A situational approach for the definition and tailoring of a data-driven software evolution method

Successful software evolution heavily depends on the selection of the right features to be included in the next release. Such selection is difficult, and companies often report bad experiences about user acceptance. To overcome this challenge, there is an increasing number of approaches that propose intensive use of data to drive evolution. This trend has motivated the SUPERSEDE method, which proposes the collection and analysis of user feedback and monitoring data as the baseline to elicit and prioritize requirements, which are then used to plan the next release. However, every company may be interested in tailoring this method depending on factors like project size, scope, etc. In order to provide a systematic approach, we propose the use of Situational Method Engineering to describe SUPERSEDE and guide its tailoring to a particular context.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects. Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. Method: The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. Results: The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. Conclusion: It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

A survey of simulation techniques in commerce and defence

Despite the developments in Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools and techniques over the past years, there has been a gap in the M&S research and practice in healthcare on developing a toolkit to assist the modellers and simulation practitioners with selecting an appropriate set of techniques. This study is a preliminary step towards this goal. This paper presents some results from a systematic literature survey on applications of M&S in the commerce and defence domains that could inspire some improvements in the healthcare. Interim results show that in the commercial sector Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) has been the most widely used technique with System Dynamics (SD) in second place. However in the defence sector, SD has gained relatively more attention. SD has been found quite useful for qualitative and soft factors analysis. From both the surveys it becomes clear that there is a growing trend towards using hybrid M&S approaches