Thesis (M.C.S.) Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-260). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Background: In developing and maintaining a large-scale system-of-systems (SoS), interface coordination & control (ICC) among interdependent subsystems is crucial for evolving individual subsystems and the overall SoS. However, the available literature offers little or no support to guide ICC in practice. Objectives: To describe how ICC can be done in the context of a large-scale SoS.We aimed to explore and analyze Ericsson’s (an example of a typical large-scaleSoS) current process and practices. To identify any limitations of the process, we investigated the challenges faced by practitioners regarding ICC, their reasons, and implications. Furthermore, we researched and proposed improvement possibilities to overcome the identified challenges. Method: We conducted a case study research and used observations, interviews, focus groups, and archival analysis for data collection. We used coding techniques from grounded theory and descriptive statistics to analyze qualitative and quantitative data, respectively. Moreover, the tabulation technique was employed to identify improvement opportunities. Results: We found that ICC is part of an overall technical coordination process. ICC is implemented through a recurrent cycle of activities. It brings together stakeholders to present upcoming changes, discuss their impact, and plan mitigation strategies. The outcome of ICC is a list of agreed-upon changes, impacted subsystems, and version numbers of interacting objects for the next release. We categorised the identified challenges in three groups: "people & subsystems", "tools, artifacts & technique", and "organization & management". These challenges impeded the effectiveness of the ICC process, quality of the SoS, and overall efficiency of the ICC and development process. Need for training, tool support, and stronger governance were identified as possible improvements to address multiple categories of identified challenges. Conclusion: The studied ICC process is well adapted for the large-scale SoS context. It is reasonably effective in minimizing the impact of evolving subsystems on the functioning and quality of SoS (as evident from the defect report analysis in this thesis). It also helps in cost-saving through early detection of compatibility-related issues. This thesis describes an ICC process used in practice, a novel contribution to the software configuration management (SCM) literature. In addition, companies in similar contexts can use the ICC description. The described ICC process is generalizableas as it is agnostic of the underlying development technologies used in a company.

Each software project requires a specialized management to handle software development activities throughout the project life cycle successfully and efficiently. Software governance structures provide easy and efficient ways to handle software development activities. Software configuration management is an important software development activity, and while selecting the right strategy in configuration management, its conformity to the software governance should be considered as well. Software configuration management patterns are aligned with the software governance structures to increase the success in development and management of the projects. Companies running large and inter-dependent projects, should adapt their governance structures to the changing characteristics and dependencies of projects. In this thesis, we propose a method to dynamically manage software configuration management, as a result of the changing specifications in the software governance representation.

The ever-increasing complexity of software systems makes them hard to comprehend, predict and tune due to emergent properties and non-deterministic behaviour. Complexity arises from the size of software systems and the wide variety of possible operating environments: the increasing choice of platforms and communication policies leads to ever more complex performance characteristics. In addition, software systems exhibit different behaviour under different workloads. Many software systems are designed to be configurable so that policies (e.g. communication, concurrency and recovery strategies) can be chosen to meet the needs of various stakeholders. For complex software systems it can be difficult to accurately predict the effects of a change and to know which configuration is most appropriate. This thesis demonstrates that it is useful to run automated experiments that measure a selection of system configurations. Experiments can find configurations that meet the stakeholders' needs, find interesting behavioural characteristics, and help produce predictive models of the system's behaviour. The design and use of ACT (Automated Configuration Tool) for running such experiments is described, in combination a number of search strategies for deciding on the configurations to measure. Design Of Experiments (DOE) is discussed, with emphasis on Taguchi Methods. These statistical methods have been used extensively in manufacturing, but have not previously been used for configuring software systems. The novel contribution here is an industrial case study, applying the combination of ACT and Taguchi Methods to DC-Directory, a product from Data Connection Ltd (DCL). The case study investigated the applicability of Taguchi Methods for configuring complex software systems. Taguchi Methods were found to be useful for modelling and configuring DC-Directory, making them a valuable addition to the techniques available to system administrators and developers.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Software often requires patches to be installed post-implementation for a variety of reasons. Organisations and individuals, however, do not always promptly install these patches as and when they are released. This study investigated the reasons for the delay or hesitation, identified the challenges, and proposed a model that could assist organisations in overcoming the identified challenges. The research investigated the extent to which the integration of software patch management and enterprise data security is an important management responsibility, by reviewing relevant documents and interviewing key role players currently involved in the patch management process. The current challenges and complexities involved in patch management at an enterprise level could place organisations at risk by compromising their enterprise-data security. This research primarily sought to identify the challenges causing the management of software patches to be complex, and further attempted to establish how organisations currently implement patch management. The aim of the study was to explore the complexities of software patch management in order to enhance enterprise data security within organisations. A single case study was used, and data were obtained from primary sources and literature. The study considered both technological and human factors, and found that both factors play an equally important role with regard to the successful implementation of a patch management program within an organisation.

One source of input data for software evolution research is data stored inside a software configuration management repository. The data includes different versions of a software system’s source code as well as version history metadata, such as check-in dates or log messages. Inherently, extracting this data manually is a time- and labor intensive task. The subsequent preprocessing step and the appropriate storage of the results, necessary to utilize the data for further analysis, is an additional effort for the researcher. The goal of this thesis is to design and implement a front-end plug-in for an existing software comprehension tool, the VizzAnalyzer, providing the capability to extract and analyze multiple versions and evolutional information of software systems from SCM repositories and to store the results. Thereby, the implemented solution provides the infrastructure for software evolution research.

Changes to a software system are the result of changing requirements or defects during the development. Each change consumes resources for the analysis, decision making, implementation, and verification. Hence, having control over changes is crucial for software development projects to meet schedules, keep quality standards and budgets. Reuse of functionality helps to create new products based on already existing building blocks. Integrating mature components enables to create reliable systems. Software product lines provide means to develop several similar systems based on reuse. Often new products also need to be released frequently to fulfil the customer needs. Shortened lead time for the development then strengthens the importance of reuse. At the same time, limited budgets and competition on the market requires projects to utilize resources efficiently. Developing several releases in parallel enables an even distribution of tasks among different roles in a development organization. Both developing software based on a product line approach and parallel releases put requirements on how changes need to be controlled. In this thesis, software engineering literature is reviewed regarding the knowledge areas of software release management, software product lines and software configuration management. Beyond the most considerable research results also related case studies are presented to show how industry practices counter existing problems. The major part of the thesis is a case study conducted at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. The outcome of the thesis is an identification of challenges of controlling changes regarding parallel development and using software product lines based on available research results and industry case studies. It further provides a case of a software development organization which faces a high market-pace, uses a software product line approach, and develops several software releases in parallel on different sites around the world.

Change is inevitable when software is built and deployed. It’s not particularly problematic to manage change if there is just one system. But in a large global IT organization, with several systems and people who develop, problems may arise. If organizations don’t control change, change will control the organization. Software Configuration Management (SCM) is a set of activities to manage change by identifying objects that are likely to change, establishing relationships among them, managing different versions of the objects, controlling the changes imposed and reporting on the changes made. A way to support the work of SCM is to follow standards. A standard can be compared to a type of rule, but also a directive. In this study we examined how a multinational organization applies standards within SCM. We examined the challenges with applying standards. We also examined whether there are deviations from standards, and in such cases why did the deviations arise and what are the following consequences? The study is based on a qualitative case study that employed interviews with developers, IT architects, operations manager and solution leader. The result of this study shows that some of the challenges in applying standards within SCM are: legacy systems, globalization, CMDB and ITSM-related tools (and their processes). The study also shows that standardization within maintenance is complex and that it’s easily breach and forgotten. The study shows that the consequence of this is that the developers must constantly compromise with standards. The result of this compromise is that it’s possible to carry out the business, but the solutions may not meet standards. In this study we concluded that the organization need to direct more attention towards maintenance, and less on new development.

This article presents a configuration management concept for software projects using Lyee methodology. To illustrate this concept, an introduction in configuration management is given. Then, the structure of Lyee programs is defined by sets and their dependencies. From this structure, the actual configuration management concept is deduced and discussed by rendering the structure for an existing configuration management testbed and describing the involved key players as well as the necessary procedures.