MiSFIT: Mining Software Fault Information and Types

As software becomes more important to society, the number, age, and complexity of systems grow. Software organizations require continuous process improvement to maintain the reliability, security, and quality of these software systems. Software organizations can utilize data from manual fault classification to meet their process improvement needs, but organizations lack the expertise or resources to implement them correctly. This dissertation addresses the need for the automation of software fault classification. Validation results show that automated fault classification, as implemented in the MiSFIT tool, can group faults of similar nature. The resulting classifications result in good agreement for common software faults with no manual effort. To evaluate the method and tool, I develop and apply an extended change taxonomy to classify the source code changes that repaired software faults from an open source project. MiSFIT clusters the faults based on the changes. I manually inspect a random sample of faults from each cluster to validate the results. The automatically classified faults are used to analyze the evolution of a software application over seven major releases. The contributions of this dissertation are an extended change taxonomy for software fault analysis, a method to cluster faults by the syntax of the repair, empirical evidence that fault distribution varies according to the purpose of the module, and the identification of project-specific trends from the analysis of the changes

A computer integrated unified modelling approach to responsive manufacturing

Computer modelling approaches have significant potential to enable decision-making about various aspects of responsive manufacturing. In order to understand the system prior to the selection of any responsiveness strategy, multiple process segments of organisations need to be modelled. The article presents a novel systematic approach for creating coherent sets of unified enterprise, simulation and other supporting models that collectively facilitate responsiveness. In this approach, enterprise models are used to explicitly define relatively enduring relationships between (i) production planning and control (PPC) processes, that implement a particular strategy and (ii) process-oriented elements of production systems, that are work loaded by the PPC processes. Coherent simulation models, can in part be derived from the enterprise models, so that they computer execute production system behaviours. In this way, time-based performance outcomes can be simulated; so that the impacts of alternative PPC strategies on the planning and controlling historical or forecasted patterns of workflow, through (current and possible future) production system models, can be analysed. The article describes the unified modelling approach conceived and its application in a furniture industry case study small and medium enterprise (SME)

Contractor’s Competencies, Business Strategy and Business Performance: A Structural Model

Many construction firms in developing countries have encompassed Competencies and business strategies that are thought to represent two harmonizing paradigm dimensions of any organization in need to grow and or develop within a multidisciplinary business sector. This study aimed to examine the correlation between the two dimensions toward business performance improvement. Using a structured questionnaire survey instrument, a sample from a high-ranked class construction firms listed by Contractors Registration Board were used to test the raised hypothesis.  Ninety-three (93) equal to (67.9%) response rate of the well-administered questionnaires were returned from more than ten years of experienced respondents purposively sampled. Data analysis was performed using Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS-24) to produce descriptive and inferential information. SPSS-AMOS software was also used to develop the structural model for the study.  The findings of the study have shown the presence of a positive significant correlation between firm capabilities, business strategies, and performance improvement. The relationship between the dimensions has predicted the empirical evidence for the presence of benefits between construct to facilitate the future construction business performance improvement. The study has presented the model suggesting potential dimensions to construction industry practitioners and stakeholders to improve business performance

Understanding task inter-dependence and co-ordination efforts in multi-sourcing: the suppliers' perspective

The last decade has witnessed a significant growth in the outsourcing of information technologies and business processes. Of a particular trend within the outsourcing industry is the shift from the client firm contracting a single supplier to utilizing multiple suppliers, which is also known as multi-sourcing. Multi-sourcing may potentially offer numerous advantages to client firms, however, it might present some challenges to suppliers. In particular, multi-sourcing could create coordination challenges, as there are inter-dependencies between the outsourced tasks to numerous suppliers. While the current outsourcing literature acknowledges the existence of inter-dependencies, little is known about the efforts required for coordinating the work between suppliers and how these coordination efforts are made to manage task inter-dependence. Three case studies at Pactera (case one) and TCS (cases two and three) serve as the empirical base to investigate the inter-dependence between outsourced tasks and suppliers coordination efforts. This research offers theoretical contributions to both coordination studies and the outsourcing body of knowledge

Factors Influencing Provision of Enterprise Training: a Study of India's Information Technology (IT) Sector

