A Model-Driven Approach for Business Process Management

The Business Process Management is a common mechanism recommended by a high number of standards for the management of companies and organizations. In software companies this practice is every day more accepted and companies have to assume it, if they want to be competitive. However, the effective definition of these processes and mainly their maintenance and execution are not always easy tasks. This paper presents an approach based on the Model-Driven paradigm for Business Process Management in software companies. This solution offers a suitable mechanism that was implemented successfully in different companies with a tool case named NDTQ-Framework.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2010-20057-C03-02Junta de Andalucía TIC-578

A Model-Driven Approach for Business Process Management

The Business Process Management is a common mechanism recommended by a high number of standards for the management of companies and organizations. In software companies this practice is every day more accepted and companies have to assume it, if they want to be competitive. However, the effective definition of these processes and mainly their maintenance and execution are not always easy tasks. This paper presents an approach based on the Model-Driven paradigm for Business Process Management in software companies. This solution offers a suitable mechanism that was implemented successfully in different companies with a tool case named NDTQ-Framework.Keywords/Index Terms: Model-Driven Web Engineering, Web Engineering, Web Development Methodologies, Business Process Managemen

Integrated Model-Centric Decision Support System for Process Industries

To bring the advances in modeling, simulation and optimization environments (MSOEs), open-software architectures, and information technology closer to process industries, novel mechanisms and advanced software tools must be devised to simplify the definition of complex model-based problems. Synergistic interactions between complementary model-based software tools must be refined to unlock the potential of model-centric technologies in industries. This dissertation presents the conceptual definition of a single and consistent framework for integrated process decision support (IMCPSS) to facilitate the realistic formulation of related model-based engineering problems. Through the integration of data management, simulation, parameter estimation, data reconciliation, and optimization methods, this framework seeks to extend the viability of model-centric technologies within the industrial workplace. The main contribution is the conceptual definition and implementation of mechanisms to ease the formulation of large-scale data-driven/model-based problems: data model definitions (DMDs), problem formulation objects (PFOs) and process data objects (PDOs). These mechanisms allow the definition of problems in terms of physical variables; to embed plant data seamlessly into model-based problems; and to permit data transfer, re-usability, and synergy among different activities. A second contribution is the design and implementation of the problem definition environment (PDE). The PDE is a robust object-oriented software component that coordinates the problem formulation and the interaction between activities by means of a user-friendly interface. The PDE administers information contained in DMD and coordinates the creation of PFOs and PIFs. Last, this dissertation contributes a systematic integration of data pre-processing and conditioning techniques and MSOEs. The proposed process data management system (pDMS) implements such methodologies. All required manipulations are supervised by the PDE, which represents an important advantage when dealing with high volumes of data. The IMCPSS responds to the need for software tools centered in process engineers for which the complexity of using current modeling environments is a barrier for broader application of model-based activities. Consequently, the IMCPSS represents a valuable tool for process industries, as the facilitation of problem formulation is translated into incorporation of plant data in less error-prone manner, maximization of time dedicated to the analysis of processes, and exploitation of synergy among activities based on process models

Amalgamation of Personal Software Process in Software Development Practice

Today, concern for quality has become an international movement. Eventhough most industrial organizations have now adopted modern qualityprinciples, the software community has continued to rely on testing as theprincipal quality management method. Different decades have different trends in software engineering. The Personal Software Process (PSP) is anevolutionary series of personal software engineering techniques that an engineer learns and practices. A software process is nothing without theindividual programmer. PSP a data driven process customized to teaching individuals about their programming styles, helping software engineers  further develop their skills in developing quality software. Apart from  discussing about PSP as a framework of techniques to help engineers and their organizations to improve their performance while simultaneously increasing product quality, in this paper, the Personal Software Process definition, principles, design, advantages and opportunities are explained focusing on the incorporation of PSP concepts in software development practice

An example of aquifer heterogeneity simulation to modeling well-head protection areas

Groundwater management requires the definition of Well-Head Protection Areas (WHPA) for water supply wells. Italian law uses geometrical, chronological and hydrogeological criteria for WHPA identification, providing a groundwater travel time of 60 days for the definition of the Zone of Travel (ZOT). An exhaustive ZOT delineation must involve numerical modeling of groundwater flow together with simulation of the advective component of the transport process. In this context, the spatial variability of hydrogeological and transport parameters has to be critically estimated during numerical modeling implementation. In the present article, geostatistical simulation using a transition probability approach and groundwater numerical modeling were performed to delineate WHPAs for several supply wells in the middle Venetian Plain, taking into account the lithologic heterogeneity of the aquifer. The transition probability approach for the lithologic data was developed by T-PROGS software, while MODDLOW-2005 and PEST-ASP were used, respectively, to reproduce and calibrate site-specific hydraulic head data. Finally, a backward particle tracking analysis was performed with MODPATH to outline the 60-day ZOT

Unconvinced, Unreconstructed, and Unrepentant: A Reply to Professor Friedman’s Response

Software defined networks are poised to dramatically simplify deployment and management of networks. OpenFlow, in particular, is becoming popular and starts being deployed. While the definition of the “northbound” API that can be used by the new services to interact with an OpenFlow controller is receiving considerable attention, the traditional, “southbound”, API that is used to program OpenFlow switches is far from perfect. In this paper, we analyze the current OpenFlow API and its usage in several controllers and show semantic differences between the intended and actual use. Thus, we argue for making the OpenFlow API clean and simple. In particular, we propose to mimic the process that exists in the Python community for deriving changes that result in a preferably only one, obvious way of performing a task. Toward this end, we propose three OpenFlow Enhancement Proposals: i) providing positive acknowledgment, ii) informing the controller about “silent” modifications, and iii) providing a partial order synchronization primitive.QC 20150704</p

The measurement process in micro and small software maintenance companies: empirical study

With the dissemination of quality models and the need for measurement-based management for software organizations, a variety of approaches and models are emerging to support organizations on this journey. According to a Systematic Review of Literature that selected 30 of 692 papers returned from search sources, it was noticed the need for guidelines and guides regarding the measurement process in a specific sector: micro and small companies that work with software maintenance. In this work, an empirical study was carried out to understand how the measurement process aligned with quality models can be implemented in these organizations. The field study followed the implementation of an improvement program based on CMMI® level 2 in 7 Brazilian companies from Maringá, Paraná. Finally, it was found that the process for the definition of a measurement guide can be common to a specific group of companies, taking steps and guidelines for its execution, always aligned with the organization’s strategy, giving top management an objective view work and process, supporting decision making

MASK-SM : multi-agent system based knowledge management system to support knowledge sharing of software maintenance knowledge environment.

Knowledge management (KM) has become an important topic as organizations wish to take advantage of the information that they produce and that can be brought to bear on present decisions. This paper described a system to manage the information and knowledge generated during the software maintenance process (SMP). Knowledge Management System (KMS) is utilizing to help employees build a shared vision, since the same codification is used and misunderstanding in staff communications may be avoided. The architecture of the system is formed from a set of agent communities each community of practice(CoP) is in charge of managing a specific type of knowledge. The agents can learn from previous experience and share their knowledge with other agents or communities in a group of multi-agent system (MAS). This paper also described on the theoretical concept and approach of multi-agent technology framework that could be implemented software maintenance process (SMP) in order to facilitate knowledge sharing among the maintainers of the learning organization. as well as to demonstrate it into the system wise, on how the multi-agent technology could be utilized in the software maintenance process (SMP) system model for serving the maintainer that is developed by using groupware such as Lotus Notes software. This architecture will be named as MASK-SM (MAS Architecture to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing of Software Maintenance). The author followed the Prometheus methodology to design the MAS architecture. This paper applied the definition of ISO 9241-11 (1998) that examines effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The emphasis will be given to the software maintenance process (SMP) activities that may concern with multi-agent technology to help the maintainers especially in learning organization to work collaboratively including critical success factor in order to ensure that software maintenance process (SMP) initiatives would be delivered competitive advantage for the community of practice(CoP) as well as users of the organization

Tools collaboration for deployment of a requirements engineering process

International audienceThe first steps of the system and requirements engineering phases of any project are to define the management aspects (management plan, requirements engineering process, schedule management) and the project specifications, in the widest sense: collection, analysis and synthesis of the need expressions from all stakeholders, and definition of requirements to express this need. Then requirements will be allocated, changed, reorganized , and tracked during all the project lifecycle. So the first priority is to have a process, even a simple one, then it's helpful to have this process supported by tools. A good process, even manual, is better than tools used without any process. As there is often a confusion there, it seems important to distinguish 2 steps in a requirements management process : • Requirements elicitation, identification and allocation : For this step there are a lot of publications, feedbacks and studies. These requirements are usually formalized in 'Specifications' documents for the development teams or the subcontractors, • Once formalized, the requirements have to be implemented and tested by the hardware and software development teams. This is the 'requirements traceability'. Requirements and implementation artefacts often change, and the impact of each change must be analyzed

THE KNOWLEDGE-GAP REDUCTION IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Many papers proposed in the software engineering and information systems literature are dedicated to analysis of software projects missing their schedules, exceeding their budgets, delivering software products with poor quality and in some cases even wrong functionality. The expression “software crisis” has been coined since the late 60’s to illustrate this phenomenon. Various solutions has been proposed by academics and practitioners in order to deal with the software crisis, counter these trends and improve productivity and software quality. Such solutions recommend software process improvement as the best way to build software products needed by modern organizations. Among the well-known solutions, many are based either on software development tools or on software development approaches, methods, processes, and notations. Nevertheless, the scope of these solutions seems to be limited and the improvements they provide are often not significant. We think that since software artifacts are accumulation of knowledge owned by organizational stakeholders, the software crisis is due to a knowledge gap between resulting from the discrepancy between the knowledge integrated in software systems and the knowledge owned by organizational actors. In particular, integrating knowledge management in software development process permits reducing the knowledge gap through building software products which reflect at least partly the organization’s know-how. In this paper, we propose a framework which provides a definition of knowledge based on information systems architecture and describes how to deal with the knowledge gap of a knowledge oriented software development process which may help organizations in reducing the software crisis impacts