Software Measurement Activities in Small and Medium Enterprises: an Empirical Assessment

An empirical study for evaluating the proper implementation of measurement/metric programs in software companies in one area of Turkey is presented. The research questions are discussed and validated with the help of senior software managers (more than 15 years’ experience) and then used for interviewing a variety of medium and small scale software companies in Ankara. Observations show that there is a common reluctance/lack of interest in utilizing measurements/metrics despite the fact that they are well known in the industry. A side product of this research is that internationally recognized standards such as ISO and CMMI are pursued if they are a part of project/job requirements; without these requirements, introducing those standards to the companies remains as a long-term target to increase quality

WapMetrics: a tool for computing UML design metrics for Web applications

Many companies are still asking how to assess and predict the maintenance cost of their software. Measures of software maintenance cost can be taken either late or early in the development process. Early measures of software maintenance cost are beneficial because they can help in allocating project resources efficiently, predicting the effort of maintenance tasks and controlling the maintenance process. This paper describes a tool for computing early metrics from UML class diagrams based on the Web Application Extension (WAE) for UML. A case study is used to show the usefulness and effectiveness of the tool

The life and times of a learning technology system: the impact of change and evolution

With the inception of the web now being more than 20 years ago, many web-based learning technology systems (LTS) have had a long life and have undergone many changes, both affecting content and infrastructure technologies. A change factor model can capture the various factors causing LTS to change. Methods for change-aware design of LTS have been suggested. The purpose of this investigation is, firstly, to add empirical results to aspects of these models and methods in order to show the relevance of such a change factor model by specifically looking at an LTS that has been developed, maintained and extended over a period of 20 years. Secondly, these results shall be used to develop a conceptual model capturing and assessing the impact of change. A key observation is an unexpectedly high impact of environmental constraints on the LTS, but also new opportunities emerging over time have had dramatic changes as their consequence

Adaptive Genetic Algorithm Based Artificial Neural Network for Software Defect Prediction

To meet the requirement of an efficient software defect prediction,in this paper an evolutionary computing based neural network learning scheme has been developed that alleviates the existing Artificial Neural Network (ANN) limitations such as local minima and convergence issues. To achieve optimal software defect prediction, in this paper, Adaptive-Genetic Algorithm (A-GA) based ANN learning and weightestimation scheme has been developed. Unlike conventional GA, in this paper we have used adaptive crossover and mutation probability parameter that alleviates the issue of disruption towards optimal solution. We have used object oriented software metrics, CK metrics for fault prediction and the proposed Evolutionary Computing Based Hybrid Neural Network (HENN)algorithm has been examined for performance in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, F-measure, completeness etc, where it has performed better as compared to major existing schemes. The proposed scheme exhibited 97.99% prediction accuracy while ensuring optimal precision, Fmeasure and recall

Effort Estimation Factors for Corrective Software Maintenance Projects: A Qualitative Analysis of Estimation Criteria

In this paper, we identify factors that impact software maintenance effort by exploring expert software maintenance estimators’ knowledge about corrective maintenance projects. We use a qualitative approach to identify the issues important to these experts to derive their effort estimates. We find seventeen factors (rated and rank ordered by importance) that affect corrective maintenance effort and include constructs related to developers, code, defects, and environment. Several of these factors that have a comparably strong influence on corrective maintenance estimation are unique to corrective maintenance and are not generally observed in established software estimation models. The results enhance organizations’ ability to effectively manage maintenance environments by focusing attention on the identified areas. For future research, these results represent an important step toward developing a comprehensive and accurate corrective maintenance effort estimation model

Modern software cybernetics: new trends

Software cybernetics research is to apply a variety of techniques from cybernetics research to software engineering research. For more than fifteen years since 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in work relating to software cybernetics. From cybernetics viewpoint, the work is mainly on the first-order level, namely, the software under observation and control. Beyond the first-order cybernetics, the software, developers/users, and running environments influence each other and thus create feedback to form more complicated systems. We classify software cybernetics as Software Cybernetics I based on the first-order cybernetics, and as Software Cybernetics II based on the higher order cybernetics. This paper provides a review of the literature on software cybernetics, particularly focusing on the transition from Software Cybernetics I to Software Cybernetics II. The results of the survey indicate that some new research areas such as Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, and even creative computing are related to Software Cybernetics II. The paper identifies the relationships between the techniques of Software Cybernetics II applied and the new research areas to which they have been applied, formulates research problems and challenges of software cybernetics with the application of principles of Phase II of software cybernetics; identifies and highlights new research trends of software cybernetic for further research