Thesis (Ph. D.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Degree granted by Missouri University of Science and Technology, formerly known as the University of Missouri-Rolla. Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed April 29, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-111).

With the reliance on information technology and the software that this technology utilizes increasing every day, it is of paramount importance that software developed be of an acceptable quality. This quality can be achieved through the utilization of various software engineering standards and guidelines. The question is, to what extent do these standards and guidelines need to be utilized and how are these standards and guidelines implemented? This research focuses on how guidelines developed by standardization bodies and the unified process developed by Rational can be integrated to achieve a suitable process and version control system within the context of a remote client/contractor small team environment.

Thesis Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology in Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technonlogy / The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in business has evolved to such an extent that many organizations (if not all) rely on Information Technology (IT) systems to better manage their processes, get competitive advantage, improve performance (efficiency and effectiveness), provide quality services on time and most importantly to keep customers happy. This has changed the way people communicate and conduct businesses, lowering processing cost, time and improving a return on investment. Therefore, high quality software systems are essential. Organizations adopt Agile Scrum methodologies in order to develop applications that help them to obtain a return on investment quickly, to improve customer satisfaction and to maintain competitive advantage. However, the IT industry is yet to develop error-free software that meets the expected quality standards. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the extent to which software quality assurance measures can be understood and applied to maximize the quality of software projects developed under Scrum methodology. A qualitative research method informed by an interpretive approach was used to collect and analyse data. Following the purposive sampling technique, five Scrum teams operating in different environments and two academics from one academic institution were interviewed. Structuration Theory (ST) was then used as an analytical framework to analyse data and to improve the understanding of Scrum practices and related quality assurance (QA) processes. Drawing on the major terms of ST, the contextual terrain of the Scrum development process was mapped. It reflected that rules are important aspects of Scrum functions. However, rules are not as strictly applied as in the traditional methodologies. The developer skill, project type and size have a direct influence on the practice/s. In Scrum, rules are flexible in that they can be modified to meet the environment and conditions of the team. Equally significant are resources, most particularly, time and the human resources in the form of developers and Scrum leaders. Otherwise, unit testing, user acceptance testing, close collaboration and code reviews were perceived as the most important practices in Scrum projects. In view of the findings, recommendations can be summed up into 4 main points; (1) that to ensure quality assurance in Scrum, Scrum teams, especially team leaders, should enforce compliance to standards, regardless of time pressures and tight deadlines; (2) It seems that the practice of working with the client to test final products as a quality assurance mechanism is working for all parties. This practice is encouraged and must be maintained; (3) Code reviews must be enforced, and that organisations invest in resources including the constant training of developers; (4) Project product owners, project managers, team leaders and business analysts should regularly meet with the user to verify requirements prior to the implementation phase. Active stakeholder involvement can minimize development costs and time.

The VizzAnalyzer Framework is a stand-alone tool for analyzing and visualizing the structures of large software systems. Today, it has its own limited Swing based GUI lacking a professional look & feel. Furthermore, the effort needed to extend the VizzAnalyzer with new features like automatic update, progress monitoring, help system, and integration of the Eclipse Java and C/C++ AST API is high. In order to improve current limitations and ease the future maintenance effort we refactored the VizzAnalyzer to be a plug-in to the Eclipse platform. We removed the burden of GUI development from the authors of the VizzAnalyzer replacing the Swing GUI with a SWT based GUI, which utilizes the rich feature set provided by the Eclipse Platform. Furthermore, the we did not only provide existing features of the VizzAnalyzer as loading and binding graphs, a complex system to load dynamic plug-ins functionalities for analysis, retrieval and visualization. We implemented an update and help manager, allowed for an easy use of third party plug-ins, which are available for Eclipse, and provided product branding. We propose that the newly created VizzAnalyzer 2.0 solved the aforementioned limitations and provides a good foundation for the future evolution of the VizzAnalyzer tool. This master thesis documents our how the VizzAnalyzer 2.0 has been developed and implemented for the Eclipse platform, and how developers shall use the new VizzAnalyzer version.

More than half of the total costs in ownership of a software system are maintenance costs. Reverse engineering is becoming more important and complex for huge systems, and tools for reverse engineering are necessary for system evaluation. The ISO/IEC 9126 standard defines software quality and The VizzAnalyzer Framework is a stand-alone tool for analyzing and visualizing large software systems’ structures. In this thesis, we describe the design and implementation of plug-ins for the VizzAnalyzer Framework, a system for reverse engineering, extending their features under the standards of software quality. It has proven to be useful in applying the new features into the VizzAnalyzer Framework being the first tool that includes a software quality model.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:51:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / A reutilização de artefatos, ao invés de construí-los do zero, processo usualmente conhecido como reuso de software, mostra-se uma boa opção de vantagem competitiva para as empresas de desenvolvimento de software. Neste contexto, o desenvolvimento baseado em componentes é uma das técnicas mais aplicadas para promover o reuso de software estabelecendo um promissor mercado de componentes. Entretanto, os métodos mais consolidados de desenvolvimento de componentes estão mais focados em demonstrá-lo como uma abordagem viável, e algumas atividades importantes, por exemplo, atividades relacionadas com qualidade, e mais especificamente, relacionadas a teste, são muitas vezes negligenciadas. Produtores de componentes têm dificuldades para preparar seus produtos para funcionar corretamente em diferentes contextos, como também para serem validados pelos consumidores que pretendem adotá-los. Similarmente, os consumidores de componentes possuem limitações para poder testar se componentes externos funcionam como especificados, e se são capazes de serem integrados aos seus sistemas. Assim, esta dissertação apresenta uma abordagem para apoiar o teste de componentes definindo atividades para guiar produtores de componentes no preparo de seus produtos para serem testados por terceiros, como também atividades para os consumidores de componentes para compreender e testar componentes externos objetivando a sua integração com seus sistemas em desenvolvimento. Por fim, é apresentada uma ferramenta para realizar as atividades definidas para produtores e consumidores. Um experimento foi conduzido avaliando a abordagem proposta e sua ferramenta relacionada

