The connection of the stakeholder cooperation intensity and team agility in software development

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6942425.Today, new software development meth-ods and technologies are being used to create new sys-tems, applications and services in a wide range of in-dustries. Especially agile software development has been gaining ground among the software development professionals. This paper analyses the differences in stakeholder cooperation intensity for different levels of agile development in the teams. Two teams use a stakeholder identification framework to identify stakeholders for the new software systems. The teams are also measured with two agile measurement tests used in the industry.Tomi Juhola's PhD research is funded by Jenny & Antti Wihuri foundation and Nokia Foundation. Man Hang Yip's PhD research was partially funded by GE Healthcar

Modeling the Delivery of Security Advisories and CVEs

This empirical paper models three structural factors that are hypothesized to affect the turnaround times between the publication of security advisories and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). The three structural factors are: (i) software product age at the time of advisory release; (ii) severity of vulnerabilities coordinated; and (iii) amounts of CVEs referenced in advisories. Although all three factors are observed to provide only limited information for statistically predicting the turnaround times in a dataset comprised of Microsoft, openSUSE, and Ubuntu operating system products, the paper outlines new research directions for better understanding the current problems related to vulnerability coordination

The Role of Organisational Phenomena in Software Cost Estimation: A Case Study of Supporting and Hindering Factors

Despite the fact that many researchers and practitioners agree that organisational issues are equally important as technical issues from the software cost estimation ( SCE) success point of view, most of the research focus has been put on the development of methods, whereas organisational factors have received surprisingly little academic scrutiny. This study aims to identify organisational factors that either support or hinder meaningful SCE, identifying their impact on estimation success. Top management's role is specifically addressed. The study takes a qualitative and explorative case study based approach. In total, 18 semi-structured interviews aided the study of three projects in three organisations. Hence, the transferability of the results is limited. The results suggest that the role of the top management is important in creating prerequisites for meaningful estimation, but their day-to-day participation is not required for successful estimation. Top management may also induce undesired distortion in estimation. Estimation maturity and estimation success seem to have an interrelationship with software process maturity, but there seem to be no significant individual organisational factors, which alone would make estimation successful. Our results validate several distortions and biases reported in the previous studies, and show the SCE research focus has remained on methodologies and technical issues

An environmental assessment of risk in achieving good environmental status to support regional prioritisation of management in Europe

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) in Europe's Seas. The requirement for regional sea authorities to identify and prioritise issues for management has meant that standardized methods to assess the current level of departure from GES are needed. The methodology presented here provides a means by which existing information describing the status of ecosystem components of a regional sea can be used to determine the effort required to achieve GES. A risk assessment framework was developed to score departure from GES for 10 out of the 11 GES descriptors, based on proposed definitions of 'good' status, and current knowledge of environmental status in each of the four regional seas (North-East Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea). This provides an approach for regional evaluation of environmental issues and national prioritisation of conservation objectives. Departure from GES definitions is described as 'high', 'moderate' or low' and the implications for management options and national policy decisions are discussed. While the criteria used in this study were developed specifically for application toward MSFD objectives, with modification the approach could be applied to evaluate other high-level social, economic or environmental objectives. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

An exposure-effect approach for evaluating ecosystem-wide risks from human activities

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is promoted as the solution for sustainable use. An ecosystem-wide assessment methodology is therefore required. In this paper, we present an approach to assess the risk to ecosystem components from human activities common to marine and coastal ecosystems. We build on: (i) a linkage framework that describes how human activities can impact the ecosystem through pressures, and (ii) a qualitative expert judgement assessment of impact chains describing the exposure and sensitivity of ecological components to those activities. Using case study examples applied at European regional sea scale, we evaluate the risk of an adverse ecological impact from current human activities to a suite of ecological components and, once impacted, the time required for recovery to pre-impact conditions should those activities subside. Grouping impact chains by sectors, pressure type, or ecological components enabled impact risks and recovery times to be identified, supporting resource managers in their efforts to prioritize threats for management, identify most at-risk components, and generate time frames for ecosystem recovery