment, and retail. These sectors have been forced to adapt to abnormal situations such as social distancing, remote work, and online entertainment. The pandemic has significantly transformed the training field, leading to the closure of many in-person instruction centers and a shift toward online education courses, which can be less effective. In addition, the entertainment industry has been heavily transformed by social distancing, resulting in the cancellation of many live events and the closure of several cinemas. This has increased demand for online entertainment options, such as streaming services and virtual events. Finally, the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic substantially impacted physical stores and fairs, suspending exhibitions for more than two years. This has further driven consumers to rely on e-commerce to fulfill their purchasing and companies to increasingly take advantage of new technologies such as augmented reality. In this suddenly disrupted scenario, new technologies have the potential to fill the gap generated by the pandemic, functioning as an interactive bridge to connect people. This Ph.D. thesis explored the potential of interactive technologies in mitigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in various contexts of use in the above-mentioned areas. Specifically, three lines of research were investigated by conducting different studies using a mixed approach in the Human-Computer Interaction field. The first research line focused on the study of immersive virtual reality training, with a particular interest in flood emergencies, a growing phenomenon. The goal was to implement engaging and efficient training for citizens that live near rivers through a human-centric design approach. The second line of research explored innovative ways to improve social interaction and collaboration in the entertainment sector, highlighting guidelines for the design of shared streaming experiences. In particular, three different communication modalities were studied during group viewing of an interactive film on a streaming platform. Finally, the third research line focused on the retail sector. On the one hand, the focus consisted of understanding which aspects of the 3D web and AR technology are helpful for supporting small businesses and trade fairs. On the other hand, the focus was to investigate how to support consumers during an AR shopping experience when interacting with 3D virtual products of different sizes. Overall, this project provides suggestions and guidelines for designing systems that can both increasingly connect people at a distance and offer new hybrid worlds. In addition, this project expands state-of-the-art related to interactive technologies and offers generalizable results outside the crisis created by COVID-19. These technologies, now increasingly integrated into everyday life, can be a tool for empowerment and resilience, improving people's lives.The COVID-19 pandemic has upset the habits of people and various sectors of society, including training, entertainment, and retail. These sectors have been forced to adapt to abnormal situations such as social distancing, remote work, and online entertainment. The pandemic has significantly transformed the training field, leading to the closure of many in-person instruction centers and a shift toward online education courses, which can be less effective. In addition, the entertainment industry has been heavily transformed by social distancing, resulting in the cancellation of many live events and the closure of several cinemas. This has increased demand for online entertainment options, such as streaming services and virtual events. Finally, the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic substantially impacted physical stores and fairs, suspending exhibitions for more than two years. This has further driven consumers to rely on e-commerce to fulfill their purchasing and companies to increasingly take advantage of new technologies such as augmented reality. In this suddenly disrupted scenario, new technologies have the potential to fill the gap generated by the pandemic, functioning as an interactive bridge to connect people. This Ph.D. thesis explored the potential of interactive technologies in mitigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in various contexts of use in the above-mentioned areas. Specifically, three lines of research were investigated by conducting different studies using a mixed approach in the Human-Computer Interaction field. The first research line focused on the study of immersive virtual reality training, with a particular interest in flood emergencies, a growing phenomenon. The goal was to implement engaging and efficient training for citizens that live near rivers through a human-centric design approach. The second line of research explored innovative ways to improve social interaction and collaboration in the entertainment sector, highlighting guidelines for the design of shared streaming experiences. In particular, three different communication modalities were studied during group viewing of an interactive film on a streaming platform. Finally, the third research line focused on the retail sector. On the one hand, the focus consisted of understanding which aspects of the 3D web and AR technology are helpful for supporting small businesses and trade fairs. On the other hand, the focus was to investigate how to support consumers during an AR shopping experience when interacting with 3D virtual products of different sizes. Overall, this project provides suggestions and guidelines for designing systems that can both increasingly connect people at a distance and offer new hybrid worlds. In addition, this project expands state-of-the-art related to interactive technologies and offers generalizable results outside the crisis created by COVID-19. These technologies, now increasingly integrated into everyday life, can be a tool for empowerment and resilience, improving people's lives

Selecting Most Appropriate Online Marketing Platforms for Delivering Value Propositions

In this modern era of technological evolution, our day to day lives is surrounded with Internet, gadgets, smartphones and laptops. We are so much obsessed with technology and those devices have become part and parcel of our everyday lives. This obsession with technology has created a unique opportunity for marketers to keep in touch with customers and to feed them promotions and offers continuously. Online marketing platforms are not only allowing marketers to implement and analyze marketing strategies but also helping them to research customer behavior, and to receive suggestions and feedback. The objective of this thesis is to select most appropriate marketing platforms for delivering value propositions to the different group of customers. The study introduces the concept of strategic benchmarking process for selecting the platform. Moreover, an additional step was included in the process which reflects the selection criteria and justifies the framework. Through the framework, marketers could identify their most suitable platform to reach to their customers. It allows businesses to optimize the marketing budget and helps to bring additional earnings for the company. The study claims that overall marketing costs of a small and medium sized enterprise could be curtailed and net earnings could be increased. One of the key findings of this study was to reduce the overall marketing expenses without impacting much on generated revenue. This finding could benefit small and medium sized enterprises, and for those who have limited marketing budget to reshuffle their marketing strategies. The result of the study shows that proposed framework was effective to determine most appropriate platform for the case company. The implemented strategy and online platform helped the company to reach to their target customer. Furthermore, the framework helped to bring additional savings from the monthly expenditure. Due to the limitation of marketing budget and lacking of strategy implementation know-how in other platforms, the study was limited to one platform

