The rapid proliferation of microprocessor based products has increased the need of Microcomputer Development Systems. The IBM PC's software architecture is modified to make it an Intel Series III compatible development system. Universal development interface (UDI) is used to allow all Intel languages and object modules to execute on the IBM PC. The development languages available are the 8086/8088 assembly language, with F0RTRAN-86 and Pascal-86 as the high level languages. The exact working and operating procedures of the software development tools, like an assembler, compiler, linker, locater, hex to object converter and a debugger are explained in detail. Mathematical support is either through an 8087 or its emulator. Detailed explanation of high level language program execution is given, including the run time support needed. A serial loader program is also available to downline load programs from the IBM PC development system to other target machines, like the SDK-86 single board computer. / M.S.

This research develops a set of predictive measures enabling software testers and designers to identify and target potential problem areas for additional and/or enhanced testing. Predictions are available as early in the design process as requirements allocation and as late as code walk-throughs. These predictions are based on characteristics of the design artifacts prior to coding. Prediction equations are formed at established points in the software development process called milestones. Four areas of predictive measurement are examined at each design milestone for candidate predictive metrics. These areas are: internal complexity, information flow, defect categorization, and the change in design. Prediction equations are created from the set of candidate predictive metrics at each milestone. The most promising of the prediction equations are selected and evaluated. The single "best" prediction equation is selected at each design milestone. The resulting predictions are promising in terms of ranking areas of the software design by the number of predicted defects. Predictions of the actual number of defects are less accurate. / Master of Science

Large scale software development efforts in the past decade have posed a problem in terms of the reliability of the software. The size and complexity of software that is being developed is growing rapidly and integrating diverse pieces of software in the operational environment also poses severe reliability issues, resulting in increased development and operational costs. A number of reliability models have been defined in the literature to deal with problems of this kind. However, most of these models treat the system as a "black box" and do not consider the complexity of the software in its reliability predictions. Also, reliability is predicted after the system had been completely developed leaving little scope for any major design changes to improve system reliability. This thesis reports on an effort to develop a reliability model based on complexity metrics which characterize a software system and runtime metrics which reflect the degree of testing of the system. A complete development of the reliability model is presented here. The model is simple and reflects on our intuition of the software development process and our understanding of the significance of the complexity metrics. Credibility analysis is done on the model by simulating a number of systems and applying the model. Data collected from three FORTRAN coded systems developed for NASA Goddard was used as representative of the actual software systems. An analysis of the results is finally presented. / Master of Science / incomplete_metadata

The currently mainstream mobile application development became part of several programming classes, and courses are being developed focused on mobile app development. There are fundamental differences in programming topics for mobile, including the small screen and finger-based interactions, connectivity using different communication channels, and a large number of sensors. Because of these differences, there is a need to explore different approaches to teach the concepts of mobile development. Integrated approaches and collaborative learning are key to handle the multi-platform environment of mobile development and the diversity of its devices. One practice that has been used in educational contexts for collaborative learning is Pair Programming (PP); an approach that features two developers working on the same development task. Since it became popular in the 1990s, Pair Programming (PP) has been used by developers who worked on desktop and web applications. During the past two decades, PP has been studied in both industrial and classroom settings. Several studies have shown that PP is a pedagogical tool that can help students enhance their productivity and performance. However, PP has not been studied for mobile development courses before. With the challenging nature of mobile development topics, we saw potential benefits for pair-based learning. To cover the challenges of mobile development, we developed an approach that integrates Lectures, hands-on Tutorials, and in-class Pair Programming (PP) sessions (the LTP approach). Although PP has been studied previously in classroom settings, LTP provides an adapted version that better fits the requirements of mobile application development. Integrating PP as a core element of mobile development classes aims at giving opportunities to students to collaborate, share experiences, and solve problems together. Moreover, providing multiple teaching approaches ensures that students would benefit from the variety of education methods. The LTP approach aims at helping Computer Science (CS) educators to develop curricula and manage classes for teaching mobile app development. / Ph. D.

Every year thousands of specialized CAD/CAM applications programs are developed to meet the needs of industry, education and research. The international 3-D graphics standard, PHIGS, has proven to be very useful in the creation of custom CAD/CAM software. Although PHIGS+ promises to deliver some geometric modeling procedures, not nearly enough is being done to support the writing of CAD/CAM software. CAD/CAM applications programmers should have available a standardized high level applications programming environment which supports the creation of device-independent and portable design and manufacturing software. In this dissertation, one approach towards the establishment of a CAD/CAM programming standard has been presented. This programming environment is called CADMADE - Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Applications Development Environment. CADMADE includes not only graphics programming support, but also high level procedures to support the creation of geometric modeling, mechanical design, manufacturing, expert systems and user interface software. The requirements of CADMADE have been created. CADMADE consists of five environments: the User Interface Environment (UIE), the Design and Modeling Environment (DME), the Virtual Manufacturing Environment (VME), the Expert Consultation Environment (ECE) and the PHIGS+ Environment. The User Interface Environment has been designed in great detail. A prototype of the User Interface Environment has been created using PHIGS. Examples of applications programs which use the prototype User Interface Environment are presented. The Design and Modeling Environment has also been designed. A new set of logical input/output devices has been created for the Design and Modeling Environment. The requirements of the Expert Consultation Environment and some new concepts in expert system consultation are discussed. / Ph. D.

