Information Systems (IS’s) have provided organisations with huge efficiency gains and benefits over the years; however an outstanding problem that is yet to be successfully tackled is that of the troublesome maintenance phase. Consuming vast resources and thwarting business progression in a competitive global market place, system maintenance has been recognised as one of the key areas where IS is failing organisations. Organisations are too often faced with the dilemma of either replacement or the continual upkeep of an unwieldy system. The ability for IS’s to be able to adapt to exogenous influences is even more acute today than at any time in the past. This is due to IS’s namely, Web Information Systems (WIS’s) increasingly and continually having to accommodate the needs of organisations to interconnect with a plethora of additional systems as well as supporting evolving business models. The richness of the interconnectivity, functionalities and services WIS’s now offer are shaping social, cultural and economic behaviour on a truly global scale, making the maintenance of such systems and evermore pertinent issue. The growth and proliferation of WIS’s shows no sign of abating which leads to the conclusion that what some have termed as the ‘maintenance iceberg’ should not be ignored. The quandary that commercial organisations face is typically driven by two key aspects; firstly, systems are built on the cultural premise of using fixed requirements, with not enough thought or attention being paid to systems abilities to deviate from these requirements. Secondly, systems do not generally cope well with adapting to unpredictable change arising from outside of the organisations environment. Over the recent past, different paradigms, approaches and methods have attempted to make software development more predictable, controllable and adaptable, however, the benefits of such measures in relation to the maintenance dilemma have been limited. The concept of flexible systems that are able to cope with such change in an efficient manner is currently an objective that few can claim to have realised successfully. The primary focus of the thesis was to examine WIS post-development change in order to empirically substantiate and understand the nature of the maintenance phase. This was done with the intention to determine exactly ‘where’ and ‘how’ flexibility could be targeted to address these changes. This study uses an emergent analytical approach to identify and catalogue the nature of change occurring within WIS maintenance. However, the research framework design underwent a significant revision as the initial results indicated that a greater emphasis and refocus was required to achieve the research objective. To study WIS’s in an appropriate and detailed context, a single case study was conducted in a web development software house. In total the case study approach was used to collect empirical evidence from four projects that investigated post-development change requests in order to identify areas of the system susceptible to change. The maintenance phases of three WIS projects were considered in-depth, resulting in the collection of over four hundred change requests. The fourth project served as a validation case. The results are presented and the findings are used to identify key trends and characteristics that depict WIS maintenance change. The analytical information derived from the change requests is consolidated and shown diagrammatically for the key areas of change using profile models developed in this thesis. Based on the results, the thesis concludes and contributes to the ongoing debate that there is a discernable difference when considering WIS maintenance change compared to that of traditional IS maintenance. The detailed characteristics displayed in the profile models are then used to map specific flexibility criteria that ultimately are required to facilitate change. This is achieved using the Flexibility Matrix of Change (FMoC) tool which was developed within the remit of this research. This tool is a qualitative measurement scheme that aligns WIS maintenance changes to a reciprocal flexibility attribute. Thus, the wider aim of this thesis is to also expand the awareness of flexibility and its importance as a key component of the WIS lifecycle.

Today’s software is more vulnerable to attacks due to increase in complexity, connectivity and extensibility. Securing software is usually considered as a post development activity and not much importance is given to it during the development of software. However the amount of loss that organizations have incurred over the years due to security flaws in software has invited researchers to find out better ways of securing software. In the light of research done by many researchers, this thesis presents how software can be secured by considering security in different phases of software development life cycle. A number of security activities have been identified that are needed to build secure software and it is shown that how these security activities are related with the software development activities of the software development lifecycle.

Product quality is directly related to how well that product meets the customer's needs and intents. It is paramount, therefore, to capture customer requirements correctly and succinctly. Unfortunately, most development models tend to avoid, or only vaguely define the process by which requirements are generated. Other models rely on formalistic characterizations that require specialized training to understand. To address such drawbacks we introduce the Requirements Generation Model (RGM) that (a) decomposes the conventional "requirements analysis" phase into sub-phases which focus and refine requirements generation activities, (b) constrains and structures those activities, and (c) incorporates a monitoring methodology to assist in detecting and resolving deviations from process activities defined by the RGM. We present an empirical study of the RGM in an industrial setting, and results derived from this study that substantiate the effectiveness of the RGM in producing a better set of requirements. / Ph. D.

Open source projects do have requirements; they are, however, mostly informal, text descriptions found in requests, forums, and other correspondence. Understanding such requirements provides insight into the nature of open source projects. Unfortunately, manual analysis of natural language requirements is time-consuming, and for large projects, error-prone. Automated analysis of natural language requirements, even partial, will be of great benefit. Towards that end, I describe the design and validation of an automated natural language requirements classifier for open source software development projects. I compare two strategies for recognizing requirements in open forums of software features. The results suggest that classifying text at the forum post aggregation and sentence aggregation levels may be effective. Initial results suggest that it can reduce the effort required to analyze requirements of open source software development projects. Software development organizations and communities currently employ a large number of software development techniques and methodologies. This implied complexity is also enhanced by a wide range of software project types and development environments. The resulting lack of consistency in the software development domain leads to one important challenge that researchers encounter while exploring this area: specificity. This results in an increased difficulty of maintaining a consistent unit of measure or analysis approach while exploring a wide variety of software development projects and environments. The problem of specificity is more prominently exhibited in an area of software development characterized by a dynamic evolution, a unique development environment, and a relatively young history of research when compared to traditional software development: the open-source domain. While performing research on open source and the associated communities of developers, one can notice the same challenge of specificity being present in requirements engineering research as in the case of closed-source software development. Whether research is aimed at performing longitudinal or cross-sectional analyses, or attempts to link requirements to other aspects of software development projects and their management, specificity calls for a flexible analysis tool capable of adapting to the needs and specifics of the explored context. This dissertation covers the design, implementation, and evaluation of a model, a method, and a software tool comprising a flexible software development analysis framework. These design artifacts use a rule-based natural language processing approach and are built to meet the specifics of a requirements-based analysis of software development projects in the open-source domain. This research follows the principles of design science research as defined by Hevner et. al. and includes stages of problem awareness, suggestion, development, evaluation, and results and conclusion (Hevner et al. 2004; Vaishnavi and Kuechler 2007). The long-term goal of the research stream stemming from this dissertation is to propose a flexible, customizable, requirements-based natural language processing software analysis framework which can be adapted to meet the research needs of multiple different types of domains or different categories of analyses.

Information Technology (IT) is inextricably tied to financial services; the business can no longer view IT as simply a part of discretionary spending. More particular to the financial services industry, technology is a way to gain competitive advantage through innovation. Financial services companies discover ways to utilize technology in order to generate product and process innovation, for example, consider the innovation to use scanners and, more recently, smart phones to deposit checks from home or elsewhere instead of with an ATM or a teller at a brick and mortar bank. As the market becomes more competitive, financial services companies must rely even more on product and process innovation. A key enabler of this innovation is the ability to fully understand the current state of how business value is delivered through the use of IT. This understanding can in turn help financial services companies to plan more effectively both strategically and tactically as the environmental factors change constantly. As companies spend vast amounts of money on projects, it is imperative to understand how ideas flow through a life cycle and are ultimately realized by some process or product offering that in turn deliver some value to the business. The goal of IT for the business is often stated as an improvement in triumvirate: better, faster, cheaper. The difficulty with this goal is that these facets are often mutually exclusive. How then, can IT deliver? This thesis will examine how one financial services company may improve its software project delivery process by examining its historical and current operating state and then discussing some recommendations to achieve improvement. / text

