Migrating Software Products to the Cloud

Cloud computing, as a disruptive innovation, has the potential to adversely affect companies. The effects can be particularly extreme for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Subsequently, considerations of organisational resilience should be made when integrating with disruptive innovations like cloud computing. This paper reports of a longitudinal study investigating how a set of SME high-value software vendors are migrating their software products to the cloud. Adaptive socio-technical systems (ASTSs) concepts are used to provide a framework for understanding the adoption process. This study draws out a set of macro and micro themes relating to key phases of strategy development, the migration process and the impact on customer perceptions. From the findings, more systemic and holistic approaches are identified to address key tensions through the adoption life cycle while considering organisational resilience

Migrating software products to the cloud: an adaptive STS perspective.

Cloud computing, as a disruptive innovation, has the potential to adversely affect companies. The effects can be particularly extreme for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Subsequently, considerations of organisational resilience should be made when integrating with disruptive innovations like cloud computing. This paper reports of a longitudinal study investigating how a set of SME high-value software vendors are migrating their software products to the cloud. Adaptive socio-technical systems (ASTSs) concepts are used to provide a framework for understanding the adoption process. This study draws out a set of macro and micro themes relating to key phases of strategy development, the migration process and the impact on customer perceptions. From the findings, more systemic and holistic approaches are identified to address key tensions through the adoption life cycle while considering organisational resilience

Realizability of the Lorentzian (n,1)-Simplex

In a previous article [JHEP 1111 (2011) 072; arXiv:1108.4965] we have developed a Lorentzian version of the Quantum Regge Calculus in which the significant differences between simplices in Lorentzian signature and Euclidean signature are crucial. In this article we extend a central result used in the previous article, regarding the realizability of Lorentzian triangles, to arbitrary dimension. This technical step will be crucial for developing the Lorentzian model in the case of most physical interest: 3+1 dimensions. We first state (and derive in an appendix) the realizability conditions on the edge-lengths of a Lorentzian n-simplex in total dimension n=d+1, where d is the number of space-like dimensions. We then show that in any dimension there is a certain type of simplex which has all of its time-like edge lengths completely unconstrained by any sort of triangle inequality. This result is the d+1 dimensional analogue of the 1+1 dimensional case of the Lorentzian triangle.Comment: V1: 15 pages, 2 figures. V2: Minor clarifications added to Introduction and Discussion sections. 1 reference updated. This version accepted for publication in JHEP. V3: minor updates and clarifications, this version closely corresponds to the version published in JHE

Systems development methods and usability in Norway: An industrial perspective

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2007 Springer Berlin HeidelbergThis paper investigates the relationship between traditional systems development methodologies and usability, through a survey of 78 Norwegian IT companies. Building on previous research we proposed two hypotheses; (1) that software companies will generally pay lip service to usability, but do not prioritize it in industrial projects, and (2) that systems development methods and usability are perceived as not being integrated. We find support for both hypotheses. Thus, the use of systems development methods is fairly stable, confirming earlier research. Most companies do not use a formal method, and of those who do, the majority use their own method. Generally, the use of methods is rather pragmatic: Companies that do not use formal methods report that they use elements from such methods. Further, companies that use their own method import elements from standardised methods into their own

Generalizing across moral sub-domains: infants bidirectionally link fairness and unfairness to helping and hindering

Across two experiments, we investigated whether infants use prior behavior to form expectations about future behavior within the moral domain, focusing on the sub-domains of fairness and help/harm. In Experiment 1, 14- to 27-month-old infants were familiarized to an agent who either helped or hindered another agent to obtain her goal. At test, infants saw the helper or hinderer perform either a fair or unfair distribution of resources to two recipients. Infants familiarized to helping looked longer to the unfair distribution than the fair distribution at test, whereas infants familiarized to hindering looked equally at both test events, suggesting that hindering led infants to suspend baseline expectations of fairness. In Experiment 2, infants saw these events in reverse. Following familiarization to fair behavior, infants looked equally to helping and hindering; in contrast, following familiarization to unfair behavior, infants looked significantly longer to helping than hindering on test, suggesting that prior unfair behavior led infants to expect the agent to hinder another agent’s goals. These results suggest that infants utilize prior information from one moral sub-domain to form expectations of how an individual will behave in another sub-domain, and that this tendency seems to manifest more strongly when infants initially see hindering and unfair distributions than when they see helping and fair distributions. Together, these findings provide evidence for consilience within the moral domain, starting by at least the second year of life

