Un Entorno ALM Flexible y Dirigido por Procesos: El Proyecto Alcuza

Recientemente, el concepto de ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) ha surgido como una evolución de los desarrollos previos en integración de herramientas (tool integration) e ingeniería del software centrada en procesos (process–centered software engineering). La experiencia obtenida en el Departamento de Tecnología de Información de Cajasol ha puesto de manifiesto que el hecho de contar con entornos ALM dirigidos por procesos favorece la implantación de metodologías basadas en recomendaciones como CMMI–DEV, y por otro lado también facilita a los desarrolladores la utilización de las correspondientes herramientas de forma coordinada con los procesos prescritos metodológicamente. En su política de mejora de calidad de procesos internos, Cajasol decidió acometer el desarrollo conjunto de una serie de procesos metodológicos acordes al nivel 2 de madurez de CMMI–DEV, junto con un entorno ALM que facilitara su implantación en la entidad, dando lugar al proyecto Alcuza. La decisión de acometer el desarrollo de un sistema tan complejo como un ALM vino motivada por la falta de integración real de las herramientas comerciales disponibles, y por la idea de facilitar la adopción de los procesos metodológicos por parte del personal involucrado al estar soportados directamente por el entorno ALM. En este artículo se describen los problemas que promovieron la decisión de acometer el proyecto Alcuza y las principales características del entorno ALM desarrollado, haciendo especial énfasis en la integración en el mismo de los procesos de desarrollo mediante flujos de trabajo (workflows).Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) TIN2009-07366Junta de Andalucía TIC-5906Junta de Andalucía P07–TIC–2533

Release engineering processes, their faults and failures

textRelease processes form an important, if overlooked, part of the complete software development life cycle. Many organizations implement the roles of release engineering and release management in different ways, with a wide amount of variance within the software industry. Ill-designed processes can lead to a higher number of software faults and costly delays. Failures in release engineering can have negative implications, yet the causes of release process failures are not well understood within in the software engineering research community. This dissertation addresses the questions of what the common release process structure is, what the common failure modes are, and how organizations recover from and prevent these failures. We address these questions through a series of case studies with practicing release engineers at commercial software companies. The live interviews with these individual companies provide insight into the state of the practice in release engineering today across a broad spectrum of organization and software domains. The results of these studies indicate four areas of theory in release engineering which future researchers can probe in more depth. These areas center around process organization, social causes of release process failure, the relationship between software architecture and the release process, and how organizations attempt to improve release processes. For practicing release engineers, these results show that most organizations would benefit from three primary improvements: increased process automation, more modular software design, and improved organizational communication and support of release engineering groups. By implementing these improvements, software development companies and the release engineering processes they support will avoid the most common process failures in this critical phase of the software life cycle.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

From Case Study as Symptom to Case Study as Sinthome: Engaging Lacan and Irigaray on Thinking in Cases as Psychoanalytic Pedagogy

This dissertation accomplishes two goals. First, this dissertation articulates a Lacanian account of the epistemological and historical presuppositions of the psychoanalytic case study genre, while engaging reflexively with extant Foucauldian scholarship on this genre as well as feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray’s criticisms of Lacan. Irigaray’s critique is engaged in order to tarry with its implications for a Lacanian approach to the psychoanalytic case study genre. Second, this dissertation critically examines the significance of Lacan’s (re)reading, in Seminar V, of Joan Riviere’s (1929) “Womanliness as Masquerade” in the midst of his oral teachings on the psychoanalytic concepts of castration and feminine sexuality, which took place when a distinctively Lacanian community of theory and practice was emerging from institutional tension in 1950s-era French psychoanalysis

Qualitative and semi-quantitative modelling and simulation of the software engineering processes

Software process modelling has been identified as being a vehicle for understanding development processes, controlling development costs, duration, and achieving product quality. In recent years, software process simulation has been becoming one of the essential techniques for effectively investigating and managing software development processes. Till now, most researches focus on the quantitative aspects of process simulation and modelling. Nevertheless, purely quantitative process modelling requires a very detailed understanding and accurate measurement of the software process, which relies on reliable and precise historical data. When such data are lacking or the quality is dubious, quantitative models have to impose severe constraints that restrict the model's value. Unfortunately, these data are not readily available in most cases, especially in the organisations at low process maturity levels. In addition, software development is a highly complex, human-centred endeavour, which involves many uncertain factors in the course of development process. Facing the inherent uncertainty and contingency, though quantitative modelling employs statistic techniques, its conditional capability and underlying assumptions limit its performance on large scale problems. As the alternatives of quantitative approaches, qualitative modelling can cope with a lack of complete knowledge, and predicts qualitative process behaviours. Furthermore, semi-quantitative modelling offers the capability of handling process uncertainty with limited knowledge, and achieves tradeoff between quantitative and qualitative approaches. However, most previous researches omitted these approaches, and the associated methods and applications are far from developed. The main contribution of this research lies in the pioneering work on the models, methods, and applications of qualitative and semi-quantitative software process modelling and simulation, and their relations with the conventional, quantitative modelling approaches. This dissertation produces its novelty from twofold research. Firstly, it explores methods and techniques to qualitatively and semi-quantitatively model and simulate software processes at different levels, i.e. project, portion of development process, and product evolution. Secondly, Some exclusive applications of these modelling approaches are also developed for aspects of software engineering practice. Moreover, a proposed framework integrates these approaches with typical quantitative paradigms to guide the adoption of process simulation modelling in software organisations. As a comprehensive reflection of state-of-the-art of software process simulation modelling, a systematic review is reported in this dissertation as well

Systematische Prozessunterstützung für die Entwicklung laufzeitkritischer Softwaresysteme: Systematische Prozessunterstützung für die Entwicklung laufzeitkritischer Softwaresysteme: PROKRIS-Methodik und -Framework

In vielen Bereichen des täglichen Lebens, angefangen vom Online-Banking bis hin zur Steuerung im Flugzeug, kommt Software mit laufzeitkritischen nicht-funktionalen Eigenschaften (NFE) zum Einsatz. Die Erfüllung der NFE spielt in diesen Anwendungen eine zentrale Rolle. Um dies zu erreichen, ist eine systematische und zielorientierte Behandlung dieser Anforderungen während der Entwicklung zwingend erforderlich. NFE zeichnen sich im Gegensatz zu funktionalen Eigenschaften durch besondere Merkmale aus, die ein adaptives Vorgehen zur Definition des Entwicklungsprozesses erzwingen. In der Arbeit wird eine Methodik zur kontextbasierten Anpassung von Vorgehensmodellen an laufzeitkritische NFE auf der Basis von Prozessmustern sowie das PROKRIS-Framework als unterstützende Umgebung vorgestellt