Cinnober is an organization that develops advanced software solutions for financial institutions. As a part of the technology toolkit used at Cinnober there is a web framework with which GUI development can be driven from the data available on the server, through configuration rather than development. Rather than having the user interface emerge as a result of technology and available data, they would like to explore a software development model driven by user centered design. Cinnober practices scrum, an agile software development framework, which has proven difficult to integrate with user centered design. This thesis strives to identify suitable methods for performing user centered design in the environment of agile software development. A development process based on scrum, lean UX, staggered sprints and the effect map was then utilized and evaluated in a short development project at Cinnober. Utilizing and evaluating those methods yielded valuable input which can be of use in future development efforts. While there was plenty of positive feedback from the development team there was also some room for improvement. Additionally, there are quite a few pieces missing in order for the utilized development process to cover all aspects considered important in one of the most commonly cited definitions of user centered design.

The development of enterprise software is a complex activity that requires a diverse set of stakeholders to communicate and coordinate in order to achieve a successful outcome. In this dissertation I introduce a high-level physical architecture for a platform titled FeatureIT that has the goal of supporting the collaboration between stakeholders throughout the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). FeatureIT is the result of unifying the theoretical foundations of the multi-disciplinary field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) with the paradigm and associated technologies of Web 2.0. The architecture was borne out a study of literature in the fields of CSCW, Web 2.0 and software engineering, which facilitated the identification of functional and non-functional requirements necessary for the platform. The design science research methodology was employed to construct this architecture iteratively to satisfy the requirements while validating its efficacy against a comprehensive set of scenarios that typically occur in the SDLC. / Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)

Context. Software Project management focuses on planning and executing the activities for developing software. Agile Software Project Management helps to plan shorter iterations and frequent changes to customer requirement. Developing the process flow metrics helps to monitor the process and to tune the process for the given context. Objectives. The main objectives in the thesis are to identify process flow metrics and frameworks that are suitable for measuring the process flow in Agile projects especially projects with significant dependence on hardware components. Apart from identified metrics from the literature, we identify the impact, challenges, and advantages of using agile models with the help of productivity and process flow metrics and implement them on a test phase project and compare the productivity of agile model with waterfall model. Methods. The thesis presents a two-step study. The first step was to perform a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and collect the metrics from the literature study that can be used for the comparison of the productivity of both the processes. The Second step was to conduct a case study at Volvo Cars to get us a better understanding the impact of the agile and how the process flow metrics can be used in real time for measuring and comparison.   Results. In the first step of SLR, 363 metrics that can be used by software teams have been identified of which 10 were suitable for the comparison of our current case study required by the second step of our thesis. In the second step, in the first iteration after the transition, an increase in productivity of 6.25% is achieved by the team following the agile process over the team following the traditional process. Several advantages and challenges faced during the transition have been identified which might have affected the achieved productivity. Conclusions. We conclude from the results achieved that metrics can be used as a tool to enhance the benefits of the Agile process. Process Flow metrics can be of good use to compare the difference of productivity between different processes and make improvements to the current processes. Use of process flow metrics increases the insight of all the team members on the progress of the project and guides them to enhance team performance and stay on track with the project schedule.

Uncertainty in software development and business environment and the need to increase thespeed of development have driven organizations to search for methods that are responsive toboth change and speed. Providing iterative development, agile development involvescustomers and users through different phases of development, and delivers frequent releasesof software to customer while receives the corresponding feedback. Using this approach, agiledevelopment thus aims at addressing mentioned issues of speed and uncertainty whiledeveloping only what customer needs from the beginning of the project. On the other hand,distributed software development is used in many organizations to reach global talent andglobal market. The problems associated with distributed software development such as lack ofenough communication and team coherency, have forced project managers to combine it withagile to mitigate these social problems. This study focuses on distributed agile development,its suitability for a typical project and its challenges and deficiencies. Text analysis andinterviews using qualitative methods are used in this scientific research work. From thetheoretical view point, different text covering agile methodology, distributed development andcombination of them were considered. This study covered two parts: first, an evaluation ofagile and distributed development opportunities and problems to help determine whether ornot distributed development is suitable for a project and second, considering the challengesonce starting to use this method and practices required to regard them. For the empirical part,the focus was put on Volvo IT employees by having seven interviews with members who arecurrently active in distributed agile development. These interviews were used to compare andverify the finding of the theoretical part. The results of the study were categorized into twosections. In the first part, important elements required to verify the suitability of using thismethod are provided. The recommended factors for this evaluation are cost, productivity,customer, team structure, etc. In the second part, the challenges of using distributed agiledevelopment were categorized into four parts: (a) challenges of selected agile method, whichthe focus in this study is Scrum, (b) challenges with time-zone differences, (c) communicationchallenges and (d) finally team building challenges. The required practices to address thesechallenges were also provided. / Program: Masterutbildning i Informatik

Thesis in its theoretical part summarizes research in the area of global software development. Practical part illustrates processes in real firm which develops software in distributed environment. Conclusion then provides reccomendations to be applied in the real company.