The effects of modularity on effective communication and collaboration

In this article we explore the consequences associated with a lack of coordination between the requirements engineering process and the development process. We conduct a detailed case study of an ICT department of a large European bank that develops software using the agile software development method. Our current study reveals that the application of a modular organizational design in a dynamic agile environment has a negative effect on the communication and coordination between members of different modules. More specifically, the modular design creates both a semantic and a pragmatic boundary among members of different modules, which is primarily caused by the fact that modules have differentiated tasks and often misaligned interests

Applying design patterns in the search-based optimization of software product line architectures

The design of the product line architecture (PLA) is a difficult activity that can benefit from the application of design patterns and from the use of a search-based optimization approach, which is generally guided by different objectives related, for instance, to cohesion, coupling and PLA extensibility. The use of design patterns for PLAs is a recent research field, not completely explored yet. Some works apply the patterns manually and for a specific domain. Approaches to search-based PLA design do not consider the usage of these patterns. To allow such use, this paper introduces a mutation operator named “Pattern-Driven Mutation Operator” that includes methods to automatically identify suitable scopes and apply the patterns Strategy, Bridge and Mediator with the search-based approach multi-objective optimization approach for PLA. A metamodel is proposed to represent and identify suitable scopes to receive each one of the patterns, avoiding the introduction of architectural anomalies. Empirical results are also presented, showing evidences that the use of the proposed operator produces a greater diversity of solutions and improves the quality of the PLAs obtained in the search-based optimization process, regarding the values of software metrics

Analyzing students’ software redesign strategies

Contains fulltext : 163078.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Koli Calling '16: 16th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli, Finland - November 24-27, 201