Methods to evaluate lightweight software process assessment methods based on evaluation theory and engineering design principles

Achieving a mature software development process has become essential for many software organizations. A mature development process permits software organizations to provide their customers with a high quality software product delivered on time and within budget. Software organizations have been struggling for decades to improve the quality of their products by improving their software development processes. Designing an improvement program for a software development process is a demanding and complex task. This task consists of two main processes: the assessment process and the improvement process. A successful improvement process requires first a successful assessment; failing to assess the organization's software development process could create unsatisfactory results. Software processes assessment (SPA) can be used either to determine the capability of another organization, for subcontracting purposes, or to determine and understand the status of the organization's current processes to initiate an improvement process. The increasing number of assessment approaches available; the ISO 15504 standard that sets out the requirements for process assessment; and the popularity of the CMMI model, illustrate the relevance of software process assessment for the software development industry. Currently, several methods are available to assess the maturity and capability of a software development process based on well-known software process assessment and improvement frameworks such as CMMI and ISO-15504. The success of these assessment methods and improvement frameworks is supported by post-development studies on the validity, reliability and effectiveness of these methods. Unfortunately, many researchers consider that such methods are too large to implement in SME organizations. As a result, many researchers have studied process assessment and improvement in SME organizations and proposed assessment methods, usually called lightweight SPA methods, suitable to the organizations' needs. The current research in the SPA field focuses on proposing convenient and easy-to-use assessment methods, without investigating to what extent the design of these methods is related to the engineering design perspective. This unclear alignment with the engineering discipline raises questions about the relevance and representativeness of the results produced by these methods from an engineering viewpoint. Moreover, although numerous SPA methods are currently available which offer help and guidance, unfortunately they only partially address evidences found essential for achieving an SPA success. This thesis presents and discusses the evaluation of lightweight SPA methods. The evaluation is two-fold: evaluating the SPA methods design using a top-down approach and based on engineering viewpoints and evaluating the success of SPA methods using a bottom-up approach. The evaluation theory concepts are used as a framework to formally develop both evaluation methods. To develop the first evaluation method using the top-down approach, an exploratory analytical study of SPA methods from an engineering design viewpoint has been conducted. Vincenti's classification has been used as a tool for this analysis. The aim of this exploratory study is to put the developed SPA methods into an engineering design framework, and use this framework as a guideline to put the new SPA methods to be designed into the same engineering design framework. To develop the second evaluation method using the bottom-up approach, a systematic literature review was conducted to extract the set of evidences for the success of the SPA method based on requirements, observations, lessons learned and recommendations which have been formulated within the industry and published in books, conferences and journals. The development process of the two evaluation methods has then been verified using a set of verification criteria and the proposed evaluation methods were tested by conducting three case studies. The first evaluation method would be useful mainly for the designers of new SPA methods during the design phase, while the second evaluation method would be useful for both designers and practitioners of SPA methods to verify the success of the assessment method in question. This research project forms an entry point to study the alignment of SPA methods design with engineering design principles and sheds light on achieving successful assessment results by studying the successful evidences that should be supported by assessment methods separated from the improvement process. The proposed evaluation methods in this thesis have great benefits for SPA methods designed mainly for SME organizations, because these assessments methods, contrary to well-known methods, lack comprehensive studies on their reliability and effectiveness

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems in aircraft: wing damage detection employing guided waves techniques

The doctoral thesis provides a detailed description of the implementation of methodologies and technologies based on ultrasonic guided waves for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) on wing structural elements made of composite materials for BVID or hidden flaws detection. The developed methodologies have been first technologically integrated and applied on small scale structural elements, unstiffened and stiffened plates. Subsequently the SHM system was integrated on a full scale wing box demonstrator in order to perform the delamination detection. The implemented SHM system is capable to control a network of surface mounted piezoelectric transducers, to perform Electromechanical Impedance measurement at each transducer, to check the reliability as well as the bonding strength, and to perform an active guided wave screening

Um Método de aquisição de conhecimento para customização de modelos de capacidade/maturidade de processos de software