Exploring social collaborative e-learning in higher education: a study of two universities in Uganda

The emerging social collaborative technologies such as Facebook and Twitter are greatly influencing the evolution of e-learning in higher education. As these technologies become more easily available to students and lecturers, the approach to e-learning continues to evolve leading to a social collaborative e-learning (SoCeL) model. SoCeL involves social interactions and collaborations among students and lecturers in order to make it easy for them to construct and share knowledge. They exchange ideas and share their own digital products using these technologies to facilitate learning. Studies have however, shown that using social collaborative technologies in the learning process has not always had definite success. This may be attributed to lack of a framework to guide effective integration. The perceived absence of suitable frameworks is addressed in this work by developing frameworks to guide effective integration of SoCeL. This empirical study follows the requirements engineering process and uses a mixed methods approach involving case study and human-computer interaction ethnography to explore the environment in which social collaborative technologies are adopted in two universities in Uganda. Data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative approaches to establish requirements for SoCeL effective integration. The findings of this study are grouped in two broad areas: learning environment and adoption of social collaborative technologies. Based on these findings, the SoCeL environment framework and SoCeL adoption frameworks were developed. These provide the basis on which important recommendations are made. In conclusion, the thesis argues that SoCeL can be effectively integrated in higher education if the learning environment focuses on an integrated design. The design should bring together: informal learning, social networking and learning management

Customer value analysis as a tool for fostering a systemic innovation: Case tractor implement connecting interface

The hi-tech companies tend to lead in the market by satisfying their customer needs. They innovate technological product in a system because technology in isolation cannot deliver value unless having complementary technologies with it to realize the peak performance. Therefore to ensure the long term sustainability in the market, companies have to analyze the customer requirements and innovate products accordingly. The objective of this study is to discuss utilizing customer value analysis as a tool for fostering a systemic innovation that commits partners for collaboration. Companies who are good at understanding the customer requirements and analyze what is important to their customers are always in a better position to satisfy the customer needs. Therefore, customer value analysis can be utilized for managing the technological innovations. The key outcome of this study is the establishment of a framework based on literature review that represents customer value analysis as a tool for fostering innovation in a system. Further, the idea of innovative coupling interface is presented to simplify the current tractor implement coupling system that until now requires the physical effort, time and high capital investment. Finally, the thesis framework shows the value proposition of innovative coupling interface, and motivates both tractor and implement manufacturers to collaborate for developing a new coupling interface in a system

Fully Functional Mock-ups in Constructing Value Propositions

Developing products based on customers’ needs is one of the key success factors for companies in today’s global market. As a result, in recent years, the involvement of customers during the product development process has increased significantly. Companies are trying to gather customer feedback as early as possible in the development process in order to understand customer value. However, reliable customer value can only be gathered once customers have gained experience in using the product. There-fore, companies usually need to wait until the late stages of the product development process after already determining product design and committing most of the costs. The objective of this thesis is to introduce the concept of a fully functional mock-up, and to explain the role of these mock-ups in assisting companies to construct value propositions for their products in the early stages of product development. In this way, companies can share the whole product concept with the customers very early in the development process and enable them to experience using the product. This allows companies to not only receive customer feedback based on real user experience, but also to analyze customer value before committing most of the costs. This study shows that fully functional mock-ups were effective communication tools both internally among development team members and externally with customers. Furthermore, they provided the possibility for a real customer experience and offered enough information to build convincing, accurate value propositions in the early stages of the product development process. In addition, fully functional mock-ups enable companies to modify their product design based on customers’ real needs, thus preventing or at least diminishing possible financial losses in the future. This study is limited to cost-reducing innovations at a low level of technical complexity

Combining Fault Localization with Information Retrieval: an Analysis of Accuracy and Performance for Bug Finding