With the increased use of computers in every-day live, the demand for newer and better software is increasing day by day. This advancement has resulted in that many developers are searching for ways to decrease their development time. One approach is to use design patterns when designing applications. Design pattern are acknowledged solutions to known design problems that can be reused over and over again without ever doing the same thing twice. The most recent advancement of identifying design patterns has been within the domain of concurrent systems. Design pattern within concurrent systems are of interest in this project because of its young age. Development of concurrent applications has often been compared to constant reinvention of the wheel, because code reuse is very low and solutions to design problems are being rediscovered over and over again. By using design pattern, an attempt is made to avoid that. The question is if design patterns are capable of standing under that load. This project takes as a case study the problem of protecting a shared resource in a concurrent application, and implements two different solutions to that problem using a special design pattern. These two implementations are then evaluated, with consideration to certain software quality attributes, in a qualitative way. This project shows how a pattern can be used to solve a common synchronization problem. It discusses the nature of design patterns, what needs to be considered when they are implemented and how a pattern language can affect the implementation.

Abstract Software process improvement (SPI) approaches have been designed to produce changes at many levels, i.e. in the strategies, culture and working practices, of software development. Studies have shown that nearly two thirds of all SPI efforts have failed or fallen short of expectations. It is often stated in SPI-related literature and practice that "commitment" to SPI plays an important part in determining whether an SPI endeavor ultimately becomes a success or a failure. However, it often remains unclear what this concept actually means and how it affects SPI. This thesis argues for a scientifically grounded concept of commitment and delivers a description and a definition of this concept in the context of software process improvement. The elaboration of the concept is based on a literature study, which makes the research done in behavioral psychology and organizational science applicable in the field of software process improvement. This thesis shows that current thinking relies on practical models of commitment, and the empirically validated analysis conducted within this study reveals a number of common misleading assumptions regarding the notion and development of commitment in SPI. On this basis, this thesis suggests that the commitment phenomenon is better explained through what can be called strategic, operational and personal commitment nets. This framework can be used for analyzing the unfolding and alteration of commitment towards a specific entity, in this case a software process improvement endeavor, through time and changing circumstances. The viability and usefulness of the commitment nets framework is demonstrated through an analysis of four SPI cases in two software organizations. As a result, it is shown that even though the objective features of SPI in terms of costs and benefits may be dominating in the project initiation phase, their role tends to lose strength later on due to an inability of the SPI effort to produce quick and meaningful results, even if these are explicitly sought for. This phenomenon gives rise to a need for enhancing the role of social and psychological drivers. If this is not achieved, SPI activities are likely to cease to exist. The empirical analysis demonstrates that the use of the commitment nets model enables a more precise analysis of the various aspects involved in the commitment phenomenon than what would have been possible with current commitment models. Commitment, as conceptualized and operationalized in this thesis, makes a significant contribution to the outcome of the SPI initiative. The empirical evidence shows that, eventually, even well-planned SPI initiatives may fail to reach the goals set for them due to changes in commitment nets.

Performance is an aspect of software quality that is often not considered at early stages of software design. Common approaches to performance analysis include utilizing profiling tools after the software has been developed to find bottlenecks and executing simulation models that are either manually constructed or derived from UML design diagrams. Many projects attempt to correct performance issues by adding more powerful hardware instead of attacking the root cause. Software metrics have been used to predict many aspects of software quality such as maintainability and fault-tolerance by correlation and regression analysis. Metrics proposed by Chidamber and Kemerer, also known as the CK metric suite, have been studied extensively in software quality model analyses. These studies examined maintainability, fault tolerance, error proneness, and scalability of the software as it evolved through time. Correlations were made between metrics and the likely quality models they represented. Other metrics such as Cyclomatic Complexity by McCabe and class couplings by Martin have also been used in quality predictions. No research has been conducted to analyze relationship between performance and metrics. The goal of this research was to construct a decision tree that used software metrics to forecast performance characteristics. The relationship between metrics and performance was derived by correlation between static code metrics and three runtime variables: number of objects, method call frequency, and average method call lengths on selected software benchmarks. The decision tree was constructed using the C4.5 algorithm implemented in the WEKA software. Pearson correlation coefficients were obtained for the combined datasets from all benchmarks. The decision trees and Pearson statistics showed that weighted methods per class (WMC), total lines of code (TLOC), and coupling between objects (CBO) have significant correlation with software performance. WMC showed positive correlation with number of objects and calls. CBO correlated positively with average method call lengths and negatively with number of objects. TLOC correlated positively with number of calls.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The advancement in technology has revolutionized the role of software in recent years. Software usage is practically found in all areas of the industry and has become a prime factor in the overall working of the companies. Simultaneously with an increase in the utilization of software, the software quality assurance parameters have become more crucial and complex. Currently the quality measurement approaches, standards, and models that are applied in the software industry are extremely divergent. Many a time the correct approach will wind up to be a combination of di erent concepts and techniques from di erent software assurance approaches [1]. Thus, having a platform that provides a single workspace for incorporating multiple software quality assurance approaches will ease the overall software quality process. In this thesis we have proposed a theoretical framework for distributed software quality assurance, which will be able to continuously monitor a source code repository; create a snapshot of the system for a given commit (both past and present); the snapshot can be used to create a multi-granular blockchain of the system and its metrics (i.e.,metadata) which we believe will let the tool developers and vendors participate continuously in assuring quality and security of systems and in the process be accessible when required while being rewarded for their services.