The Design Metrics Research Team in the Computer Science Department at Ball State University has been engaged in developing and validating quality design metrics since 1987. Since then a number of design metrics have been developed and validated. One of the design metrics developed by the research team is design balance (DB). This thesis is an attempt to validate the metric DB. In this thesis, results of the analysis of five systems are presented. The main objective of this research is to examine if DB can be used to evaluate the complexity of a software design and hence the quality of the resulting software. Two of the five systems analyzed were student projects and the remaining three were from industry. The five systems analyzed were written in different languages, had different sizes and exhibited different error rates. / Department of Computer Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Degree granted by Missouri University of Science and Technology, formerly known as the University of Missouri-Rolla. Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed April 29, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-111).

With the reliance on information technology and the software that this technology utilizes increasing every day, it is of paramount importance that software developed be of an acceptable quality. This quality can be achieved through the utilization of various software engineering standards and guidelines. The question is, to what extent do these standards and guidelines need to be utilized and how are these standards and guidelines implemented? This research focuses on how guidelines developed by standardization bodies and the unified process developed by Rational can be integrated to achieve a suitable process and version control system within the context of a remote client/contractor small team environment.

Thesis Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology in Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technonlogy / The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in business has evolved to such an extent that many organizations (if not all) rely on Information Technology (IT) systems to better manage their processes, get competitive advantage, improve performance (efficiency and effectiveness), provide quality services on time and most importantly to keep customers happy. This has changed the way people communicate and conduct businesses, lowering processing cost, time and improving a return on investment. Therefore, high quality software systems are essential. Organizations adopt Agile Scrum methodologies in order to develop applications that help them to obtain a return on investment quickly, to improve customer satisfaction and to maintain competitive advantage. However, the IT industry is yet to develop error-free software that meets the expected quality standards. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the extent to which software quality assurance measures can be understood and applied to maximize the quality of software projects developed under Scrum methodology. A qualitative research method informed by an interpretive approach was used to collect and analyse data. Following the purposive sampling technique, five Scrum teams operating in different environments and two academics from one academic institution were interviewed. Structuration Theory (ST) was then used as an analytical framework to analyse data and to improve the understanding of Scrum practices and related quality assurance (QA) processes. Drawing on the major terms of ST, the contextual terrain of the Scrum development process was mapped. It reflected that rules are important aspects of Scrum functions. However, rules are not as strictly applied as in the traditional methodologies. The developer skill, project type and size have a direct influence on the practice/s. In Scrum, rules are flexible in that they can be modified to meet the environment and conditions of the team. Equally significant are resources, most particularly, time and the human resources in the form of developers and Scrum leaders. Otherwise, unit testing, user acceptance testing, close collaboration and code reviews were perceived as the most important practices in Scrum projects. In view of the findings, recommendations can be summed up into 4 main points; (1) that to ensure quality assurance in Scrum, Scrum teams, especially team leaders, should enforce compliance to standards, regardless of time pressures and tight deadlines; (2) It seems that the practice of working with the client to test final products as a quality assurance mechanism is working for all parties. This practice is encouraged and must be maintained; (3) Code reviews must be enforced, and that organisations invest in resources including the constant training of developers; (4) Project product owners, project managers, team leaders and business analysts should regularly meet with the user to verify requirements prior to the implementation phase. Active stakeholder involvement can minimize development costs and time.

The VizzAnalyzer Framework is a stand-alone tool for analyzing and visualizing the structures of large software systems. Today, it has its own limited Swing based GUI lacking a professional look & feel. Furthermore, the effort needed to extend the VizzAnalyzer with new features like automatic update, progress monitoring, help system, and integration of the Eclipse Java and C/C++ AST API is high. In order to improve current limitations and ease the future maintenance effort we refactored the VizzAnalyzer to be a plug-in to the Eclipse platform. We removed the burden of GUI development from the authors of the VizzAnalyzer replacing the Swing GUI with a SWT based GUI, which utilizes the rich feature set provided by the Eclipse Platform. Furthermore, the we did not only provide existing features of the VizzAnalyzer as loading and binding graphs, a complex system to load dynamic plug-ins functionalities for analysis, retrieval and visualization. We implemented an update and help manager, allowed for an easy use of third party plug-ins, which are available for Eclipse, and provided product branding. We propose that the newly created VizzAnalyzer 2.0 solved the aforementioned limitations and provides a good foundation for the future evolution of the VizzAnalyzer tool. This master thesis documents our how the VizzAnalyzer 2.0 has been developed and implemented for the Eclipse platform, and how developers shall use the new VizzAnalyzer version.

