Culture dimensions in software development industry: The effects of mentoring

Software development is a human centric and sociotechnical activity and like all human activities is influenced by cultural factors. However, software engineering is being further affected because of the globalization in software development. As a result, cultural diversity is influencing software development and its outcomes. The software engineering industry, a very intensive industry regarding human capital, is facing a new era in which software development personnel must adapt to multicultural work environments. Today, many organizations present a multicultural workforce which needs to be managed. This paper analyzes the influence of culture on mentoring relationships within the software engineering industry. Two interesting findings can be concluded from our study: (1) cultural differences affect both formal and informal mentoring, and (2) technical competences are not improved when implementing mentoring relationships

Software entrepreneurism in Korea

노트 : Since 1994, the authors have been directing a study of the worldwide software industry at the Stanford Computer Industry Project (SCIP). Initiated with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, SCIP has sponsored a broad range of research activities at the School of Engineering, the School of Humanities and Sciences, the Graduate School of Business, and the Institute for International Studies. SCIP’s Software Industry Study has systematically identified and analyzed the issues that will shape the commercial use of software, including piracy, patents, antitrust, project management, the Internet, globalization, litigation, software quality, project failures, systems and device failures, the global talent supply, and the education of software professionals. Most recently, the study has focused on the globalization of the software industry, the worldwide shortage of talented software people, and changes in the financing of software R&D

Requirements Prioritization Techniques for Global Software Engineering

Increase in globalization of the industry of software requires an exploration of requirements engineering (RE) in software development institutes at multiple locations. Requirements engineering task is very complicated when it is performed at single site, but it becomes too much complex when stakeholder groups define well-designed requirements under language, time zone and cultural limits. Requirements prioritization (RP) is considered as an imperative part of software requirements engineering in which requirements are ranked to develop best-quality software. In this research, a comparative study of the requirements prioritization techniques was done to overcome the challenges initiated by the corporal distribution of stakeholders within the organization at multiple locations. The objective of this study was to make a comparison between five techniques for prioritizing software requirements and to discuss the results for global software engineering. The selected techniques were Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Cumulative Voting (CV), Value Oriented Prioritization (VOP), Binary Search Tree (BST), and Numerical Assignment Technique (NAT). At the end of the research a framework for Global Software Engineering (GSE) was proposed to prioritize the requirements for stakeholders at distributed locations

Towards a new vision of Information System Engineering.

Information Technologies bear the potential of new uses. These uses provoke a new organization which induces a new vision of software engineering. Under the influence of globalization, and the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that modify radically our relationship with space and time, the hierarchical company locked up on its local borders becomes an Extended Company, without borders, opened and adaptable. In this context, this paper proposes a shift in the way the design of information systems is viewed, so that the digital information system and potential user are in harmony right from the design stage of the system. The goal is to help to design systems that are useful. It will therefore be a matter of distributed intelligence of the situation in terms of interactions and cooperative partners rather than in terms of a more passive user. This means putting at the disposal of the user, seen as a "partner", a system that will help him or her think more efficiently about a situation. The approach adopted is a global philosophy based on business process management within the framework of all the methodological principles. The research described here is therefore a contribution to the software engineering.User; Software Engineering; Information System; Business Process Management; Extended Company; Digital Information System;

The Country-specific Organizational and Information Architecture of ERP Systems at Globalised Enterprises

The competition on the market forces companies to adapt to the changing environment. Most recently, the economic and financial crisis has been accelerating the alteration of both business and IT models of enterprises. The forces of globalization and internationalization motivate the restructuring of business processes and consequently IT processes. To depict the changes in a unified framework, we need the concept of Enterprise Architecture as a theoretical approach that deals with various tiers, aspects and views of business processes and different layers of application, software and hardware systems. The paper outlines a wide-range theoretical background for analyzing the re-engineering and re-organization of ERP systems at international or transnational companies in the middle-sized EU member states. The research carried out up to now has unravelled the typical structural changes, the models for internal business networks and their modification that reflect the centralization, decentralization and hybrid approaches. Based on the results obtained recently, a future research program has been drawn up to deepen our understanding of the trends within the world of ERP systems.Information System; ERP; Enterprise Resource Planning; Enterprise Architecture; Globalization; Centralization; Decentralization; Hybrid

