Criteria for the evaluation of business process simulation tools

This paper focuses on a process of simulation software packages selection in the context of business process change projects. The paper presents discrete event simulation, its relation to business process modelling and examples of its practical applications in business process change projects. Features of business process simulation tools are examined, the most important simulation features are identified and the criteria for their evaluation are defined. The guidelines that could help managers in the selection of business process simulation tools are proposed. The discussion addresses the limitations of the proposed guidelines. Finally, based on the conducted research and the evaluation criteria defined within the guidelines, some directions for the further improvement of business process simulation tools are given

Software Product Line Engineering: Future Research Directions

The recent trend of switching from single software product development tolines of software products in the software industry has made the software product line concept viable and widely accepted methodology in the future. Some of the potential benefits of this approach include cost reduction, improvement in quality and a decrease in product development time. Many organizations that deal in wide areas of operation, from consumer electronics, telecommunications, and avionics to information technology, are using software product lines practice because it deals with effective utilization ofsoftware assets and provides numerous benefits. Software product line engineering is an inter-disciplinary concept. It spans over the dimensions of business, architecture, process and organization. The business dimension of software product lines deals with managing a strong coordination between product line engineering and the business aspects of product line. Software product line architecture is regarded as one of the crucial piece of entity in software product lines. All the resulting products share thiscommon architecture. The organizational theories, behavior and management play critical role in the process of institutionalization of software product line engineering in an organization. The objective of this chapter is to discuss the state of the art of software product line engineering from the perspectives of business, architecture, organizational management and software engineering process. This work also highlights and discusses the future research directions in this area thus providing an opportunity to researchers and practitioners to better understand the future trends and requirements

Analysis of the Research Trend of Global Value Chain Based on Literature Metrology and Visualization Technology

With the improvement of international division of labor and cooperation and the refinement of production process division, the global value chain division of labor system is becoming the latest mode of product division. In order to deeply analyze and explore the research status and development trend in the field of global value chain, based on the Web of Science core collection SCIE and SSCI database, this paper uses the literature metrology method and CiteSpace software to conduct a visual analysis of the literature in the field of global value chain. The study discovered research hotspots, research processes, development frontiers, research distribution, and citation status of global value chains. We have comprehensively grasped the literature status of global value chain research, providing scholars with new research directions, and also providing strong reference and guidance for investment decision-making of multinational corporations and trade policy formulation of countries and international organizations

User Experience for Model-Driven Engineering : Challenges and Future Directions

Since its infancy, Model Driven Engineering (MDE) research has primarily focused on technical issues. Although it is becoming increasingly common for MDE research papers to evaluate their theoretical and practical solutions, extensive usability studies are still uncommon. We observe a scarcity of User eXperience (UX)-related research in the MDE community, and posit that many existing tools and languages have room for improvement with respect to UX [26], [44], [37], where UX is a key focus area in the software development industry. We consider this gap a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed by the community if MDE is to gain widespread use. In this vision paper, we explore how and where UX fits into MDE by considering motivating use cases that revolve around different dimensions of integration: model integration, tool integration, and integration between process and tool support. Based on the literature and our collective experience in research and industrial collaborations, we propose future directions for addressing these challenges

Survey on Software Defined VANETs

Modern vehicles are equipped with a wide variety of sensors, onboard computers and different devices supporting navigation and communication. These systems aim the fulfillment of various demands on the improvement of traffic safety, traffic/route optimization, passenger, comfort, etc. Inter-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication plays an important role in this process, which resulted in the birth of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks. In the first part of the article, the key ideas of VANETs and their communication types are presented, then the most important features of vehicular ad-hoc networks are discussed followed by typical application types and actual characteristic research directions. The second part of the article focuses on Software Defined Networking and its application possibilities in VANETs emphasizing the benefits they can provide

EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF USING AUTOMATIC STATIC ANALYSIS ON CODE QUALITY

Automatic static analysis (ASA) tools analyze the source or compiled code looking for violations of recommended programming practices (called issues) that might cause faults or might degrade some dimensions of software quality. Antonio Vetro' has focused his PhD in studying how applying ASA impacts software quality, taking as reference point the different quality dimensions specified by the standard ISO/IEC 25010. The epistemological approach he used is that one of empirical software engineering. During his three years PhD, he's been conducting experiments and case studies on three main areas: Functionality/Reliability, Performance and Maintainability. He empirically proved that specific ASA issues had impact on these quality characteristics in the contexts under study: thus, removing them from the code resulted in a quality improvement. Vetro' has also investigated and proposed new research directions for this field: using ASA to improve software energy efficiency and to detect the problems deriving from the interaction of multiple languages. The contribution is enriched with the final recommendation of a generalized process for researchers and practitioners with a twofold goal: improve software quality through ASA and create a body of knowledge on the impact of using ASA on specific software quality dimensions, based on empirical evidence. This thesis represents a first step towards this goa

Probing Software Engineering Beliefs about System Testing Defects: Analyzing Data for Future Directions

Research findings are often expressed as short startling sentences or software engineering (SE) beliefs such as “about 80 percent of the defects come from 20 percent of the modules” and “peer reviews catch 60 percent of the defects” [2]. Such SE beliefs are particularly important in industry, as they are attention-getting, easily understandable, and thus practically useful. In this paper we examine the power of such SE beliefs to justify process improvement through empirical validation of selected beliefs related to the increase or decrease of defects in system testing. We explore four basic SE beliefs in data from two midsize embedded software development organizations in Japan, and based on this information, identify possible process improvement actions for each organization. Based on our study, even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use this approach to find possible directions to improve their process, which will result in better products

Challenging the Artifacts and Practices Adopted in Agile Software Development

Roughly speaking, agile software development methods include the adoption of an iterative life cycle and of special kinds of artifacts and practices. The life cycle is the result of years of improvement in software development starting from waterfall, going through planned long iterations like in the Rational Unified Process, to finally end-up with short, unplanned sprints. The used artifacts and practices nevertheless deserve more research in order to measure development performance, to analyze their optimal uses, and to determine the opportunity of their integration in a custom agile process. This paper highlights the need for challenging the artifacts and practices from a scientific standpoint. While doing so, we briefly discusses the research conducted in the field user stories–that have often been studied in the literature in combination with conceptual modeling–, before outlining the first edition of the Agil-ISE workshop and discussing future directions

Recent Trends in Software Engineering Research As Seen Through Its Publications

This study provides some insight into the field of software engineering through analysis of its recent research publications. Data for this study are taken from the ACM\u27s Guide to Computing Literature (GUIDE) They include both the professionally assigned Computing Classification System (CCS) descriptors and the title text of each software engineering publication reviewed by the GUIDE from 1998 through 2001. The first part of this study provides a snapshot of software engineering by applying co-word analysis techniques to the data. This snapshot indicates recent themes or areas of interest, which, when compared with the results from earlier studies, reveal current trends in software engineering. Software engineering continues to have no central focus. Concepts like software development, process improvement, applications, parallelism, and user interfaces are persistent and, thus, help define the field, but they provide little guidance for researchers or developers of academic curricula. Of more interest and use are the specific themes illuminated by this study, which provide a clearer indication of the current interests of the field. Two prominent themes are the related issues of programming-in-the-large and best practices. Programming-in-the-large is the term often applied to large-scale and long-term software development, where project and people management, code reusability, performance measures, documentation, and software maintenance issues take on special importance. These issues began emerging in earlier periods, but seem to have risen to prominence during the current period. Another important discovery is the trend in software development toward using networking and the Internet. Many network- and Internet-related descriptors were added to the CCS in 1998. The prominent appearance and immediate use of these descriptors during this period indicate that this is a real trend and not just an aberration caused by their recent addition. The titles of the period reflect the prominent themes and trends. In addition to corroborating the keyword analysis, the title text confirms the relevance of the CCS and its most recent revision. By revealing current themes and trends in software engineering, this study provides some guidance to the developers of academic curricula and indicates directions for further research and study

Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view