Työkalut apuna keskuskoneympäristön sovelluksien laadunhallinnassa

Keskuskoneympäristön sovelluskehityksessä vanhojen ja suurien lähdekielisten ohjel-mien laadukkuuden arvioiminen on hankalaa ilman oikeanlaisia työkaluja. Ohjelmistokehittäjien aiemmin tehtyjen ratkaisujen vaikutukset voivat näkyä negatiivisena lopputuloksena vuosienkin päästä erinäisinä ongelmina ohjelmien toiminnoissa. Tähän on ollut aiemmin apuna sovelluskehittäjien kymmenien vuosien vahva kokemus kohteen liiketoiminnasta, ohjelmista ja niiden lähdekielisten ohjelmien kielestä. Tarkoituksena oli tutkia keskuskoneympäristössä tapahtuvaa sovelluskehitystä sovelluskehittäjien näkökulmasta pyrkimällä parantamaan sovelluskehittäjien tuottamien ratkaisujen laadukkuutta, tehokkuutta sekä helpottaa manuaalisesti tapahtuvaa työtä staattisen testauksen työkalulla, joka soveltuu lähdekielisten ohjelmien katselmointeihin. Työssä tutkittiin erästä kaupallista ohjelmistoratkaisua ja analysoitiin sen ratkaisujen soveltuvuuksia, erään organisaation käyttöön. Lähtökohtana oli, että pilotoitavia ratkaisuja olisi ollut useampia ja varteenotettavimmat niistä ohjelmistoratkaisuista pilotoitaisiin, mutta kriteerejä täyttäneitä ohjelmistoratkaisuja ei löytynyt kuin yksi. Työssä myös analysoitiin kahta erilaista COBOL-ohjelmaa keskenään, sekä vertailtiin niiden tuloksia keskenään. Tutkimustuloksista voidaan vetää johtopäätös, että pilotoitavan ohjelmistoratkaisun avulla voidaan paikantaa laadullisia ongelmia suuresta määrästä lähdekielisiä ohjelmia, joka ei ole ihmisvoimin manuaalisesti tehtynä välttämättä kovinkaan kannattavaa. Ohjelmointiympäristöön on mahdollista liittää ohjelmistoratkaisun lisäosa, joka mahdollistaa uuden lähdekielisen ohjelman luonnissa reaaliaikaisen ongelmien tarkastuksen. Ohjelmistoratkaisu tarjoaa myös omanlaisen ratkaisunsa lähdekielisen ohjelman laadunhallintaan, joka perustuu annettuihin kynnysarvoihin.Evaluating the quality of old and large program codes in the application development of the mainframe environment is difficult without the right tools. The effects of previous software developer solutions may, over the years, be reflected in several problems with software functions. This has been assisted in the past by decades of application developers strong experience in the subject's business, programs and their code. The purpose was to study the application development in the mainframe environment from the application developer point of view, aiming to improve the quality, efficiency of the applications produced by the application developers and facilitate manual work with a static testing tool suitable for code review. This thesis investigated a commercial software solution and analyzed the suitability of its solutions for use by an organization. The starting point was that there would be more and more feasible solutions to be piloted, but there was no one that met the criteria. The work also analyzed two different COBOL programs and compared their results. It can be concluded from the results of the research that the software solution to be piloted can detect qualitative problems from a large amount of program code, which is not very profitable when manually executed by a human. It is possible to add a software solution plug-in to the programming environment, which allows real-time problem checking when creating new program code. The software solution also offers a unique solution for program code quality management based on the given thresholds

Improving the software inspection process with patterns

Abstract The quality of a software product depends largely on the quality of the process that is used to develop it. In small software companies, the development process may be informal or even ad hoc, which causes uncertainty and variation in the product quality. However, quality issues are as important in small companies as in their larger counterparts. To sustain their dynamics and competitiveness, small organizations need to concentrate on the most effective quality assurance methods. Software inspection is a proven method for improving product quality and it provides a very cost-effective way for small companies to improve their development processes. This study introduces a framework for adjusting the inspection process for the organization's specific needs and evaluating its capabilities. The main focus of this work, however, is on refining and improving the inspection process. The improvement is guided by concrete instructions that are documented as process patterns. The pattern approach has already been used successfully in several other areas of software engineering. Patterns aim at capturing the best practices of software development and transferring this knowledge between people or organizations. The framework for inspection process capability originates from the literature relating to different types of peer review methods and experiments with flexible and tool-supported inspections in small companies. Furthermore, generic process improvement models are studied to find a feasible structure for the framework. As a result of the analysis, the i3 capability model is introduced. The feasibility of the model has been investigated in real-life software organizations carrying out inspections. After the capability evaluation, the inspection process can be upgraded with the aid of improvement patterns, which provide structured and easy-to-follow guidelines for implementing improvements. An initial list of patterns, describing solutions to the most common problems confronted in the establishment of inspections, is extracted from related inspection research and an industrial experiment. The contributions of this study are, first, the new view of the inspection process, based on the fundamental activities that are performed during an inspection instead of a series of stages, as it is usually presented. An activity-based process description enables tailoring of the process for organization-specific needs and its targeted improvement. Second, the study introduces a practical, lightweight method for implementing the improvement. Patterns are especially suitable in companies where resources are limited and full-scale improvement programmes cannot be initiated. Furthermore, the generic process improvement models do not provide detailed information on how improvements should be carried out, and the pattern approach represents a promising method for that. Third, the inspection process currently does not have a very significant role in generic software process improvement models; this study helps in outlining the importance of inspections. A similar approach could be applied to other software subprocesses to enable their evaluation and improvement