Multi software product lines: A systematic mapping study

Even if Software Product Line (SPL) is an established technique in software engineering, there are several limitations of its use. This is mainly caused by the exponential increase of software systems complexity and by the high pace of software and hardware evolution. Many of these limitations have been studied and faced by applying the Multi Software Product Line (MSPL), an extension of the SPL. MSPL is an emerging and novel technique based on using more than one SPL to derive a functional product system. This paper aims to characterize the state of the art of MSPL, the main goal is to highlight the reached achievement in this field and then discuss about the open issues or the not covered aspects of this approach. In order to make an overall analysis inside the research community, a well-defined method of systematic mapping is applied in order to classify, in a proper scheme, every paper strictly related to this topic. These classified results could give a valid hint about lacks which should be investigated further

L'Open Innovation per il trasferimento tecnologico

Si presenta un framework per il supporto cooperativo della catena dell’innovazione nella prospettiva dell’Open In- novation (OI). Viene proposto un Knowledge Management System (KMS) che consiste in un insieme di processi che formano l’Experience Factory (EF) e una piattaforma che è una Knowledge Experience Base (KEB), che colleziona Knowledge Experience Packages (KEP). Il KMS così formato supporta la formalizzazione e l’impacchettamento delle conoscenze ed esperienze da parte dei produttori e dei cedenti l’innovazione incoraggiando una graduale esplicitazione di informazione tacita nei portatori di conoscenze. Si facilita in tal modo per facilitare il trasferimento riducendo al minimo costi e rischi. Il KMS consente la produzione cooperativa di KEP tra i diversi autori che contribuiscono alla produzione di KEP e gli utenti di quest’ultimo. Il documento descrive l’approccio delineato nel Progetto Prometheus e le precauzioni adottate nella progettazione dei KEP per garantire che l’esperienza in esso contenuta, anche se raccolta attraverso progetti eseguiti durante molti anni-persona, possa essere rapidamente acquisita dall’utente e contenga gli strumenti per agevolare l’acquisizione di conoscenze di supporto all’innovazione

Open Innovation for Technological Transfer

This chapter presents a framework aiming to support a cooperative "innovation chain" in an Open Innovation (OI) perspective. To this end we propose a Knowledge Management System (KMS) which consists of a set of processes that constitute the Experience Factory (EF) and a platform that is the Knowledge Experience Base (KEB), which collects Knowledge Experience Packages (KEP). The KMS thus formed supports the formalization and packaging of knowledge and experience of producers and innovation transferors encouraging gradual explanation of tacit information of bearers of knowledge to facilitate the transfer while minimizing costs and risks

Experimentation of Flipped Learning in a University Course on Object-Oriented Programming Paradigm

Several academic institutes provide students, as the first programming course, with an understanding of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm. This requires the teacher to face several obstacles due to the necessity to explain various and deep concepts such as type, data abstraction, encapsulation and different forms of polymorphism such as overloading, coercion, sub-typing, and parameterization. This paper proposes and evaluates a teaching strategy based on a flipped classroom approach for one selected topic in a second-year programming university course, Programming II, held at the University of Bari and focused on the OOP paradigm. This approach lets the students learn and train on their own before coming to class. Here, they will apply the knowledge during face-to-face lessons to elaborate, reflect and compare on what has been learned. We provided a preliminary evaluation of the approach through a quasi-experiment aiming at comparing two groups of students: one instructed by a flipped classroom approach and the other one by the traditional approach. Results show that the flipped group understands better concepts and produces better source code than the traditional group

A Maintenance Metric Model for Open Source Governance

The adoption of Open Source in industrial applications has increased in the last years. In this context the need to provide answers to high levels of Maintenance arises. Therefore it is critical to select Open Sources components to be integrated in a software system according to their Maintenance characteristics. The work presents a Metric Model and its related Decision Model for OS Governance and in particular for selecting OSs according to their Maintenance Level. The Metric Model was obtained individuating some automatically calculable measures from a group of projects available on the Web. The measures were validated on several OSs used in industrial projects. The results are of interest and encourage future research

PROMETHEUS: a web platform for supporting knowledge management in an environment based on experience factory

This paper presents a Knowledge Management System (KMS), called PROMETHEUS, which consists of a set of processes that constitute the Experience Factory (EF) and a platform that is the Knowledge Experience Base (KEB), which collects Knowledge Experience Packages (KEP). The KMS thus formed supports the formalization and packaging of knowledge and experience of producers and innovation transferors encouraging gradual explanation of tacit information of bearers of knowledge to facilitate the transfer. The KMS enables the cooperative production of KEP between different authors contributing to the production of KEP and users of the latter. The paper describes the approach outlined in the PROMETHEUS Project and the precautions taken in the design of KEP to ensure that: the experience contained in it, even when collected through projects executed by many person-years, can be quickly acquired by the user, contains the tools to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge innovation support to transfer

Empirical Validation of Knowledge Packages as facilitators for knowledge transfer

Transfer of research results in production systems requires, among others, that knowledge be explicit and understandable by stakeholders. Such transfer is demanding, as so many researchers have been studying alternative ways to classic approaches such as books and papers that favour knowledge acquisition on behalf of users. In this context, we propose the concept of Knowledge Experience Package (KEP) with a specific structure as an alternative. The KEP contains both the conceptual model(s) of the research results which make up the innovation, including all the necessary documentation ranging from papers or book chapters; and the experience collected in acquiring it in business processes, appropriately structured. The structure allows the identification of the knowledge chunk(s) that the developer, who is acquiring the knowledge, needs in order to simplify the acquisition process. The experience is needed to point out the scenarios that the user will most likely face and therefore refer to. Both structure and experience are important factors for the innovation transferability and efficacy. Furthermore, we have carried out an experiment which compared the e±cacy of this instrument with the classic ones, along with the comprehensibility of the information enclosed in a KEP rather than in a set of Papers. The experiment has pointed out that knowledge packages are more effective than traditional ones for knowledge transfe

Un’appendicite acuta rivela un liposarcoma retroperitoneale: caso clinico

Liposarcoma is the most frequent type among the retroperitoneal soft-tissues sarcomas. The characteristic aptitude of such tumors is the slowly subtle growing of a deep-located mass, often reaching huge size, causing diffuse dull abdominal pain, anorexia and weight loss. Liposarcomas can involve or compress neighboring organs but their clinical evidence rarely shows acute symptoms. We present the case of a 57-year old men admitted at the emergency with a diagnosis of acute appendicitis. Further physical examination in our division suspected a large intraabdominal mass coexisting and probably causing the acute appendicitis. The CT scan performed showed a huge retroperitoneal fatty mass occupying the right abdominal quadrants from the liver to the obturator foramen, rounding the kidney and contiguous to an abscessual collection in the right iliac fossa. Patient underwent surgery with a resection of the mass en bloc with the ileocaecal tract involved as well as the abdominal wall delimiting the appendicular abcess. Kidney parenchyma was spared. Histologic examination revealed a lipoma – like well differentiated liposarcoma. Postoperative hemorrage occurred and managed conservatively. Patient hospital stay was fourteen days. Follow-up at three months demonstrated absence of local and distant recurrence. The reported case refers to the unusual clinical presentation of a retroperitoneal liposarcoma. Surgical behaviour in facing such rare tumors should be aggressive, althought a complete resection, allowing the patient the best outcome in terms of survival and recurrence, remains sometimes a challenge