Anna Beatriz Marques

Systematic Literature Reviews in Distributed Software Development: A Tertiary Study

Distributed Software Development (DSD) emerged from the need to achieve geographically distant customers and currently, allows organizations have global customers and other benefits. This scenario has given rise to new Software Engineering challenges resulting from DSD particularities. Several Systematic Reviews were conducted to address these new challenges. The objective of this paper is to categorize systematic reviews conducted in DSD context. We used the systematic review method to identify SLRs (Systematic Literature Reviews) that address DSD aspects. This study is categorized as a tertiary review. Of fourteen SLRs, seven address aspects of managing distributed development. Four SLRs addressed topics of engineering process. The three remaining are related to Requirements, Design and Software Engineering Education in DSD. The topic areas covered by SLRs are limited, where the majority are focused on summarize the current knowledge concerning a research question. Despite the number of SLRs, the amount of empirical studies is relatively small.

An Ontology for Task Allocation to Teams in Distributed Software Development

An adequate task allocation plan is an effective strategy to reduce collaboration issues in distributed software development. Practitioners adopt distinct processes to allocate tasks as well as diverse labels for the same activities and artifacts. This diversity is also found in literature. Task allocation proposals consider different elements and use distinct names for the same concepts. The lack of a standardized vocabulary and of an understanding of the elements involved impairs knowledge acquisition and sharing. Our paper presents a domain ontology to represent concepts related to task allocation in distributed teams. The ontology was defined based on a literature systematic mapping and on the opinion of experts. Preliminary evaluation suggests that the relationships among concepts are valid in real projects. The ontology brings awareness to managers regarding the factors related to task allocation planning and provides researchers with a framework to define processes and design tools to support such activity.

MoLVERIC: An Inspection Technique for MoLIC Diagrams

During interaction design, interaction models are developed to help design adequate user interaction with the system. MoLIC (Modeling Language for Interaction as Conversation) is a language used to represent an interaction model, which can then be used as a basis for building other artifacts, such as mockups. However, inspections are necessary to verify whether the MoLIC diagrams are complete, consistent, unambiguous, and contain few or no defects, to avoid propagating preventable defects to derived artifacts. In this paper, we present MoLVERIC, a technique for the inspection of MoLIC diagrams that uses cards with verification items and employs principles of gamification. Furthermore, we discuss the results of a pilot study conducted to analyze the feasibility of this technique.

The Evolution and Impact of the Research in Distributed Software Development in Brazil

A comunidade mundial de Engenharia de Software tem testemunhado uma mudança significativa na forma com que os projetos de software têm sido desenvolvidos nas últimas duas décadas: as equipes vêm sendo organizadas com seus integrantes geograficamente distantes uns dos outros. O termo Desenvolvimento Distribuído de Software (DDS) tem sido cada vez mais utilizado na academia e na indústria para especificar este contexto de desenvolvimento, bem como suas peculiaridades e problemas. Ao mesmo tempo, esta mudança vem causando impacto não apenas no mercado em si, mas na maneira como os produtos de software estão sendo modelados, construídos, testados e entregues para os clientes. Neste sentido, o DDS tem atraído um grande número de pesquisas na área de Engenharia de Software. No Brasil isto não é diferente. Existem registros de pesquisas sendo desenvolvidas no país desde 1999. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar e discutir como a pesquisa em DDS tem evoluído no país a partir de uma avaliação histórica de artigos sobre este assunto, qual o impacto desta pesquisa tanto em nível nacional como internacional e o papel da comunidade brasileira de Engenharia de Software no desenvolvimento desta área. Discute-se também a visão de futuro para pesquisas na área.

Representing the interaction and navigation of interactive systems through a usability-oriented model: A feasibility study

Modeling the interaction and navigation of an interactive system can assist designers in making decisions about how the users will be able to achieve their interaction goals. However, there is lack of proposals to (1) deal with interaction and navigation through an integrated way and (2) deal with usability features in interaction and navigation modeling. In this paper, we propose a usability-oriented interaction and navigation model to improve the quality in use of interactive systems. We evaluate the model feasibility through a study with three subjects with experience in using models in industry, teaching models and academic researching about models. Our main contributions are: (1) knowledge base about the existing solutions for the problem, (2) the USINN (Usability-oriented Interaction and Navigation) model, and (3) a preliminary evaluation about the feasibility of USINN.

A comparative evaluation of interaction models for the design of interactive systems

Traditional models applied in the design of interactive systems focus on aspects related to the application functionality rather than its interaction with the user. Although some approaches have been developed for interaction modeling, there is no consensus on the more adequate model, making it necessary to evaluate the proposed models. To address the issue, this paper presents an empirical study comparing MoLIC (Modeling Language for Interaction as a Conversation) and CTDM (Comprehensive Tasks and Dialog Model) regarding their support for interaction modeling. While the number of defects in MOLIC diagrams was higher, there was no significant difference between the number of defects in MoLIC and CTDM diagrams. 60% of the participants pointed out that MoLIC is more useful and easier to use for designing interaction. And 56% of them indicated MoLIC as the more complete model in comparison with CTDM.

Evaluating the usability expressiveness of a USability-oriented INteraction and Navigation model

The success of an interactive system is strongly related not only to the quality of its user interface, but also to the quality of its interaction and navigation mechanisms. Those mechanisms need to be carefully designed, but there are still no de facto standard design models to represent user-system interaction in a way that privileges decisions regarding the usability of the product being developed. Recently, we proposed USINN (USability-oriented INteraction and Navigation model) to express usability mechanisms in interaction and navigation modeling solutions. In this paper, we present an empirical study conducted in academic environment to investigate the use of USINN to represent usability mechanisms in interaction and navigation design solutions. The results indicated that the participants consider USINN to be easy to use and useful for the interaction and interface design. They also pointed out the need for a better knowledge about usability to apply USINN effectively.