Software Reuse in Agile Development Organizations - A Conceptual Management Tool

The reuse of knowledge is considered a major factor for increasing productivity and quality. In the software industry knowledge is embodied in software assets such as code components, functional designs and test cases. This kind of knowledge reuse is also referred to as software reuse. Although the benefits can be substantial, software reuse has never reached its full potential. Organizations are not aware of the different levels of reuse or do not know how to address reuse issues. This paper proposes a conceptual management tool for supporting software reuse. Furthermore the paper presents the findings of the application of the management tool in an agile development organization

ICOPER Project - Deliverable 4.3 ISURE: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, embodied in the ICOPER CD&R

The purpose of this document is to capture the ideas and recommendations, within and beyond the ICOPER community, concerning the reuse of learning content, including appropriate methodologies as well as established strategies for remixing and repurposing reusable resources. The overall remit of this work focuses on describing the key issues that are related to extending effective reuse embodied in such materials. The objective of this investigation, is to support the reuse of learning content whilst considering how it could be originally created and then adapted with that ‘reuse’ in mind. In these circumstances a survey on effective reuse best practices can often provide an insight into the main challenges and benefits involved in the process of creating, remixing and repurposing what we are now designating as Reusable Learning Content (RLC). Several key issues are analysed in this report: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, building upon those described in the previous related deliverables 4.1 Content Development Methodologies and 4.2 Quality Control and Web 2.0 technologies. The findings of this current survey, however, provide further recommendations and strategies for using and developing this reusable learning content. In the spirit of ‘reuse’, this work also aims to serve as a foundation for the many different stakeholders and users within, and beyond, the ICOPER community who are interested in reusing learning resources. This report analyses a variety of information. Evidence has been gathered from a qualitative survey that has focused on the technical and pedagogical recommendations suggested by a Special Interest Group (SIG) on the most innovative practices with respect to new media content authors (for content authoring or modification) and course designers (for unit creation). This extended community includes a wider collection of OER specialists. This collected evidence, in the form of video and audio interviews, has also been represented as multimedia assets potentially helpful for learning and useful as learning content in the New Media Space (See section 4 for further details). Section 2 of this report introduces the concept of reusable learning content and reusability. Section 3 discusses an application created by the ICOPER community to enhance the opportunities for developing reusable content. Section 4 of this report provides an overview of the methodology used for the qualitative survey. Section 5 presents a summary of thematic findings. Section 6 highlights a list of recommendations for effective reuse of educational content, which were derived from thematic analysis described in Appendix A. Finally, section 7 summarises the key outcomes of this work

FRAMEWORK FOR FLEXIBLE REUSE AND ASSEMBLY OF LEARNING OBJECTS – A PILOT PROJECT

The present paper aims to highlight certain relevant and new features revealed by the research on assisted training. The motivation is given by the necessity to efficiently develop the educational resources by combining reusable learning objects, and also by the need to customize training in order to meet specific user options. The main objective is to design a flexible framework for assembling and reusing learning objects, which can be successfully applied in developing an educational platform for mathematics teaching.learning object, learning environment, e-Learning, learning architecture

Knowledge re-use for decision support

Effective decision support has already been identified as a fundamental requirement for the realisation of Network Enabled Capability. Decision making itself is a knowledge-intensive process, and it is known that right decisions can only be reached based on decision maker's good judgement, which in turn is based on sufficient knowledge. It is not unusual for decision makers to make incorrect decisions because of insufficient knowledge. However, it is not always possible for decision makers to have all the knowledge needed for making decisions in complex situations without external support. The re-use of knowledge has been identified as providing an important contribution to such support, and this paper considers one, hitherto unexplored, aspect of how this may be achieved. This paper is concerned with the computational view of knowledge re-use to establish an understanding of a knowledge-based system for decision support. The paper explores knowledge re-use for decision support from two perspectives: knowledge provider's and knowledge re-user's. Key issues and challenges of knowledge re-use are identified from both perspectives. A structural model for knowledge re-use is proposed with initial evaluation through empirical study of both experienced and novice decision maker's behaviour in reusing knowledge to make decisions. The proposed structural model for knowledge re-use captures five main elements (knowledge re-uers, knowledge types, knowledge sources, environment, and integration strategies) as well as the relationships between the elements, which forms a foundation for constructing a knowledge-based decision support system. The paper suggests that further research should be investigating the relationship between knowledge re-use and learning to achieve intelligent decision support

Software development: A paradigm for the future

A new paradigm for software development that treats software development as an experimental activity is presented. It provides built-in mechanisms for learning how to develop software better and reusing previous experience in the forms of knowledge, processes, and products. It uses models and measures to aid in the tasks of characterization, evaluation and motivation. An organization scheme is proposed for separating the project-specific focus from the organization's learning and reuse focuses of software development. The implications of this approach for corporations, research and education are discussed and some research activities currently underway at the University of Maryland that support this approach are presented

Enhancing design learning using groupware

Project work is increasingly used to help engineering students integrate, apply and expand on knowledge gained from theoretical classes in their curriculum and expose students to 'real world' tasks [1]. To help facilitate this process, the department of Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management at the University of Strathclyde has developed a web±based groupware product called LauLima to help students store, share, structure and apply information when they are working in design teams. This paper describes a distributed design project class in which LauLima has been deployed in accordance with a Design Knowledge Framework that describes how design knowledge is generated and acquired in industry, suggesting modes of design teaching and learning. Alterations to the presentation, delivery and format of the class are discussed, and primarily relate to embedding a more rigorous form of project-based learning. The key educational changes introduced to the project were: the linking of information concepts to support the design process; a multidisciplinary team approach to coaching; and a distinction between formal and informal resource collections. The result was a marked improvement in student learning and ideation

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

Glider: A GPU Library Driver for Improved System Security

Legacy device drivers implement both device resource management and isolation. This results in a large code base with a wide high-level interface making the driver vulnerable to security attacks. This is particularly problematic for increasingly popular accelerators like GPUs that have large, complex drivers. We solve this problem with library drivers, a new driver architecture. A library driver implements resource management as an untrusted library in the application process address space, and implements isolation as a kernel module that is smaller and has a narrower lower-level interface (i.e., closer to hardware) than a legacy driver. We articulate a set of device and platform hardware properties that are required to retrofit a legacy driver into a library driver. To demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of library drivers, we present Glider, a library driver implementation for two GPUs of popular brands, Radeon and Intel. Glider reduces the TCB size and attack surface by about 35% and 84% respectively for a Radeon HD 6450 GPU and by about 38% and 90% respectively for an Intel Ivy Bridge GPU. Moreover, it incurs no performance cost. Indeed, Glider outperforms a legacy driver for applications requiring intensive interactions with the device driver, such as applications using the OpenGL immediate mode API