Engineering Trust-based Software Intensive Systems

Abstract of a keynote speech given at the Strategic Research Workshop on Engineering Software Intensive Systems

A goal model for crowdsourced software engineering

Crowdsourced Software Engineering (CSE) is the act of undertaking any external software engineering tasks by an undefined, potentially large group of online workers in an open call format. Using an open call, CSE recruits global online labor to work on various types of software engineering tasks, such as requirements extraction, design, coding and testing. The field is rising rapidly and touches various aspects of software engineering. CSE has grown significance in both academy and industry. Despite of the enormous usage and significance of CSE, there are many open challenges reported by various researchers. In order to overcome the challenges and realizing the full potential of CSE, it is highly important to understand the concrete advantages and goals of CSE. In this paper, we present a goal model for CSE, to understand the real environment of CSE, and to explore the aspects that can somehow overcome the aforementioned challenges. The model is designed using RiSD, a method for building Strategic Dependency (SD) models in the i* notation, applied in this work using iStar2.0. This work can be considered useful for CSE stakeholders (Requesters, Workers, Platform owners and CSE organizations).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Software acquisition: a business strategy analysis

The paper argues that there are new insights to be gained from a strategic analysis of requirements engineering. The paper is motivated by a simple question: what does it take to be a world class software acquirer? The question has relevance for requirements engineers because for many organisations market pressures mean that software is commonly acquired rather than developed from scratch. The paper builds on the work of C. H. Fine (1998) who suggests that product, process and supply chain should be designed together, i.e., 3D concurrent engineering. Using a number of reference theories, it proposes a systematic way of carrying out 3D concurrent engineering. The paper concludes that the critical activity in supply chain design is the design of the distribution of skills and the nature of contract

Using The Morphological Analysis Perspective (MAP) In Software Engineering Project Management

Corporations require well defined strategies and successful implementation of strategic solutions in order to survive, facilitate growth, and remain competitive. In the current internet enabled economy, software development plays an increasing role in the implementation of corporate strategic solutions. The development of software product solutions aligned to corporate strategy help facilitate business success. The focus of this thesis is to present the Morphological Analysis Perspective (MAP) as an effective methodology that provides a link between corporate strategic planning processes that identify strategic problems and software engineering project processes used to implement solutions to corporate problems. The MAP enables the visualization of the total problem set, facilitates the reduction of a large total problem set to a smaller manageable solution set, and provides traceability between high-level strategic goals and software engineering project requirements.M.S

An approach to reconcile the agile and CMMI contexts in product line development

Software product line approaches produce reusable platforms and architectures for products set developed by specific companies. These approaches are strategic in nature requiring coordination, discipline, commonality and communication. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) contains important guidelines for process improvement, and specifies "what" we must have into account to achieve the disciplined processes (among others things). On the other hand, the agile context is playing an increasingly important role in current software engineering practices, specifying "how" the software practices must be addressed to obtain agile processes. In this paper, we carry out a preliminary analysis for reconciling agility and maturity models in software product line domain, taking advantage of both.Postprint (published version

Modelling the Strategic Alignment of Software Requirements using Goal Graphs

This paper builds on existing Goal Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) research by presenting a methodology with a supporting tool for analysing and demonstrating the alignment between software requirements and business objectives. Current GORE methodologies can be used to relate business goals to software goals through goal abstraction in goal graphs. However, we argue that unless the extent of goal-goal contribution is quantified with verifiable metrics and confidence levels, goal graphs are not sufficient for demonstrating the strategic alignment of software requirements. We introduce our methodology using an example software project from Rolls-Royce. We conclude that our methodology can improve requirements by making the relationships to business problems explicit, thereby disambiguating a requirement's underlying purpose and value.Comment: v2 minor updates: 1) bitmap images replaced with vector, 2) reworded related work ref[6] for clarit

Scaffolding Strategic Planning and Reflection within Software Engineering Student Team

Strategic planning is essential for a student software engineering team to successfully accomplish a project. Often student software teams struggle with planning, because it is hard for novices to distribute work among teammates, identify tasks, prioritize development tasks, and know how much time they should invest in each task. In other words, students struggle to self-regulate their learning. Prior work in this area typically focuses on an individual, and does not promote iterative reflection and feedback on a collaboratively created plan. In this paper, we introduce Software Engineering Team Strategic Planning (SETS Planning), a novel strategic planning and reflection technique that helps student teams plan software development tasks. We conducted a pilot test of our planning technique in an undergraduate Software Engineering course over two semesters. We report student perceptions of the experience, how students used and deviated from their plans, and teamwork challenges. Our findings show that when teams used our planning technique, recognizing and following the development tasks was smoother, students were more organized in team works, and estimating development time was closer to actual time. We also found that when teams use our process, they generate data that reveals the high performers and low performers within a team and helps the TA provide better help to a team

Towards an Approach for Analysing the Strategic Alignment of Software Requirements using Quantified Goal Graphs

Analysing the strategic alignment of software requirements primarily provides assurance to stakeholders that the software-to-be will add value to the organisation. Additionally, such analysis can improve a requirement by disambiguating its purpose and value, thereby supporting validation and value-oriented decisions in requirements engineering processes, such as prioritisation, release planning, and trade-off analysis. We review current approaches that could enable such an analysis. We focus on Goal Oriented Requirements Engineering methodologies, since goal graphs are well suited for relating software goals to business goals. However, we argue that unless the extent of goal-goal contribution is quantified with verifiable metrics, goal graphs are not sufficient for demonstrating the strategic alignment of software requirements. Since the concept of goal contribution is predictive, what results is a forecast of the benefits of implementing software requirements. Thus, we explore how the description of the contribution relationship can be enriched with concepts such as uncertainty and confidence, non-linear causation, and utility. We introduce the approach using an example software project from Rolls-Royce.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1211.625