Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-10-31T11:54:46Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Versão revisão da biblioteca (Mychelline).pdf: 10739859 bytes, checksum: c0a1ce1d36f92341e4bdef5880bf25a8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-31T11:54:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Versão revisão da biblioteca (Mychelline).pdf: 10739859 bytes, checksum: c0a1ce1d36f92341e4bdef5880bf25a8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-01-01 / CNPq / Com as mudanças advindas do avanço da tecnologia, diversos setores da sociedade passaram por adaptações. O setor educacional, por exemplo, tem recebido fortes influências e, com isso, surgem novas configurações de ensino. Softwares Educacionais (SEs) têm sido bastante utilizados nos ambientes educacionais. Todavia, desenvolver software para educação não é trivial, pois eles necessitam de um conjunto de funcionalidades para atender aos aspectos pedagógicos. Para o melhor de nosso conhecimento, não foi encontrado na literatura um processo padrão de desenvolvimento para SEs e, consequentemente, a identificação de requisitos específicos a esse domínio pode ficar comprometida. As teorias de aprendizagem explicam como ocorre o processo de aprendizagem e, portanto, devem ser usadas explicitamente no desenvolvimento dos SEs. Diante desse cenário, alguns questionamentos surgiram: Os SEs são fundamentados em teorias de aprendizagem? Quais as teorias de aprendizagem utilizadas em SEs? Quais requisitos relacionados aos aspectos pedagógicos são utilizados em SEs? Visando responder a essas perguntas, um catálogo de requisitos, intitulado EduCatalog4RE, foi concebido para auxiliar o desenvolvimento de SEs na fase de elicitação dos requisitos. O EduCatalog4RE foi desenvolvido a partir de um estudo exploratório, configurando-se em uma Revisão Sistemática da Literatura, e foi avaliado por especialistas em Informática na Educação. A primeira versão do catálogo foi disponibilizada para download através de um site. Para melhorar a apresentação dos requisitos, a segunda versão do catálogo foi desenvolvida na forma de um protótipo navegável de telas online. Ambas as versões foram avaliadas através de um questionário online. Após os resultados da primeira avaliação, foi possível refinar o EduCatalog4RE, incluindo e excluindo requisitos para desenvolver a segunda versão. Os resultados da avaliação obtidos com a segunda versão evidenciam a contribuição da proposta na identificação dos requisitos para SEs. Além disso, a primeira versão do EduCatalog4RE foi utilizada em uma disciplina de mestrado da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, com o propósito de avaliar SEs, levando em consideração as teorias e métodos de aprendizagem disponíveis no catálogo. A professora responsável pela disciplina entrou em contato e evidenciou a qualidade do material disponibilizado no catálogo. Assim, percebeu-se que a proposta pode ser também utilizada por professores/pesquisadores em disciplinas ligadas à tecnologia e a educação, demonstrando o potencial do catálogo não só no desenvolvimento de SEs. / Due to the changes arising from the technology advance, various sectors of the society have been adapted. The education sector, for example, has received strong influences and, therefore, new educational settings arise. Educational Software (ES) has been widely used in educational environments. However, developing software for education is not trivial, because they need a set of features to meet the pedagogical aspects. To the best of our knowledge, it was not found in the literature a development standard process for ESs and, consequently, the identification of requirements for this domain can be compromised. Learning theories explain how the learning process occurs and, therefore, must be explicitly used in the development of ESs. In this scenario, some questions appeared: Are ESs based on learning theories? Which learning theories are used in SEs? Which requirements related to the pedagogical aspects are used in ESs? Aiming at addressing these issues, a catalog of requirements, entitled EduCatalog4RE, was designed to assist the development of ESs in the requirements elicitation phase. The EduCatalog4RE was developed from an exploratory study, by means of a Systematic Literature Review, and it was evaluated by experts from the Informatics in Education area. The first version of the catalog was made available to be downloaded from a website. To improve the requirements presentation, the second version of the catalog was developed as prototype navigable online screens. Both versions were evaluated via an online questionnaire. After the first assessment of the catalog, it was possible to refine it, by including and excluding requirements to develop the second version. The results obtained from the evaluation of the second version demonstrate the proposal contributes to the identification of requirements for ES. In addition, the first version of EduCatalog4RE was used in a master's course of the Federal University of Rio Grande, with the purpose of evaluating ESs, taking into account the learning theories and methods available in the catalog. The teacher in charge of the discipline has contacted the author and highlighted the quality of the material available in the catalog. Thus, it was noticed that the proposal can also be used by teachers/researchers in courses related to technology and education, demosntrating the potential of the catalog not only in the development of SEs.

