Streamlining Software Development in Enterprises: The Power of Metrics-Driven Development

In today's fiercely competitive market, software companies must prioritize the activities in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to produce high-quality software and stay ahead of competitors. The exponential growth of Cloud computing enabled technologies has prompted companies to adapt their software development processes based on Cloud, as it offers instant access to essential resources. However, traditional software metrics-based approaches fall short when applied to Cloud computing-based software development. In order to address this challenge head-on, this paper presents an approach called Metrics-Driven Development (MDD) tailored specifically for enterprise Cloud development which is also known as full-stack development. In order to support informed decision-making in the age of Cloud computing, the main goal of this research is to evaluate the functionality and quality of software using several metrics. Furthermore, MDD plays a pivotal role in improving the software quality, performance, and efficiency within the realm of Cloud computing. Based on the empirical experiments and observation, it is evident that Metrics-Driven Development is an invaluable approach for enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in enterprise software development

An evaluation methodology for ergonomic design of electronic consumer products based on fuzzy axiomatic design

This article is posted with permission of OCP Science imprint. Copyright @ 2008 Old City Publishing Group.The development life cycle of software and electronic products has been shortened by the growth of rapid prototyping techniques. The evaluation of electronic consumer products should consider hardware and software as well as the ergonomic usability, emotional appeal and aesthetic integrity of the design. This research follows a systematic approach to develop an evaluation methodology for electronic mobile products on ergonomic design. The proposed methodology is based on fuzzy multi attribute decision making and fuzzy axiomatic design realized in three steps; determination of ergonomic attributes for electronic consumer products, determination of a representative set of alternatives, and selection of the best alternative in terms of ergonomic design by utilizing fuzzy axiomatic design. A case study is also provided to support the proposed methodology

Product and process information interactions in assembly decision support systems

A characteristic of concurrent engineering is the intensive information interchange between areas that are involved through the product life cycle. Shared information structures to integrate different software applications have become necessary to support effectively the interchange of information. While . much work has been done into the concepts of Product and Manufacturing Models, there is a need to make them able to support Assembly related activities. The research reported in this thesis explores and defines the structures of a Product Model and. a Manufacturing Model to support assembly related information. These information models support the product development process, especially during the early stages of the product life cycle. The structures defined for the models allow information interactions between them and with application software; these interactions are essential to support an effective concurrent environment. The Product Model is a source and repository of the product information, whilst the Manufacturing Model holds information about the manufacturing processes and resources of an enterprise. A combination of methods was proposed in order to define the structure for the information models. An experimental software system was created and used to show that the structure defined for the Product Model and the Manufacturing Model can support· a range of assembly-related software applications through the concurrent development of the product, system and process, from conceptual design through to planning. The applications implemented in the experimental system were Design for Assembly and Assembly Process Planning. The real data used for the tests was obtained from an industrial collaborator who manufactures large electrical machines. This research contributes to the understanding of. the general structural requirements of the decision support systems based on information models, and to the integration of Design for Assembly and Assembly Process Planning

Continuous Rationale Management

Continuous Software Engineering (CSE) is a software life cycle model open to frequent changes in requirements or technology. During CSE, software developers continuously make decisions on the requirements and design of the software or the development process. They establish essential decision knowledge, which they need to document and share so that it supports the evolution and changes of the software. The management of decision knowledge is called rationale management. Rationale management provides an opportunity to support the change process during CSE. However, rationale management is not well integrated into CSE. The overall goal of this dissertation is to provide workflows and tool support for continuous rationale management. The dissertation contributes an interview study with practitioners from the industry, which investigates rationale management problems, current practices, and features to support continuous rationale management beneficial for practitioners. Problems of rationale management in practice are threefold: First, documenting decision knowledge is intrusive in the development process and an additional effort. Second, the high amount of distributed decision knowledge documentation is difficult to access and use. Third, the documented knowledge can be of low quality, e.g., outdated, which impedes its use. The dissertation contributes a systematic mapping study on recommendation and classification approaches to treat the rationale management problems. The major contribution of this dissertation is a validated approach for continuous rationale management consisting of the ConRat life cycle model extension and the comprehensive ConDec tool support. To reduce intrusiveness and additional effort, ConRat integrates rationale management activities into existing workflows, such as requirements elicitation, development, and meetings. ConDec integrates into standard development tools instead of providing a separate tool. ConDec enables lightweight capturing and use of decision knowledge from various artifacts and reduces the developers' effort through automatic text classification, recommendation, and nudging mechanisms for rationale management. To enable access and use of distributed decision knowledge documentation, ConRat defines a knowledge model of decision knowledge and other artifacts. ConDec instantiates the model as a knowledge graph and offers interactive knowledge views with useful tailoring, e.g., transitive linking. To operationalize high quality, ConRat introduces the rationale backlog, the definition of done for knowledge documentation, and metrics for intra-rationale completeness and decision coverage of requirements and code. ConDec implements these agile concepts for rationale management and a knowledge dashboard. ConDec also supports consistent changes through change impact analysis. The dissertation shows the feasibility, effectiveness, and user acceptance of ConRat and ConDec in six case study projects in an industrial setting. Besides, it comprehensively analyses the rationale documentation created in the projects. The validation indicates that ConRat and ConDec benefit CSE projects. Based on the dissertation, continuous rationale management should become a standard part of CSE, like automated testing or continuous integration

