Towards a framework for work package allocation for GSD

Proceeding of: Proceeding of: OTM 2011 Workshops: Confederated International Workshops and Posters: EI2N+NSF ICE, ICSP+INBAST, ISDE, ORM, OTMA, SWWS+MONET+SeDeS, and VADER 2011, Hersonissos, Crete, Greece, October 17-21, 2011Global software development is an inexorable trend in the software industry. The impact of the trend in conventional software development can be found in many of its aspects. One of them is task or work package allocation. Task allocation was traditionally driven by resource competency and availability but GSD introduces new complexities to this process including time-zones differences, costs and cultural differences. In this work a report on the construction of a framework for work-package allocation within GSD projects is presented. This framework lies on three main pillars: individual and organizational competency, organizational customization and sound assessment methods.This work is supported by the Spanish Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI) under the Eureka Project E! 6244 PROPS-Tour and the national cooperation project SEM-IDi (IDI-20091150)

A discussion on the Role of People in Global Software Development.

Literature is producing a considerable amount of papers which focus on the risks, challenges and solutions of global software development (GSD). However, the influence of human factors on the success of GSD projects requires further study. The aim of our paper is twofold. First, to identify the challenges related to the human factors in GSD and, second, to propose the solution(s), which could help in solving or reducing the overall impact of these challenges. The main conclusions of this research can be valuable to organizations that are willing to achieve the quality objectives regarding GSD projects

Satellite edge computing for real-time and very-high resolution Earth observation

In real-time and high-resolution Earth observation imagery, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites capture images that are subsequently transmitted to ground to create an updated map of an area of interest. Such maps provide valuable information for meteorology or environmental monitoring, but can also be employed in near-real time operation for disaster detection, identification, and management. However, the amount of data generated by these applications can easily exceed the communication capabilities of LEO satellites, leading to congestion and packet dropping. To avoid these problems, the Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs) can be used to distribute the data among the satellites for processing. In this paper, we address an energy minimization problem based on a general satellite mobile edge computing (SMEC) framework for real-time and very-high resolution Earth observation. Our results illustrate that the optimal allocation of data and selection of the compression parameters increase the amount of images that the system can support by a factor of 12 when compared to directly downloading the data. Further, energy savings greater than 11% were observed in a real-life scenario of imaging a volcanic island, while a sensitivity analysis of the image acquisition process demonstrates that potential energy savings can be as high as 92%.Comment: submitted for publication to IEEE Transactions in Communication

Developing a methodology to balance benefit-sharing : application in the context of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction

The effectiveness and success of benefit-sharing measures to date, particularly in contributing towards the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, has been questionable. This is likely related to the degree of beneficial impacts versus burden on the users and regulatory authorities in terms of administrative complexities. It is, therefore, timely to reconsider which forms of benefit-sharing may most favourably balance the associated beneficial and burdensome aspects. The aim of this paper is to develop and demonstrate a benefit-sharing balance methodology which can be used as a tool to help decision-makers to select options in an objective and transparent manner. Application in the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction context provides a useful example of how this tool can be used. Results suggest that sharing of genetic sequence data and research results provide the most favourable balance in terms of non-monetary benefit sharing, whilst the most favourable monetary benefit-sharing options were associated with research funding and salaries. The benefit-sharing balance methodology presented here provides a useful tool and starting point, which can be built upon in the future, to include more detailed information gathered from expert groups to consolidate the perceived balance of beneficial impacts versus burden. In addition, the equation can be tailored according to different policy settings where different benefit-sharing factors may be more appropriate. Ultimately, use of this tool could help to enhance implementation of benefit-sharing policies/legislation with greater potential to balance beneficial impacts with associated burden, thereby enhancing workability of the access and benefit-sharing system as a whole

A Hybrid Model for Dynamic Simulation of Custom Software Projects in a Multiproject Environment

This paper describes SimHiProS, a hybrid simulation model of software production. The goal is to gain insight on the dynamics induced by resource sharing in multiproject management. In order to achieve it the hierarchy of decisions in a multiproject organization is modeled and some resource allocation methods based on algorithms from the OR/AI domain are used. Other critical issues such as the hybrid nature of software production and the effects of measurement and control are also incorporated in the model. Some first results are presented.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2004-06689-C03-03Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2007-67843-C06-0

Evaluating degrees of multitenancy isolation: a case study of cloud-hosted GSD tools.

Multitenancy is an essential cloud computing property where a single instance of an application serves multiple tenants. Multitenancy introduces significant challenges when deploying application components to the cloud due to the demand for different degrees of isolation between tenants. At the very basic degree of isolation, tenants still share application components as much as possible. However, while some components may benefit from low degree of isolation between tenants, others may need a higher degree of isolation, for instance, in a situation where a component is too critical to be shared, or needs to be configured specifically for individual tenants. This paper describes COMITRE (COmponent-based approach to Multitenancy Isolation Through request RE-routing) to empirically evaluate the degree of isolation between tenants enabled by three multitenancy patterns (i.e., shared component, tenant-isolated component, and dedicated component) for cloud-hosted Global Software Development (GSD) tools. We developed a multitenant component for each multitenancy pattern, integrated it within Hudson, and then compared their impact on different tenants. The study revealed among other things that a component deployed based on shared component offers a lower degree of tenant isolation (than tenant-isolated component and dedicated component) when one of the tenants is exposed to a demanding deployment condition (e.g, large instant loads). We also provide some recommendations to guide an architect in implementing multitenancy isolation on a set of GSD tools: Hudson, Subversion and Bugzilla

CIRA annual report FY 2016/2017

Reporting period April 1, 2016-March 31, 2017