Opiskelijoiden valmistaminen työelämään yliopiston sisäisen ohjelmisto-startupin avulla

Tertiary education aims to prepare computer science students for the working life. While much of the technical principles are covered in lower-level courses, team-based capstone projects are a common way to provide students hands-on experience and teach soft skills. Although such courses help students to gain some of the relevant skills, it is difficult to simulate in a course context what work in a professional software engineering team really is about. Our goal is to understand ways tertiary education institutions prepare students for the working life in software engineering. Firstly, we do this by focusing on the mechanisms that software engineering capstones use to simulate work-life. A literature review of 85 primary studies was conducted for this overview. Secondly, we present a more novel way of teaching industry-relevant skills in an university-lead internal software startup. A case study of such a startup, Software Development Academy (SDA), is presented, along with the experiences of both students and faculty involved in it. Finally, we look into how these approaches might differ. Results indicate that capstone courses differ greatly in ways they are organized. Most often students are divided in teams of 4–6 and get assigned with software projects that the teams then develop from an idea to a robust proof-of-concept. In contrast, students employed in the SDA develop production-level software in exchange for a salary for university clients. Students regarded SDA as a highly relevant and fairly irreplaceable educational experience. Working with production-quality software and having a wide range of responsibilities was perceived integral in giving a thorough skill set for the future. In conclusion, capstones and the internal startup both aim to prepare students for the work-life in software engineering. Capstones do it by simulating professional software engineering in a one-semester experience in a course environment. The internal startup adds a touch of realism to this by being actual work in a relatively safe university context

Using scrum together with UML models: a collaborative university-industry R&D software project

Conducting research and development (R&D) software projects, in an environment where both industry and university collaborate, is challenging due to many factors. In fact, industrial companies and universities have generally different interests and objectives whenever they collaborate. For this reason, it is not easy to manage and negotiate the industrial companies’ interests, namely schedules and their expectations. Conducting such projects in an agile framework is expected to decrease these risks, since partners have the opportunity to frequently interact with the development team in short iterations and are constantly aware of the characteristics of the system under development. However, in this type of collaborative R&D projects, it is often advantageous to include some waterfall practices, like upfront requirements modeling using UML models, which are not commonly used in agile processes like Scrum, in order to better prepare the implementation phase of the project. This paper presents some lessons learned that result from experience of the authors in adopting some Scrum practices in a R&D project, like short iterations, backlogs, and product increments, and simultaneously using UML models, namely use cases and components.This research is sponsored by the Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2013 and by project in co–promotion nº 36265/2013 (Project HMIExcel - 2013-2015)

FEED-FORWARD IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING WITH PARTICULAR FOCUS ON REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND SOFTWARE ARCHITECTING

This study is intended to determine the characteristics, impact and state of the practice of feed-forward in software engineering; in particular, in the fields of Requirements Engineering (RE) and Software Architecting (SA). Feed-forward is used in many domains such as systems engineering, neural networks, management and psychotherapy. However, in software engineering, especially in RE and SA, the concept of feed-forward is not well researched. For example, what are the characteristics of feed-forward information? What effect does feed-forward information have on architectural artefacts and software project aspects such as cost, quality, time, etc.? What is the current state of practice of feed-forward? A knowledge seeking empirical investigation including an industrial survey and an embedded case study with four projects as four units of analysis were carried out based on these questions. The overall findings ofthis study show that the most common types of information that are fed-forward consistently are requirements and architectural information. This information affects a multitude of aspects of a software project (such as time, cost and quality) and influences several architectural artefacts (such as tactics, patterns and decisions). The results also show that approximately 20% of software professionals have never, or rarely, practiced feed­ forward in their organizations. On the other hand, approximately 66% of software professionals practice feed-forward in their organization in varying levels (“sometimes”, “most of the time”, “always”). 64% of software professionals find feed-forward to be useful for their organization and 4% thought that feed-forward would not be useful, citing reasons such as information overload and lack of motivation. From a researcher’s perspective, determining the properties of feed-forward could provide ground work for doing further research on feed-forward such as: the practice of feed-forward in the other areas of software engineering and the comparison of feedback and feed-forward in software engineerin

The Web Engineering Security (WES) methodology

The World Wide Web has had a significant impact on basic operational economical components in global information rich civilizations. This impact is forcing organizations to provide justification for security from a business case perspective and to focus on security from a web application development environment perspective. This increased focus on security was the basis of a business case discussion and led to the acquisition of empirical evidence gathered from a high level Web survey and more detailed industry surveys to analyse security in the Web application development environment. Along with this information, a collection of evidence from relevant literature was also gathered. Individual aspects of the data gathered in the previously mentioned activities contributed to the proposal of the Essential Elements (EE) and the Security Criteria for Web Application Development (SCWAD). The Essential Elements present the idea that there are essential, basic organizational elements that need to be identified, defined and addressed before examining security aspects of a Web Engineering Development process. The Security Criteria for Web Application Development identifies criteria that need to be addressed by a secure Web Engineering process. Both the EE and SCWAD are presented in detail along with relevant justification of these two elements to Web Engineering. SCWAD is utilized as a framework to evaluate the security of a representative selection of recognized software engineering processes used in Web Engineering application development. The software engineering processes appraised by SCWAD include: the Waterfall Model, the Unified Software Development Process (USD), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) and eXtreme Programming (XP). SCWAD is also used to assess existing security methodologies which are comprised of the Orion Strategy; Survivable / Viable IS approaches; Comprehensive Lightweight Application Security Process (CLASP) and Microsoft’s Trust Worthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle. The synthesis of information provided by both the EE and SCWAD were used to develop the Web Engineering Security (WES) methodology. WES is a proactive, flexible, process neutral security methodology with customizable components that is based on empirical evidence and used to explicitly integrate security throughout an organization’s chosen application development process. In order to evaluate the practical application of the EE, SCWAD and the WES methodology, two case studies were conducted during the course of this research. The first case study describes the application of both the EE and SCWAD to the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery’s Online Photo Library (HOPL) Internet application project. The second case study presents the commercial implementation of the WES methodology within a Global Fortune 500 financial service sector organization. The assessment of the WES methodology within the organization consisted of an initial survey establishing current security practices, a follow-up survey after changes were implemented and an overall analysis of the security conditions assigned to projects throughout the life of the case study

