Assessing the instrument reliability and validity of risk mitigation for anti software ageing model during software maintenance

Longer software lifecycle is important to ensure its ability to provide on-going function and services. However, software relevancy and importance may reduce once its performance and quality degrades through inevitable ageing progress. Even though software ageing is inevitable, the progress of ageing in software could be slowed down and delayed. To achieve this, we may need to determine and understand the causes contributing to this phenomenon. Little attention had been paid to address software ageing from software engineering perspective, ageing caused by failures to modify the software or from the results of software changes. Hence, this motivate the study to determine the risks of performing software changes that influence software ageing occurrences and propose a method to tackle software ageing from software engineering perspective to reduce risks impact before it become apparent through risk mitigation. This paper discusses on the reliability and validity of instrument designed to conduct a study among software practitioners in order to gain insight on the risks of performing changes to software influencing software ageing and determine risk mitigation effect on the relationship between software ageing and anti software ageing. Preliminary study was conducted through content validity interview and pilot study. The results from pilot study conducted shows the items in the questionnaire has a good level of reliability to measure each variable in the model, hence the instrument can be used for further studies

Constructing a model of risk mitigation for anti software ageing during software maintenance

Software will normally undergo an inevitable ageing process during its lifecycle. Most often, software rejuvenation is mainly proposed by past researchers to delay software ageing caused by errors accumulation from long running software execution. This method addresses software ageing from software dependability perspective.However little attention has been paid to address software ageing from software engineering perspective, which caused by failures to modify the software or from the results of software changes.Changes are vital to enable software accommodating new functions, ensuring its survivability towards new environment but pioneer in software ageing field argued that the results of software changes could influence software ageing. Hence, this motivate the study to develop a method to tackle software ageing from software engineering perspective to reduce risks impact before it become apparent. This paper discusses on the development of conceptual model of risk mitigation for anti software ageing during software maintenance through concepts gained from literature study. The design of the conceptual modelillustrates the relationships between related concepts through concept mapping. It is significant to portray preliminary work in the study thus provide direction for further work to examine the relationships between concepts

A model of software change risk assessment measures using risk mitigation process in anti-ageing

Continuous changes during maintenance may cause software structure to deteriorate and causing bugs and errors, which reduces software quality leading to software ageing. Software ageing is inevitable, however, the progress of ageing can be delayed to attain software anti-ageing where software maintains its quality. Change analysis involves assessment of risks that monitor, examine and manage the impact of software changes to deal with software ageing, however, it is still unclear how maintainers perform the assessment of risks. Existing risk mitigation is lack of quantifiable approach, which arises ambiguous issues for change analysis. There are also inadequate tools to support maintainers for change analysis during software maintenance for software anti-ageing. The study aims to determine the risks of software changes that influence software ageing from software engineering perspective and further develop a model of software change risk assessment measures using risk mitigation process in anti-ageing as well as building a prototype based on the model. From a comprehensive theoretical study, six risks of software changes such as human, technical, environment, technology, resources and maintenance procedure and process were discovered to influence software ageing during software maintenance. To examine the relationships between those risks and software ageing, a quantitative survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire among 152 software practitioners in Malaysia. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis consists of measurement model and structural model assessment through SmartPLS software. The result shows that human risk, technical risk, environment risk, technology risk and maintenance procedure and process risk have significant effect on software ageing. The study found resources risk has no significant effect on software ageing. The study also discovered that risk mitigation is a moderator for the relationship between software ageing and software anti-ageing, where the interaction term demonstrates a significant path with the p- value of interaction term is 0.0001, which is smaller than recommended p-value of 0.05. Based on the results, a model of software change risk assessment measures using risk mitigation process in anti-ageing is developed that comprises of five components such as change request, risks of software changes, software ageing, risk mitigation process and software anti-ageing. Then, a prototype named Risk Mitigation for Software Anti-Ageing System is built based on the model. The model was validated and prototype was verified using expert or accreditation approach through interview with experts. The findings from this research contributes to assist maintainers to monitor, evaluate and manage risk of software changes that influence software ageing during change analysis in software maintenance to achieve software anti-ageing

Assessment of instrument reliability and validity on requirement reuse practices in Malaysia

Requirement reuse came as an alternative method to facilitate the requirement engineering process. It is an approach of making use of existing requirement documents in order to reduce effort requirement elicitation and analysis during software development lifecycle. There are various research works had been done on the implementation of requirement reuse and many had sought to provide a better practice of it. However, the practice of requirement reuse is still uncertain. There is a lack of study to determine the current state of requirement reuse practice in Malaysia. Therefore, an instrument is designed and developed to determine requirement reuse process, challenges, component, and its support tools. This paper describes the design of the instrument used for the survey on requirement reuse practice and the assessment of its reliability and validity. Cronbach’s alpha test was used to check on its reliability meanwhile hetero-monotrait ratio (HTMT) criterion was used to check on the discriminant validity. The result from both of the tests shows the item in the questionnaire has a high level of consistency and established discriminant validity.Therefore, based on the results, there are no modifications or amendments made to the questionnaire. Hence, the developed instrument is reliable and has sufficient discriminant validity for further work