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnoclógico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Gestão do Conhecimento, Florianópolis, 2011A Engenharia do Conhecimento provê métodos que possibilitam o entendimento das estruturas e processos utilizados por especialistas, no intuito de criar uma melhor integração da tecnologia da informação em suporte ao trabalho intelectual. Um dos principais processos da Engenharia do Conhecimento é a aquisição de conhecimento, que consiste em extrair o conhecimento necessário a partir de suas diversas fontes, de modo a poder codificá-lo e reutilizá-lo. O conhecimento representado na forma de melhores práticas constitui-se no encapsulamento de experiências que, quando repetidas, levam a alcançar resultados semelhantes. Nesse sentido, os Modelos de Capacidade/ Maturidade de Processo de Software (SPCMMs) são frameworks de melhores práticas de desenvolvimento de software e têm sido customizados para atender as necessidades específicas de qualidade de cada domínio de desenvolvimento de software. Neste sentido, esta tese apresenta um método de aquisição de conhecimento para customização de SPCMMs para domínios específicos, desenvolvido com base nas experiências de desenvolvimento de SPCMMs relatadas na literatura, nos processos e técnicas de aquisição de conhecimento, processos de desenvolvimento de normas de qualidade e em frameworks de desenvolvimento de modelos de qualidade de processo. O método é avaliado por especialistas e utilizado na customização de dois SPCMMs. Os resultados observados revelam primeiros indícios de que o método é adequado e aplicável à aquisição de conhecimento para a customização de SPCMMs. O método desenvolvido contribui para a Engenharia do Conhecimento na pesquisa atual em aquisição do conhecimento a partir de fontes não estruturadas e na área de aplicação em Engenharia de Software fornecendo um suporte sistemático para a customização de SPCMMs

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Annual report of the town of Stratham, New Hampshire by the selectmen, town clerk, tax collector, town treasurer, and other town departments, boards and commissions, and reports of school districts and SAU #16 December 31, 2011 with the vital statistics for 2011.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

A process capability profile driven proposal for software process improvement

Orientador: Mario JinoTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: Melhoria de processo de software baseada nos níveis de maturidade fixos da arquitetura estagiada dos modelos SW-CMM e CMMI não atendem à diversidade de contextos e objetivos estratégicos das organizações intensivas em software. Esta pesquisa evoluí a área de melhoria de processo com a utilização da flexibilidade da arquitetura contínua da ISO/IEC 15504 para um melhor alinhamento da melhoria com o contexto e objetivos estratégicos específicos de cada organização, principalmente as micro e pequenas. São identificadas três gerações de arquiteturas de modelos de capacidade de processo (estagiada fixa, contínua fechada e contínua aberta). É proposta uma engenharia de processo, de software e de qualquer outro trabalho humano intensivo em conhecimento, dirigida por perfis de capacidade de processo. É desenvolvida uma abordagem exemplo dessa engenharia com um conjunto de propriedades, um modelo unificado, um ciclo de melhoria e um conjunto de medições, bem como um método para o estabelecimento de perfis de capacidade de processo. As propostas são validadas com análises, aplicações práticas e uma agenda de pesquisaAbstract: Software process improvement based on the staged architecture¿s fixed maturity levels of SWCMM and CMMI models do not support the diversity of software intensive organizations context and strategic objectives. This research evolves the current process improvement area taking advantage of the flexibility of ISO/IEC 15504 continuous architecture towards a better alignment between an improvement with each organization¿s specific context and strategic objectives, especially of micro and small ones. Three generations of architectures for process capability models (fixed staged, closed continuous, open continuous) are identified. A process capability profile driven, software and any other knowledge intensive human work, process engineering is proposed. An exemplar approach for this engineering is developed, with a set of properties, a unified model, an improvement cycle and a measurement set, as well as a method for establishing process capability profile. These proposals are validated by analyses, practical applications and a research agendaDoutoradoEngenharia de ComputaçãoDoutor em Engenharia Elétric