Cognition and the Engineering Design Requirement

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Le projet HOP!: vers un enseignement de la programmation pour tous

Parce que, dans une large mesure, la programmation fait intervenir de nombreuses compétences implicites, qui ne peuvent s'acquérir que par la pratique, l'enseignement de l'informatique nous paraît aujourd'hui encore insatisfaisant. Dans cet article, nous présentons le système HOP! (aka. Hands-On-Programming!), qui est un environnement de programmation interactif destiné à être utilisé pour enseigner la programmation au moyen d'exemples développés de façon incrémentale, en partant de projets simples pour aller petit à petit vers des réalisations plus compliquées. La philosophie et la conception du système HOP! s'appuient sur un certain nombre de développements récents dans les domaines des sciences du langage, de la psychologie, et de la pédagogie, ainsi que sur une analyse de l'activité de résolution de problèmes en informatique

An investigation of the utility and value of process patterns in the management of software development projects.

Pattern theory has engendered much controversy in the field of architecture; yet it has brought new insights to the field of software engineering. Patterns continue to play an important role in software engineering in general, and in software development in particular. In this study, two preliminary surveys, focusing on the two fields of architecture and software engineering, were carried out to investigate the role and effect of patterns. The surveys indicate that while, patterns are unpopular within the architecture community and are criticised for stifling creativity, software patterns are popular within the software community and a high proportion of software development companies use them in their development practice. The results however show that in the vast majority of cases, pattern usage is limited to design-based problems, involving a single type of pattern (i.e. design patterns). The results further show that process-based patterns are seldom used in the software development industry, which prompted the topic of the main investigation of this research to evaluate the effect and utility of process patterns. A controlled experimental research method was designed and used to evaluate the utility and value of process patterns in the management of software development projects. In this '2x2 factorial design' experiment, the subjects were divided in two groups of experimental and control, where the experimental groups were given a set of process patterns to use in their software development projects. Overall, there were over 750 subjects involved in this experiment and a total of 260 software development projects (individual and group projects) were investigated. Measurements of a number of appropriate software attributes were taken during the life of the projects though a devised goal-based measurement process. A further number of attributes were measured after the projects were completed. Using metrics, a number of software attributes across the four major phases of the development lifecycle (i.e. Requirement Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Delivery) were measured and statistically analysed. In addition to these specific measurement data, official marks awarded to the projects by the tutors were also used in the analysis. The objective was to determine if the experimental groups produced software projects that were of higher quality, in terms of the measured software attributes, than the control groups. The experiment results show that, in the case of thirteen measured attributes, the treated groups scored significantly higher than the control groups. The improvements are across all the four major development phases, with at least two attribute in each phase, showing significant improvement. The experiment, therefore, confirms that the application of process patterns in software development projects, improves the quality of the projects in terms of a number of specific attributes such as productivity and defect density. The results further show that the treated subjects in the group projects performed significantly better than those in the individual projects. This, therefore, confirms that while the application of process patterns significantly improves the quality of both group and individual projects, the improvement is more prominent in the case of team projects. Process patterns are thus shown to be more effective on team projects in improving the quality of software development projects

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

An Integrative Design Methodology to Support an Inter-Organizational Knowledge Management Solution

Design research develops knowledge to respond to real-world challenges and solve authentic problems. In this paper, we adopt a pragmatic and semantic design approach to combine the best of two separate design discourses: the discourse about developing science-based design rules and the discourse on user-centered, participative, and experience-based design. We develop a methodology that combines both discourses and perspectives. Subsequently, this methodology is illustrated by means of a case study of designing and developing a portal for mapping competencies in the multi-stakeholder environment of an IT cluster. This case study suggests design research can become more effective if it adopts a deliberate focus on articulating design rules as well as engaging users in trying out prototypes, to create artifacts that support and drive the dialogue between user-practitioners and design-oriented researchers