Towards Ontology-based SQA Recommender for Agile Software Development

Agility is heavily dependent on tacit knowledge, skilled and motivated employees, and frequent communications. Although, the Agile Manifesto claims fast and light software development process while maintaining high quality, it is however not very clear how current agile practices and methods attain quality under time pressure and unstable requirements. In this paper, we present an ontological approach for process-driven Quality Assurance support for agile software development. Challenges related to the role of Quality Assurance in agile projects are addressed by developing a process-driven recommender that provides tailored resources to user’s queries. The proposed ontological model embeds both conceptual and operational SQA knowledge about software processes and their requirements, including quality attributes, SQA measurements, SQA metrics and related SQA techniques and procedures

Towards an aspect weaving BPEL engine

This position paper proposes the use of dynamic aspects and the visitor design pattern to obtain a highly configurable and extensible BPEL engine. Using these two techniques, the core of this infrastructural software can be customised to meet new requirements and add features such as debugging, execution monitoring, or changing to another Web Service selection policy. Additionally, it can easily be extended to cope with customer-specific BPEL extensions. We propose the use of dynamic aspects not only on the engine itself but also on the workflow in order to tackle the problems of Web Service hot deployment and hot fixes to long running processes. In this way, composing aWeb Service "on-the-fly" means weaving its choreography interface into the workflow

Online experimentation in automotive software engineering

Context: Online experimentation has long been the gold standard for evaluating software towards the actual needs and preferences of customers. In the Software-as-a-Service domain, various online experimentation techniques are applied and proven successful. As software is becoming the main differentiator for automotive products, the automotive sector has started to express an interest in adopting online experimentation to strengthen their software development process. Objective: In this research, we aim to systematically address the challenges in adopting online experimentation in the automotive domain.Method: We apply a multidisciplinary approach to this research. To understand the state-of-practise in online experimentation in the industry, we conduct case studies with three manufacturers. We introduce our experimental design and evaluation methods to real vehicles driven by customers at scale. Moreover, we run experiments to quantitatively evaluate experiment design and causal inference models. Results: Four main research outcomes are presented in this thesis. First, we propose an architecture for continuous online experimentation given the limitations experienced in the automotive domain. Second, after identifying an inherent limitation of sample sizes in the automotive domain, we apply and evaluate an experimentation design method. The method allows us to utilise pre-experimental data for generating balanced groups even when sample sizes are limited. Third, we present an alternative approach to randomised experiments and demonstrate the application of Bayesian causal inference in online software evaluation. With the models, we enable software online evaluation without the need for a fully randomised experiment. Finally, we relate the formal assumption in the Bayesian causal models to the implications in practise, and we demonstrate the inference models with cases from the automotive domain. Outlook: In our future work, we plan to explore causal structural and graphical models applied in software engineering, and demonstrate the application of causal discovery in machine learning-based autonomous drive software

The Challenges of Inter-Organizational Business Process Design - A Research Agenda

Given the increasing importance of value chain collaboration, business processes need to be more closely aligned across organizational boundaries. Hence, business process modeling and design have to be enhanced and extended to cope with inter-organizational business relationships. Among the challenges that arise are interdependencies between internal and external processes, different process logic and terminology, missing clarification of responsibilities and confidentiality issues. This paper analyzes existing approaches to business process modeling, workflow management and B2B standardization with regard to the specific requirements concerning inter-organizational business process design. It extracts the relevant concepts addressing these requirements and draws up an agenda for further research

Digital Transformation in IT Consulting

Internship Report presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceAs IT Consulting market revenue increases year after year, more and more digital transformation projects are being sold. Yet, the deep change IT consultants sell to their clients in this type of projects, which translates into the digitalisation of practices accompanied by a change in mentalities, is not usually the reality that we find in their same consultancy firms. For Creative Management, the company that hosted the internship, the problem recurs: there is a general desire of evolving into a digital company, with some disconnected digital tools already implemented but without planning or coordination. Literature shows that a Digital Transformations requires several premises to develop into a successful project such as the definition of a plan, the knowledge and support of leaders, investment, etc. My project, within the internship, aimed to address Digital Transformation at Creative Management by coordinating an internal digital strategy that materialized in new technological tools. The key takeaway is the fact that an IT Consulting firm is probably better prepared for this type of change than non-IT consultancies