Policy debates and academic research have emphasised the need for investment in human capital for improving national and organisational competitiveness and reducing unemployment. However, limited attempts have been undertaken to understand the factors that explain a firm's decision to invest in training. Most studies have been undertaken in the context of manufacturing firms in developed countries. Extant training demand models do not fully explicate the reasons for differences in training provision between firms operating in one industry sector. Further, the extant literature has often neglected a much cited need to consider, among other external factors, the influence of an organisation's clients on its decision to invest in training. Finally, little is known of the factors that influence a firm's decision to invest in training in the context of born-global, high-technology firms in a developing country context. This thesis is an attempt to bridge the above gaps. More specifically, it addresses how various factors - internal and external to the firm - interact with each other in shaping the final provision of training. Further, the thesis explores the reasons for variations in training between firms. Owing to the still evolving state of theory and a relatively unexplored contextual setting, case study research is considered an appropriate method for this study. This thesis examines factors influencing training in ten organisations in India's IT services sector. Findings from case analysis suggest that the nature and extent of training is a result of complex interaction between an organisation's internal and external environment. An organisation's competitive strategy, the service markets it caters to, clients' specifications, workplace change, employee turnover, the temporal dimension of a process/project, and process complexity are found to be important factors in training decision-making. Contrary to the established view of training as an integral part of a firm's human resource management infrastructure, this thesis finds support for strong linkages between a firm's training infrastructure and its operations management. Further, this thesis reveals the critical and unexplored link between an organisation's quality management systems and its human resource management, as well as its learning and market orientation capabilities, in shaping the nature and extent of training. Findings from the study are then used in the development of a conceptual framework for understanding training decisionmaking in dynamic and high-growth outsourcing environments. Finally, areas for future research are identified

A model-based framework for classifying and diagnosing usability problems

A great deal of study has been devoted to the problem of how to identify and categorize usability problems; however, there is still a lack of studies dealing with the problem of how to diagnose the causes of usability problems and how to feed them back into design process. The value of classifying usability problems can be enhanced when they are interpreted in connection with design process and activities. Thus, it is necessary to develop a systematic way of diagnosing usability problems in terms of design aspects and applying diagnosis results to improve design process and activities. With this issue in mind, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that supports a systematic classification and diagnosis of usability problems. This paper firstly reviews seven approaches to classifying usability problems. Then, we point out the needs of adopting a model-based approach to classifying and diagnosing usability problems and of developing a comprehensive framework guiding the use of model-based approaches. We then propose a conceptual framework that specifies how a model-based classification and diagnosis of usability problems should be conducted and suggests the combined use of three different types of models, each of which addresses context of use, design knowledge and design activities. Last, we explain how a sound classification scheme of usability problems can be systematically developed, and how the classification of usability problems can be connected to design process and activities on the basis of the framework

An Autonomic Cross-Platform Operating Environment for On-Demand Internet Computing

The Internet has evolved into a global and ubiquitous communication medium interconnecting powerful application servers, diverse desktop computers and mobile notebooks. Along with recent developments in computer technology, such as the convergence of computing and communication devices, the way how people use computers and the Internet has changed people´s working habits and has led to new application scenarios. On the one hand, pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing and nomadic computing become more and more important since different computing devices like PDAs and notebooks may be used concurrently and alternately, e.g. while the user is on the move. On the other hand, the ubiquitous availability and pervasive interconnection of computing systems have fostered various trends towards the dynamic utilization and spontaneous collaboration of available remote computing resources, which are addressed by approaches like utility computing, grid computing, cloud computing and public computing. From a general point of view, the common objective of this development is the use of Internet applications on demand, i.e. applications that are not installed in advance by a platform administrator but are dynamically deployed and run as they are requested by the application user. The heterogeneous and unmanaged nature of the Internet represents a major challenge for the on demand use of custom Internet applications across heterogeneous hardware platforms, operating systems and network environments. Promising remedies are autonomic computing systems that are supposed to maintain themselves without particular user or application intervention. In this thesis, an Autonomic Cross-Platform Operating Environment (ACOE) is presented that supports On Demand Internet Computing (ODIC), such as dynamic application composition and ad hoc execution migration. The approach is based on an integration middleware called crossware that does not replace existing middleware but operates as a self-managing mediator between diverse application requirements and heterogeneous platform configurations. A Java implementation of the Crossware Development Kit (XDK) is presented, followed by the description of the On Demand Internet Computing System (ODIX). The feasibility of the approach is shown by the implementation of an Internet Application Workbench, an Internet Application Factory and an Internet Peer Federation. They illustrate the use of ODIX to support local, remote and distributed ODIC, respectively. Finally, the suitability of the approach is discussed with respect to the support of ODIC

Reproducibility of environment-dependent software failures: An experience report

Abstract-We investigate the dependence of software failure reproducibility on the environment in which the software is executed. The existence of such dependence is ascertained in literature, but so far it is not fully characterized. In this paper we pinpoint some of the environmental components that can affect the reproducibility of a failure and show this influence through an experimental campaign conducted on the MySQL Server software system. The set of failures of interest is drawn from MySQL's failure reports database and an experiment is designed for each of these failures. The experiments expose the influence of disk usage and level of concurrency on MySQL failure reproducibility. Furthermore, the results show that high levels of usage of these factors increase the probabilities of failure reproducibility