Alexandra Martinez

Application of GQM+Strategies in a Small Software Development Unit

GQM+Strategies is an extension of the Goal-Question-Metric method that focuses on filling the vertical gaps in organizations in order to facilitate the alignment of levels. In this case study, we applied GQM+Strategies in small software organization to define its metric program. We describe how a set of metrics was devised using this methodology and show the implementation results.

MBT4J: Automating the Model-Based Testing Process for Java Applications

Model-based testing is a process that can reduce the cost of software testing by automating the design and generation of test cases but it usually involves some time-consuming manual steps. Current model-based testing tools automate the generation of test cases, but offer limited support for the model creation and test execution stages. In this paper we present MBT4J, a platform that automates most of the model-based testing process for Java applications, by integrating several existing tools and techniques. It automates the model building, test case generation, and test execution stages of the process. First, a model is extracted from the source code, then an adapter—between this model and the software under test—is generated and finally, test cases are generated and executed. We performed an evaluation of our platform with 12 configurations using an existing Java application from a public repository. Empirical results show that MBT4J is able to generate up to 2,438 test cases, detect up to 289 defects, and achieve a code coverage ranging between 72% and 84%. In the future, we plan to expand our evaluation to include more software applications and perform error seeding in order to be able to analyze the false positive and negative rates of our platform. Improving the automation of oracles is another vein for future research.

Building a Personalized Cancer Treatment System

This paper reports the process by which a personalized cancer treatment system was built, following a user-centered approach. We give some background on personalized cancer treatment, the particular tumor chemosensitivity assay supported by the system, as well as some quality and legal issues related to such health systems. We describe how Contextual Design was applied when building the system. Contextual design is a user-centered design technique involving seven steps. We also provide some details about the system implementation. Finally, we explain how the Think-Aloud protocol and Heuristic Evaluation methods were used to evaluate the system and report its results. A qualitative assessment from the users perspective is also provided. Results from the heuristic evaluation indicate that only one of ten heuristics was missing from the system, while five were partially covered and four were fully covered.

Facilitating learning dynamic programming through a previous introduction of exhaustive search

A strategy to facilitate learning Dynamic Programming (DP) is presented. The strategy consists in introducing Exhaustive Search (ES) before DP. The foundations of the strategy are the following hypothesis: (1) knowing ES can be a contributing factor in learning DP; (2) ES is easier to understand than DP; and (3) having an ES solution can help to find a DP solution. Based on the implementation of the strategy during one semester, we conclude that it was effective, since the students were able to understand DP more easily than in the previous semester, where the strategy was not applied.