Extending the Conceptual Base for a Holistic Quality Evaluation Approach

For software organizations often performing measurement, evaluation (ME), and even change/improvement (MEC) projects, a wellestablished quality evaluation approach can be useful. In this direction, we have developed a holistic quality evaluation approach whose architecture is based on two pillars, namely: a quality multi-view modeling framework, and ME/MEC integrated strategies. In this paper, we specify the conceptual base for the former pillar. Specifically, we specify an ontology of quality views documenting its main terms, properties and relationships. Quality views are paramount for selecting evaluation strategies and strategy patterns to be assigned as resources to ME/MEC projects. Also, we show how this ontology is semantically linked with the previously built ME domain ontology.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

Enhancing the Process Specification for Systematic Literature Reviews

SLR (Systematic Literature Review) is a research methodology intended to obtain evidence from scientific articles stored in digital repositories. It must be systematic, repeatable and auditable to formulate research questions about a thematic area or phenomenon of interest and to search, select, analyze and communicate all basic or applied research relevant findings in order to answer those questions. SLR can be carried out on primary or secondary studies. In both cases, well-established processes and methods are required. Although there are guides to the SLR process in Software Engineering, which indicate the steps to be followed in the three phases of the process proposed by Kitchenham, we considered that would be a contribution for the research community the strengthening of its current process specification. For this goal, we document the SLR process specification using mainly the SPEM (Software & Systems Process Engineering Metamodel) language and process modeling perspectives. As long as we develop the present work, we exemplify process aspects using a pilot SLR on software testing ontologies already performed.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Aplicando una estrategia de mejora que incluye conceptos de requisitos funcionales y no funcionales

Organizations should set and reach business goals for varied purposes using the suitable strategies. Basically, a strategy specifies the activities, methods and another related resources that should be considered in order to achieve a given goal purpose. Goal purposes and their associated strategies can aim at evaluating, testing, developing, or maintaining some entity. Some concrete evaluation purposes such as to understand or monitor can be achieved by strategies embracing non-functional requirements definition, measurement, evaluation and analysis activities. Other specific evaluation purposes such as to improve or control also imply changing the target entity; therefore, strategies should embrace functional requirements definition activities as well. Moreover, specific development and maintenance purposes always involve functional requirements. In this work, we relate business and information need goals with functional and nonfunctional requirements concepts, which are paramount for well-defined strategies. Therefore, we specify vocabularies for them, and illustrate the applicability of an improving strategy –which embeds these concepts- in the context of a running example. Having well-structured vocabularies serving as common ground for diverse strategies may promote a more effective operationalization of projects dealing with evaluation, testing, development and maintenance goal purposes.Las organizaciones deben establecer y alcanzar metas de negocio para diferentes propósitos utilizando las estrategias adecuadas. Básicamente, una estrategia especifica las actividades, los métodos y los recursos relacionados que deben considerarse para lograr un determinado propósito. Los propósitos de las metas y sus estrategias asociadas pueden apuntar a la evaluación, prueba, desarrollo o mantenimiento de alguna entidad. Algunos propósitos específicos de evaluación, como comprender o monitorear, pueden lograrse mediante estrategias que abarcan actividades de definición de requisitos no funcionales, medición, evaluación y análisis. Otros propósitos de evaluación, como mejorar o controlar, implican además cambiar la entidad o su contexto; por lo tanto, las estrategias también deben incluir actividades de definición de requisitos funcionales. En cuanto a los propósitos específicos de desarrollo y mantenimiento, estos siempre implican requisitos funcionales. Este trabajo relaciona las metas de negocio y de necesidad de información con conceptos de requisitos funcionales y no funcionales, que son fundamentales para estrategias bien definidas. Por lo tanto, especificamos sus vocabularios e ilustramos la aplicabilidad de una estrategia de mejora –la cual embebe estos conceptos- mediante un ejemplo que desarrollamos a lo largo de las secciones. Tener vocabularios bien estructurados que sirvan de base común para diversas estrategias puede promover una operacionalización más efectiva de los proyectos que tienen que ver con propósitos de metas de evaluación, prueba, desarrollo y mantenimiento.Facultad de Informátic

A Holistic Quality Evaluation, Selection and Improvement Approach driven by Multilevel Goals and Strategies

Organizations should establish business goals and check for their achievement in a systematic and disciplined way. In order to know if a business goal is achieved, it should be necessary to consider information need goals that also can require satisfying measurement and evaluation goals at operational level. Furthermore, if measurement and evaluation goals are not aligned with top-level business goals such as tactical or strategic level goals, the organization could waste its effort and resources. Usually, the different goals established in an organization are operationalized through projects. For a given project, strategies should be used in order to help in the goal achievement. A strategy defines a set of activities and methods to be followed for a specific goal purpose. Ultimately, to engineering all these issues in a systematic way, organizations should adopt a holistic evaluation approach supported by a set of integrated strategies. By means of a systematic literature review as research method, we have observed that very few approaches support integrated strategies and multilevel goals. To bridge this gap, we have developed a holistic quality multilevel and multipurpose evaluation approach that ties together multilevel goals, projects and integrated strategies. As contributions, this paper discusses an enhanced conceptual base (specified by ontologies) for linking business and information need goal concepts with project, strategy and nonfunctional requirements concepts. Then, it defines the step by step of our holistic quality evaluation approach, by listing the necessary activities to establish goals and projects at different organizational levels. Lastly, it specifies and illustrates evaluation scenarios for business/information need goal purposes such as understanding, improving, monitoring and controlling, comparing and selecting entities, which are supported by strategies and strategy patterns.Fil: Rivera, María Belén. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Becker, Pablo Javier. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Olsina, Luis Antonio. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Papa, María Fernanda. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Family of Evaluation Strategies: A Practical Case for Comparing and Adopting Strengths

Companies commonly establish and pursue business goals. A goal states a purpose. In the Software Engineering literature, different evaluation purposes such as to understand, monitor, improve, control, compare and select are mentioned. Considering that these purposes share distinctive and common aspects, in the present work, we include a categorization that helps a better understanding of them. On the other hand, to reach the purpose of a goal, a suitable strategy should be chosen. A strategy describes a particular course of action by means of process and method specifications. We have envisioned different strategies for different evaluation goal purposes. Therefore, in this paper we also present some strategies, which are part of a family of strategies driven by measurement and evaluation activities. Specifically, we document evaluation strategies for the monitoring, improving, and comparing and adopting purposes. In addition, we illustrate the comparing and adopting strategy applied to four social network mobile apps.Facultad de Informátic

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse