Le développement de logiciels pour les robots connectés est une difficulté majeure dans le domaine du génie logiciel. Les systèmes proposés sont souvent issus de la fusion de une ou plusieurs plates-formes provenant des robots, des ordinateurs autonomes, des appareils mobiles, des machines virtuelles, des caméras et des réseaux. Nous proposons ici une approche orientée agent permettant de représenter les robots et tous les systèmes auxiliaires comme des agents d’un système. Ce concept de l’agence préserve l’autonomie sur chacun des agents, ce qui est essentiel dans la mise en oeuvre logique d’un nuage d’éléments connectés. Afin de procurer une flexibilité de mise en oeuvre des échanges entre les différentes entités, nous avons mis en place un mécanisme d’hyperactivité ce qui permet de libérer sélectivement une certaine autonomie d’un agent par rapport à ces associés.Actuellement, il n’existe pas de solution orientée méta-modèle pour décrire les ensembles de robots interconnectés. Dans cette thèse, nous présentons un méta-modèle appelé HTM5 pour spécifier a structure, les relations, les échanges, le comportement du système et l’hyperactivité dans un système de nuages de robots. La thèse décrit l’anatomie du méta-modèle (HTM5) en spécifiant les différentes couches indépendantes et en intégrant une plate-forme indépendante de toute plateforme spécifique. Par ailleurs, la thèse décrit également un langage de domaine spécifique pour la modélisation indépendante dans HTM5. Des études de cas concernant la conception et la mise en oeuvre d’un système multi-robots basés sur le modèle développé sont également présentés dans la thèse. Ces études présentent des applications où les décisions commerciales dynamiques sont modélisées à l’aide du modèle HTM5 confirmant ainsi la faisabilité du méta-modèle proposé. / Software development for cloud connected robotic systems is a complex software engineeringendeavour. These systems are often an amalgamation of one or more robotic platforms, standalonecomputers, mobile devices, server banks, virtual machines, cameras, network elements and ambientintelligence. An agent oriented approach represents robots and other auxiliary systems as agents inthe system.Software development for distributed and diverse systems like cloud robotic systems require specialsoftware modelling processes and tools. Model driven software development for such complexsystems will increase flexibility, reusability, cost effectiveness and overall quality of the end product.The proposed 5-view meta-model has separate meta-models for specifying structure, relationships,trade, system behaviour and hyperactivity in a cloud robotic system. The thesis describes theanatomy of the 5-view Hyperactive Transaction Meta-Model (HTM5) in computation independent,platform independent and platform specific layers. The thesis also describes a domain specificlanguage for computation independent modelling in HTM5.The thesis has presented a complete meta-model for agent oriented cloud robotic systems and hasseveral simulated and real experiment-projects justifying HTM5 as a feasible meta-model.