Context. Agile Software Development has provided a new concept of Software Development based in adaptation to changes, quick decisions, low high-level design and frequent deliveries. However, this approach ignores the value that Software Architecture provides in the long term for increasing the speed in delivery working software, which may have catastrophic consequences in the long term. Objectives. In this study, the combination of these two philosophies of Software Development is investigated. Firstly, the concept of Software Architecture in Agile Projects; then, the major challenges faced concerning Software Architecture in Agile Projects, the practices and approaches that can be used to overcome these challenges and the effects that these practices may cause on the project. Methods. The research methodologies used in this study are Systematic Literature Review for gathering the highest amount possible of contributions available in the Literature at this respect, and also the conduction of Semi-Structured Interviews with Agile Practitioners, in order to obtain empirical knowledge on the problem and support or deny the SLR findings. Results. The results of the Thesis are a unified description of the concept of Software Architecture in Agile Projects, and a collection of challenges found in agile projects, practices that overcome them and a relation of effects observed. Considering the most frequent practices/approaches followed and the empirical support, it is enabled a discussion on how to combine Software Architecture and Agile Projects. Conclusions. The main conclusion is that there is not a definite solution to this question; this is due to the relevance of the context (team, project, customer, etc.) that recommends the evaluation of each situation before deciding the best way to proceed. However, there are common trends on the best-recommended practices to integrate these two concepts. Finally, it is required more empirical work on the issue, the conduction of controlled experiments that allows to quantify the success or failure of the practices implemented would be most helpful in order to create a body of knowledge that enables the application of certain practices under certain conditions.

Context. Global Software Development (GSD) is the plan of action in which software development is performed under temporal, political, organizational and cultural boundaries. Offshore outsourced software development is the part of GSD, which refers to the transfer of certain software development activities to an external organization in another country. The primary factors driving offshore outsourced software development are low cost, access to a large pool of skilled laborers, increased productivity, high quality, market access and short development cycle. Requirements engineering (RE) and especially requirements elicitation is highly affected by the geographical distribution and multitude of stakeholders. Objectives. The goal of conducting this study is to explore the challenges and solutions associated with requirements elicitation phase during offshore software projects, both in research literature and in industrial practice. Moreover, this study examines that which of the challenges and practices reported in literature can be seen in industrial practice. This helped in finding out the similarities and differences between the state of art and state of practice. Methods. Data collection process has been done through systematic literature review (SLR) and web survey. SLR has been conducted using guidelines of Kitchenham and Charters. During SLR, The studies have been identified from the most reliable and authentic databases such as Compendex, Inspec (Engineering village) and Scopus. In the 2nd phase, survey has been conducted with 391 practitioners from various organizations involved in GSD projects. In the 3rd phase, qualitative comparative analysis has been applied as an analysis method. Results. In total 10 challenges and 45 solutions have been identified from SLR and survey. Through SLR, 8 challenges and 22 solutions have been identified. While through industrial survey, 2 additional challenges and 23 additional solutions have been identified. By analyzing the frequency of challenges, the most compelling challenges are communication, control and socio-cultural issues. Conclusions. The comparison between theory and practice explored the most compelling challenges and their associated solutions. It is concluded that socio-cultural awareness and proper communication between client and supplier organization’s personnel is paramount for successful requirements elicitation. The scarcity of research literature in this area suggests that more work needs to be done to explore some strategies to mitigate the impact of additional 2 challenges revealed through survey. / 0046 707123094

Context: Distributed software development has become a most desired way of software development. Application of agile development methodologies in distributed environments has taken a new trend in developing software due to its benefits of improved communication and collaboration. Teamwork is an important concept that agile methodologies facilitate and is one of the potential determinants of team performance which was not focused in distributed agile software development. Objectives: This research shed a light on the topic of teamwork in the context of distributed agile software development. The objectives are to identify the factors contributing teamwork of distributed agile teams along with the dependencies between the factors. And, as it is not without challenges to work with unity in a heterogeneous environment, identification of challenges related to teamwork factors of distributed agile teams along with the mitigation strategies is an another objective. Methods: A systematic literature review (SLR) was employed to identify the teamwork factors along with their dependencies and corresponding challenges and mitigation strategies of each teamwork factor from state-of-the-art literature. Quasi-gold standard method was employed as search strategy in SLR to find out the primary studies representing the objective under investigation. Further a survey was conducted with industrial practitioners working in distributed agile projects to validate the findings from state-of-the-art literature. Results: A total of 13 teamwork factors (i.e. team orientation, shared leadership, mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior, feedback, team autonomy, team learning, coordination, communication, trust, collective culture, ease of use of technology, team familiarity), a set of nine dependencies between the teamwork factors and 45 challenges and 41 mitigation strategies related to the teamwork factors were identified from state-of-the-art literature. From survey result, communication, coordination, trust and team orientation were identified as four most important teamwork factors for distributed agile teams. Out of nine dependencies, seven were supported and two were not supported by the practitioners of distributed agile projects. Additionally, nine challenges and 12 mitigation strategies were identified through survey. Conclusions: From this study, we conclude that communication is the top most important factor for successful teamwork of distributed agile teams. And, unlike its prime importance in distributed software development for getting teams work together, trust was identified with a third priority for successful teamwork of distributed agile teams. Similar to the findings of the agile teams, team autonomy was identified with least importance towards the successful teamwork of distributed agile teams. Results of dependencies show that there is need for future research to explore all the dependencies between the teamwork factors. Furthermore, there are teamwork factors with no challenges and mitigation strategies being identified in state-of-the-art literature but later, through survey it was found that practitioners are facing the challenges for that particular teamwork factor. Though, this study identified those missed challenges, due to the limited number of participants involved in the survey, we cannot conclude that these were the only challenges faced in relation to the teamwork. Hence, there is a need to have a dedicated investigation in exploring all the challenges and mitigation strategies, such that it would help the distributed agile teams in attaining the fruitful interactions between them. / H.no. 5-5-289, Prashanth Nagar, Vanasthalipuram, Hyderabad-500070, Andhra Pradesh. India

Context: Today, most of the software products are built with COTS components. When a new version of these components is available, it is difficult to perform testing as the vendors of the component do not usually provide source code. Various regression testing techniques have been developed, but most of the techniques are based on the source code for change identification. So, the testers are facing different challenges in performing effective testing. Objectives: The goal of this research is to find out the different approaches that are used to identify changes in modified COTS component, analyze the main characteristics of those approaches and investigate how these characteristics can be used in selection and development of CBRT approach. Methods: To fulfill the aims of the research, we have conducted systematic literature review of different CBRT approaches from the year 1993-2010. From systematic literature we found out 32 papers relevant to our study. Data related to our research are extracted from those papers and conclusion is made. The relevant articles were searched in six scientific databases such as IEEE Explore, ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink, Science Direct, Scopus, and Engineering Village. Furthermore, online survey was conducted based on the characteristics of CBRT approaches. This survey was conducted to validate the SLR result. Results: From the systematic Literature Review we have found out 8 different characteristics of CBRT approaches such as applicability, automation, complexity, behavior model used, coverage criteria, strength and weakness, theory used and input. We observe that these are the most important characteristics in CBRT approaches and these approaches should be considered in selecting or developing new CBRT approach. The results from the survey also validate our findings. From survey some more factors were identified. Conclusion: The research develops the state-of-art of CBRT approaches towards future research. The result of this thesis will be helpful for the researchers as well as practitioners who are working on CBRT. The result of the thesis can be considered as a basis for further study. Based on the result of this thesis further study can be done on making a framework based on these characteristics and support component based regression testing. / Nabin Raj Dulal, 139, Jagriti Tole Marg, Balaju-16, Kathmandu , Nepal ph: +97714351087

Context. The use of data warehouses, a specialized class of information systems, by organizations all over the globe, has recently experienced dramatic increase. A Data Warehouse (DW) serves organiza-tions for various important purposes such as reporting uses, strategic decision making purposes, etc. Maintaining the quality of such systems is a difficult task as DWs are much more complex than ordi-nary operational software applications. Therefore, conventional methods of software testing cannot be applied on DW systems. Objectives. The objectives of this thesis study was to investigate the current state of the art in DW testing, to explore various DW testing tools and techniques and the challenges in DW testing and, to identify the improvement opportunities for DW testing process. Methods. This study consists of an exploratory and a confirmatory part. In the exploratory part, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) followed by Snowball Sampling Technique (SST), a case study at a Swedish government organization and interviews were conducted. For the SLR, a number of article sources were used, including Compendex, Inspec, IEEE Explore, ACM Digital Library, Springer Link, Science Direct, Scopus etc. References in selected studies and citation databases were used for performing backward and forward SST, respectively. 44 primary studies were identified as a result of the SLR and SST. For the case study, interviews with 6 practitioners were conducted. Case study was followed by conducting 9 additional interviews, with practitioners from different organizations in Sweden and from other countries. Exploratory phase was followed by confirmatory phase, where the challenges, identified during the exploratory phase, were validated by conducting 3 more interviews with industry practitioners. Results. In this study we identified various challenges that are faced by the industry practitioners as well as various tools and testing techniques that are used for testing the DW systems. 47 challenges were found and a number of testing tools and techniques were found in the study. Classification of challenges was performed and improvement suggestions were made to address these challenges in order to reduce their impact. Only 8 of the challenges were found to be common for the industry and the literature studies. Conclusions. Most of the identified challenges were related to test data creation and to the need for tools for various purposes of DW testing. The rising trend of DW systems requires a standardized testing approach and tools that can help to save time by automating the testing process. While tools for operational software testing are available commercially as well as from the open source community, there is a lack of such tools for DW testing. It was also found that a number of challenges are also related to the management activities, such as lack of communication and challenges in DW testing budget estimation etc. We also identified a need for a comprehensive framework for testing data warehouse systems and tools that can help to automate the testing tasks. Moreover, it was found that the impact of management factors on the quality of DW systems should be measured. / Shahan (+46 736 46 81 54), Ahmad (+46 727 72 72 11)

Context: Over the recent years, ‘Lean Software Development’ (LSD) has been emerging as a significant practice in the Software Industry. The inherent nature of ‘Lean’ to efficiently handle frequently changing customer needs by minimizing ‘Waste’ is a major success factor in practicing it in the context of ‘Software Engineering’. In simple words, Lean Software Development is the true translation of Lean Manufacturing and Lean IT principles to Software Engineering. This work presents an in-depth analysis on the implication of lean methodologies from both ‘State of Art’ and ‘State of Practice’ in the context of Software Engineering. Objectives: The prime objective of the study is to investigate what methodologies were considered & adopted under lean philosophy and to present relevant evidence on the implication of lean methodologies in reference to what defines ‘lean’ in Software Engineering. An extensive literature review was aimed to find the existing challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were employed by various software organizations to appease their negative impact. Industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing lean experts, with a motive to find the current state of lean implementation in software industry. The outcomes from the systematic literature review (State of Art) and the industry (State of Practice) are comparatively analysed to explore the similarities and differences on the state of lean implication. Finally, a set of guidelines are recommended that would benefit an Industrial Practitioner/Stakeholder/Academic Researcher in practicing the appropriate lean methodology in the context of software engineering. Methods: We conducted a ‘Systematic literature review’ (SLR) by systematically analyzing relevant studies and then interviewed industrial experts to validate our findings. The systematic literature review was conducted according to the guidelines proposed by Dr. Barbara Kitchenham stated in ‘Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews’ article. The thorough review helped us in identifying various challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were practiced in the context of software engineering. The associated