A Domain-Specific Modeling Approach This study has presented a component-based domain modeling approach that provides an environment for simplifying and accelerating software development and analysis, and improves software reusability, maintainability, and productivity. With highlevel design abstraction, constraints of application domains, and the guidance of domain rules, the proposed component-based framework offers an effective solution to modeling and automating the development and deployment of software application. Meta-modeling will be used in this study to define the domain notations, rules, and constraints for component composition within a specific domain context. A domain-specific graphical design environment will also be proposed to simplify and accelerate the software development by simply dragging and dropping pre-built components with minimal programming effort. The modeling of components can be further extended with the specification of their dependability and real-time constraints. / Related work -- Component composition -- Domain-specific modeling -- Model-based component composition environment for a specific domain -- Mobile service creation framework (MCSF) -- A model-driven approach to implementing dependable component-based mobile services -- A model-driven approach to implementing component-based real-time mobile services / Related work -- Component composition -- Domain-specific modeling -- Model-based component composition environment for a specific domain -- Mobile service creation framework (MCSF) -- A model-driven approach to implementing dependable component-based mobile services -- A model-driven approach to implementing component-based real-time mobile services. / Department of Computer Science

The aim of this study was to assess the impact that Business Process Excellence has on the innovation process to create new products and services in the software development environment. The best practices were identified in the current use of BPE in software development organisations. Subsequently, a proposal was put forward to enhance the use of BPE in the software development process to create innovative products and services. Once these products are implemented the organisation can use these products as a sustainable competitive advantage. The use of Business Process Excellence in software development creates an innovative environment for employees in order to develop innovative products that can create shareholder wealth, and increase market share. Companies want to create products that are unique to the market, and be able to offer their customers products that only they can offer in order to secure future business. Innovation is a key factor to enhance processes within the software development company. Enhancing the processes can generate new ideas that contribute to the sustainable competitive advantage of the company. The literature does not create a definite link between the use of Business Process Excellence and innovation, and the study aimed at evaluating the possibility to merge the concepts. Business Process Excellence optimises a currently implemented process, by exploring all ideas to increase the effectiveness of the system. It is a structured way to ensure that all possibilities are explored before a decision is made on how the process is structured to implement new products or services. The software development industry is a very competitive industry, and most companies do not share their competitive strategy, or make it available to the public, to ensure that they would be offering their customer something unique. These companies would only make their strategy known to the market once the new product or service is launched, and the trend is set for other companies to follow. It also creates the opportunity for companies to become the market leader within the industry, to ensure growth, and increase profits. Some key aspects were identified that companies could focus on to encourage an innovative environment. Most employees are willing to accept responsibility for the v innovative ideas, since this will benefit the company. Managers should take responsibility for their actions within the software development department, and reward employees that assist in reaching the goals set in company strategy. The software development process should always include a step for quality and reliability. This step is needed, since even the most innovative product needs to be stable and reliable, otherwise the product will not be used by customers if they are frustrated. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The aim of this study was to assess the impact that Business Process Excellence has on the innovation process to create new products and services in the software development environment. The best practices were identified in the current use of BPE in software development organisations. Subsequently, a proposal was put forward to enhance the use of BPE in the software development process to create innovative products and services. Once these products are implemented the organisation can use these products as a sustainable competitive advantage. The use of Business Process Excellence in software development creates an innovative environment for employees in order to develop innovative products that can create shareholder wealth, and increase market share. Companies want to create products that are unique to the market, and be able to offer their customers products that only they can offer in order to secure future business. Innovation is a key factor to enhance processes within the software development company. Enhancing the processes can generate new ideas that contribute to the sustainable competitive advantage of the company. The literature does not create a definite link between the use of Business Process Excellence and innovation, and the study aimed at evaluating the possibility to merge the concepts. Business Process Excellence optimises a currently implemented process, by exploring all ideas to increase the effectiveness of the system. It is a structured way to ensure that all possibilities are explored before a decision is made on how the process is structured to implement new products or services. The software development industry is a very competitive industry, and most companies do not share their competitive strategy, or make it available to the public, to ensure that they would be offering their customer something unique. These companies would only make their strategy known to the market once the new product or service is launched, and the trend is set for other companies to follow. It also creates the opportunity for companies to become the market leader within the industry, to ensure growth, and increase profits. Some key aspects were identified that companies could focus on to encourage an innovative environment. Most employees are willing to accept responsibility for the v innovative ideas, since this will benefit the company. Managers should take responsibility for their actions within the software development department, and reward employees that assist in reaching the goals set in company strategy. The software development process should always include a step for quality and reliability. This step is needed, since even the most innovative product needs to be stable and reliable, otherwise the product will not be used by customers if they are frustrated. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Software development is increasingly conducted in a recurrent fashion, where the same product or service is continuously being developed for the marketplace. Still, we lack detailed studies about this particular context of software development. Against this backdrop, this dissertation presents an action research study into Software Inc., a large multi-national software provider. The research addressed the challenges the company faced in managing releases and organizing software process improvement (SPI) to help recurrently develop and deliver a specific product, Secure-on-Request, to its customers and the wider marketplace. The initial problem situation was characterized by recent acquisition of additional software, complexity of service delivery, new engineering and product management teams, and low software development process maturity. Asking how release management can be organized and improved in the context of recurrent development of software, we draw on Pettigrew’s contextualist inquiry to focus on the ongoing interaction between the contents, context and process to organize and improve release cycle practices and outcomes. As a result, the dissertation offers two contributions. Practically, it contributes to the resolution of the problem situation at Software Inc. Theoretically, it introduces a new software engineering discipline, release cycle management (RCM), focused on recurrent delivery of software, including SPI as an integral part, and grounded in the specific experiences at Software Inc.

