77,542 research outputs found
A Unified Checklist for Observational and Experimental Research in Software Engineering (Version 1)
Current checklists for empirical software engineering cover either experimental research or case study research but ignore the many commonalities that exist across all kinds of empirical research. Identifying these commonalities, and explaining why they exist, would enhance our understanding of empirical research in general and of the differences between experimental and case study research in particular. In this report we design a unified checklist for empirical research, and identify commonalities and differences between experimental and case study research. We design the unified checklist as a specialization of the general engineering cycle, which itself is a special case of the rational choice cycle. We then compare the resulting empirical research cycle with two checklists for experimental research, and with one checklist for case study research. The resulting checklist identifies important questions to be answered in experimental and case study research design and reports. The checklist provides insights in two different types of empirical research design and their relationships. Its limitations are that it ignores other research methods such as meta-research or surveys. It has been tested so far only in our own research designs and in teaching empirical methods. Future work includes expanding the comparison with other methods and application in more cases, by others than ourselves
The Scalability-Efficiency/Maintainability-Portability Trade-off in Simulation Software Engineering: Examples and a Preliminary Systematic Literature Review
Large-scale simulations play a central role in science and the industry.
Several challenges occur when building simulation software, because simulations
require complex software developed in a dynamic construction process. That is
why simulation software engineering (SSE) is emerging lately as a research
focus. The dichotomous trade-off between scalability and efficiency (SE) on the
one hand and maintainability and portability (MP) on the other hand is one of
the core challenges. We report on the SE/MP trade-off in the context of an
ongoing systematic literature review (SLR). After characterizing the issue of
the SE/MP trade-off using two examples from our own research, we (1) review the
33 identified articles that assess the trade-off, (2) summarize the proposed
solutions for the trade-off, and (3) discuss the findings for SSE and future
work. Overall, we see evidence for the SE/MP trade-off and first solution
approaches. However, a strong empirical foundation has yet to be established;
general quantitative metrics and methods supporting software developers in
addressing the trade-off have to be developed. We foresee considerable future
work in SSE across scientific communities.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for presentation at the Fourth
International Workshop on Software Engineering for High Performance Computing
in Computational Science and Engineering (SEHPCCSE 2016
Predicting and Evaluating Software Model Growth in the Automotive Industry
The size of a software artifact influences the software quality and impacts
the development process. In industry, when software size exceeds certain
thresholds, memory errors accumulate and development tools might not be able to
cope anymore, resulting in a lengthy program start up times, failing builds, or
memory problems at unpredictable times. Thus, foreseeing critical growth in
software modules meets a high demand in industrial practice. Predicting the
time when the size grows to the level where maintenance is needed prevents
unexpected efforts and helps to spot problematic artifacts before they become
critical.
Although the amount of prediction approaches in literature is vast, it is
unclear how well they fit with prerequisites and expectations from practice. In
this paper, we perform an industrial case study at an automotive manufacturer
to explore applicability and usability of prediction approaches in practice. In
a first step, we collect the most relevant prediction approaches from
literature, including both, approaches using statistics and machine learning.
Furthermore, we elicit expectations towards predictions from practitioners
using a survey and stakeholder workshops. At the same time, we measure software
size of 48 software artifacts by mining four years of revision history,
resulting in 4,547 data points. In the last step, we assess the applicability
of state-of-the-art prediction approaches using the collected data by
systematically analyzing how well they fulfill the practitioners' expectations.
Our main contribution is a comparison of commonly used prediction approaches
in a real world industrial setting while considering stakeholder expectations.
We show that the approaches provide significantly different results regarding
prediction accuracy and that the statistical approaches fit our data best
An evaluation of NASA's program in human factors research: Aircrew-vehicle system interaction
Research in human factors in the aircraft cockpit and a proposed program augmentation were reviewed. The dramatic growth of microprocessor technology makes it entirely feasible to automate increasingly more functions in the aircraft cockpit; the promise of improved vehicle performance, efficiency, and safety through automation makes highly automated flight inevitable. An organized data base and validated methodology for predicting the effects of automation on human performance and thus on safety are lacking and without such a data base and validated methodology for analyzing human performance, increased automation may introduce new risks. Efforts should be concentrated on developing methods and techniques for analyzing man machine interactions, including human workload and prediction of performance
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Simulation for business processes and information systems design
Business Process (BP) literature promotes the value of business processes as essential gearwheels that help organizations to reach their goals. Similarly, many process design approaches claim that Information Technology (IT) is a major enabler of business process, a view also shared by the Information Systems (IS) community. Despite this, BP and IS approaches do not provide clear guidance on how to assess the benefits that a given IS design may bring to the BP prior the IS implementation. Nor is clear indication of which modeling techniques could be used to assess such relationship. This paper uses the insights gained during a UK funded research project, namely ASSESS-IT, that aimed to depict the dynamic relationships between BP and IT to propose an alternative framework to develop BP simulation models that depict the dynamic behavior of the relationships between BP and IS
Guidelines for assessing pedestrian evacuation software applications
This paper serves to clearly identify and explain criteria to consider when evaluating the
suitability of a pedestrian evacuation software application to assess the evacuation
process of a building. Guidelines in the form of nine topic areas identify different
modelling approaches adopted, as well as features / functionality provided by
applications designed specifically for simulating the egress of pedestrians from inside a
building. The paper concludes with a synopsis of these guidelines, identifying key
questions (by topic area) to found an evaluation
Advancing automation and robotics technology for the space station and for the US economy: Submitted to the United States Congress October 1, 1987
In April 1985, as required by Public Law 98-371, the NASA Advanced Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) reported to Congress the results of its studies on advanced automation and robotics technology for use on the space station. This material was documented in the initial report (NASA Technical Memorandum 87566). A further requirement of the Law was that ATAC follow NASA's progress in this area and report to Congress semiannually. This report is the fifth in a series of progress updates and covers the period between 16 May 1987 and 30 September 1987. NASA has accepted the basic recommendations of ATAC for its space station efforts. ATAC and NASA agree that the mandate of Congress is that an advanced automation and robotics technology be built to support an evolutionary space station program and serve as a highly visible stimulator affecting the long-term U.S. economy
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