Coordination Contracts as Connectors in Component-Based Development

Several proposals for component-based development methods have started to appear. However, the emphasis is still very much on the development of components as opposed to the development with components. The main focus is on how to generate ideal reusable components not on how to plug existing components and specify their interactions and connections. The concept of a coordination contract (Andrade and Fiadeiro 1999; Andrade and Fiadeiro 2001; Andrade, Fiadeiro et al. 2001) has been proposed to specify a mechanism of interaction between objects based on the separation between structure, what is stable, and interaction, what is changeable. This separation supports better any change of requirements, as contracts can be replaced, added or removed dynamically, i.e. in run-time, without having to interfere with the components that they coordinate. A coordination contract corresponds to an expressive architectural connector that can be used to plug existing components. In this paper we integrate the concept of a coordination contract with component-based development and show how coordination contracts can be used to specify the connectors between components

Enterprise Agility: Why Is Transformation so Hard?

Enterprise agility requires capabilities to transform, sense and seize new business opportunities more quickly than competitors. However, acquiring those capabilities, such as continuous delivery and scaling agility to product programmes, portfolios and business models, is challenging in many organisations. This paper introduces definitions of enterprise agility involving business management and cultural lenses for analysing large-scale agile transformation. The case organisation, in the higher education domain, leverages collaborative discovery sprints and an experimental programme to enable a bottom-up approach to transformation. Meanwhile the prevalence of bureaucracy and organisational silos are often contradictory to agile principles and values. The case study results identify transformation challenges based on observations from a five-month research period. Initial findings indicate that increased focus on organisational culture and leveraging of both bottom-up innovation and supportive top-down leadership activities, could enhance the likelihood of a successful transformation

Developing Open Educational Resources through Learning Design and Agile Practices

One of the current challenges related to Open Educational Resources (OERs) is how to produce quality and relevant materials to be reused and adapted to different contexts and learning situations. In this paper we present a flexible and systematic method for OERs, called AM-OER, that allows the development of OERs to evolve incrementally, and be modified and improved as needed. Practices of Learning Design are incorporated into the OERs development, making the design more understandable and shareable, and facilitating the reuse and adaptation. We applied AM-OER through a case study involving the development of a course in the software engineering domain. The results obtained suggest the applicability and usefulness of the AM-OER in the development of OERs

AM-OER: An Agile Method for the Development of Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources have emerged as important elements of education in the contemporary society, promoting life-long and personalized learning that transcends social, eco- nomic and geographical barriers. To achieve the potential of OERs and bring impact on education, it is necessary to increase their development and supply. However, one of the current challenges is how to produce quality and relevant OERs to be reused and adapted to different contexts and learning situations. In this paper we proposed an agile method for the development of OERs – AM-OER, grounded on agile practices from Software Engineering. Learning Design practices from the OULDI project (UK Open University) are also embedded into the AM-OER aiming at improving quality and facilitating reuse and adaptation of OERs. In order to validate AM-OER, an experiment was conducted by applying it in the development of an OER on software testing. The results showed preliminary evidences on the applicability, effectiveness and ef ciency of the method in the development of OERs

Patterns for service-oriented information exchange requirements

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is an emerging computing paradigm that supports loosely-coupled inter-enterprise interactions. SOC interactions are predominantly specified in a procedural manner that defines message sequences intermixing implementation with business requirements. In this paper we present a set of patterns concerning requirements of information exchange between participants engaging in service-oriented interactions. The patterns aim at explicating and elaborating the business requirements driving the interaction and separating them from implementation concerns

deep|think: A Second Life environment for part-time research students at a distance

This paper reports on the design of a Second Life campus for a new innovative post-graduate research programme at the Open University, UK, a world leader in supported distance higher education. The programme, launched in October 2009, is a part- time Master of Philosophy (MPhil) to be delivered at a distance, supported by a blend of synchronous and asynchronous Internet technologies. This paper briefly discusses the pedagogical thinking behind the Second Life campus, and the way the implementation was designed to meet the pedagogy. The paper also reports on the outcome of an early evaluation we have conducted

Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model

There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience

Developing research degrees online

Research degrees have been changing radically in the last twenty years, with an extensive body of work accumulated on improving the practice of research degrees and on developing skills for independent researchers. However, most of this work focuses on full-time residential research degrees, and little attention has been paid to part-time research degrees at a distance. This paper presents a novel research degree, the Virtual MPhil in Computing, offered by The Open University (UK), supported by a blend of technologies, and designed to address this gap. We discuss the support it provides for the development of student community, research dialogue and progress monitoring of distance research students

Recursos Educacionais Abertos: Aspectos de desenvolvimento no cenário brasileiro [Open Educational Resources: aspects of development in the Brazilian context]

Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REAs) têm emergido como um importante elemento da educação na sociedade contemporânea, possibilitando novas perspectivas de construção e partilha de conhecimento que transcendem as restrições impostas pela educação tradicional. Embora REAs possam trazer diversos benefícios e impacto sobre a educação, sua adoção ainda é limitada. No Brasil, em especial, há falta de evidências sobre a produção e o uso efetivo de REAs na educação, seja na modalidade presencial, híbrida ou a distância. Neste trabalho, uma pesquisa baseada em survey é conduzida com o objetivo de determinar “como” é o processo de desenvolvimento de REAs e evidenciar as principais barreiras e lacunas associadas, bem como fatores que possam ampliar a produção e a oferta de REAs no cenário brasileiro. Os resultados obtidos apontam para a necessidade de um esforço coletivo (governo, instituições de ensino, pesquisadores, educadores e aprendizes) para prover a fundamentação e os mecanismos adequados à produção, uso e compartilhamento de REAs, ajudand

Remote Working and Collaboration in Agile Teams

Agile software development relies heavily on tight and continuous collaboration, which becomes a challenge when team members work at a distance. Despite significant focus on distributed Agile working, remote working, when only one or two individuals are not co-located with the rest of the team, remains largely unexplored. We focus on one organisation with several such teams and investigate one in detail using distributed cognition – a theoretical framework for studying collaborative work. We present the results of a group retrospective, and a comparative analysis of collaboration in the team, taking the contrasting perspectives of the remote worker and his co-located teammates. The analysis shows substantial differences in three aspects: virtual artefacts; information flow; and the primacy of structure and facilities provided by collaborative platforms. Platforms that support meaningful collaboration and engagement for the remote worker, and create parity between all members of the team are crucial to integrating capability