ASSESSING MULTIVIEW COMPREHENSIBILITY(MF) AND EFFICIENCY: A REPLICATED EXPERIMENT

Goal oriented quality models have become an important means for assessing and improving software quality. In this sense, in previous papers, authors have proposed an approach called Multiview Framework, for guiding quality managers in designing and managing a goal oriented quality model. This approach has been validated through a controlled experiment carried out with university students. In this paper authors describe and discuss a strict replication of the controlled experiment carried out with university graduates attending a master degree course in an Italian university. Although research goals and hypotheses are the same, context differs. In particular, for the replication, experimental subjects were better representative of practitioners, given the fact that their master degree course required project work with industrial partners. This difference in context has represented an important first step for generalizing experimental results. Data analysis and interpretation support our research goals and confirm validity of the conclusions made

Systematic Review on Statistical Process Control: an Experience Report

Background: A systematic review is a rigorous method for assessing and aggregating research results. Unlike an ordinary literature review consisting of an annotated bibliography, a systematic review analyzes existing literature with reference to specific research questions on a topic of interest. Objective: Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a well established technique in manufacturing contexts that only recently has been used in software production. Software production is unlike manufacturing because it is human rather than machine-intensive, and results in the production of single one-off items. It is therefore pertinent to assess how successful SPC is in the context of software production. These considerations have therefore motivated us to define and carry out a systematic review to assess whether SPC is being used effectively and correctly by software practitioners. Method: A protocol has been defined, according to the systematic literature review process, it was revised and refined by the authors. At the current time, the review is being carried out. Results: We report our considerations and preliminary results in defining and carrying out a systematic review on SPC, and how graduate students have been included in the review process of a first set of the papers. Conclusions: Our first results and impressions are positive. Also, involving graduate students has been a successful experience

Non Invasive Monitoring of a Distributed Maintenance Process

It is well known that measurement impacts on developer performances. Furthermore, in order to be effective, it must conform to the context characteristics. Both these aspects are critical for globally distributed software processes due to distance and heterogeneity between monitored sites. Here measurement must be non invasive and interpretation of results flexible with respect to each site context. Our conjecture is that quality of primary processes, can be measured, non intrusively, through supporting ones and that interpretation must be based on experience collected during process execution. This work faces these critical issues focusing on maintenance processes. The paper presents a non invasive Statistical Process Control (SPC) based approach, for measuring a primary process (maintenance) through a supporting one (Problem Resolution Process). The approach's efficacy shall be investigated through a simulation carried out on legacy data collected in an industrial environment

Software Renewal Projects Estimation Using Dynamic Calibration

Effort estimation is a long faced problem, but, in spite of the amount of research spent in this field, it still remains an open issue in the software engineering community. This is true especially in the case of renewal of legacy systems, where the current and well established approaches also fail. This paper presents an application of the method named Dynamic Calibration for effort estimation of renewal projects together with its experimental validation. The approach satisfies all the requirements of the estimation models. The results obtained applying dynamic calibration are compared with those obtained with a competitor method: estimation by analogy. The results are shown to be promising although further experimentation on field is neede

Enterprise Information Integration Management System (EII_MS)

This demo illustrates the EII management system which is a support tool to iterative reengineering of data and applications, developed in SERLAB. EII_MS provides a unified view of enterprise data over the various data sources in spite of original data heterogeneity and redundancy

Empirical studies for innovation dissemination: Ten years of experience

Context: technology transfer and innovation dissemination are key success factors for an enterprise. The shift to a new software technology determines inevitable changes to ingrained and familiar processes and at the same time leads to changes in practices, requires training and commitment on behalf of technical staff and management. As so, it cannot leave out neither organizational nor technical factors. Objective: our conjecture is that the process of innovation dissemination is facilitated if the new technology is supported by empirical evidence. In this sense, Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) serves as support for transferring an innovation, either it being a process or product, within production processes. Method: this paper investigates the relation between empirical studies and technical/organizational factors in order to identify the most suitable empirical study for disseminating an innovation in an enterprise. The analysis has been carried out with respect to empirical studies carried out during a ten year time span within the Software Engineering Research LABoratory (SERLAB), at the University of Bari. Results: the results point out that a critical factor in designing empirical studies is the quality model, i.e. measurement program defined by researchers during the study and used to collect relevant information on the effectiveness and efficacy of the innovation being transferred, in order to gain commitment on behalf of stakeholders who will finally adopt the technology. Conclusion: the study outcomes provide an empirically founded guideline that can be used when choosing the most appropriate approach for addressing an innovation. Copyright 2013 ACM

Comparing ISO/IEC 12207 and CMMI-DEV: Towards a Mapping of ISO/IEC 15504-7

Software process improvement is a planned, managed and controlled effort which aims to enhance the capability of the software development processes of an organization. In particular, SPI often involves process reference models, process assessment methods and models that guide process improvement though specific standards such as the ISO and CMMI families. Recently, growing interest has been shown towards the need for harmonization of different improvement technologies with the aim of presenting an integrated vision about the standards. In this sense this paper presents a comparison between the process areas of CMMI-DEV and the processes described in the latest version of ISO/IEC 12207:2008. Based on these results we investigate the relationship between the CMMI-DEV and ISO/IEC 15504-7 models with the aim of identifying the degree of coverage of CMMI-DEV maturity levels in relation to ISO/IEC 15504-7

A Hands-On Approach for Teaching Systematic Review

An essential part of a software engineering education is technology innovation. Indeed software engineers, as future practitioners, must be able to identify the most appropriate technologies to adopt in projects. As so, it is important to develop the skills that will allow them to evaluate and make decisions on tools, technologies, techniques and methods according to the available empirical evidence reported in literature. In this sense, a rigorous manner for analyzing and critically addressing literature is Systematic Review. It requires formalizing an answerable research question according to the problem or issues to face; search the literature for available evidence according to a systematic protocol and retrieve data from the identified sources; analyze the collected evidence and use it to support decision making and conclusions. In this paper we report on how Systematic Review has been integrated in the "Empirical Software Engineering Methods" course that is taught at the Department of Informatics at the University of Bari, and how students have been introduced to this type of literature review through a hands-on approach. As far as we know, it is the first attempt of including a complex topic like systematic review in a university course on empirical software engineering. We have no empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the approach adopted, other than practice-based experience that we have acquired. Nonetheless, we have collected qualitative data through a questionnaire submitted to the students of the course. Their positive answers and impressions are a first informal confirmation of the successful application of our strategy

The Role of Empirical Evidence for Transferring a New Technology to Industry

Technology transfer and innovation diffusion are key success factors for an enterprise. The shift to a new software technology involves, on one hand, inevitable changes to ingrained and familiar processes and, on the other, requires training, changes in practices and commitment on behalf of technical staff and management. Nevertheless, industry is often reluctant to innovation due to the changes it determines. The process of innovation diffusion is easier if the new technology is supported by empirical evidence. In this sense our conjecture is that Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) serves as means for validating and transferring a new technology within production processes. In this paper, the authors report their experience of a method, Multiview Framework, defined in the SERLAB research laboratory as support for designing and managing a goal oriented measurement program that has been validated through various empirical studies before being transferred to an Italian SME. Our discussion points out the important role of empirical evidence for obtaining management commitment and buy-in on behalf of technical staff, and for making technological transfer possible