Arilo Claudio Dias-Neto

Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO): A Systematic Mapping Study

The development of mobile applications around a central software platform has been impacting the software industry. Software solutions are collaboratively built within a dynamic market, often requiring adaptation of software development processes. This trend has been broadly studied as Software Ecosystem (SECO) - in the mobile platform domain, named as Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO). In this paper, we share the results of a systematic mapping study on the MSECO field that analyzed 28 papers identified as relevant to answer our research questions. The results indicate the growing interest in this research field as well as the main software platforms and trending topics. We confirmed the three main MSECOs as Android (Google), iOS (Apple) and Windows Phone (Microsoft). We observed the more investigated area is mobile app development. Finally, we highlighted the main benefits: the attracting and supporting developers, then helping developers to learn and create content and the app store that allows selling and buying processes.

MSECO-DEV: Application Development Process in Mobile Software Ecosystems

In a Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO), the central organization (keystone), must restructure processes to aid external developers to produce mobile applications. The external developer helps the keystone to reach goals, such as growing number of mobile applications. However, there is no process in this context to support developers in the development aligned with the keystones goals. This paper presents MSECO-DEV, a process to support external developers in reaching keystones goals by developing mobile applications. MSECO-DEV comprises 8 activities, 7 artifacts, 8 recommendations, and 17 practices. Activities, recommendations, and practices were evaluated by 65 Brazilian developers (experts and novices). Such developers acted within the main MSECOs (Android, iOS and Windows Phone) to assess their benefits for the mobile applications development routine. As result, we stated that developers have difficulties to perform marketing activities, as well as to find materials that support development. Practices, activities, and recommendations were also evolved and adjusted for the definition of MSECO-DEV.

Cloud-Based Mobile App Testing Framework: Architecture, Implementation and Execution

The growth in the use of mobile devices is notorious due to the multiple functionalities they offer. The time between the release of new device models and mobile platform updates is very short, and this has a direct influence on the quality of mobile applications, because these applications need to be compatible with new mobile devices and the different versions of mobile platforms. As a negative consequence, the quality of mobile apps would be lower than expected. Therefore, to ensure mobile application quality, many services for mobile test are offered as Cloud Testing. Thus, this work proposes a Mobile Cloud Testing Framework, called AM-TaaS, that meets these needs. AM-TaaS facilitates the test environment setup and configuration and covers a range of mobile devices and platforms. We also describe the architecture and implementation of the proposed framework. With the use of AM-TaaS framework, it is possible to perform mobile app testing on different mobile emulators/devices.

Supporting the Combined Selection of Model-Based Testing Techniques

The technical literature on model-based testing (MBT) offers us several techniques with different characteristics and goals. Contemporary software projects usually need to make use of different software testing techniques. However, a lack of empirical information regarding their scalability and effectiveness is observed. It makes their application difficult in real projects, increasing the technical difficulties to combine two or more MBT techniques for the same software project. In addition, current software testing selection approaches offer limited support for the combined selection of techniques. Therefore, this paper describes the conception and evaluation of an approach aimed at supporting the combined selection of MBT techniques for software projects. It consists of an evidence-based body of knowledge with 219 MBT techniques and their corresponding characteristics and a selection process that provides indicators on the level of adequacy (impact indicator) amongst MBT techniques and software projects characteristics. Results from the data analysis indicate it contributes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the selection process when compared to another selection approach available in the technical literature. Aiming at facilitating its use, a computerized infrastructure, evaluated into an industrial context and evolved to implement all the facilities needed to support such selection approach, is presented.

Organizational Culture and Success in SPI Initiatives

To succeed, a software quality improvement (SQI) initiative must reflect organizational culture and the values that compose it. A study to define these values in software organizations includes proposals for implementing them.