First experiences with the implementation of the European standard EN 62304 on medical device software for the quality assurance of a radiotherapy unit

BACKGROUND: According to the latest amendment of the Medical Device Directive standalone software qualifies as a medical device when intended by the manufacturer to be used for medical purposes. In this context, the EN 62304 standard is applicable which defines the life-cycle requirements for the development and maintenance of medical device software. A pilot project was launched to acquire skills in implementing this standard in a hospital-based environment (in-house manufacture). METHODS: The EN 62304 standard outlines minimum requirements for each stage of the software life-cycle, defines the activities and tasks to be performed and scales documentation and testing according to its criticality. The required processes were established for the pre-existent decision-support software FlashDumpComparator (FDC) used during the quality assurance of treatment-relevant beam parameters. As the EN 62304 standard implicates compliance with the EN ISO 14971 standard on the application of risk management to medical devices, a risk analysis was carried out to identify potential hazards and reduce the associated risks to acceptable levels. RESULTS: The EN 62304 standard is difficult to implement without proper tools, thus open-source software was selected and integrated into a dedicated development platform. The control measures yielded by the risk analysis were independently implemented and verified, and a script-based test automation was retrofitted to reduce the associated test effort. After all documents facilitating the traceability of the specified requirements to the corresponding tests and of the control measures to the proof of execution were generated, the FDC was released as an accessory to the HIT facility. CONCLUSIONS: The implementation of the EN 62304 standard was time-consuming, and a learning curve had to be overcome during the first iterations of the associated processes, but many process descriptions and all software tools can be re-utilized in follow-up projects. It has been demonstrated that a standards-compliant development of small and medium-sized medical software can be carried out by a small team with limited resources in a clinical setting. This is of particular relevance as the upcoming revision of the Medical Device Directive is expected to harmonize and tighten the current legal requirements for all European in-house manufacturers

Sistem Pendukung Keputusan Seleksi Beasiswa Menggunakan Metode Topsis Berbasis WEB (Studi Kasus Beasiswa Bank Indonesia)

Basically, the decision support system is a computer-based system that helps in the decision-making process. A Decision Support System is a computer system that processes data into information to make decisions from specific semi-structured problems that were specifically developed to support solutions to unstructured management problems to improve the quality of decision-making. This support system helps in the decision-making process in selecting the internal administration of Bank Indonesia scholarships at Hamzanwadi University. In this decision support system, criteria are needed to determine who will be selected to receive the scholarship. In this study, the author uses the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method as a decision-making method. The TOPSIS method was chosen because it is used to find alternatives with certain criteria. The method used in the preparation and design of the application to be built is to use the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) method with a design using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with object-oriented programming concepts. The system that has been made is said to be suitable for use because the results of the recommendations are in accordance with user expectations and the scholarship selection process becomes more effective and efficient

Facilitating mas complete life cycle through the protégé-prometheus approach

The approach of this paper aims to support the complete multi-agent systems life cycle, integrated by two existing and widely accepted tools, Protégé Ontology Editor and Knowledge-Base Framework, and Prometheus Development Kit. A general sequence of steps facilitating application creation is proposed in this paper. We propose that it seems reasonable to integrate all traditional software development stages into one single methodology. This view provides a general approach for MAS creation, starting with problem definition and resulting in program coding, deployment and maintenance. The proposal is successfully being applied to situation assessment issues, which has concluded in an agent-based decision-support system for environmental impact evaluation