Software development is of great significance in manufacturing and process industry. Software can, for example, make production more efficient and monitoring easier. In paperboard industry testing the product, that is, paperboard, is important. Testing is done to make sure that the product meets the requirements of the customers who transform the paperboard to packaging products. In the Skoghall paperboard Mill operators make use of a range of different test methods. Since the work pace is high and the product is being continuously tested improvements of the workflow at the laboratory are always of interest.   The aim of this project is to develop a program that connects test instruments at Skoghall Mill’s test laboratory to the Mill’s network. The motivation is to automate part of the work process by removing the step of manually reading measurement values from the test instruments. The scope of this project includes developing software that connects one of the instruments (the Short Span Compression tester [1] or SCT) at the laboratory to the Mill’s network. This program, named TestLink, will work as a proof of concept for connecting instruments using a common interface. The software is constructed using a modular approach forming a platform where an additional instrument can be connected by creating a new module. The software is developed in Visual Studio using C# as the programming language. The software architecture follows the MVVM [2] (Model View ViewModel) design pattern paradigm and WPF [3] (Windows Presentation Foundation) is used to construct the graphical user interface. The result shows that time savings can be made when automating part of the work with the introduction of new software.

The objective of the study was to generate a ‘theory’/ ‘hypothesis’  on the important factors to focus on in implementing agile project methods in globally distributed teams. Using the grounded theory method, five key categories emerged from the so-called theoretical sampling, which entails the joint collection of data, coding and analysis. The study involved 33 individuals in four different companies, three in the Philippines and one in Sweden. The data collected for this thesis consisted of individual interviews in the Philippines and Sweden (Sept-Dec 2014), focus group sessions, observations of formal agile practices and experiences in the substantive area, conducted in the Philippines during the period Sept-Nov 2014.  The following five key categories emerged as the main concerns of the individuals involved in implementing agile project methods in globally distributed teams in software development projects:  (i) Working Communication, (ii)  Self-organizing Teams, (iii) People-centric organization, (iv) Continuous Learning and (v) Sustaining Infrastructure.  The respondents meant that these concerns should be addressed and resolved in such a way that the implementation of Agile project methods would resemble the case of a collocated Agile project team. The key categories, their fundamental characteristics and the subconcepts behind them were presented and analyzed in relation to the empirical data.The analysis included reported incidents and direct citations from the respondents, focus groups and from observations during the field study, in order to shed light on the process used to arrive to the categories, as well as explain the characteristics of the concepts in the emerging ‘grounded hypothesis’.

Very large graphs are difficult for a person to browse and edit on a computer screen. This thesis introduces a visual formalism, structured graphs, which supports the scalable browsing and editing of very large graphs. This approach is relevant to a given application when it incorporates a large graph which is composed of named nodes and links, and abstraction hierarchies which can be defined on these nodes and links. A typical browsing operation is the selection of an arbitrary group of nodes and the display of the network of nodes and links for these nodes. Typical editing operations is: adding a new link between two nodes, adding a new node in the hierarchy, and moving sub-graphs to a new position in the node hierarchy. These operations are scalable when the number of user steps involved remains constant regardless of how large the graph is. This thesis shows that with structured graphs, these operations typically take one user step. We demonstrate the utility of structured graph formalism in an application setting. Computer aided software engineering tools, and in particular, structured analysis tools, are the chosen application area for this thesis, as they are graph based, and existing tools, though adequate for medium sized systems, lack scalability. In this thesis examples of an improved design for a structured analysis tool, based on structured graphs, is given. These improvements include scalable browsing and editing operations to support an individual software analyst, and component composition operations to support the construction of large models by a group of software analysts. Finally, we include proofs of key properties and descriptions of two text based implementations.

This thesis investigates project risk management issues in smaller software teams. Certain gaps in the literature are identified. There is limited literature on what risk management techniques software practitioners use. The studies that are published tend to focus on large software teams. This thesis investigates what risks these smaller teams consider to be important. It also investigates what techniques are perceived to address these risks and how effective those techniques are considered to be. One of those risks is found to be of primary importance, yet this risk is not suggested by the project management literature. This thesis goes on to conduct a more in-depth exploration of that specific risk in the context of these smaller teams Interviews were selected as the most appropriate method to achieve the objectives of the thesis. Nineteen interviews in eight software organisations are conducted to collect data for this thesis. Three different perspectives on project risk were investigated. Those were the perspectives of the; service managers, project managers and developers. Hence a large store of rich information is collated. The results are analysed and a rich set of information is presented in this thesis. As a result of this research it is suggested that smaller software teams may find it useful to consider the 16 risks discussed in this research and how applicable those risks are to their individual organisation. Service managers may need to do more to raise the awareness of the importance of risks associated with ‘customer relationship issues’ within their own organisations. Three risks stood out as areas where future research might be most fruitful. They were; customer relationship issues, introduction of new technology and unrealistic schedules and budgets. Risks related to customer relationship issues were of particular significance and have tended to be over looked in the project management literature. It is submitted that research into standard project risk management approaches may need to be combined with business risk management approaches to gain a full understanding of the risks faced and addressed by these smaller teams.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Oulu, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Java is a major platform for performance sensitive applications. Unit testing of functionality has already become a common practice in software devel- opment; however, the amount of projects employing performance tests is substantially lower. A comprehensive study in combination with a short sur- vey among developers is made in order to examine the current situation in open-source projects written in Java. Results show that suitable tools for measurements exist, but they are hard to use or the outputs are difficult to understand. To improve the situation in favor of performance evaluation a set of user friendly tools for collecting, comparing and visualizing the data is designed, implemented, and verified on a sample Java project. 1