The validation of software quality metrics lacks statistical significance. One reason for this is that the data collection requires quite some effort. To help solve this problem, we develop tools for metrics analysis of a large number of software projects (146 projects with ca. 70.000 classes and interfaces and over 11 million lines of code). Moreover, validation of software quality metrics should focus on relevant metrics, i.e., correlated metrics need not to be validated independently. Based on our statistical basis, we identify correlation between several metrics from well-known objectoriented metrics suites. Besides, we present early results of typical metrics values and possible thresholds.

More than half of the total costs in ownership of a software system are maintenance costs. Reverse engineering is becoming more important and complex for huge systems, and tools for reverse engineering are necessary for system evaluation. The ISO/IEC 9126 standard defines software quality and The VizzAnalyzer Framework is a stand-alone tool for analyzing and visualizing large software systems’ structures. In this thesis, we describe the design and implementation of plug-ins for the VizzAnalyzer Framework, a system for reverse engineering, extending their features under the standards of software quality. It has proven to be useful in applying the new features into the VizzAnalyzer Framework being the first tool that includes a software quality model.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:51:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / A reutilização de artefatos, ao invés de construí-los do zero, processo usualmente conhecido como reuso de software, mostra-se uma boa opção de vantagem competitiva para as empresas de desenvolvimento de software. Neste contexto, o desenvolvimento baseado em componentes é uma das técnicas mais aplicadas para promover o reuso de software estabelecendo um promissor mercado de componentes. Entretanto, os métodos mais consolidados de desenvolvimento de componentes estão mais focados em demonstrá-lo como uma abordagem viável, e algumas atividades importantes, por exemplo, atividades relacionadas com qualidade, e mais especificamente, relacionadas a teste, são muitas vezes negligenciadas. Produtores de componentes têm dificuldades para preparar seus produtos para funcionar corretamente em diferentes contextos, como também para serem validados pelos consumidores que pretendem adotá-los. Similarmente, os consumidores de componentes possuem limitações para poder testar se componentes externos funcionam como especificados, e se são capazes de serem integrados aos seus sistemas. Assim, esta dissertação apresenta uma abordagem para apoiar o teste de componentes definindo atividades para guiar produtores de componentes no preparo de seus produtos para serem testados por terceiros, como também atividades para os consumidores de componentes para compreender e testar componentes externos objetivando a sua integração com seus sistemas em desenvolvimento. Por fim, é apresentada uma ferramenta para realizar as atividades definidas para produtores e consumidores. Um experimento foi conduzido avaliando a abordagem proposta e sua ferramenta relacionada

The aim of this work is to investigate how to address the management of individuals in a software company to positively affect the quality of the software product. The basic idea is that the better people are managed, the better is the quality of the product and, consequently, the more the customer is satisfied. This paper goes across the literature to offer an overview on some main aspects of the management of knowledge: reasons for managing knowledge, effective strategies, adopted methods. The management of a software company is also examined: models of software development processes are described, methodologies for processes’ assessment and to guide improvements are presented, approaches to people management are deepened. Particular attention is drawn to software quality, how it can be defined and measured and its relationships with both the development process and the user/customer perspective (in terms of needs and satisfaction). Within the literature very few are the explicit references to the relationship between software quality and software people, because of the opposite attitudes towards this concept: it’s something taken for granted or else not considered at all. For this reason, a questionnaire has been designed to collect information on this subject. The questionnaire has been submitted to several software companies and the answers have been analyzed. Furthermore, interviews to managers within the software development area have been arranged to gather more exhaustive information . Consequently, this work provides a description of how individual competencies, team skills and people’s involvement in software development are managed in some real cases. Moreover, this project shows how much companies actually understand that effectively managing their people affects the quality of their software products. Conclusions on how software companies may improve their people management in order to enhance the quality of their software are drawn.

With the increased use of computers in every-day live, the demand for newer and better software is increasing day by day. This advancement has resulted in that many developers are searching for ways to decrease their development time. One approach is to use design patterns when designing applications. Design pattern are acknowledged solutions to known design problems that can be reused over and over again without ever doing the same thing twice. The most recent advancement of identifying design patterns has been within the domain of concurrent systems. Design pattern within concurrent systems are of interest in this project because of its young age. Development of concurrent applications has often been compared to constant reinvention of the wheel, because code reuse is very low and solutions to design problems are being rediscovered over and over again. By using design pattern, an attempt is made to avoid that. The question is if design patterns are capable of standing under that load. This project takes as a case study the problem of protecting a shared resource in a concurrent application, and implements two different solutions to that problem using a special design pattern. These two implementations are then evaluated, with consideration to certain software quality attributes, in a qualitative way. This project shows how a pattern can be used to solve a common synchronization problem. It discusses the nature of design patterns, what needs to be considered when they are implemented and how a pattern language can affect the implementation.