International conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering: Session chair

The Thirtieth International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE 2018) will be held at the Hotel Pullman, San Francisco Bay, USA, from July 1 to July 3, 2018. SEKE2018 will also be dedicated in memory of Professor Lofti Zadeh, a great scholar, pioneer and leader in fuzzy sets theory and soft computing. The conference aims at bringing together experts in software engineering and knowledge engineering to discuss on relevant results in either software engineering or knowledge engineering or both. Special emphasis will be put on the transference of methods between both domains. The theme this year is soft computing in software engineering & knowledge engineering. Submission of papers and demos are both welcome

A software engineering ontology as software engineering knowledge representation

This paper aims to present software engineering ontology as software engineering knowledge representation for a multi-site software development. It will not only facilitate the capturing of software engineering knowledge but also enhance the sharing of software engineering knowledge across geographically multiple software development sites. The software engineering ontology assists in defining information for the exchange of semantic project data and is used as a communication framework. Its end users are software engineers sharing software engineering domain knowledge as well as software engineering project data

Qualitative software engineering research -- reflections and guidelines

Researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance of human aspects in software development and since qualitative methods are used to, in-depth, explore human behavior, we believe that studies using such techniques will become more common. Existing qualitative software engineering guidelines do not cover the full breadth of qualitative methods and knowledge on using them found in the social sciences. The aim of this study was thus to extend the software engineering research community's current body of knowledge regarding available qualitative methods and provide recommendations and guidelines for their use. With the support of an epistemological argument and a literature review, we suggest that future research would benefit from (1) utilizing a broader set of research methods, (2) more strongly emphasizing reflexivity, and (3) employing qualitative guidelines and quality criteria. We present an overview of three qualitative methods commonly used in social sciences but rarely seen in software engineering research, namely interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis, and discourse analysis. Furthermore, we discuss the meaning of reflexivity in relation to the software engineering context and suggest means of fostering it. Our paper will help software engineering researchers better select and then guide the application of a broader set of qualitative research methods.Comment: 30 page

Tool Support for Decision and Usage Knowledge in Continuous Software Engineering

Continuous software engineering copes with frequent changes and quickly evolving development projects while maintaining a high software quality. Developers require knowledge about former and ongoing decisions as well as about the users' needs to evolve software. Thus, decision and usage knowledge are two important knowledge types in continuous software engineering. Issue tracking and version control systems are widely used in continuous software engineering but lack a structured approach to integrate decision and usage knowledge. In this paper, we present ideas and requirements for a tool support to manage decision and usage knowledge in continuous software engineering. As a first step, we introduce the JIRA DecDoc plug-in for documenting decision knowledge

Milestones in Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering History: A Comparative Review

We present a review of the historical evolution of software engineering, intertwining it with the history of knowledge engineering because “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This retrospective represents a further step forward to understanding the current state of both types of engineerings; history has also positive experiences; some of them we would like to remember and to repeat. Two types of engineerings had parallel and divergent evolutions but following a similar pattern. We also define a set of milestones that represent a convergence or divergence of the software development methodologies. These milestones do not appear at the same time in software engineering and knowledge engineering, so lessons learned in one discipline can help in the evolution of the other one

Computing Curriculum-Software Engineering: Its Impacts on Professional Software Engineering Education

The computing curriculum-software engineering (CCSE) volume and its impacts on professional software engineering education are discussed. The CCSE is an excellent cucciculum document that defines the body of knowledge for undergraduate software engineering students. It is perfectly legitimate for CCSE to recommend software engineers to adhere to the guideline in the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, that 'software engineers must commit themselves to making software engineering a beneficial and respected profession'. The CCSE Final Report proves to be an excellent and comprehensive curriculum document specifying a body of knowledge for software engineerrs.published_or_final_versionThe 28th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference Proceedings, Hong Kong, China, 28-30 September 2004, v. 1, p. 176-17