benefits of practicing the lean methodologies are also presented. The extensive review included peer reviewed articles from electronic databases such as IEEE Explore, Inspec, Scopus and ISI. In addition to this, we conducted snowball sampling on the references of the selected articles to avoid the potential risk of losing relevant and valuable information. Also, other potential sources of information such as books, theses/dissertations, white papers and website/blog articles are included as a part of Grey Literature. In this study, the articles related to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering were considered. The review included 72 primary studies published between 1993 and 2012. The primary studies were selected based on the following criteria: If they presented the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean mitigation methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) that appeased the negative impact of the identified challenging factors that hampered the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) in general or for a specific development/ Management/ Maintenance improvement activities that lead to the success of software projects in the context of software engineering. If they presented the benefits of practicing lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. The study quality assessment was done based on the quality criteria defined in the ‘Quality assessment criteria checklist’. The data such as Article ID, Article Title, Literature type (Peer- reviewed, Non-peer reviewed), Context of validation of the lean methodology (Industry/Academia), Subjects considered for the study (Researchers/students, Industrial practitioners), Type of article publication (Conference/ Journal/ Books/ Thesis Reports/ Doctoral dissertations/ Other), Research method used in the study (Case Study/ Experiment/ Experience Report/ Not stated/ Secondary Data Analysis/ Literature Review), Context of conducting the research (Industry/ Academia/ Not stated/ Both), Context of validation of the study (Strong/ Medium/ Weak), Publication date & year, Source of the publication, are extracted as a part of Quantitative analysis. The secondary data analysis for both ‘State of Art’ (Systematic literature review) and ‘State of Practice’ (Industry) was carried by performing a generic data analysis designed to answer our research questions. The more specific data such as the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects, the type of lean contribution presented i.e., the methodology being a Tool, Technique, Practice, Principal, Process or a Method, along with the benefits associated on their implication that helped us to answer our research questions are extracted as a part of qualitative analysis from the selected studies. The industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing potential lean experts who had decent experience in lean software development, to find the current state of lean implication in the software industry. In the end, a comparative analysis was performed to clearly understand the state of convergence and divergence between the results from extensive literature review and the industry with respect to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. Results: A total of 72 primary articles were selected for data extraction. 56 articles were selected from the electronic databases that clearly depicted lean implementation in the context of software engineering. 9 articles were selected by conducting snowball sampling i.e. by scrutinizing the references of the selected primary studies and finally the grey literature resulted in 7 articles. Most of the articles discussed about lean implication in the context of software engineering. The depicted lean methodologies were validated in either Industry or Academia. A few articles depicted regarding lean principles and their benefits in the context of software engineering. Most of the selected articles in our study were peer- reviewed. Peer reviewing is a process of evaluating one’s work or performance by an expert in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of work or performance in the particular field. This indicates that the articles considered for data extraction have been reviewed by potential experts in the research domain. Conclusions: This study provided a deeper insight into lean implication in the context of software engineering. The aim of the thesis is to find the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. A total of 54 challenges were identified from the literature review. The 72 primary articles selected from various resources yielded 53 lean methodologies. The lean methodologies were grouped into Principles, practices, tools and methods. Mapping between the identified challenges and the mitigation lean methodologies is presented. Industrial interviews were conducted to find the current state of lean implication in software engineering. A total of 30 challenges were identified from the industry. A total of 40 lean methodologies were identified from the interviews. Comparative analysis was done to find the common challenges and mitigation lean methodologies between the State of art and State of practice. Based on the analysis a set of guidelines are presented at the end of the document. The guidelines benefit an industrial practitioner in practicing the appropriate lean methodology. Keywords: Lean Methodology, Lean software development, lean software management, lean software