A DISCUSSION ON ASSURING SOFTWARE QUALITY IN SMALL AND MEDIUM SOFTWARE ENTERPRISES: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

Under the studies of general core activities including software inspection, review and testing to achieve quality objectives in small-medium size enterprises (SMEs), the paper presents a contemporary view of such companies against quality measures. The results from a local empirical investigation of quality standards in the Turkish software industry are reported.Around 150 software companies have been approached from which 17 detailed feedback inform that in order to ensure software quality, standards including internationally recognized International Standards Organization (ISO) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) are given credit. However the substantial workload and resources required to obtain them are also reported as serious; downscaled frameworks of such large models proposed in the literature are not well known by the SMEs either. The paper also discusses "work around" that bypasses such standards to ease delivery of products while keeping certificates as labels just to acquire new jobs for the business

A Balanced Theory of Knowledge Management in Software Process Improvement

This research employs a social network analysis (SNA) approach to study the longitudinal changes in co-authorship and affiliations of authors, who published in the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) from 2001 to 2011. The research explores the structural patterns of co-authorship at the institution and individual author levels, and found research collaboration tend to occur between authors in the same regions and institutions. Descriptive findings further revealed key authors with rich and diverse co-authorship ties, as well as the tendency of authors to collaborate in silos within institutions. A longitudinal SNA method was performed to statistically deduce the changing patterns of co-authorship and affiliations from a sample of the authors in this 11-year period, which complements the descriptive findings. The discussion of our findings results in recommendations to improve the ACIS community’s productivity and in directions for future studies concerning the applications of SNA in examining research collaboration

Blending process assessment and employees competencies assessment in very small entities

The ISO/IEC 29110 series aims to provide Very Small Entities (VSEs) with a set of standards based on subsets of existing standards. Process capability determination does not seem suitable for a VSE in terms of return on investment. Our approach proposes to move the viewpoint away from process and to the human resources. We propose a blended assessment model using the ISO/IEC 15504 for the level 1, but based on competency assessment for higher capability levels

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

Methodological approaches for software process improvement in multi-model environments

