Process Scenarios in Open Source Software Certification

Certification of Open Source Software (OSS) presents inherent trade-offsdue to the necessity of precisely identifying both a product and an independent certificationagent, and on the other of maintain the peculiar, valuable OSS characteristicof being available to an unlimited multiplicity of actors for trial, use and change.This is an intriguing challenge, usually solved by removing from the picture thecertifying agent and providing an intrinsic certification by means of rigorous, reapplicableproperty demonstrations, adopting Formal Methods (FM) in expressingand verifying the code. As such approach, yet quite valuable and good-promising,has some restrictions (such as the limited set of provable product qualities), we proposeto tackle the problem by analysing the various processes executed by differentOSS stakeholders, including the process of an independent Certification Body. Inthe paper some kinds of representative scenarios in which such processes interleaveare presented and discussed. The aim is to introduce a process-centered perspectivefor OSS that can stimulate research to further understand and mitigate the mentionedtrade-offs

When Teams Go Crazy:An Environment to Experience Group Dynamics in Software Project Management Courses

Software development consists to a large extend of humanbased processes with continuously increasing demands regarding interdisciplinary team work. Understanding the dynamics of software teams can be seen as highly important to successful project execution. Hence, for future project managers, knowledge about non-technical processes in teams is significant. In this paper, we present a course unit that provides an environment in which students can learn and experience the impact of group dynamics on project performance and quality. The course unit uses the Tuckman model as theoretical framework, and borrows from controlled experiments to organize and implement its practical parts in which students then experience the effects of, e.g., time pressure, resource bottlenecks, staff turnover, loss of key personnel, and other stress factors. We provide a detailed design of the course unit to allow for implementation in further software project management courses. Furthermore, we provide experiences obtained from two instances of this unit conducted in Munich and Karlskrona with 36 graduate students. We observed students building awareness of stress factors and developing counter measures to reduce impact of those factors. Moreover, students experienced what problems occur when teams work under stress and how to form a performing team despite exceptional situations