engineering, Systematic literature review, literature review. / Context: Over the recent years, ‘Lean Software Development’ (LSD) has been emerging as a significant practice in the Software Industry. The inherent nature of ‘Lean’ to efficiently handle frequently changing customer needs by minimizing ‘Waste’ is a major success factor in practicing it in the context of ‘Software Engineering’. In simple words, Lean Software Development is the true translation of Lean Manufacturing and Lean IT principles to Software Engineering. This work presents an in-depth analysis on the implication of lean methodologies from both ‘State of Art’ and ‘State of Practice’ in the context of Software Engineering. Objectives: The prime objective of the study is to investigate what methodologies were considered & adopted under lean philosophy and to present relevant evidence on the implication of lean methodologies in reference to what defines ‘lean’ in Software Engineering. An extensive literature review was aimed to find the existing challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were employed by various software organizations to appease their negative impact. Industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing lean experts, with a motive to find the current state of lean implementation in software industry. The outcomes from the systematic literature review (State of Art) and the industry (State of Practice) are comparatively analysed to explore the similarities and differences on the state of lean implication. Finally, a set of guidelines are recommended that would benefit an Industrial Practitioner/Stakeholder/Academic Researcher in practicing the appropriate lean methodology in the context of software engineering. Methods: We conducted a ‘Systematic literature review’ (SLR) by systematically analyzing relevant studies and then interviewed industrial experts to validate our findings. The systematic literature review was conducted according to the guidelines proposed by Dr. Barbara Kitchenham stated in ‘Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews’ article. The thorough review helped us in identifying various challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects and the respective lean mitigation methodologies that were practiced in the context of software engineering. The associated benefits of practicing the lean methodologies are also presented. The extensive review included peer reviewed articles from electronic databases such as IEEE Explore, Inspec, Scopus and ISI. In addition to this, we conducted snowball sampling on the references of the selected articles to avoid the potential risk of losing relevant and valuable information. Also, other potential sources of information such as books, theses/dissertations, white papers and website/blog articles are included as a part of Grey Literature. In this study, the articles related to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering were considered. The review included 72 primary studies published between 1993 and 2012. The primary studies were selected based on the following criteria: If they presented the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean mitigation methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) that appeased the negative impact of the identified challenging factors that hampered the success of software projects. If they depicted the implication of lean methodologies (Tool/ Technique/ Method/ Process/ Practice/ Principle) in general or for a specific development/ Management/ Maintenance improvement activities that lead to the success of software projects in the context of software engineering. If they presented the benefits of practicing lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. The study quality assessment was done based on the quality criteria defined in the ‘Quality assessment criteria checklist’. The data such as Article ID, Article Title, Literature type (Peer- reviewed, Non-peer reviewed), Context of validation of the lean methodology (Industry/Academia), Subjects considered for the study (Researchers/students, Industrial practitioners), Type of article publication (Conference/ Journal/ Books/ Thesis Reports/ Doctoral dissertations/ Other), Research method used in the study (Case Study/ Experiment/ Experience Report/ Not stated/ Secondary Data Analysis/ Literature Review), Context of conducting the research (Industry/ Academia/ Not stated/ Both), Context of validation of the study (Strong/ Medium/ Weak), Publication date & year, Source of the publication, are extracted as a part of Quantitative analysis. The secondary data analysis for both ‘State of Art’ (Systematic literature review) and ‘State of Practice’ (Industry) was carried by performing a generic data analysis designed to answer our research questions. The more specific data such as the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects, the type of lean contribution presented i.e., the methodology being a Tool, Technique, Practice, Principal, Process or a Method, along with the benefits associated on their implication that helped us to answer our research questions are extracted as a part of qualitative analysis from the selected studies. The industrial interviews were conducted by interviewing potential lean experts who had decent experience in lean software development, to find the current state of lean implication in the software industry. In the end, a comparative analysis was performed to clearly understand the state of convergence and divergence between the results from extensive literature review and the industry with respect to the implication of lean methodologies in the context of software engineering. Results: A total of 72 primary articles were selected for data extraction. 