Data-driven requirements engineering in agile projects: The Q-Rapids approach

Requirements identification, specification and management are key activities in the software development process. In the last years, many approaches to these activities have emerged, based on the exploitation of huge amounts of data gathered from software repositories and system usage. The Q-Rapids project proposes the collection and analysis of such data and its consolidation into a set of strategic indicators as product quality, time to market and team productivity. These indicators are visualized through a dashboard designed to support decision-makers. In this paper, we present the ongoing research undertaken in this project. We use the concept of blocking situation to exemplify the Q-Rapids approach.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Managing risks in virtual-agile it projects: The paradigm of responsiveness

Managing risks in IT projects has always been a critical area of study for many researchers and practitioners. Due to the rapid advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), there is an increasing number of challenges and issues for the IT organisations. Virtual-Agile IT projects being virtually operated and based on Agile methodology principles are facilitating IT industry having their main application in the software development industry, where entities from diverse backgrounds have varied working practices, languages and culture, and works together for achieving common aims. There have been several benefits integrated with the application of Virtual-Agile IT projects but the intersection of these two unique working concepts (Virtual-Agile) gives rise to several risks and uncertainties which have now become a point of concern for these organisations. The need for minimising the possibility of such evolving risks and uncertainties became the foundation of conducting this study from a theoretical viewpoint, where the researcher aimed to propose a conceptual framework helping organisations meet their business objectives constructively. The study is exploratory in nature which discovers all those appropriate practices, strategies and guidelines which support reducing risk and uncertainties between the distributed stakeholders during the product development phase. The research methodology used is primarily dependent on qualitative methods combined with the grounded theory methodology to gather rich and rigorous information from experienced and professional personnel from different geographical regions. Depending upon the procedures of grounded theory methodology, the data were collected and analysed simultaneously under the principles of constant comparison and theoretical sampling. The procedures helped to determine thought-provoking results and highlighted various dimensions of the phenomenon under investigation. Responsiveness which emerged as the central phenomenon to overcome risks and uncertainties in Virtual-Agile IT project environments proposes for a proactive system which could be able to deal with project uncertainties, thus reducing the likelihood of potential risks, and enhancing opportunities for the organisations. Responsiveness, which is an ability of the system to perceive, reflect and adapt changes in the project environments is dependent upon efficiently management of three major components, i.e. technology, timeliness and communication. Technology which is the most critical element when operating in virtual environments requires standardization and should be extensively used to develop strong networks and integration between various locations around the world. Timeliness is elementary and a pre-requisite for completion of on-going multiple projects in IT organisations Communication which is the utmost component, is required at various levels for evolving synchronisation in the overall system, such as when developing correlation and satisfaction among distributed stakeholders, estimating the level of required competency and ensuring an efficient knowledge transfer process. Responsiveness, which is required throughout the development cycle, also further influences formal risk management practices undertaken at various levels of the project. Risk management planning and implementation of the response strategies are dependent upon Responsiveness i.e. how well, timely and using technical resources the entities communicate for determining a solution to a problem. The paradigm developed, thus reflects industrial practices undertaken in the software development industry to meet project objectives and would support organisations and their prominent stakeholders to overcome risks and uncertainties in the future Virtual-Agile IT projects

Task 10: Research an Alternative Instructional Design Model

Under authority of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Center of Excellence (COE) Technical Training Human Performance (TTHP) Task 10 research team has prepared a comprehensive technical report and an executive summary for the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) concerning the instructional development (ID) of occupational education and training for Air Traffic (AT) controllers and Technical Operations (TO) technicians. Research included: • Front-end analysis of available FAA courses and government furnished information (GFI), including course-development documentation and associated guidance, policies, and regulations. • Structured and semi-structured data-gathering techniques in cooperation with Instructional Systems Specialists (ISS), ISS Managers, and Requirements personnel. • Informal observations of validation events for Air Traffic training. • Analysis of the relevant literature from academic, government, and industry domains. The executive summary describes the findings and observations of issues directly related to the ID process and potential solutions based on findings from this comparative analysis. The comprehensive report that follows includes these and additional observations and recommendations as well as the project overview, an introduction to best practice research, the research methodology, presentation and analysis of the results, and discussion of the findings and conclusions

Is Knowledge transfer an obstacle? A post pandemic study of the challenges and proposing strategies to improve efficiency in distributed IS projects

Knowledge transfer (or sharing) has always been crucial within the dispersed teams’ structure. As we are moving into post-Covid 19 pandemic times where the norms of working are being redefined, there becomes a need to revisit this area and examine the working collaboration of the teams for meeting clients’ expectations, as there have been only few attempts undertaken after the pandemic. This study is based on interviewing 18 IT practitioners and professionals, further support by thematic analysis of data collected. The findings determined that for efficient knowledge transfer process ‘sustaining coordination’ is the core phenomenon together with having ‘closed feedback loops, exchanging particulars and logs timely, dynamic reporting and building teams capacity’ as sub-cores. The key observations identified from the results of this study were mainly the inclusion of several non-technical components which have now become essential, and back and forth support knowledge sharing in the distributed IS projects for productivity and completing tasks