The basic aim for any software development organization is to maximize value creation for any given investment. To amplify and speed up value creation efforts, Agile Software Development has gained much popularity during the last decade as a response to a volatile and disruptive market. In an Agile environment, the team focuses on lightweight working practices, constant deliveries and customer collaboration rather than heavy documentation and inflexible processes. However, the Agile way of working has complicated how an organization can control and evaluate the process; allowing organizations to believe that all Agile processes is the ideal process. This master thesis was conducted as a case study at Sectra ImIT, an Agile Health IT company working with Imaging and IT solutions that is currently in an early phase of introducing metrics in the System Development process. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate and suggest how the organization could use metrics to control and evaluate value creation in the System Development process. It also aimed to provide strategic recommendations to such an organization how they could continue their work with implementing and using metrics. The descriptive and exploratory purpose of this study was realized through unstructured and semistructured interviews with people involved in the process as well as observations. One of the major findings in this thesis is related to a missing feedback loop from defects occurring at customer site to the internal System Development process. Therefore, this study developed and implemented a concept to generate this feedback. The concept builds on defect information that can be used both to generate feedback and statistics for evaluation. The second major finding in this study is related to the identification of barriers to why the organization is not using metrics in teams to control and evaluate the process. Based on these findings, the authors presented several recommendations that should be considered to create a culture where teams are using metrics to learn more about the process. The first recommendation is that the organization should set guidelines among teams of what should, and is desired to be evaluated with focus on information need. Secondly, metrics need to be higher prioritized through directives from management granting team’s resources to manage metrics, which at the same time provides incentives that the organization believe metrics could improve their work. Thirdly, based on the company context, teams should identify metrics based on an information need derived from their prioritizations, changes, decisions and what is currently left unanswered. Finally, metrics should primarily be used to provide means for discussion and provide feedback with focus on trends rather than absolute numbers. / Det huvudsakliga målet för ett godtyckligt företag inom mjukvaruutveckling är att maximera det värde som skapas i varje enskild investering. För att förstärka och snabba upp värdeskapande har Agil mjukvaruutveckling växt i popularitet som en respons mot volatila och osäkra marknader. I en Agil miljö fokuserar grupper på ”lättviktade” arbetsmetoder, kontinuerliga leveranser och kundsamarbeten över det tidigare arbetssättet som bestod av mycket dokumentation och inflexibla processer. Samtidigt har det Agila arbetssättet gjort det svårt för organisationer att kontrollera och utvärdera processen, vilket har resulterat i att organisationer antar att deras Agila process är ideal och välfungerande med avsaknad av belägg för det. Detta examensarbete genomfördes som en fallstudie på Sectra ImIT, ett Agilt företag inom medicinsk teknik med fokus på bildhanteringssystem och IT lösningar. Företaget är i en tidig fas av att undersöka och introducera mätetal i systemutvecklingsprocessen, där syftet med examensarbetet var att utvärdera och föreslå hur organisationen kunde använda mätetal för att kontrollera och utvärdera värdeskapande i processen. Därtill ämnade studien även att ge strategiska förslag på hur företaget i framtiden kan arbeta med att implementera och använda sig av mätetal. Det deskriptiva och explorativa syftet realiserades genom ostrukturerade och semi-strukturerade intervjuer samt observationer med människor som dagligen arbetade inom processen. En iakttagelse var kopplad till avsaknaden av återkoppling mellan de defekter som uppkommer ute hos kund tillbaka till systemutvecklingsprocessen. Detta resulterade i ett koncept som utvecklades och implementerades av författarna med syfte att skapa återkoppling och möjlighet till statistisk utvärdering av processen som helhet. Den andra iakttagelsen berörde ett antal anledningar till varför organisationen inte använder mätetal i teams för att kontrollera och utvärdera processen. Baserat på en analys av dessa presenterar författarna flertalet rekommendationer som företaget borde ta hänsyn till för att skapa en kultur som främjar användandet av mätetal för att skapa ytterligare förståelse för processen. Den första rekommendationen är att organisationen bör diskutera riktlinjer gemensamt för teams gällande vad som anses önskvärt att utvärdera, med fokus på informationsbehov. Därtill bör organisationen uppmana teams till att allokera mer resurser på mätetal, vilket samtidigt ger incitament att det är något företaget tror kan hjälpa teams att bli bättre. Utifrån företagets kontext bör teams själva tillåtas att identifiera mätetal baserat på deras informationsbehov som ett resultat av exempelvis prioriteringar, förändringar, beslut och vad som för tillfället är obesvarat. Slutligen ska mätetal användas i huvudsak som en grund för diskussion och feedback med fokus på trender snarare än att uppnå specifika mål.

Business-IT alignment has been a top research topic for three decades now and consistently ranks high on CIO priorities and concerns. In spite of its seeming advantages, sustainable business-IT alignment remains elusive in practice. This can be attributed to the language and knowledge gaps which impede mutual understanding between business and IT stakeholders. It can also be attributed to the limitations imposed by approaching alignment solely from a strategic perspective. This thesis argues for an ontology-based framework that bridges the language and knowledge gaps through closer interaction between business and IT stakeholders throughout the software development and project management lifecycles, especially at the requirements engineering stage. Attempts at achieving sustainable business-IT alignment predominantly focus on strategic alignment and have not been successful for various reasons. Firstly, driving down alignment initiatives to the operational and tactical levels is challenging. Secondly, it is difficult to operationalize the metrics used for evaluating alignment maturity at strategic levels. These limitations are less pronounced at the functional levels of an organization. It is at these levels that business strategies are executed and interaction between business and IT personnel is most frequent. The interaction between business and IT stakeholders in the execution of IT projects presents an opportunity that can be leveraged to drive alignment maturity. The proposed framework is discussed in terms of its underpinning hypotheses, workflows, tool design and implementation, its use with a third party framework and tool. Antecedents to operational and tactical alignment such as quality, reuse, communication, learning, and shared understanding, are proposed as a practical means of achieving sustainable alignment maturity. The framework is applied to real world, business-critical projects in a top global financial services organization and validated using descriptive statistical analysis and structural equation modelling techniques. Contributions made through the study are highlighted. This includes the Alignment Forces Model which unifies the proposed framework and its support tool within software development and project management lifecycles. The Alignment Forces model and how it can be applied in practice is presented. Results of the quantitative data analyses indicate support for the arguments for the framework towards improving business-IT alignment, however with some limitations. Results also indicate support for the hypotheses for the antecedents to sustainable alignment maturity at lower organizational levels put forward. Finally, suggestions on furthering the study, addressing its limitations, and refining the framework and tool are articulated.

A software component model is the cornerstone of any Component-based Software Development (CBSD) methodology. Such a model defines the modelling elements for constructing software systems. In software system modelling, it is necessary to capture the three elements of a system's behaviour: (i) control (ii) computation and (iii) data. Within a system, computations are performed according to the flow of control or the flow of data, depending on whether computations are control-driven or data-driven. Computations are function evaluations, assignments, etc., which transform data when invoked by control or data flow. Therefore a component model should be able to model control flow, data flow as well as computations. Current component models all model computations, but beside computations tend to model either control flow only or data flow only, but not both. In this thesis, we present a new component model which can model both control flow and data flow. It contains modelling elements that capture control flow and data flow explicitly. Furthermore, the modelling of control flow is separate from that of data flow; this enables the modelling of both control-driven and data-driven computations. The feasibility of the model is shown by means of an implementation of the model, in the form of a prototype tool. The usefulness of the model is then demonstrated for a specific domain, the embedded systems domain, as well as a generic domain. For the embedded systems domain, unlike current models, our model can be used to construct systems that are both control-driven and data-driven. In a generic domain, our model can be used to construct domain models, by constructing control flows and data flows which together define a domain model.

In this thesis, the overall conclusion is that combination strategies, (i.e., test case selection methods that manage the combinatorial explosion of possible things to test), can improve the software testing in most organizations. The research underlying this thesis emphasizes relevance by working in close relationship with industry. Input parameter models of test objects play a crucial role for combination strategies. These models consist of parameters with corresponding parameter values and represent the input space and possibly other properties, such as state, of the test object. Test case selection is then defined as the selection of combinations of parameter values from these models. This research describes a complete test process, adapted to combination strategies. Guidelines and step-by-step descriptions of the activities in process are included in the presentation. In particular, selection of suitable combination strategies, input parameter modeling and handling of conflicts in the input parameter models are addressed. It is also shown that several of the steps in the test process can be automated. The test process is validated through a set of experiments and case studies involving industrial testers as well as actual test problems as they occur in industry. In conjunction with the validation of the test process, aspects of applicability of the combination strategy test process (e.g., usability, scalability and performance) are studied. Identification and discussion of barriers for the introduction of the combination strategy test process in industrial projects are also included. This research also presents a comprehensive survey of existing combination strategies, complete with classifications and descriptions of their different properties. Further, this thesis contains a survey of the testing maturity of twelve software-producing organizations. The data indicate low test maturity in most of the investigated organizations. Test managers are often aware of this but have trouble improving. Combination strategies are suitable improvement enablers, due to their low introduction costs.