Architectures v/s Microservices

As it evolves, technology has always found a better way to build applications and improve their efficiency. New techniques have been learned by adapting old technologies and observing how markets shift towards new trends to satisfy their customers and shareholders. By taking Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and evolving techniques in cloud computing, Web 2.0 emerged with a new pattern for designing an architecture evolved from the conventional monolithic approach known as microservice architecture (MSA). This new pattern develops an application by breaking the substantial use into a group of smaller applications, which run on their processes and communicate through an API. This style of application development is suitable for many infrastructures, especially within a cloud environment. These new patterns advanced to satisfy the concepts of domain-driven, continuous integration, and automated infrastructure more effectively. MSA has created a way to develop and deploy small scalable applications, which allows enterprise-level applications to dynamically adjust to their resources. This paper discusses what that architecture is, what makes it necessary, what factors affect best-fit architecture choices, how microservices-based architecture has evolved, and what factors are driving service-based architectures, in addition to comparing SOA and microservice. By analyzing a few popular architectures, the factors which help in choosing the architecture design will be compared with the MSA to show the benefits and challenges that may arise as an enterprise shifts their developing architecture to microservices

Wireless sensors networks

After studying in depth look at wireless sensor networks are quite clear improvement compared to traditional wireless networks due to several factors as are the durability of the lifetime of the batteries, allowing greater portability of sensor nodes and that can record more events to power stay longer in some places, the routing protocols networks sensors allow gain than in durability also gain in efficiency the avoidance of collisions between packets, which also ensures a lower number of unnecessary network traffic. Because of the great features of such networks are currently using sensor networks in many projects related to different fields such as: environment, health, military, construction and structures, automotive, home automation, agriculture, etc. This type of network currently is leading a technological revolution similar to that had appearance of internet, because the applications appear to be infinite, also speaks global surveillance network on the planet capable of recording and tracking people specific goods and research projects have generated great interest for application in practice

Conception and realization of a mobile data acquisition and assistance application for intersession processes of patients in psychotherapeutic treatments at the example of the iOS platform

Conventional effectiveness and impact factor studies in psychotherapy research deal mainly with the therapy session per se. In contrast, a current trend is the increasing focus on patient advancement between therapy sessions, the so-called intersession processes. Traditionally, patient data is collected and evaluated in the form of paper questionnaires. In the context of intersession research, where this is done just prior to the therapy session, this means that their results often can not be properly included immediately afterwards. With the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, and wearables, mobile crowd sensing is a promising approach for capturing and analyzing large amounts of distributed data. This is attributed to the fact that modern mobile devices are equipped with unprecedented sensing, computing, and communication capabilities that allow them to perform complex tasks and provide countless possibilities for user interactions. Contemporaneous, in the course of digitization, both the topic of electronic health and mobile health (mHealth) are gaining increasingly more importance in the healthcare industry. Furthermore, simple and efficient interaction with mobile applications, as well as the exchange of information between the health care provider, here the therapist, and the patients, are essential aspects in applications in the mHealth field. Properly implemented, this can both improve and simplify the patient's treatment process. Within the scope of this thesis, in cooperation with the Institute of Psychology of the University of Klagenfurt, a mHealth application is developed, which allows to scientifically record intersession processes of patients in psychotherapeutic treatments. The patient automatically receives questionnaires via the mobile application, depending on therapy session dates and the results of previous evaluations, as well as manual interventions by the therapist. Thus, it should be significantly easier and more efficient for the therapist to collect and evaluate data on the patient's intersession processes and to prepare in advance for the upcoming therapy session

Data Governance and Sovereignty in Urban Data Spaces Based on Standardized ICT Reference Architectures

European cities and communities (and beyond) require a structured overview and a set of tools as to achieve a sustainable transformation towards smarter cities/municipalities, thereby leveraging on the enormous potential of the emerging data driven economy. This paper presents the results of a recent study that was conducted with a number of German municipalities/cities. Based on the obtained and briefly presented recommendations emerging from the study, the authors propose the concept of an Urban Data Space (UDS), which facilitates an eco-system for data exchange and added value creation thereby utilizing the various types of data within a smart city/municipality. Looking at an Urban Data Space from within a German context and considering the current situation and developments in German municipalities, this paper proposes a reasonable classification of urban data that allows the relation of various data types to legal aspects, and to conduct solid considerations regarding technical implementation designs and decisions. Furthermore, the Urban Data Space is described/analyzed in detail, and relevant stakeholders are identified, as well as corresponding technical artifacts are introduced. The authors propose to setup Urban Data Spaces based on emerging standards from the area of ICT reference architectures for Smart Cities, such as DIN SPEC 91357 “Open Urban Platform” and EIP SCC. In the course of this, the paper walks the reader through the construction of a UDS based on the above-mentioned architectures and outlines all the goals, recommendations and potentials, which an Urban Data Space can reveal to a municipality/city. Finally, we aim at deriving the proposed concepts in a way that they have the potential to be part of the required set of tools towards the sustainable transformation of German and European cities in the direction of smarter urban environments, based on utilizing the hidden potential of digitalization and efficient interoperable data exchange.EC/H2020/646578/EU/Triangulum: The Three Point Project / Demonstrate. Disseminate. Replicate./TriangulumBMBF, 13NKE012, Datenaustausch und Zusammenarbeit im urbanen Raum - Bestandsanalyse (Urban Data Space