Adriano Bessa Albuquerque

Cloudstep: A step-by-step decision process to support legacy application migration to the cloud

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm whose benefits (such as high scalability, reduced IT costs, self-service on demand, and pay-as-you-go price models) have increasingly attracted the interest of the corporate world. Nevertheless, many organizations have found it difficult to adopt cloud-based solutions, particularly regarding the migration of their existing legacy applications to this new environment. One of the main obstacles faced by those organizations is the lack of a general process to help application developers not only in selecting the cloud models and services best suited for their application, but also in carefully assessing the various risks and benefits involved. To fill this gap, this paper presents Cloudstep, a step-by-step decision process aimed at supporting legacy application migration to the cloud. The process relies on the creation of template-based profiles characterizing the organization, the target legacy application and candidate cloud providers, which are then cross-analyzed to help identify and possibly resolve critical constraints (either technical or non technical) that may hinder migration to the cloud. The use of the process is illustrated through an analysis of key factors influencing the migration of a commercial medical application to different infrastructure-as-a-service cloud providers.

E-commerce Website quality evaluation

E-commerce is considered an excellent alternative for companies to reach new customers. Sometimes, many E-commerce Web sites have a short life. The success of these virtual stores depends on many issues, especially their quality, as it is such a complex solution. This paper defines a relevant set of E-commerce Web site quality attributes based on the literature. Research was undertaken to validate and establish the relative importance of these attributes. The results were obtained from a software quality evaluation model.

Security Engineering Approach to Support Software Security

As information security and privacy become increasingly important to organizations, the demand grows for software development processes that assure information integrity, availability, and confidentiality. Unfortunately, despite the investments made in process improvement, there is still no guarantee that the developed software products are protected from attacks or do not present security vulnerabilities. As soon as software products continue to present security flaws and be compromised by attacks, the Systems Security Engineering – Capability Maturity Model (SSE-CMM) becomes the de facto model to structure a software security approach. Moreover, security best practices, practical experience or international standards, like ISO/IEC 15408, should also be considered to support security engineering as they propose activities that can be adapted to enhance security in a software development process and contribute towards the overall software security. This paper proposes a security engineering approach to support software security through a specialized process that helps develop more secure software, entitled Process to Support Software Security (PSSS). In addition, one of PSSS’s subprocess, Model Security Threat, is explained in detail. This paper also presents the results of the case study when the PSSS was first applied in a software development project as well as the preliminary results of a large project implementation.

Task Allocation Approaches in Distributed Agile Software Development: A Quasi-systematic Review

Increasingly, software organizations are investing in distributed software development. However, this new scenario introduces a number of new challenges and risks. Organizations have sought alternatives to the traditional software development models by applying agile software development practices to distributed development. The key point in a distributed scenario is related to task allocation. This paper conducts a quasi-systematic review of studies of task allocation in distributed software development projects that incorporate agile practices, trying to establish issues for additional research. The study allows us to conclude that there are few works on task classification and prioritization what suggests a fertile area for work.

Applying verbal decision analysis in selecting specific practices of CMMI

Although many activities are available in order to satisfy the Project Management area, Software Development Organizations face difficulties to implant functional and effective practices of Project Management. The main objective of this work is to provide an analysis of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Specific Practices applied in the Software Development. This work intends to examine them toward to identify which are the most preferable ones, according to elicitation of preferences of a decision maker, in order to improve a software development process for a stated type of project and Company. The process of decision making is supported by the application of a classification methodology named ZAPROS-LM of Verbal Decision Analysis (VDA), classifying the mentioned Specific Practices (SP), as alternatives.

Applying multi-criteria decision analysis to global software development with scrum project planning

Distributed Software Development (DSD) projects have become a common reality for many organizations. Scrum is a consolidated Agile methodology and has been increasingly used in a distributed fashion. As distance makes difficult to interact and to cooperate effectively, it is paramount to use methodologies like Scrum that emphasizes communication, reduces coordination and control overhead. Successfully planning and managing the combined use of DSD and Scrum is a complex task and requires carefully planning. Despite the importance and complexity of this type of problem, there seems to be a lack of reports, in the literature, of models that could support managers dealing with such decision context. This paper applies a multi-criteria decision model on the choice of DSD Scrum project plans that have a better chance of success. The model, presented in [1], was developed using cognitive mapping and MACBETH[2]. The application of the model is demonstrated, followed by conclusion and future work.

A Multi-criteria Model for Planning and Fine-Tuning Distributed Scrum Projects

Distributed software development is a fact of life for many projects. It is well established that distance makes difficult to interact and to cooperate effectively. Scrum emphasizes communication, reduces coordination and control overhead; therefore it has enormous potential to help the management of distributed projects and has been increasingly used. Successfully managing the combined use of DSD and Scrum is a complex task and it requires carefully planning. Despite the importance and complexity of this type of problem, there seems to be a lack of reports, in the literature, of models that could support project managers dealing with these decision contexts. This paper presents a multi-criteria decision model for planning and finetuning such project plans. This model was developed using cognitive mapping and MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique). The application of the model is demonstrated, followed by conclusion and remarks about future work.

Task Allocation in Distributed Software Development Aided by Verbal Decision Analysis

One of the most critical activities in distributed project management is the allocation of tasks among remote teams. In distributed software development projects, to allocate a task for a team in any of the locations, the project manager needs consider several factors such as team maturity and time zone difference among the sites. Deciding which task to allocate for each team constitutes a decision-making task. This decision is usually made subjectively. The verbal decision analysis is an approach based on solving problems through multi-criteria qualitative analysis, which means it considers the analysis of subjective criteria. This paper describes the application of a verbal decision analysis methodology called ORCLASS to classify the most relevant factors that the project managers should take into account when allocating tasks in distributed software development projects.

CROSS PLATFORM APP A COMPARATIVE STUDY

The use of mobile applications is now so common that users now expect companies whose services which they consume already have an application to provide these services or a mobile version of your site, but this is not always simple to do or cheap. Thus, the hybrid development has emerged as a potential alternative to this need. The evolution of this new paradigm has taken the attention of researchers and companies as viable alternative to the mobile development. This paper shows how hybrid development can be an alternative for companies provide their services with a low investment and still offer a great service to their clients.

Factors that Influence the Productivity of Software Developers in a Developer View

To measure and improve the productivity of software developers is one of the greatest challenges faced by software development companies. Therefore, aiming to help these companies to identify possible causes that interfere in the productivity of their teams, we present in this paper a list of 32 factors, extracted from the literature, that influence the productivity of developers. To obtain the ranking of these factors, we have applied a questionnaire with developers. In this work, we present the results: the factors that have the greatest positive and negative influence on productivity, the factors with no influence and the most important factors and what influences them. To finish, we present a comparison of the results obtained from the literature.