Abstract In the last decade, the software industry has been marked by a growing trend of software companies’ ability to deploy new software features fast and frequently in short release cycle times. The companies’ software release cycles have been shortened to hours and minutes rather than months. To enable the transformation towards short release cycle times, companies have adopted several different strategies, including the DevOps approach. DevOps in the software industry emerged to represent a professional movement emphasising the collaboration between software development and operations. In practice, DevOps affects the company culture, processes, products, associated technologies and organisational structures used in software development and operations processes. The multifaceted nature of DevOps makes the concept ambiguous and difficult for software companies to adopt as there are many different paths to its adoption. The purpose of the thesis is to provide detailed description of the adoption and implementation of DevOps in software development comprehending the DevOps concept definition, and its practices, benefits and challenges. The research was performed by systematically reviewing the literature, multi-vocal documents and making qualitative inquiries among software practitioners; and based on that the consolidated body of knowledge of DevOps was constructed. The key finding of the research is that the DevOps approach includes an automated software deployment mechanism focusing on the rapid and repeatable release of software changes and automated management of operational infrastructure. The adoption and implementation of DevOps practices are prominent in software companies that use cloud computing technology, while its adoption is challenging in the embedded system domain. DevOps is not a silver bullet; challenges pertaining to the management of infrastructures due to legacy technologies still persist. The key lesson learned in the adoption and implementation of DevOps is that the software operational infrastructure is no longer considered separate from the development of software features; and this is achieved by having software development and operations teams jointly working together. / Tiivistelmä Viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana ohjelmistoteollisuudessa on ollut kasvavana trendinä ohjelmistotalojen lisääntyvä kyky toimittaa ohjelmistomuutoksia nopeasti ja usein toistuvina päivityksinä. Yritysten ohjelmistotoimitus- ja päivitysjaksot ovat lyhentyneet kuukausista tunneiksi ja jopa minuuteiksi. Yritykset ovat ottaneet käyttöön useita erilaisia toimintatapoja kyetäkseen muuttamaan toimintaansa lyhyen aikavälin ohjelmistopäivityksiin kykeneväksi, joista yksi viimeisimmistä on DevOps (saumaton ohjelmiston kehittäminen ja käyttö). Ohjelmistotuotannossa DevOps syntyi ohjelmistoteollisuudessa ammattilaisten alkaessa painottaa ohjelmistojen kehittämisen ja käytön yhteistyön tärkeyttä. Käytännössä DevOpsilla on vaikutusta ohjelmisto-organisaation toimintakulttuuriin, prosesseihin, tuotteisiin, sekä teknologioihin ja organisaatiorakenteisiin, joita käytetään ohjelmistokehityksessä ja käyttöönottoprosessissa. DevOpsin käsitteen moniulotteisuudesta johtuen käsitteen sisältö jää usein epäselväksi ja samalla sen mukainen toiminta vaikeasti käyttöön otettavaksi ohjelmistoyrityksissä, koska toteutus on mahdollista tehdä monella eri tavalla. Tämän väitöksen tarkoituksena on antaa selkeä kuvaus DevOpsista ja sen toteutuksesta ohjelmistokehityksessä niin, että sen käsite, ja käytännöt, sekä sen tarjoamat edut ja haasteet tulevat ymmärretyiksi. Tutkimuksessa suoritettiin systemaattinen kirjallisuuskatsaus tieteellisiin julkaisuihin ja muihin lähinnä käytännön kokemuksiin pohjautuviin lähteisiin, suoritettiin kvalitatiiviset kyselytutkimukset, joiden kohteena olivat ohjelmistoammattilaiset, sekä muodostettiin näiden pohjalta saumattoman ohjelmistokehityksen ja käytön yhtenäinen tietämyskanta. Tutkimuksen keskeinen tulos on, että DevOps-lähestymistapa sisältää automaattisen ohjelmiston käyttöönottomekanismin, joka keskittyy nopeiden ja toistettavien ohjelmistomuutosten käyttöönottoon ja sitä tukevan operatiivisen infrastruktuurin hallintaan. DevOpsin omaksuminen ja käyttöönotto ovat näkyvästi esillä pilvipalvelinteknologiaa käyttävissä ohjelmistoyrityksissä, kun taas sen käyttöönotto on haastavaa sulautettujen järjestelmien alueella. DevOps ei ole mikään ’hopealuoti’, vaan sisältää erityisesti infrastruktuurien hallintaan liittyviä haasteita, jotka johtuvat edelleen käytössä olevista vanhoista tekniikoista. Keskeisin oppima DevOpsin omaksumisesta ja soveltamisesta käytäntöön on, että ohjelmistojen käyttöinfrastruktuuria ei enää tarkastella erillään ohjelmistojen kehittämisestä, vaan ne toimivat saumattomassa yhteistyössä keskenään.