Debugging is a key activity in the software development process. It has been used extensively by developers to attempt to localize faults, while enhancing the quality and performance of software in general. There has been a significant amount of study in developing and enhancing fault localization techniques, which are used in assisting developers to locate faults within a body of code. However, identifying fault locations using individual techniques is not always effective; combining different techniques, which represent distinct forms of analysis, might help to overcome this issue. There has been a very limited amount of research that suggests that combining more than one approach to fault localization may have benefits, principally because information from different sources is included in the localization process. In this thesis, I attempt to more precisely address the question of whether combining different fault localization techniques can more effectively and efficiently find faults in code, when contrasted with a single technique. To answer this, I have carried out experiments that combine the use of three fault localization techniques: Information Retrieval (IR), Spectrum Based Fault Localization (SBFL), and Text Based Search. These techniques are representative of both dynamic and static fault localization. My hypothesis is that a combination of dynamic and static fault localization analysis can assist developers in better fault localization. I have evaluated the various combinations of techniques in identifying faults against real-world programs, Defects4j, where 395 faults and bug reports have been analyzed. The experimental results demonstrate that the combination of three techniques (SBFL, Text Search, and IR) is the most accurate, with 86.84% accuracy for 343 faults located from a total of 395. This finding contributes positively towards concretely recommending techniques for assisting developers in locating faults in code. Guidelines are provided on which combination of techniques, with maximal accuracy of result, should be applied especially when there is no prior knowledge about the fault

Fully Functional Mock-ups in Constructing Value Propositions

Developing products based on customers’ needs is one of the key success factors for companies in today’s global market. As a result, in recent years, the involvement of customers during the product development process has increased significantly. Companies are trying to gather customer feedback as early as possible in the development process in order to understand customer value. However, reliable customer value can only be gathered once customers have gained experience in using the product. There-fore, companies usually need to wait until the late stages of the product development process after already determining product design and committing most of the costs. The objective of this thesis is to introduce the concept of a fully functional mock-up, and to explain the role of these mock-ups in assisting companies to construct value propositions for their products in the early stages of product development. In this way, companies can share the whole product concept with the customers very early in the development process and enable them to experience using the product. This allows companies to not only receive customer feedback based on real user experience, but also to analyze customer value before committing most of the costs. This study shows that fully functional mock-ups were effective communication tools both internally among development team members and externally with customers. Furthermore, they provided the possibility for a real customer experience and offered enough information to build convincing, accurate value propositions in the early stages of the product development process. In addition, fully functional mock-ups enable companies to modify their product design based on customers’ real needs, thus preventing or at least diminishing possible financial losses in the future. This study is limited to cost-reducing innovations at a low level of technical complexity

Mergers and Acquisitions as a Business Opportunity for Competitors

Expanding business through acquiring new customers can be challenging in the industries with high supplier switch barriers. In the attempt to increase reliability in the operation and maintain stable quality level companies tend to establish long-term, value-added cooperation. Strong relationship between a supplier and a customer significantly decreases companies’ agility. Nevertheless, a major organizational change, like a merger or an acquisition, in supplying company are able to destabilize strong partnership, that has been built even through years of cooperation. The objective of this thesis is to explore business opportunities mergers and acquisitions represent for competitors in industries with high supplier switch barriers, and to create a tool for their proactive identification. Organizational changes not only affect a company in which they take place, but their consequences spread outside company’s boundaries and influence business partners. The stronger cooperation between companies, the bigger impact on partners a change will cause. Although mergers and acquisitions are usually aimed at increasing value delivered to customers, practice shows that during post-merger stage customers often experience insecurity and disbelief in positive outcome, and exhibit resentment toward the change. The outcomes of this study suggest that temporary customer dissatisfaction with current supplier and supplier’s inability to deliver previous value to customer that occur during mergers and acquisitions creates favourable environment for competitive responses. Although mergers and acquisitions happen comparatively infrequently, they can impact a group of potential customers at a time. For this reason, it is important that a company, which is going to use mergers and acquisitions in competitors as opportunities to get new customers, integrates it as a strategy and continuously woks on gaining competitive intelligence in order to be proactive and catch opportunities timely

Should-Cost Analysis as an Alternative to Open Book Accounti

A key question that decision makers from start-ups to SMEs and corporates face is “to outsource, or not to outsource?”. In today’s business world which is fast-paced, the pressure on companies to provide products and services is higher than ever. To respond to this pressure but holding costs down, all types of companies need to outsource their non-core processes and more concentrate on their key core competencies. Nevertheless, the gained advantages of outsourcing can be beyond only cutting costs. Hence, it is critical to understand the different benefits for both company and its partners. Sharing information and supply chain collaboration have become the main elements of their success. Suppliers’ pricing decisions historically may have been in mystery and the details of a price are confidential. It is logical for a buyer to want to probe the main cost drivers. A recommended approach is to persuade the supplier to open its books. Some believe open book accounting (OBA) as a solution to that and it can deliver, but not guarantees, considerable results or cost savings. The objective of this study is to find an alternative to OBA when the business partners are not ready or willing to open their books. The study shows OBA may not succeed even in mature and rather partnership-oriented relationships. Therefore, should-cost analysis supports the purchaser to achieve its aims to control the profits and costs made within upstream of supply chain. The study shows such alternative to OBA enables the purchaser to enhance the supply network’s efficiency by bringing the cost transparency into the customer-supplier relationships. This study illustrates should-cost analysis is an effective tool in determining fair and reasonable pricing and today it has to be embedded in procurement processes. Should-cost analysis determines what a product should cost on the basis of labor, materials, overhead, and profit margin