Context: In the requirements engineering phase, requirements elicitation is considered as the most important task as it is the initial phase in which the requirements are gathered and prioritised. Changes in requirements may lead to project failure or delay in project deliveries. So, it is essential to elicit the requirements at the early stage to avoid changes in requirements in the later stage of development. Therefore, there is a need to study the impact of volatility in elicitation techniques to gather requirements appropriately in the early stages. Objectives: In the present thesis, we focused on the analysis of the requirements volatility in the requirement elicitation phase. The main objectives we have formulated to achieve our goal are Objective 1: To identify and determine the various causes of requirement volatility. Objective 2: To examine the impact of requirement volatility in the requirement elicitation process. Objective 3: To examine whether the procedure of elicitation techniques differ if volatility occurs while eliciting the requirements. Methods: In this thesis, we have implemented a Systematic Literature Review(SLR) and Survey research methods in order to attain our aim and objectives. SLR is performed for objective 1, to receive the data about the causes of volatility in various development life cycle phases. A survey is conducted to identify the causes of volatility in all phases of development, in the elicitation phase, and check whether the process of elicitation techniques differ if volatility occurs while eliciting the requirements. Results: From the SLR and survey, numerous factors of causes of volatility on the software development lifecycle were identified. Several new factors were identified from both the research methods. The factors have its own interpretation for the cause of volatility. Moreover, from the survey results, we can determine that the volatility occurs in the elicitation phase and has a huge impact while eliciting the requirements. Most of the practitioners working with the agile development process and waterfall model have stated that the impact of volatility results in prolonging the elicitation phase, slowing down the project, etc. Conclusions: For this research, our contribution is to provide insights on the impact of volatility in the elicitation process and check whether the elicitation techniques and its process change due to volatility. Based on the results of the respondents, we can conclude that the elicitation techniques procedure change is not intentional and not only because of the volatility but also due to some external factors while eliciting the requirements.

Context. Application Lifecycle Management refers to the coordination of all aspects of software engineering, through a collection of integrated software development tools. More and more organizations are heavily relying on the ALM tools nowadays. Objectives. In this study we research ALM first as a business strategy, its roots, its advantages and disadvantages. As well as making a theoretical research, we seek out the setbacks of the practical side of ALM in order to find the areas needed for improvement, by investigating the ALM’s existing tools, interviewing ALM’s users, and using gained statistical data to derive practical facts about ALM. The goal of the thesis is to find out how ALM can be improved. Methods. The vast amount of sources, including articles, books, and journals is used to support our arguments and conclusions. A long online survey was carried with many participants to understand the practical side of ALM, as well as gain access to information about ALM’s setbacks. Results. The problems of ALM are recognized and named. Proposals are made in respect of how to deal with these problems. A list of what options need to be studied in the future, in order to improve the overall ALM design, and make it a powerful tool, is presented. A detailed plan for further research regarding this highly important issue is presented. Conclusions. We conclude that there are several ALM tool options on the market, all having their strengths and weaknesses. But in order for ALM to become an industrial solution and to be truly successful and effective in supporting the broader goals of the different organizations using it, the requests of the stakeholders towards deeper semantic integration between the various tool involved in the ALM processes need to be embodied in the current ALM offerings. We conclude that further research is needed in order to assess the proposals, and test the design ideas that are presented in the last chapter of this thesis. / This thesis concerns the authors and stakeholders of ALM. With the technological achievements taking place every day, and competition being very high, it is important to get the software product ready for release on time and of good quality. The current tools for managing of the application’s lifecycle are incoherent in terms of tool integration. In this thesis we describe the setbacks of ALM, according to interviewed stakeholders and authors of journals, articles and books. We conclude our thesis with the several proposed design options that may succeed in making ALM strong and consistent in the future. The proposed design mainly concerns the integration problems, and provides several potential solutions, aiming at easy to use and integrate tools. Further research areas are explained, and stated.

Il presente contributo illustra una posizione sul ruolo dei modelli e della modellizzazione nel contesto del Research Software Engineering (RSE) nelle Digital Humanities (DH). La nostra ipotesi è che all'interno del contesto nel quale opera il King’s Digital Lab, influenzato da fattori storici e di gestione manageriale, la produzione di modelli è di fatto il contributo essenziale dell'RSE all'epistemologia di DH. Tuttavia, riteniamo che quando considerate da una prospettiva di RSE olistica, che include - pur non essendo ad essa limitata – la modellizzazione empirica e predittiva, queste attività di modellizzazione non siano state studiate in modo abbastanza sistematico da supportare a pieno questa posizione. Il nostro contributo può soltanto indicare qualche idea e abbozzare un approccio che meriterebbero ricerche più approfondite / This paper1 offers a position on the role of models and modelling in the context of Research Software Engineering (RSE) in Digital Humanities (DH). Our hypothesis is that within the context that King’s Digital Lab operates, shaped by historical and management factors, the production of models is arguably the core contribution of RSE to the epistemology of DH. However, we argue that, when analysed from a holistic RSE perspective, encompassing but not limited to empirical and predictive modelling, these modelling activities have not been studied systematically enough to support such a claim in straight-forward ways. Our contribution can only gesture at some ideas and sketch a framework that would need further research.