A new paradigm for virtual knowledge sharing in product development based on emergent social software platforms

The UK Government considers its Aerospace Industry a remarkable success story, enjoying a global market share of 17% in 2015. The capture, management and sharing of employee knowledge is seen as vital if the industry is to remain highly innovative and retain its pre-eminent position internationally. Aerospace manufacturers, such as BAE Systems, often have to re-engineer business processes routinely to ensure their survival. Knowledge sharing in the industry is seen as challenging due to the dispersed nature of its operations and multi-tier supply chains. This article, through a 5-year participant-observation study at the World’s second largest aerospace and defence organisation, BAE Systems, proposes a new paradigm for virtual knowledge sharing in dispersed aerospace product development based on emergent social software platforms such as Enterprise 2.0 technologies. The developed framework and methodologies are applied to the bespoke BAE Systems’ engineering lifecycle process to validate its effectiveness with results indicating that Enterprise 2.0 technologies offer a more openly innovative environment in which employees may share and interact with knowledge more effectively and easily across geographical and functional boundaries, compared with conventional engineering information systems

Science & engineering software migration: moving from desktop to mobile applications

The proliferation of mobile devices over the last years provides opportunities and challenges for solving problems in Science & Engineering. Among other novel features, mobile devices contain global positioning sensors, wireless connectivity, built-in web browsers and photo/video/voice capabilities that allow providing highly localized, context aware applications. Mobile phones have become as powerful as any desktop computer in terms of applications they can run. However, the software development in mobile computing is still not as mature as it is for desktop computer and the whole potential of mobile devices is wasted. A current problem in the engineering community is the adaptation of desktop applications for mobile technologies. To take advantage of new platform technologies, existing software must evolve. A number of solutions have been proposed to deal with this problem such as redevelopment, which rewrites existing applications, or migration, which moves the existing system to a more flexible environment while retaining the original system data and functionality. A good solution should be to restore the value of the existing software, extracting knowledge and exploiting investment in order to migrate to new software that incorporates the new technologies. On the one hand, traditional reverse engineering techniques can help in the software migration to mobile applications. They are related to the process of analyzing available software with the objective of extracting information and providing high-level views on the underlying code. On the other hand, to achieve interoperability with multiple platforms the migration needs of technical frameworks for information integration and tool interoperability such as the initiative of the Object Management Group (OMG) called Model Driven Architecture (MDA). The outstanding ideas behind MDA are separating the specification of the system functionality from its implementation on specific platforms and managing the software evolution from abstract models to implementations increasing the degree of automation. The objective of this paper is to describe a reengineering process that allow moving existing desktop applications for solving engineering problems of multidisciplinary character to mobile platforms. Our research aims to simplify the creation of applications for mobile platforms by integrating traditional reverse engineering techniques, such static and dynamic analysis, with MDA. We validated our approach by using the open source application platform Eclipse, EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework), EMP (Eclipse Modeling Project) and the Android platform

Reusable Knowledge-based Components for Building Software Applications: A Knowledge Modelling Approach

In computer science, different types of reusable components for building software applications were proposed as a direct consequence of the emergence of new software programming paradigms. The success of these components for building applications depends on factors such as the flexibility in their combination or the facility for their selection in centralised or distributed environments such as internet. In this article, we propose a general type of reusable component, called primitive of representation, inspired by a knowledge-based approach that can promote reusability. The proposal can be understood as a generalisation of existing partial solutions that is applicable to both software and knowledge engineering for the development of hybrid applications that integrate conventional and knowledge based techniques. The article presents the structure and use of the component and describes our recent experience in the development of real-world applications based on this approach

SMEs: ERP or virtual collaboration teams

Small firms are indeed the engines of global economic growth. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role to promote economic development. SMEs in the beginning of implementing new technologies always face capital shortage and need technological assistance. Available ERP systems do not fulfil the specific requirements of Small firms. SMEs has scarce resources and manpower therefore many SMEs don?t have the possessions to buy and operate an ERP System. On the other hand competition and competitiveness of SMEs have to be strengthened. This paper briefly reviews the existing perspectives on virtual teams and their effect on SMEs management. It also discusses the main characteristics of virtual teams and clarifies the differences aspects of virtual team application in SMEs. After outlining some of the main advantages and pitfall of such teams, it concentrates on comparing of ERP and virtual collaborative teams in SMEs. Finally, it provides evidence for the need of ?Software as a Service (SaaS)? where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the web for SMEs as an alternative of ERP. It has been widely argued that ERP disadvantage in SMEs such as administrative expenditure and cost, isolated structure, severe lack of software flexibility, insufficient support of SMEs business and high operating cost, lead SMEs to use virtual collaborative team which is net work base solution

Project Management Learning in a Collaborative Distant Learning Context - An Actual On-going Experience

The goal of this paper is to show the results of an on-going experience on teaching project management to grade students by following a development scheme of management related competencies on an individual basis. In order to achieve that goal, the students are organized in teams that must solve a problem and manage the development of a feasible solution to satisfy the needs of a client. The innovative component advocated in this paper is the formal introduction of negotiating and virtual team management aspects, as different teams from different universities at different locations and comprising students with different backgrounds must collaborate and compete amongst them. The different learning aspects are identified and the improvement levels are reflected in a rubric that has been designed ad hoc for this experience. Finally, the effort frameworks for the student and instructor have been established according to the requirements of the Bologna paradigms. This experience is developed through a software-based support system allowing blended learning for the theoretical and individual?s work aspects, blogs, wikis, etc., as well as project management tools based on WWW that allow the monitoring of not only the expected deliverables and the achievement of the goals but also the progress made on learning as established in the defined rubri

A Model-Driven Approach for Business Process Management

The Business Process Management is a common mechanism recommended by a high number of standards for the management of companies and organizations. In software companies this practice is every day more accepted and companies have to assume it, if they want to be competitive. However, the effective definition of these processes and mainly their maintenance and execution are not always easy tasks. This paper presents an approach based on the Model-Driven paradigm for Business Process Management in software companies. This solution offers a suitable mechanism that was implemented successfully in different companies with a tool case named NDTQ-Framework.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2010-20057-C03-02Junta de Andalucía TIC-578