IS Architecture Characteristics as a Measure of IT Agility

As markets change, business models alter and technology evolves information systems need to change. The ability and speedof change in information systems are crucial success factors for the success of the business itself. We call this IT Agility.IT Agility depends on many internal and external factors of the enterprise and can be achieved through reactive and proactiveactions. In this paper the focus is on the information systems architecture as a main proactive contributor to IT Agility.As measurement is essential for the management of IT Agility a framework is suggested that quantitatively evaluates themain influencing factors of information systems architecture on IT Agility (coupling, redundancy, complexity andparameterization). Results from a real-world application show the ability of the framework to identify fields for improvementin IT Agility in the information systems architecture of enterprises

Understanding and managing the manage processes

This paper discusses understanding and managing the manage processes. It was presented at the conference of the Performance Measurement Association in 2004

Empirical Comparison of Chirp and Multitones on Experimental UWB Software Defined Radar Prototype

This paper proposes and tests an approach for an unbiased study of radar waveforms' performances. Using the ultrawide band software defined radar prototype, the performances of Chirp and Multitones are compared in range profile and detection range. The architecture was implemented and has performances comparable to the state of the art in software defined radar prototypes. The experimental results are consistent with the simulations

Event-Cloud Platform to Support Decision- Making in Emergency Management

The challenge of this paper is to underline the capability of an Event-Cloud Platform to support efficiently an emergency situation. We chose to focus on a nuclear crisis use case. The proposed approach consists in modeling the business processes of crisis response on the one hand, and in supporting the orchestration and execution of these processes by using an Event-Cloud Platform on the other hand. This paper shows how the use of Event-Cloud techniques can support crisis management stakeholders by automatizing non-value added tasks and by directing decision- makers on what really requires their capabilities of choice. If Event-Cloud technology is a very interesting and topical subject, very few research works have considered this to improve emergency management. This paper tries to fill this gap by considering and applying these technologies on a nuclear crisis use-case

Examining perceptions of agility in software development practice

This is the post-print version of the final published article that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 ACM.Organizations undertaking software development are often reminded that successful practice depends on a number of non-technical issues that are managerial, cultural and organizational in nature. These issues cover aspects from appropriate corporate structure, through software process development and standardization to effective collaborative practice. Since the articulation of the 'software crisis' in the late-1960s, significant effort has been put into addressing problems related to the cost, time and quality of software development via the application of systematic processes and management practices for software engineering. Early efforts resulted in prescriptive structured methods, which have evolved and expanded over time to embrace consortia/ company-led initiatives such as the Unified Modeling Language and the Unified Process alongside formal process improvement frameworks such as the International Standards Organization's 9000 series, the Capability Maturity Model and SPICE. More recently, the philosophy behind traditional plan-based initiatives has been questioned by the agile movement, which seeks to emphasize the human and craft aspects of software development over and above the engineering aspects. Agile practice is strongly collaborative in its outlook, favoring individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan (see Sidebar 1). Early experience reports on the use of agile practice suggest some success in dealing with the problems of the software crisis, and suggest that plan-based and agile practice are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, flexibility may arise from this unlikely marriage in an aim to strike a balance between the rigor of traditional plan-based approaches and the need for adaptation of those to suit particular development situations. With this in mind, this article surveys the current practice in software engineering alongside perceptions of senior development managers in relation to agile practice in order to understand the principles of agility that may be practiced implicitly and their effects on plan-based approach

An approach to reconcile the agile and CMMI contexts in product line development

Software product line approaches produce reusable platforms and architectures for products set developed by specific companies. These approaches are strategic in nature requiring coordination, discipline, commonality and communication. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) contains important guidelines for process improvement, and specifies "what" we must have into account to achieve the disciplined processes (among others things). On the other hand, the agile context is playing an increasingly important role in current software engineering practices, specifying "how" the software practices must be addressed to obtain agile processes. In this paper, we carry out a preliminary analysis for reconciling agility and maturity models in software product line domain, taking advantage of both.Postprint (published version