Life Cycle Data Network: Handbook for data developers and providers

After its debut in the European Commission’s Integrated Product Policy (COM (2003)302) as the “best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products”, Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) and Assessment (LCA) has become increasingly used in support of community policies and business. Focus has been primarily on establishing agreed methods, both within Europe and internationally. The EC’s European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA) has continued to address the equally essential issue of data availability, coherence, and quality assurance. LCA has become an important approach to boost smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in the EU. As an example, in the context of the Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative “A Resource Efficient Europe” , and the “Single Market for Green Products Communication” and related European Commission Recommendation for the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) Guides . These methodologies reflect a vital milestone in the aim to increase coherence and quality in the assessment of environmental performance of products and organisations. Other prominent applications include in support of the Waste Framework Directive, the Eco-design Directive, EU Ecolabel and EU GPP, the Raw Materials Initiative, the bio economy strategy, as well as providing a more advanced basis for indicators and targets accounting for the burdens of EU imports and exports to help focus policies and research funding. Life Cycle Thinking is essential in modern decision making in business and policy. Commonly implemented through Life Cycle Assessment, it is increasingly necessary to quantify the benefits and burdens associated with products, both goods and services, that occur in their supply chains, during use, as well as at the end-of-their lives. This helps to avoid the shifting of burdens between different geographic regions, generations and impacts. Within this framework, the EPLCA, developed by the JRC, together with DG-Environment, represents the reference point for data and methods essential to implementing Life Cycle based approaches. The EPLCA promotes the availability of data and information, with a focus on coherence and quality assurance. Although methodology development is advancing fast, the availability of coherent, quality-assured life cycle data and studies still represents a major challenge to mainstream the use of LCA and associated environmental footprint methods in business and in policy. To date, the EPLCA has facilitated several notable developments: - The Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN); launched in early 2014, aims at providing a globally usable infrastructure for consistent and quality assured life cycle data. - The European Reference Life Cycle Database (ELCD); comprises of Life Cycle emissions and resource consumption Inventory (LCI) data from front-running EU-level business associations and other sources for key materials, energy carriers, transport, and waste management, to be used as source for secondary data. - The Resource Directory (RD); provides a structured repository for several types of life cycle-based documents and studies, as well as a world-wide list of life cycle support software packages and databases from suppliers/developers, and service providers. - The Reviewer Registry (RR): provides a list of potential reviewers for different LCA schemes, and automatically assess the eligibility of single reviewers and reviewers’ teams, according to different levels of compliance. This guide provides comprehensive instructions on how to utilize the Life Cycle Data Network (LCDN) for publishing LCA data. It summarizes how to orchestrate the various tools in order to guide the data developers through the entire process from generation of a dataset to publication on the LCDN. Further and more detailed documentation for the individual steps can be found in the annexes to this technical report. In principle, the following steps are required in order to publish data on the LCDN and therefore covered in this document: 1. Prepare data (export from an LCA modelling tool) 2. Technical validation of the data 3. Set up a node for participation in the LCDN. 4. Upload of the data to the node 5. Publication of the data on the LCDN Beyond that, a detailed guidance on how document different ILCD-EL aspects, in three commonly used LCA software in Europe (Namely: GaBi , OpenLCA and SimaPro ), is also provided in this document. This document is providing some examples, taking into account some the above mentioned LCA software, because are the most commonly used and widespread in Europe, this does NOT imply any recommendation or endorsement from the JRC or the European Commission. An exemplary dataset was used to provide an overview and understanding of how to address some compliance issues, in different software. Some general guiding principles that apply to all of the software are summarized, along with a short review of discrepancies found when exporting the dataset in ILCD format using the individual LCA software. The editable compliance elements are explained individually, showing some screenshots of different software tools. Finally a set of slides, resuming the content of this guide, is provided in annex II.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Decision support tools for concrete infrastructure rehabilitation (using FRP composites)

This report presents a summary of the research conducted by the research team of the CRC project 2002-005-C, “Decision support tools for concrete infrastructure rehabilitation”. The project scope, objectives, significance and innovation and the research methodology is outlined in the introduction, which is followed by five chapters covering different aspects of the research completed. Major findings of a review of literature conducted covering both use of fibre reinforced polymer composites in rehabilitation of concrete bridge structures and decision support frameworks in civil infrastructure asset management is presented in chapter two. Case study of development of a strengthening scheme for the “Tenthill Creek bridge” is covered in the third chapter, which summarises the capacity assessment, traditional strengthening solution and the innovative solution using FRP composites. The fourth chapter presents the methodology for development of a user guide covering selection of materials, design and application of FRP in strengthening of concrete structures, which were demonstrated using design examples. Fifth chapter presents the methodology developed for evaluating whole of life cycle costing of treatment options for concrete bridge structures. The decision support software tool developed to compare different treatment options based on reliability based whole of life cycle costing will be briefly described in this chapter as well. The report concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations for future research