56 articles were selected from the electronic databases that clearly depicted lean implementation in the context of software engineering. 9 articles were selected by conducting snowball sampling i.e. by scrutinizing the references of the selected primary studies and finally the grey literature resulted in 7 articles. Most of the articles discussed about lean implication in the context of software engineering. The depicted lean methodologies were validated in either Industry or Academia. A few articles depicted regarding lean principles and their benefits in the context of software engineering. Most of the selected articles in our study were peer- reviewed. Peer reviewing is a process of evaluating one’s work or performance by an expert in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of work or performance in the particular field. This indicates that the articles considered for data extraction have been reviewed by potential experts in the research domain. Conclusions: This study provided a deeper insight into lean implication in the context of software engineering. The aim of the thesis is to find the challenging factors that negatively influenced the success of software projects. A total of 54 challenges were identified from the literature review. The 72 primary articles selected from various resources yielded 53 lean methodologies. The lean methodologies were grouped into Principles, practices, tools and methods. Mapping between the identified challenges and the mitigation lean methodologies is presented. Industrial interviews were conducted to find the current state of lean implication in software engineering. A total of 30 challenges were identified from the industry. A total of 40 lean methodologies were identified from the interviews. Comparative analysis was done to find the common challenges and mitigation lean methodologies between the State of art and State of practice. Based on the analysis a set of guidelines are presented at the end of the document. The guidelines benefit an industrial practitioner in practicing the appropriate lean methodology. Keywords: Lean Methodology, Lean software development, lean software management, lean software engineering, Systematic literature review, literature review. / 0091-8375920473

Context: Mutation testing is a fault-based technique for measuring the effectiveness of a test set in terms of its ability to detect faults. Mutation testing seeds artificial faults into an application and checks whether a test suite can detect them. If these faults are not found, the test suite is still not considered to be 'good enough'. However, there are also mutations which keep the program semantics unchanged and thus cannot be detected by any test suite. Finding a way to assess these mutations is also known as the equivalent mutant problem (EMP). Objectives: The main objective of this thesis is to conduct a systematic literature review in the field of mutation testing, to identify and classify existing methods for equivalent mutants detection. In addiction, other objectives are: analyze possibilities to improve existing methods for equivalent mutant detection, implement new or improved method and compare it with existing ones. Methods: Based on the systematic literature review method we have went over publications from six electronic databases and one conference proceedings. Standard method was extended by scanning lists of references and some alternative sources: searching in Google Scholar, checking personal websites of relevant authors and contacting all of them. We have performed all the systematic literature review steps such as the protocol development, initial selection, final selection, quality assessment, data extraction and data synthesis. In the second part of this thesis - an experiment, we have implemented four second order mutation testing strategies and compared them each other from four different perspectives: mutants reduction, equivalent mutants reduction, fault detection loss and mutation testing process time reduction. Results: The search identified 17 relevant techniques in 22 articles. Three categories of techniques can be distinguished: detecting (DEM), suggesting (SEM) and avoiding equivalent mutants generation (AEMG). Furthermore, for each technique current state of development and some ideas on how to improve it are provided. The experiment proved that DifferentOperators strategy gives the best results in all four investigated areas. In addition, time for manual mutants classification against equivalence was measured. Assessing one first order mutant takes 11 minutes 49 seconds, while for the second order mutants classification time is 9 minutes 36 seconds in average. Conclusions: After three decades of studies, results obtained for techniques from the DEM group are still far from perfection (best one is detecting 47,63% of equivalent mutants). Thus, new paths for the solution have been developed - SEM and AEMG group. Methods from both categories help in dealing with EMP, however from SEM provide only mutants likely to equivalent, while from AEMG cause some loss of test effectiveness. The conclusion from the experiment is that DifferentOperators strategy gives the best results among all proposed.