Black holes and a scalar field in an expanding universe

We consider a model of an inhomogeneous universe including a massless scalar field, where the inhomogeneity is assumed to consist of many black holes. This model can be constructed by following Lindquist and Wheeler, which has already been investigated without including scalar field to show that an averaged scale factor coincides with that of the Friedmann model. In this work we construct the inhomogeneous universe with an massless scalar field, where we assume that the averaged scale factor and scalar field are given by those of the Friedmann model including a scalar field. All of our calculations are carried out in the framework of Brans-Dicke gravity. In constructing the model of an inhomogeneous universe, we define the mass of a black hole in the Brans-Dicke expanding universe which is equivalent to ADM mass if the mass evolves adiabatically, and obtain an equation relating our mass to the averaged scalar field and scale factor. As the results we find that the mass has an adiabatic time dependence in a sufficiently late stage of the expansion of the universe, and that the time dependence is qualitatively diffenrent according to the sign of the curvature of the universe: the mass increases decelerating in the closed universe case, is constant in the flat case and decreases decelerating in the open case. It is also noted that the mass in the Einstein frame depends on time. Our results that the mass has a time dependence should be retained even in the general scalar-tensor gravitiy with a scalar field potential. Furthermore, we discuss the relation of our results to the uniqueness theorem of black hole spacetime and gravitational memory effect.Comment: 16 pages, 3 tables, 5 figure

Historical roots of Agile methods: where did “Agile thinking” come from?

The appearance of Agile methods has been the most noticeable change to software process thinking in the last fifteen years [16], but in fact many of the “Agile ideas” have been around since 70’s or even before. Many studies and reviews have been conducted about Agile methods which ascribe their emergence as a reaction against traditional methods. In this paper, we argue that although Agile methods are new as a whole, they have strong roots in the history of software engineering. In addition to the iterative and incremental approaches that have been in use since 1957 [21], people who criticised the traditional methods suggested alternative approaches which were actually Agile ideas such as the response to change, customer involvement, and working software over documentation. The authors of this paper believe that education about the history of Agile thinking will help to develop better understanding as well as promoting the use of Agile methods. We therefore present and discuss the reasons behind the development and introduction of Agile methods, as a reaction to traditional methods, as a result of people's experience, and in particular focusing on reusing ideas from histor

Key Challenges in Agile Requirements Engineering

Agile Software Development (ASD) is becoming more popular in all fields of industry. For an agile transformation, organizations need to continuously improve their established approaches to Requirements Engineering (RE) as well as their approaches to software development. This is accompanied by some chal‐lenges in terms of agile RE. The main objective of this paper is to identify the most important challenges in agile RE industry has to face today. Therefore, we conducted an iterative expert judgement process with 26 experts in the field of ASD, comprising three complementary rounds. In sum, we identified 20 challenges in three rounds. Six of these challenges are defined as key challenges. Based on the results, we provide options for dealing with those key challenges by means of agile techniques and tools. The results show that the identified challenges are often not limited to ASD, but they rather refer to software development in general. Therefore, we can conclude that organ‐izations still struggle with agile transition and understanding agile values, in particular, in terms of stakeholder and user involvement.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

From Analysis Model to Software Architecture: a PIM2PIM Mapping.

To our knowledge, no current software development methodology explicitly describes how to transit from the analysis model to the software architecture of the application. This paper presents a method to derive the software architecture of a system from its analysis model. To do this, we are going to use MDA. Both the analysis model and the architectural model are PIMs described with UML 2. The model type mapping designed consists of several rules (expressed using OCL and natural language) that, when applied to the analysis artifacts, generate the software architecture of the application. Specifically the rules act on elements of the UML 2 metamodel (metamodel mapping). We have developed a tool (using Smalltalk) that permits the automatic application of these rules to an analysis model defined in RoseTM to generate the application architecture expressed in the architectural style C2