Programa de Doutoramento em Informática das Universidades do Minho, de Aveiro e do PortoSoftware has improved quality of life dramatically and has now a vital role in today’s society, supporting simple services that range from simple electronic shopping to software responsible for flying planes or performing remote medical surgery. The demand on services is increasing and the result are systems of software that grow in size and complexity. For that reason these software systems are more prone to faults and software quality is an increasing concern for organisations developing software. The costs associated to lack of quality can simply put a software organisation out of business and worst, result in loss of human life. The need to ensure high levels of software quality motivates organisations to adopt approaches to improve their software development process, also referred to software improvement models or simply improvement models. There are two paradigms to process improvement, the benchmark and the analytical based process improvement approaches. Benchmark based approaches are prescriptive in nature, defining requirements or prescribing a set of practices originating from top performing organisations, that are adopted by organisations aiming to improve their software process. Analytical approaches are based on strategies that aim first, to define business, process and product goals and then establish a clear understating of the impact of process performance in these goals. A recent trend in software process improvement in the adoption of more than one improvement model into a single organisational environment, originating what are denominated multi-model environments. The goal is to attain the cumulative added benefit of adopted models. Several challenges arise in these multi-model environments that motivate the research work of this dissertation. One challenge in multi-model environments is the comparison of improvement models for selection and integration purposes and existing approaches compare models in qualitative terms. We propose metrics of size and complexity to compare improvement models in quantitative terms. Additionally, in multi-model environments, ensuring compliance to model adopted is often expected and desired. We develop a model to manage compliance of organisational practices with multiple improvement models minimising the effort required for establishing compliance in these environments. In cooperation with CRITICAL Software S.A. a process improvement process is proposed alighted with the analytical paradigm to process improvement and a set of CMMI-Dev level 5 specific goals. Finally we also addressed the issue of modelling complex system of processes that result from adopting multiple improvement models. The main research method guiding this dissertation was Design Research. We followed the steps in the method in different extents. For validation purposes the method expects demonstration and experimental validation. We focussed mainly on demonstration and we lack the desired level of experimentation. Nonetheless we provide detailed demonstrations of proposed solutions. These were submitted and accepted in peer reviewed international conferences. The main contribution of this dissertation is the demonstration, through practical scenarios, of a set to meteorological approaches to addresses challenges on conducting software process improvement in multi-model environments.O Software melhorou a qualidade de vida de uma forma considerável e assume agora um papel vital no suporte a simples serviços como pagamentos eletrónicos a software que é responsável pelo voo em aviões e por possibilitar cirurgia médica remota. A procura por novos serviços baseados em software está a aumentar e a diversificar-se. O resultado prático é que os sistemas de software estão a aumentar em tamanho e em complexidade. Por esta razão, estes sistemas incorrem num maior risco de exibir falhas e a qualidade do Software é uma procuração crescente nas organizações que desenvolvem software. Falta de qualidade pode simplesmente levar uma empresa à falência ou no pior cenário, resultar em perda de vidas humanas. A necessidade de assegurar elevados níveis de qualidade no software motiva as organizações a adotar abordagens para melhoria do processo de desenvolvimento de software, também referidas como modelos de melhoria do software ou simplesmente modelos de qualidade. Existem dois paradigmas na melhoria do processo de desenvolvimento de software, uma primeira abordagem baseada em práticas de referência e uma segunda abordagem de base analítica. As abordagens baseadas em práticas de referência assumem um carácter prescritivo definindo um conjunto de requisitos ou práticas, originárias de organizações com processos de desenvolvimento com elevados níveis de desempenho. Os modelos resultantes são adotados pelas organizações que procuram idênticos níveis de desempenho. As abordagens analíticas são alicerçadas em estratégias que visam numa primeira fase definir objetivos de negócio, de processo e de produto e depois perceber, de uma forma clara o impacto das fraquezas da organização na capacidade de esta atingir os objetivos identificados. Uma vaga recente no domínio da melhoria do processo de software é a adoção de mais do que um modelo de melhoria pela mesma organização, originando os denominados ambientes de melhoria multi-modelo. O objetivo é acumular os benefícios dos modelos adotados. Novos desafios emergem nestes ambientes que motivam o esforço de investigação desta dissertação. Um desafio nestes ambientes ´e a comparação de modelos de qualidade para efeitos de seleção e integração. As abordagens existentes permitem comparar os modelos de uma forma qualitativa. No ˆâmbito desta dissertação um dos contributos ´e uma pro posta de métricas de tamanho e de complexidade de forma a permitir uma comparação de base quantitativa. De igual forma, nos ambientes multi-modelo, assegurar o alinhamento das práticas organizacionais com os modelos adotados ´e na maior parte das vezes um requisito. No âmbito desta dissertação propomos um modelo que permite gerir a informação sobres as práticas organizacionais implementadas e os requisitos/práticas prescritas pelos modelos de melhoria adotados com o objetivo de minimizar o esforço necessário para assegurar o alinhamento de práticas organizacionais e os modelos adotados. Adicionalmente e em parceria com a empresa CRITICAL Software S.A., é proposto um processo para a melhoria do processo de desenvolvimento de software alinhado com a abordagem analítica de melhoria de processos e com os objetivos específicos da área de processo de nível 5 do CMMI-Dev. Finalmente, abordamos o problema de modelação de processos de software de elevada complexidade que resultam tipicamente da adoção de vários modelos de qualidade. É proposta uma abordagem de modelação de processos a níveis elevados de abstração que permite o seu refinamento para modelos de mais baixo nível, baseado num conjunto de regras de transição que permite a sua conversão de uma forma sistemática. A metodologia de investigação adotada nesta dissertação foi Design Research e executámos os passos expectáveis da metodologia na extensão possível. No objetivo de validação, o método espera o uso de demonstrações e de experimentação. O nosso principal foco foi a demonstração, não tendo sido possível atingir o nível de experimentação desejável. Porém, o detalhe e extensão das descrições nas demonstrações é elevado e o trabalho foi submetido e aceite em conferências internacionais da área. A contribuição desta dissertação é a demonstração, através de cenários práticos, de um conjunto de abordagens para endereçar desafios emergentes nas organizações que adotam múltiplos modelos de qualidade na melhoria do processo de software