Abstract—Background: Software Process Improvement (SPI) maturity models have been developed to assist organizations to enhance software quality. Agile methodologies are used to ensure productivity and quality of a software product. Amongst others they are applied in Small and Medium – sized Enterprises (SMEs). However, little is known about the combination of Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models regarding SMEs and the results that could emerge, as all the current SPI models are addressed to larger organizations and all these improvement models are difficult to be used by Small and Medium – sized firms. Combinations of these methodologies could lead to improvement in the quality of the software products, better project management methodologies and organized software development framework. Objectives: The aim of this study is to identify the main Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models applied in SMEs, the combinations of these methodologies, and the results that could emerge. Through these combinations, new software development frameworks are proposed. What is more, the results of this study can be used as a guide with the appropriate combination for each SME, as a better project management methodology or as improvement in the current software engineering practices. Methods: A Systematic Literature Review was conducted, resulting in 71 selected relevant papers ranging from 2001 to 2013. Besides, a survey has been performed from June 2013 to October 2013, including 49 participants. Results: Seven Agile methodologies and six different SPI maturity models were identified and discussed. Furthermore, the combination of eight different Agile methodologies and Software Process Improvement maturity models is presented, and as well as their benefits and drawbacks that could emerge in Small and Medium – sized firms. Conclusion: The majority of the Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models are addressed to large or very large enterprises. Thus, little research has been conducted for SMEs. The combinations of the Agile methodologies and SPI maturity models are usually performed in experimental stages. However, it has been observed that such type of combination could present numerous benefits, which can also be applicable in SMEs as well. The combinations that are most common are the CMMI and XP, CMMI and Scrum, CMMI and Six Sigma, and the PRINCE2 and DSDM. / 0034-636835645

Context: Software cost and effort estimation are important activities for planning and estimation of software projects. One major player for cost and effort estimation is functional size of software which can be measured in variety of methods. Having several methods for measuring one entity, converting outputs of these methods becomes important. Objectives: In this study we investigate different techniques that have been proposed for conversion between different Functional Size Measurement (FSM) techniques. We addressed conceptual similarities and differences between methods, empirical approaches proposed for conversion, evaluation of the proposed approaches and improvement opportunities that are available for current approaches. Finally, we proposed a new conversion model based on accumulated data. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review for investigating the similarities and differences between FSM methods and proposed approaches for conversion. We also identified some improvement opportunities for the current conversion approaches. Sources for articles were IEEE Xplore, Engineering Village, Science Direct, ISI, and Scopus. We also performed snowball sampling to decrease chance of missing any relevant papers. We also evaluated the existing models for conversion after merging the data from publicly available datasets. By bringing suggestions for improvement, we developed a new model and then validated it. Results: Conceptual similarities and differences between methods are presented along with all methods and models that exist for conversion between different FSM methods. We also came with three major contributions for existing empirical methods; for one existing method (piecewise linear regression) we used a systematic and rigorous way of finding discontinuity point. We also evaluated several existing models to test their reliability based on a merged dataset, and finally we accumulated all data from literature in order to find the nature of relation between IFPUG and COSMIC using LOESS regression technique. Conclusions: We concluded that many concepts used by different FSM methods are common which enable conversion. In addition statistical results show that the proposed approach to enhance piecewise linear regression model slightly increases model’s test results. Even this small improvement can affect projects’ cost largely. Results of evaluation of models show that it is not possible to say which method can predict unseen data better than others and it depends on the concerns of practitioner that which model should be used. And finally accumulated data confirms that empirical relation between IFPUG and COSMIC is not linear and can be presented by two separate lines better than other models. Also we noted that unlike COSMIC manual’s claim that discontinuity point should be around 200 FP, in merged dataset discontinuity point is around 300 to 400. Finally we proposed a new conversion approach using systematic approach and piecewise linear regression. By testing on new data, this model shows improvement in MMRE and Pred(25). / Javad Amiri: Nabshe Kooche 3, Bolvare shadi, Farhangian 2, Qom, Iran, phone: +989127476593 Vinod Kumar: s/o P.V.Kondala Rao, Main Road Khaji Street Rajahmundry. A.P. India pin: 533101 phone: +917396449336