Leveraging Global Resources: A Process Maturity Framework for Managing Distributed Software Product Development

Distributed software development is pervasive in the software industry as companies vie to leverage global resources. However popular quality and process frameworks do not specifically address the key processes needed for managing distributed software development. We develop an evolutionary process maturity framework for globally distributed software development that incorporates 24 new key process areas essential for managing distributed software product development We test the validity of our process framework using data collected from more than sixty large, distributed enterprise product development projects. We believe we have laid new ground for software process research by extending generic quality process frameworks to address the distributed development scenario

BOA: Framework for Automated Builds

Managing large-scale software products is a complex software engineering task. The automation of the software development, release and distribution process is most beneficial in the large collaborations, where the big number of developers, multiple platforms and distributed environment are typical factors. This paper describes Build and Output Analyzer framework and its components that have been developed in CMS to facilitate software maintenance and improve software quality. The system allows to generate, control and analyze various types of automated software builds and tests, such as regular rebuilds of the development code, software integration for releases and installation of the existing versions.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure

Managing Distributed Software Development in the Virtual Astronomical Observatory

The U.S. Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO) is a product-driven organization that provides new scientific research capabilities to the astronomical community. Software development for the VAO follows a lightweight framework that guides development of science applications and infrastructure. Challenges to be overcome include distributed development teams, part-time efforts, and highly constrained schedules. We describe the process we followed to conquer these challenges while developing Iris, the VAO application for analysis of 1-D astronomical spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Iris was successfully built and released in less than a year with a team distributed across four institutions. The project followed existing International Virtual Observatory Alliance inter-operability standards for spectral data and contributed a SED library as a by-product of the project. We emphasize lessons learned that will be folded into future development efforts. In our experience, a well-defined process that provides guidelines to ensure the project is cohesive and stays on track is key to success. Internal product deliveries with a planned test and feedback loop are critical. Release candidates are measured against use cases established early in the process, and provide the opportunity to assess priorities and make course corrections during development. Also key is the participation of a stakeholder such as a lead scientist who manages the technical questions, advises on priorities, and is actively involved as a lead tester. Finally, frequent scheduled communications (for example a bi-weekly tele-conference) assure issues are resolved quickly and the team is working toward a common visionComment: 7 pages, 2 figures, SPIE 2012 conferenc

Leveraging global resources: A distributed process maturity framework for software product development

Distributed software development is pervasive in the software industry as companies vie to leverage global resources. However popular quality and process frameworks do not specifically address the key processes needed for managing distributed software development. We develop an evolutionary process maturity framework for globally distributed software development that incorporates 24 new key process areas essential for managing distributed software product development We test the validity of our process framework using data collected from more than sixty large, distributed enterprise product development projects. We believe we have laid new ground for software process research by extending generic quality process frameworks to address the distributed development scenario

Architectural requirements for an open source component and artefact repository system within GENESIS

When software is being created by distributed teams of software engineers, it is necessary to manage the work-flow, processes, and artefacts which are involved in the engineering process. The GENESIS project aims to address some of the technical issues involved by providing a software system to support distributed development. One of the parts of the system will be known as OSCAR, a repository for managing distributed artefacts. Artefacts can be process models, software components, design documents, or any other kind of entity associated with the software engineering process. OSCAR will be designed as a light-weight distributed system, managing the storage and access to a distributed repository of artefacts. This paper presents and discusses the requirements for OSCAR, and suggests a possible architecture for a software system which will meet those requirements. OSCAR will be a reliable and light-weight distributed system, managing both artefacts and meta-data corresponding to the artefacts. Users of OSCAR will be able to access the distributed repository through a local interface, using the searching and indexing capabilities of the system to locate and retrieve components. OSCAR must be able to store and retrieve both artefacts and meta-data efficiently. It must be possible for OSCAR to inter-operate with existing artefact management systems (such as CVS) and to collect metrics about the contents of and accesses to the repository. The next stage in the GENESIS project is to complete the requirements for the whole of the system (in addition to the OSCAR sub-system) and then to design the software. The software will initially be developed in a traditional closed-source fashion until the first release is finished. After the first release, the GENESIS software will become open source, and will be developed accordingly

WeDRisk :an approach to managing web and distributed software development risks

PhD ThesisWeb and distributed software developments are risky and face speci c challenges like time zone and cultural di erences. These challenges have resulted in new risks and risk management needs. In this thesis, a systematic review of existing software risk management approaches was conducted to investigate their ability to satisfy the risk management needs of web and distributed developments. The review identi es a number of weaknesses in existing approaches. Examples are the lack of consideration for web and distributed factors and lack of preparation for atypical risks. A new approach called WeDRisk is introduced to manage the risks from project, process and product perspectives. The WeDRisk approach addresses the weaknesses of existing approaches to risk management, which are less able to deal with the speci c challenges of web and distributed develop- ment. A key part of the approach is exibility to deal with the rapid evolution which is typical of such developments. This exibility is achieved by customiz- ing the risk management and providing a method for coping with atypical risks. WeDRisk also provides an improved risk estimation equation to consider web and distributed factors. The novel aspects of the WeDRisk approach were subjected to a series of evaluation cycles, including peer review, two controlled experiments, expert evaluation and a case study. In addition to a number of improvement sug- gestions, the evaluation results illustrate how WeDRisk is useful, understandable, exible, easy to use, and able to satisfy many web and distributed development risk management needs.Industrial Research Centre and Libyan government-Higher Ed- ucation for the scholarship

MOLNs: A cloud platform for interactive, reproducible and scalable spatial stochastic computational experiments in systems biology using PyURDME

Computational experiments using spatial stochastic simulations have led to important new biological insights, but they require specialized tools, a complex software stack, as well as large and scalable compute and data analysis resources due to the large computational cost associated with Monte Carlo computational workflows. The complexity of setting up and managing a large-scale distributed computation environment to support productive and reproducible modeling can be prohibitive for practitioners in systems biology. This results in a barrier to the adoption of spatial stochastic simulation tools, effectively limiting the type of biological questions addressed by quantitative modeling. In this paper, we present PyURDME, a new, user-friendly spatial modeling and simulation package, and MOLNs, a cloud computing appliance for distributed simulation of stochastic reaction-diffusion models. MOLNs is based on IPython and provides an interactive programming platform for development of sharable and reproducible distributed parallel computational experiments

Developing Internet-based integrated architecture for managing globally distributed software development projects

Given the increasing importance of globally distributed software development (GDSD) over the last decade, it is surprising that empirical research in this area is still in the very early stage. The few existing suggest that traditional coordination and control mechanisms can be effective for these projects only with support from appropriate information technology. However, at present, little is known about the success of current Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support in the context of GDSD projects. Therefore, the main question this research addresses is what ICT-based support is appropriate for globally distributed software development projects? The objectives of this research are to elicit and develop the functional requirements for ICT support for GDSD projects, to analyze the gap between existing tools and these requirements, and to develop an Internet-based integrated architecture of tools that would fill these gaps