Software engineering research in Brazil from the perspective of young researchers: a panorama of the last decade

BackgroundAfter graduating and starting a career as a professor, a young researcher usually finds him/herself lost due to a huge amount of new obligations and opportunities. Choosing the best strategy to guide his/her career into a productive and successful end is not an easy task to everyone, leading sometimes to anxiety and frustration. Previous studies on this topic looked only at published papers as the main source of analysis, lacking an analysis from the researchers’ perspective. Such analysis would be able to identify relevant researchers in the field and which decision and actions they took along their careers.MethodsWe surveyed more than 30 researchers using snowball sampling and mining their profiles.ResultsWe identified patterns related to the universities and regions that formed and hired the most prominent Brazilian young researchers in software engineering. We also found patterns related to research areas (within software engineering), vehicles where research results were published, citations, and joint publication.ConclusionsWe observed that the current generation of prominent researchers has graduated in the most important universities in Brazil and are still working (most of them) in Brazilian federal universities. Analyzing publication patterns, we observed that they target high-quality conferences and journals and usually collaborate strongly with a large number of peers. They also tend to establish themselves in a given research area and propose and develop workshops and conferences to promote the expansion of research on that area.

A survey of empirical investigations on SSBSE papers

We present a survey based on papers published in the first two editions of the Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering (2009 and 2010). The survey addresses how empirical studies are being designed and used by researchers to support evidence on the effectiveness and efficiency of heuristic search techniques when applied to Software Engineering problems. The survey reuses the structure and research questions proposed by a systematic review published in the context of search-based software testing and covering research papers up to 2007. A list of validity threats for SBSE experiments is also proposed and the extent to which the selected research papers address these threats is evaluated. We have compared our results with those presented by the former systematic review and observed that the number of Search-based Software Engineering (SBSE) research papers supported by well-designed and well-reported empirical studies seems to be growing over the years. On the other hand, construct, internal, and external validity threats are still not properly addressed in the design of many SBSE experiments.

What are Software Engineers asking about Android Testing on Stack Overflow

Software testing represents an important activity to achieve quality during mobile application development. The constant evolution of mobile applications in previous years relating to size and complexity entails the need to improve testing techniques and tools. In this context, developers/testers often resort to specialized communities or Question & Answer repositories to clarity doubts regarding testing in a practical and efficient way. Thus, these repositories become a popular source of data to understand the current context of software testing practices. In this paper, we present a study using the Stack Overflow repository for analyzing and clustering the main topics on Android testing. We employed the LDA algorithm to summarize the mobile testing related questions. Our findings show that topics such as testing tools, functional testing, and unit testing are often discussed when compared to other topics. We also analyzed the evolution of the interest of Android testing tools. Results show that developers are more interested in Appium, Espresso, Monkey, and Robotium tools.

Which factors affect the evangelist's support during training sessions in mobile software ecosystems?

In Mobile Software Ecosystems (MSECO), keystone organizations provide mobile platforms and perform training sessions to educate and motivate developers to achieve goals, such as increasing the number of mobile apps as well as reusing and integrating information. Dedicated official staff known as evangelists performs official training sessions. However, there is little discussion about the factors that affect training sessions in MSECO. It can support evangelist in planning and performing effective training sessions. In this paper, we share results from two experimental studies to evaluate factors that may affect training sessions: (1) Case study: we identified seven impact factors in the context of a real MSECO; and (2) Survey: these factors were evaluated by 25 evangelists with respect to impact level. Those seven factors ordered by impact level are: Commitment of the partner institution; Infrastructure; Evangelists approach; Focus on goals; Synergy; Subjectivity of the training planning; and Risk mitigation.

Towards a Guideline-Based Approach to Govern Developers in Mobile Software Ecosystems

Mobile application developers use repositories to store and reuse resources that support the development process. These repositories can be classified into internal – property of an organization that owns the mobile platform – or external – maintained by developers’ communities in a open-source way. The app store is an example of an internal repository. As examples of external repositories, we can mention Github (code) and Stack Overflow (questions and answers. Such repositories can be used to support keystone’s strategy to open its infrastructure in order to engage developers to meet the users’ demands. This scenario refers to Mobile Software Ecosystem (MSECO) where keystones can use governance models to increase profits and reduce possible risks. However, it is necessary to understand how to monitor the engagement of developers using repositories as sources of information. In other words, it is important to define developers’ governance guidelines to monitor the developer, contributions, technical questions, alignment with the keystone’ goals, and developers’ experience (DX). In this context, the goal of this PhD dissertation is to define a guideline-based approach to govern developers in an MSECO.