Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Software that is regularly used for real world problem solving or addressing a real world application must be continually adapted and enhanced to maintain its fitness to an ever changing real world, its applications and application domains. This adaptation and enhancement activities are termed , As progressive activity is undertaken, the complexity (e.g., functional, structural) of the evolving system is likely to increase unless work, termed , is also undertaken in order to control and even reduce complexity. However, with progressive and anti-regressive work naturally competing for the same pool of resources, management will benefit from means to estimate the amount of work and resources to be applied to each of the two types. After providing a necessary background, this chapter describes a systems dynamics model that can serve as a basis of a tool to support decision making regarding the optimal personnel allocation over the system lifetime. The model is provided as an example of the use of process modelling in order to plan and manage long-term software evolution.

This chapter draws attention to software process modeling for open source software development. It proposes a three-layered open source software development process model. Its ‘definitional’ and ‘generic’ levels specify the common features of all fully-fledged open source projects. Its’ specific’ level allows to describe fine-grained process model fragments characteristics of different open source projects. In this chapter, the specific level is exemplified with the release management process of NetBeans IDE and Apache HTTP Server projects. The underlying modeling approach is SPEM (Software Process Engineering Meta-model) from the OMG. The paper closes with a discussion of the interest of explicit software process models for (1) process understanding and communication, (2) process comparison, reuse, and improvement, (3) process enactment support.

Software process modeling can be used to reason about strategies for attaining software dependability. The impact of different processes and technologies on dependability attributes can be evaluated through modeling and simulation. Strategies may have overlapping capabilities, and process modeling is useful for assessing mixed strategies. Dependability has many facets, and there is no single software dependability metric that fits all situations. A stakeholder value-based approach is useful for determining relevant dependability measures for different contexts. Analytical models and simulation techniques including continuous systems and discrete event modeling approaches can be applied to dependability. Continuous systems modeling is easier for aggregate analyses. Discrete event has some advantages for dependability applications because multiple attributes related to dependability measures can be attached to system entities, particularly when those same attributes are represented in empirical data. Combined approaches using the advantages of both are attractive for dependability applications. Two primary processes can be modeled to investigate dependability phenomena. Development process models mainly address software defect introduction and removal rates. Operational process models address the probability of various classes of failure: race conditions, deadlocks, missing real-time deadlines. An overview of sample applications is presented. An elaborated example shows how modeling can be used to optimize a process for dependability. There have been relatively few dependability modeling applications to-date, and the field is rich for exploration.

Software that is regularly used for real world problem solving or addressing a real world application must be continually adapted and enhanced to maintain its fitness to an ever changing real world, its applications and application domains. This adaptation and enhancement activities are termed , As progressive activity is undertaken, the complexity (e.g., functional, structural) of the evolving system is likely to increase unless work, termed , is also undertaken in order to control and even reduce complexity. However, with progressive and anti-regressive work naturally competing for the same pool of resources, management will benefit from means to estimate the amount of work and resources to be applied to each of the two types. After providing a necessary background, this chapter describes a systems dynamics model that can serve as a basis of a tool to support decision making regarding the optimal personnel allocation over the system lifetime. The model is provided as an example of the use of process modelling in order to plan and manage long-term software evolution.

In this chapter we describe how the socio-technical systems (STS) approach has been applied to the software process, as well as attempts that have been made to simulate and model the process as a whole. We also outline previous attempts to use socio-technical criteria and guidelines in order to make improvements to the process of constructing software. We first provide a broad outline of the STS approach followed by a number of examples drawn from the areas of COTS-based selection, the People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM), competency programmes and process simulation. We conclude the chapter with a set of future research issues that are most likely to occupy researchers in the coming years. These issues are drawn partly from the theoretical literature within software engineering, as well as recent developments within industrial practice.

VEGA 2 was the last Soviet or Russian Venus mission and remains so to the present day. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union and then Russia turned their attention back to Mars. By 1986, Soviet scientists were beginning to reach the limits of what could be achieved on Venus, although some further missions were sketched (Chapter 8). With the unbroken success of the Venus programme from 1975 to 1986, they had good reason to expect that their new efforts on Mars would be more successful than some of the previous missions.

Software process improvement has become a necessity for software intensive businesses for their competitive performance. However, managing change and revitalizing the organization for software process improvement is a considerable challenge. This chapter presents an analysis of the factors that enable and inhibit software process improvement, and presents a model and recommendations for successfully bringing about organizational change for software process improvement.

We introduce electronic process guides, and discuss their role in software engineering projects. We then present existing methods for constructing electronic process guides by defining a set of common processes for a company. Different approaches from the software engineering and management science are presented. We then go on to propose a new way of dealing with process description in software engineering: using process workshops as a tool to reach consensus on work practice. The main reason for this is to get realistic descriptions with accurate detail as well as company commitment in an efficient manner. We describe our workshop-oriented method to define processes, which we have used in small software companies, and show examples of results.