ISO-Standardized Requirements Activities for Very Small Entities

International audienceThe use of Software Engineering standards may promote recognized and valuable engineering practices for Very Small Entities (VSEs) but these standards do not fit the needs of VSEs. The ISO/IEC Working Group 24 (WG24) is developing the ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities; this standard is due for approval in June 2010. A pilot project about ISO 29110 use has been established between our Software Engineering group and a 14-person company building and selling counting systems about the frequentation levels of public and private sites. The pilot project aims to help VSEs deliver the Software Requirements Specification, Test Cases and Test Procedures for a new web-based system intended to manage fleets of counting systems. As the project goes along, it appears that the 29110 set of documents was not up to the task of sustaining this VSE in its engineering activities. We supported the VSE in two ways: (i) a Training Session based on the 29110 Requirements Analysis activity, and (ii) Self-Training Packages - a set of resources intended to develop experience and skills in Requirements Identification and SW Requirement Specification (SRS). Our inspiration stems from the 15504-5 standard with a desire to provide software engineers with an exemplar set of base practices providing a definition of the tasks and activities needed to fulfil the process (e.g. requirements) outcomes. Task definition is collected on a task card. The results of this pilot study provide the VSE with a roadmap through the Requirements activity, which is compatible with the ISO/IEC 29110 standard

Software engineering standards and guides for very small entities: implementation in two start-ups

Very small entities, enterprises, organizations, projects or departments with up to 25 people, are very important to the worldwide economy. However it has ben established that such entities often do not utilize existing standards and frameworks. To address the needs of Very Small Entities (VSEs), a set of international standards and guides known as ISO/IEC 29110 has been developed. In this paper we present the results of early trials of this standard in two IT start-ups VSEs. A Peruvian VSE was recently audited and issued an ISO/IEC 29110 certificate of conformity

Experience Management for Very Small Entities: Improving the Copy-paste Model

International audienceThe emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities is developing a "Generic" profile group applicable to a vast majority of very small entities (enterprises, organizations, departments or projects) having up to 25 people, that do not develop critical software and have typical situational factors. The developers of the standard, ISO/IEC JCT1/SC7 Working Group 24, recommended the use of pilot projects as a mean to trial the adoption of the new International standard in small organizations. Accordingly an ISO/IEC 29110 pilot project has been established between the Software Engineering group of Brest University and a 14-person company with the aim of establishing an engineering discipline for a new web-based project. As the project proceeded, it became apparent that the current set of ISO/IEC 29110 documents describing a first profile, the Basic profile, was not sufficient to sustain this VSE in its SE activities. What was needed was to organize the knowledge contained in them. The results of this pilot study are providing VSEs with a simple Experience Management system which is compatible with the emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard. It is founded on two principles: 1) keeping the Content Management System-based Experience Management infrastructure as simple as possible, structured with the decomposition of the ISO/IEC 29110 processes; and 2) the requirement of Experience Management dedicated processes, taken from D. Schon's work on the reflection-on-action approach to learning

Process Productivity Improvements through Semantic and Linked Data Technologies

Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Informática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: José María Álvarez Rodríguez.- Secretario: Rafael Valencia García.- Vocal: Alejandro Rodríguez Gonzále

Towards Experience Management for Very Small Entities

International audienceThe ISO/IEC 29110 standard: Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities, provides several Process Reference Models applicable to the vast majority of very small entities (defined by the ISO as "an entity (enterprise, organization, department or project) having up to 25 people") which do not develop critical software and share typical situational factors. An ISO/IEC 29110 pilot project has been established between the Software Engineering group at Brest University and a 14-employee company with the aim of establishing an engineering discipline for a new Web-based project. As the project proceeded, it became apparent that setting up the ISO/IEC 29110 standard has to be performed in two steps: 1) provide self-training materials to the VSE employees on this new standard; and 2) support good practices with a simple Experience Management system which is compatible with the ISO/IEC 29110 standard. This paper reports the lessons learned about training from the pilot project, and addresses the research issues associated with the Experience Management system

Software process improvement in graduate software engineering programs

At the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), software process improvement (SPI) is taught in lecture format and with a 10-week implementation project in an organization by teams of students of the graduate software engineering curriculum. The SPI course is taught using a ‘problem- goal-solution’ approach where students learn that any process improvement initiative must be based on issues preventing an organization in achieving its organizational goals whether the organization is a company or a not-for- profit organization. An important aspect of this course is the management of technological change where students learn and put in practice in their project the ‘soft’ issues which are part of most SPI organizational initiatives

Software project management with ISO/IEC 29110

The recently published ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities has at its core a Management and Engineering Guide [1] which are targeted at very small entities (enterprises, organizations, departments or projects) having up to 25 people [2], to assist them unlock the potential benefits of using standards which are specifically designed to address their needs. This paper discusses the role and structure of Project Management in the emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Software Process Lifecycles for Very Small Entities as well as its practical implication. This paper will also focus on the design and development of project management support documentation and their associated usage in early trials of ISO/IEC 29110

An innovative approach in developing standard professionals by involving software engineering students in implementing and improving international standards

Today, the ability of organizations to compete, adapt, and survive depends increasingly on software. Some cellular phones, for example, contain over twenty million lines of code, and top of the line automobiles may have up to 100 million lines of code.1 Manufacturers depend increasingly on the components produced by their suppliers. A manufacturing chain of large mass-market products often has a pyramidal structure, as illustrated in Figure 1, adapted from Shintani. For example, a large mass product manufacturer integrated into one of its products a part with an unknown software error that was produced by one of its 6,000 lower-level producers. This defective part resulted in a loss of over $200 million by the mass product manufacturer. A vast majority of these low level suppliers are very small entities

Using a Semantic Wiki for Documentation Management in Very Small Projects

International audienceThe emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities is targeted at very small entity (VSE) having up to 25 people, to assist them unlock the potential benefits of using software engineering standards. VSEs may use semantic web technologies to improve documentation management infrastructure and processes. We proposed to use a semantic wiki for documentation management based on an identification scheme inspired from an IFLA proposition called Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. The document identification scheme allows documents to be managed by the internal resource management of the semantic wiki, hence benefiting from a straightforward but powerful version control. With few inputs of semantic annotations by VSE employees - through usable semantic forms and templates, the semantic wiki acts as a library catalog, and users can find, identify, select, obtain, and navigate resources

Towards Disciplined Software Development : ISO 9001:2008 Based Software Process Improvement in SME

The case company’s quality management system has recently been awarded the ISO 9001:2008 certificate. The next necessary step is to incorporate the software processes into the company’s quality management system. The goal of this study was to identify the key software process improvement areas based the ISO 9001:2008 requirements and to provide recommended actions for improvement. Sufficient background knowledge on quality in general and quality in the context of SMEs and software was gained and ISO 9001:2008 and its application in the context of software was studied. Based on the gained knowledge methods and models for assessing the current software processes and deriving the recommended improvement actions were selected and developed. A self-assessment was performed and respective improvement actions were derived and presented. The self-assessment results indicated that the software processes would need to be redesigned from the ground up. Hence, recommendations targeted on key software process areas could not be derived. Alternatively, an example process based on the Disciplined Agile Delivery framework was presented for the company to consider when the software process is redesigned. Even though the results of the assessment were not what was expected the study itself provides a sound basis for software process improvement efforts in the future. Plenty of valuable knowledge and experience on software process improvement was gained which will to serve the case company well in the future