We introduce a class of program editors that present a program using a rich set of transformations; we call these kinds of editors composable presentation editors. Proper use of these kinds of editors appears to lead to more expressive programs-programs whose structure are aligned with the problem they are trying to solve. By default, the composable presentation editor presents program elements textually as concrete syntax and enables typical editor commands on the program. Metadata on program elements control how the transformations are applied. Customized metadata can re-order, pictorialize, collapse, duplicate, or expand the displayed form of program elements and can additionally alter the available editor commands. We have developed a set of presentation techniques to be used by presentation designers (i.e., the programmers who design how a program is presented in the editor. These techniques relate to well-understood programming language design, editor design, and programming best-practices techniques including scoping, higher order functions, refactoring, prettyprinting, naming conventions, syntax highlighting, and text hovers. We introduce two implementations of composable presentation editors and a number of examples showing how programs can be made more expressive when presentation techniques are properly used. The first implementation is the ETMOP, an open editor, where a metaobject protocol is provided that allows language and editor designers to customize the way program elements are displayed. These customizations are called presenta- tion extensions and the corresponding presentation extension protocol acts in a way similar to the way that syntax macros extend the syntax of a language. The second implementation is Embedded CAL, a closed editor that uses these presentation techniques to embed one language (CAL) inside a host language (Java) through the use of presentation techniques, without changing the syntax or compiler of either language. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

This thesis provides a tour of main software development methods and their assimilation with usability. Various software development methods have been developed since the origin of software products, and with integration of usability they have achieved great heights. Software developers and researchers are also keen to integrate usability with their methods to develop a successful software product, as their product might not lose its grip over their competitors. This thesis is a preliminary literature review that provides solutions to key questions such as: Which development methods are used in projects with high demands on usability?Do agile methods positively contribute to the usability of the product? Do projects with high demands on usability use usability specialists?Which types of usability are addressed in articles relating development methods and usability? The research aim is to identify how software development methods deal with usability. This thesis clearly discusses about previous empirical studies on software development methods and usability. In this thesis, Kitchenham’s systematic literature review was followed to extract the knowledge from the databases (Inspec and ACM). Validation on the literature is performed using Cohen’s kappa value with a researcher. Four research questions mentioned above are discussed in detail to analyse the results. Agile software development methods have been widely deployed due to its iterative, incremental approach and positive contribution towards usability rather than traditional approach. The role of an usability expert has been analyzed in this thesis and their need in the development process. Futhermore, various usability types like satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness have also been discussed in detail. Finally, this thesis suggess a solution of incorporating usability with software development methods.

Current advances in the software development industry are growing more ubiquitous by the day. This has caused for security, not only in the broader sense, but specifically within the design and overall development of software itself, to become all the more important. An evidently prevalent problem in the domain of software development is that software security is not consistently addressed during design, which undermines core security concerns, and leads to the development of insecure software. This research seeks to address this issue via a model for secure software design, which is based on a software design pattern, namely, the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. The use of a pattern to convey knowledge is not a new notion. However, the ability of software design patterns to convey secure software design is an idea worth investigating. Following identification of secure software design principles and concepts, as well as software design patterns, specifically those relating to the MVC pattern, a model was designed and developed. With the MVC pattern argued as being a suitable foundation for the model, the security conscious MVC (SecMVC) combines secure software design principles and concepts into the MVC pattern. Together herewith, the MVC pattern’s components in the MVC Compound pattern, namely: the Observer pattern, the Strategy pattern, and the Composite pattern, have provided further sub-models for less abstraction and greater detail. These sub-models were developed, as a result of the SecMVC model’s evaluation in the validation for this study, an expert review. Argued in the light of similar research methods, the expert review was chosen – along with a process that included the use of two expert participants to validate the SecMVC model. It was determined through the expert review that the SecMVC model is of sufficient utility, quality, and efficacy to constitute research value. The research methodology process followed was design science, in which the SecMVC model, which includes its related sub-models, serves as the artefact and research output of this study. This research study contributes evidence of the feasibility for integrating knowledge into software design patterns. This includes the SecMVC model itself. In addition, it argues for the use of an expert review, as an evaluative research method for such an artifact.

The purpose of this research is to explore project success factors and freelance marketplace characteristics that are critical to the success of software development projects on freelance marketplaces, while identifying important metrics to measure the success of software development projects on freelance marketplaces. This exploratory study is done from the point of view of the software development services buyer. Three methodologies were developed for the purpose of this research. First, a methodology for the definition of the freelance marketplace concept and the delimitation of the field of study was followed. Second, a methodology for sourcing opinions from blogs and self-published articles was created to mine information to complement the scant specialized literature on the subject of freelance marketplace characteristics and freelance marketplace project success factors. Third, a survey methodology was used as the main data collection instrument. The findings suggest that freelance marketplaces play the role of enabler of project success factors. The most important success factors are focused on product quality, project efficiency factors, cost control factors, and qualifications of the buyer. The most important metric to measure the success of software development projects on freelance marketplaces was quality in use.