INTERKULTURALNI SOFTVERSKI INŽENJERING

One of the leading trends in software development is globalization. This trend can be seen from two different viewpoints: the software development in distributed cross-cultural organizations and the products distributed in the global market. The latter aspect means that developers must recognize the cultural differences of the users and produce adaptable, culturally sensitive products. This aspect will be left outside the scope of this paper. Instead, we will concentrate on analyzing the complexity caused by the globalization of software engineering work. Globalization is mostly motivated by economic reasons – a cheaper workforce is expected to reduce the costs of the work. However, in practice, it is not only a question of economics. Globalization has consequences in management culture, in distribution of the work, in ways of communication, and in many other aspects. In our paper we will open the discussion on the problems of the globalization of software development work. In spite of the importance of the topic only a few public studies on it are available. The paper analyzes the different organizational aspects of globalization and reviews experiences based on practical studies of the topic. The goal is to recognize the right kind of globalization path and also to point out the key issues worth recognizing when making the decision whether to globalize.Jedan od vodećih trendova u razvoju softvera je globalizacija. Na ovaj trend možemo gledati s dva stajališta: razvoja softvera u distribuiranim interkulturalnim organizacijama i proizvoda distribuiranih na globalnom tržištu. Potonje gledište znači da sudionici u razvoju istih moraju prepoznati kulturološke razlike korisnika i razvititi kulturno prilagodljive proizvode. To gledište, međutim, neće biti područjem ovog rada. Umjesto toga, usredotočit ćemo se na analizu složenosti uzrokovanu globalizacijom razvoja softvera. Globalozaciju uglavnom motivira ekonomizacija – očekuje se da jeftinija radna snaga snizi cijenu proizvodnje. Međutim, u praksi ovo nije samo pitanje ekonomiziranja. Globalizacija ima svoje posljedice u kulturi upravljanja, u raspodjeli rada, načinu komuniciranja i mnogim drugim aspektima. U svom uradku otvorit ćemo raspravu o problemima globalizacije razvoja softvera. Unatoč njenoj važnosti, postoji samo nekoliko dostupnih studija objavljenih o toj temi. Uradak analizira različite organizacijske aspekte globalizacije i osvrće se na iskustva temeljena na prektičnom proučavanju teme. Cilj je prepoznati pravu vrstu puta u globalizaciju kao i ukazati na važne probleme koje valja prepoznati pri donošenju odluke o globalizaciji

Exploration and practice of talent training mode in Sino-foreign cooperative schools -- taking Software engineering as an example

With the deepening of globalization, Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools plays an important role in China’s higher education. Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools refers to the degree education program set up by Chinese higher education institutions and foreign higher education institutions. This mode of cooperation can not only provide Chinese students with broader learning opportunities and international educational resources, but also promote educational exchanges and cooperation between China and foreign countries. As an important subject in the field of information technology, software engineering has broad employment prospects and development potential, so it has been widely used and promoted in Chinese-foreign cooperative education. This paper will take the software engineering major as an example to explore and practice the talent training model of Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools, aiming to provide reference for other majors and Chinese-foreign cooperation in running schools

Semantically valid integration of development processes and toolchains

As an indispensable component of today’s world economy and an increasing success factor in production and other processes, as well as products, software needs to handle a growing number of specific requirements and influencing factors that are driven by globalization. Two common success factors in the domain of Software Systems Engineering are standardized software development processes and process-supported toolchains. Development processes should be formally integrated with toolchains. The sequence and the results of toolchains must also be validated with the specifications of the development process on several levels. The outcome of a conceptual deductive analysis is that there is neither a formal general mapping nor a generally accepted validation mechanism for the challenges that such an integrated concept faces. To close this research gap, this paper focuses on the core issue of the integration of development processes and toolchains in order to create benefits for modeling and automatization in the domain of systems engineering. Therefore, it describes a self-developed integration approach related to the recently introduced prototypical technical implementation TOPWATER. A unified metamodel specifies how processes and toolchains are linked by a general mapping mechanism that considers test options for the structural, content, and semantic levels

Outsourcing Strategies in Software Engineering

Over the last several years, software has become a vital component of almost every business. Success increasingly depends on using software as a competitive weapon [1]. In today’s software industry, many organizations are realizing that outsourcing is becoming an imperative, strategic step to growing their business, and as a way to gain competitive advantage over its competitors. The focus of this article, will be a literature review of current literature on outsourcing, and its strategies in the Software Engineering domain. As a software engineer at Intel, I have seen an increased need for outsourcing within our business group, and the entire software domain as a whole. This has become a necessity, in order to stay competitive, in an increasingly competitive, and challenging environment. Globalization, and the growth of communication technologies, has allowed the Globalization, and the growth of communication technologies, has allowed the world to become a place where companies are not limited to work in local areas, they can look for expertise throughout the world. Unlike physical goods, software components, if required, can be transferred to the place where required expertise is available, and the cost is also less. To stay competitive in this ever-changing environment, managers must be able to know when the right time to outsource is, and when is not a good time to pursue this strategy. Additionally, they need to be able to identify what business functions to outsource, and what not to. Outsourcing, can be an immense source of competitive advantage for a company, if leveraged correctly, accordingly, it can be a weakness, if not deployed correctly

Project Controls and Management Systems : current practice and how it has changed over the past decade

Project Controls and Management System (PCMS) refers to an ecosystem of processes, tools and personnel required for the proper planning and execution of capital projects throughout the different phases of design, procurement, construction and startup. This can be divided into different focus areas (functions) that would include Estimating, Planning, Scheduling, Cost Control, Change Management, Progressing, and Forecasting. Various trends such as globalization, contractor specialization and information technology developments have impacted the way PCMS are implemented and made it the subject of extensive research over the past years to investigate how to best utilize those trends. Replicating the research methodology used in a 2011 report published by the Construction Research Institute (CII), this work aims to investigate the current status of PCMS implementation and how it has changed over the past decade. It was concluded that while the original PCMS principles are still valid, adoption has drastically changed in terms of efficiency for the majority of the functions. The research also identifies areas of potential concerns and provides recommendations for further improvement.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin