BibSonomy publications for /concept/user/neilernst/metaWed Aug 13 01:13:40 CEST 2008Computer51- 58Automating change evolution in model-driven engineering392006must-read evolution modeling aspects The escalating complexity of software and system models is making it difficult to rapidly explore the effects of a design decision. Automating such exploration with model transformation and aspect-oriented techniques can improve both productivity and model quality. The combination of model transformation and aspect weaving provides a powerful technology for rapidly transforming legacy systems from the high-level properties that models describe. Further, by applying aspect-oriented techniques and program transformation, small changes at the modeling level can trigger very large transformations at the source code level. Thus, model engineers can explore alternative configurations using an aspect weaver targeted for modeling tools and then use the models to generate program transformation rules for adapting legacy source code on a wide scale.Sun Jul 13 02:14:03 CEST 2008Empirical Software Engineeringonline only currently--An experiment on the role of graphical elements in architecture visualization2008empirical visualization should-read Abstract  The evolution and maintenance of large-scale software systems requires first an understanding of its architecture before delving into lower-level details. Tools facilitating the architecture comprehension tasks by visualization provide different setsof configurable, graphical elements to present information to their users. We conducted a controlled experiment that exemplifiesthe critical role of such graphical elements when aiming at understanding the architecture. In our setting, a different configurationof graphical elements had significant influence on program comprehension tasks. In particular, a 63% gain in effectivenessin architectural analysis tasks was achieved simply by changing the configuration of the graphical elements of the same tool.Based on the results, we claim that significant effort should be spent on the configuration of architecture visualizationtools and that configurability should be a requirement for such tools.Tue Jun 24 20:06:02 CEST 2008IEEE Transaction on Software EngineeringJuneA Realistic Empirical Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of UML in Software Maintenance2008uml empirical should-read The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto standard for object-oriented software analysis and design modeling. However, few empirical studies exist that investigate the costs and evaluate the benefits of using UML in realistic contexts. Such studies are needed so that the software industry can make informed decisions regarding the extent to which they should adopt UML in their development practices. This is the first controlled experiment that investigates the costs of maintaining and the benefits of using UML documentation during the maintenance and evolution of a real, non-trivial system, using professional developers as subjects, working with a state-of-the-art UML tool during an extended period of time. The subjects in the control group had no UML documentation. In this experiment, the subjects in the UML group had on average a practically and statistically significant 54\% increase in the functional correctness of changes (p=0.03), an insignificant 7\% overall improvement in design quality (p=0.22) - though a much larger improvement was observed on the first change task (56\%) - at the expense of an insignificant 14\% increase in development time caused by the overhead of updating the UML documentation (p=0.35).Thu May 29 21:07:47 CEST 2008Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice283-107How do APIs evolve? A story of refactoring182006must-read evolution framework Frameworks and libraries change their APIs. Migrating an application to the new API is tedious and disrupts the development process. Although some tools and ideas have been proposed to solve the evolution of APIs, most updates are done manually. To better understand the requirements for migration tools, we studied the API changes of four frameworks and one library. We discovered that the changes that break existing applications are not random, but tend to fall into particular categories. Over 80% of these changes are refactorings. This suggests that refactoring-based migration tools should be used to update applications.Sun May 25 01:01:16 CEST 2008Empirical Software EngineeringThe impact of agile practices on communication in software development2008empirical should-read software agile Agile software development practices such as eXtreme Programming (XP) and SCRUM have increasingly been adopted to respond to the challenges of volatile business environments, where the markets and technologies evolve rapidly and present the unexpected.In spite of the encouraging results so far, little is known about how agile practices affect communication. This article presents the results from a study which examined the impact of XP and SCRUM practices on communication within software development teams and within the focal organization. The research was carried out as a case study in F-Secure where two agile software development projects were compared from the communication perspective. The goal of the study is to increase the understanding of communication in the context of agile software development: internally among the developers and project leaders and in the interface between the development team and stakeholders (i.e. customers, testers, other development teams). The study shows that agile practices improve both informal and formal communication. However, it further indicates that, in larger development situations involving multiple external stakeholders, a mismatch of adequate communication mechanisms can sometimes even hinder the communication. The study highlights the fact that hurdles and improvements in the communication process can both affect the feature requirements and task subtask dependencies as described in coordination theory. While the use of SCRUM and some XP practices facilitate team and organizational communication of the dependencies between product features and working tasks,the use of agile practices requires that the team and organization use also additional plan-driven practices to ensure the efficiency of external communication between all the actors of software development.Thu May 22 22:33:41 CEST 2008Kansai Science City, JapanProduct Focused Software Process ImprovementApril408--423Empirical Evaluation of Agile Software Development: The Controlled Case Study Approach2004should-read case-study Agile software development, despite its novelty, is an important domain of research within software engineering discipline. Agile proponents have put forward a great deal of anecdotal evidence to support the application of agile methods in various application domains and industry sectors. Scientifically grounded empirical evidence is, however, still very limited. Most scientific research to date has been conducted on focused practices performed in university settings. In order to generate impact on both the scientific and practical software engineering community, new approaches are needed for performing empirically validated agile software development studies. To meet these needs, this paper presents a controlled case study approach, which has been applied in a study of extreme programming methodology performed in close-to-industry settings. The approach considers the generation of both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data is grounded on three data points (time, size, and defect) and qualitative data on developers’ research diaries and post-mortem sessions. ER -Wed Jan 09 04:26:02 CET 2008Requirements EngineeringNovember4248-265Quantitative risk-based requirements reasoning82003Tradeoffs Risk Information Requirements should-read visualization Cost–benefit Decision At NASA we have been developing and applying a risk management framework, "Defect Detection and Prevention"(DDP). It is based on a simple quantitative model of risk and is supported by custom software. We have used it to aid in study and planning for systems that employ advanced technologies. The framework has proven successful at identifying problematic requirements(those which will be the most difficult to attain), at optimizing the allocation of resources so as to maximize requirements attainment, at identifying areas where research investments should be made, and at supporting tradeoff analyses among major alternatives. We describe the DDP model, the information that populates a model, how DDP is used, and its tool support. DDP has been designed to aid decision making early in development. Detailed information is lacking at this early stage. Accordingly, DDP exhibits a number of strategic compromises between fidelity and tractability. The net result is an approach that appears both feasible and useful during early requirements decision making.Mon Jan 07 21:05:28 CET 2008Commun. ACM142-52Software Errors and Complexity: An Empirical Investigation.271984software empirical complexity could-read Sat Dec 15 16:59:24 CET 2007IEEE Internet Computing82-85Extending a Natural Language Interface with Geospatial Queries112007query gis should-read The authors describe an extension of a menu-based natural language interface (MBNLI) to support geospatial queries. Their extension makes it easier for application analysts and even inexperienced users to phrase complex queries without knowing SQL, database schemas, spatial operators, or spatial indexes.Sat Dec 15 16:51:21 CET 2007IEEE Trans. Software EngineeringAugust8721 -- 734Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Research in Software Engineering282002software should-read empirical engineering Empirical software engineering research needs research guidelines to improve the research and reporting processes. We propose a preliminary set of research guidelines aimed at stimulating discussion among software researchers. They are based on a review of research guidelines developed for medical researchers and on our own experience in doing and reviewing software engineering research. The guidelines are intended to assist researchers, reviewers and meta-analysts in designing, conducting and evaluating empirical studies. Editorial boards of software engineering journals may wish to use our recommendations as a basis for developing guidelines for reviewers and for framing policies for dealing with the design, data collection and analysis and reporting of empirical studies.Tue Oct 30 17:56:43 CET 2007Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality129--143A Quantitative Assessment of Requirements Engineering Publications -- 1963--20062007meta requirements Requirements engineering research has been conducted for over 40 years. It is important to recognize the plethora of results accumulated to date to: (a) improve researchers' understanding of the historical roots of our field in the real-world andthe problems that they are trying to solve, (b) expose researchers to the breadth and depth of solutions that have been proposed,(c) provide a synergistic basis for improving those solutions or building new ones to solve real-world problems facing theindustry today, and d) increase practitioner awareness of available solutions. A detailed meta-analysis of the requirementsengineering literature will provide an objective overview of the advances and current state of the discipline. This paperrepresents the first step in a planned multi-year analysis. It presents the results of a demographic analysis by date, type,outlet, author, and author affiliation for an existing database of over 4,000 requirements engineering publications.Tue Oct 23 22:45:10 CEST 2007Software Process: Improvement and PracticeMarch/April295 --105Understanding Free/Open Source Software Development Processes112006could-read evolution oss This article introduces a special issue of Software Process – Improvement and Practice focusing on processes found in free or open source software development (F/OSSD) projects. It seeks to provide a background overview of research in this area through a review of selected empirical studies of F/OSSD processes. The results and findings from a survey of empirical studies of F/OSSD give rise to an interesting variety of opportunities and challenges for understanding these processes, which are identified along the way. Overall, what becomes clear is that studies of F/OSSD processes reveal a more diverse set of different types of processes than have typically been examined in conventional software development projects. The articles in this special issue further advance understanding of what processes characterize and shape F/OSSDWed Jun 20 20:33:50 CEST 2007Minneapolis, MinnesotaFuture of Software Engineering at ICSEMay37-54Model-driven Development of Complex Software: A Research Roadmap2007could-read complexity modeling software The term Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is typically used to describe software development approaches in which abstract models of software systems are created and systematically transformed to concrete implementations. In this paper we give an overview of current research in MDE and discuss some of the major challenges that must be tackled in order to realize the MDE vision of software development. We argue that full realizations of the MDE vision may not be possible in the near to medium-term primarily because of the wicked problems involved. On the other hand, attempting to realize the vision will provide insights that can be used to significantly reduce the gap between evolving software complexity and the technologies used to manage complexity.Tue May 08 04:14:06 CEST 2007AmsterdamEuropean Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR)March91--100Exploring Inter-Module Relationships in Evolving Software Systems2007software visualization evolution should-read 21-23Many of the existing approaches to reverse architecting –the reverse engineering of the architecture of software systems– are based on software exploration tools which provide interactive ways of exploring the system. These tools start with high-level views of the system and refine them with drill-down techniques applied on the high-level entities such as modules and packages, leaving aside valuable information contained in the dependencies between them. In this article we argue that the visualization of inter-module relations bears great potential for supporting the understanding of large evolving software systems. We present two concrete examples of such visualizations. The first, The Semantic Dependency Matrix is a technique for displaying details about a dependency between two modules which groups together classes with similar behavior. The second, The Edge Evolution Filmstrip presents the evolution of an inter-module relation through multiple versions of the system. Based on our experience with the Edge Evolution Film Strip, we propose a pattern language for inter-module relationships. We exemplify both the visualizations and the pattern language with examples from two large open source software systems.Fri Apr 06 21:39:38 CEST 2007Samos, GreeceFirst International Workshop on Critical Information Infrastructures SecurityAugustLNCS 434755--66Modelling Risk and Identifying Countermeasure in Organizations2006goal risk should-read 31--1Modelling and analysing risk is one of the most critical activity in system engineering. However, in literature approaches like Fault Tree Analysis, Event Tree Analysis, Failure Modes and Criticality Analysis focus on the system-to-be without considering the impact of the associated risks to the organization where the system will operate. The Tropos framework has been proved effective in modelling strategic interests of the stakeholders at organizational level. In this paper, we introduce the extended Tropos goal model to analyse risk at organization level and we illustrate a number of different techniques to help the analyst in identifying and enumerating relevant countermeasures for risk mitigation.Wed Feb 21 22:42:55 CET 2007IEEE SoftwareMar/Apr228-35Wiki-Based Stakeholder Participation in Requirements Engineering242007requirements should-read wiki Requirements elicitation and documentation are complex activities. The quality of their products can improve through stakeholders' participation, particularly in projects with high uncertainty. However, participative requirements engineering, especially in distributed environments, needs a platform that can support effective collaboration among often diverse stakeholders. Wikipedia has proved the flexibility of wikis for collaborating on content creation in general. In this article, the authors adapt this approach to support active stakeholder participation in RE. They include a document structure for wiki-based RE and discuss challenges and solutions based on their experience with several industry and academic projects. This article is part of a special issue on stakeholders in requirements engineering.Thu Jan 18 22:28:53 CET 2007Discourse Structure of Software Explanation: Snapshot Theory, Cognitive Patterns and Grounded Theory Methods2006could-read software ethnography grounded This thesis introduces a grounded theory of the discourse structure that professional software engineers use while explaining software. The ‘Snapshot Theory’ relates how the snapshot is the critical moment and fundamental building block in the discourse structure. We built Snapshot Theory by applying a rigorous qualitative data analysis research methodology, known as grounded theory, on observational data of professional software developers explaining software architectures. We developed a research methodology, qualitative analysis tools and case data in support of our investigation. We present two versions of our theory, the grounded theory tied to evidence, and our interpretation of the applied theory in pattern form, as cognitive patterns. We intend cognitive patterns to facilitate the development of software tool features based on Snapshot Theory.Sun Dec 31 18:53:42 CET 2006IEEE Transactions on Software EngineeringFebruary287-107A Systematic Review of Theory Use in Software Engineering Experiments332007software theory methodology should-read Empirically based theories are generally perceived as foundational to science. However, in many disciplines, the nature, role and even the necessity of theories remain matters for debate, particularly in young or practical disciplines such as software engineering. This article reports a systematic review of the explicit use of theory in a comprehensive set of 103 articles reporting experiments, from of a total of 5,453 articles published in major software engineering journals and conferences in the decade 1993-2002. Of the 103 articles, 24 use a total of 40 theories in various ways to explain the cause-effect relationship(s) under investigation. The majority of these use theory in the experimental design to justify research questions and hypotheses, some use theory to provide post hoc explanations of their results, and a few test or modify theory. A third of the theories are proposed by authors of the reviewed articles. The interdisciplinary nature of the theories used is greater than that of research in software engineering in general. We found that theory use and awareness of theoretical issues are present, but that theory-driven research is, as yet, not a major issue in empirical software engineering. Several articles comment explicitly on the lack of relevant theory. We call for an increased awareness of the potential benefits of involving theory, when feasible. To support software engineering researchers who wish to use theory, we show which of the reviewed articles on which topics use which theories for what purposes, as well as details of the theories' characteristics.Mon Nov 20 19:29:34 CET 2006MIS Quarterly167--93A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems231999should-read methodology empirical evaluation This article discusses the conduct and evaluation of interpretive research in information systems. While the conventions for evaluating information systems case studies conducted according to the natural science model of social science are now widely accepted, this is not the case for interpretive field studies. A set of principles for the conduct and evaluation of interpretive field research in information systems is proposed, along with their philosophical rationale. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by evaluating three published interpretive field studies drawn from the IS research literature. The intention of the paper is to further reflection and debate on the important subject of grounding interpretive research methodology.Thu Nov 16 19:58:26 CET 2006Hawaii, USAHawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)10Capabilities Engineering: Constructing Change-Tolerant Systems2007system evolution complexity must-read capability We propose a Capabilities-based approach for building long-lived, complex systems that have lengthy development cycles. User needs and technology evolve during these extended development periods, and thereby, inhibit a fixed requirements-oriented solution specification. In effect, for complex emergent systems, the traditional approach of baselining requirements results in an unsatisfactory system. Therefore, we present an alternative approach, Capabilities Engineering, which mathematically exploits the structural semantics of the Function Decomposition graph - a representation of user needs - to formulate Capabilities. For any given software system, the set of derived Capabilities embodies change-tolerant characteristics. More specifically, each individual Capability is a functional abstraction constructed to be highly cohesive and to be minimally coupled with its neighbors. Moreover, the Capability set is chosen to accommodate an incremental development approach, and to reflect the constraints of technology feasibility and implementation schedules. We discuss our validation activities to empirically prove that the Capabilities-based approach results in change-tolerant systems.