Arnaldo Dias Belchior

Quality Characteristics for Software Components: Hierarchy and Quality Guides

The success of software component applications dependsupon a number of factors, one of the most important being the quality of components. According to the ISO/IEC 9126 standard, quality characteristics can be used both as goals to be attained in the processes of developing, selecting or acquiring components and as criteria for predicting the properties of final applications. This chapter identifies the quality characteristics and sub-characteristics most relevant for software components and organizes them in dimensions that are critical to their assessment. A quality guide is presented, which was elaborated through a field research carried out with developers of components and component-based applications. A software quality evaluation model was used to treat collected data.

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.

Fuzzy Modeling for Function Points Analysis

Function Point Analysis (FPA) is a largely used technique to estimate the size of development project, enhancement project or applications already installed. During the point counting process that represents the dimension of a project or an application, each function is classified according to its relative functional complexity. Several studies resulted in FPA extensions, and most of them are mainly aimed at achieving greater precision in the point assessment of systems of greater algorithmic complexity. This work proposes the use of concepts and properties from fuzzy set theory to extend FPA into FFPA (Fuzzy Function Point Analysis). Fuzzy theory seeks to build a formal quantitative structure capable of emulating the imprecision of human knowledge. With the function points generated by FFPA, the functionality of the project is better represented than it was through FPA. Thus, derived values such as costs and terms of development can be more precisely determined.

A Fuzzy Model for Function Point Analysis to Development and Enhancement Project Assessments

Function Point Analysis (FPA) is among the most commonly used techniques to estimate the size of software system projects or software systems. During the point counting process that represents the dimension of a project or an application, each function is classified according to its relative functional complexity. Various studies already propose to extend FPA, mainly aimed at achieving greater precision in the point assessment of systems of greater algorithmic complexity. This work proposes the use of concepts and properties from fuzzy set theory to extend FPA to FFPA (Fuzzy Function Point Analysis). Fuzzy theory seeks to build a formal quantitative structure capable of emulating the imprecision of human knowledge. With the function points generated by FFPA, derived values such as costs and terms of development can be more precisely determined.

AN ONLINE MULTIMEDIA SYSTEM FOR LEARNING TO DESIGN USER INTERFACES

Resumo: This work addresses the problem of learning how to (i) design user interfaces (UIs) and (ii) evaluate their quality. We present an online collaborative multimedia system, the TELE-environment, to help UI developers solve problems of modeling, usability and acceptability during the entire development process. The developer accesses the environment as a tool for assistance, aiming at learning design concepts, guidelines and activities. During the interaction, the environment provides assistance with textual descriptions, examples and similar solution cases in different media. Moreover, the environment provides a collaborative support that allows the interaction among developers in a synchronous or asynchronous way. Abstract: This work addresses the problem of learning how to (i) design user interfaces (UIs) and (ii) evaluate their quality. We present an online collaborative multimedia system, the TELE-environment, to help UI developers solve problems of modeling, usability and acceptability during the entire development process. The developer accesses the environment as a tool for assistance, aiming at learning design concepts, guidelines and activities. During the interaction, the environment provides assistance with textual descriptions, examples and similar solution cases in different media. Moreover, the environment provides a collaborative support that allows the interaction among developers in a synchronous or asynchronous way.

Application of Multi-Criteria to Perform an Organizational Measurement Process

Software quality has become increasingly important as a crucial factor in keeping organizations competitive. Software process measurement is an essential activity in achieving better quality and guarantees, both in the development process and in the final product. This paper presents the use of multi-criteria in a proposed model for the software measurement process, in order to make it possible to perform organizational planning for measurement, prioritize organizational metrics and define minimal acceptance percentage levels for each metric. This measurement process was based on five well known processes of measurement: CMMI-SW, ISO/IEC 15939, IEEE Std 1061, Six Sigma and PSM.

Multicriteria Model for Selection of Automated System Tests

Software Test Automation is a renowned way to enhance the test process, but it is not always the best approach for the project, despite that a crucial matter when applying software tests is to decide the viability of automating them. This decision is not always easy to take, because it involves persons exposing their point of view, which can bring a conflict with others opinion. In this context, this work aims to implement a decision aid model based on multicriteria to help test analysts and stakeholders in the selection of use cases for automation, according to organizational and projects’ realities.

A Knowledge Management Approach to Support a Secure Software Development

Organizations that want to increase their profits from reliable and secure software product need to invest in software security approaches. However, secure software is not easily achieved and the actual scenario is that investments in software development process improvement do not assure software that resist from attacks or do not present security vulnerabilities. The PSSS (Process to Support Software Security) may help obtaining secure software as it proposes security activities to be integrated into software development life cycles. This paper resumes the application of the PSSS and proposes the support of a knowledge management environment based, specially, on security inspections of the artifacts generated during the processes execution. It also proposes a checklist to security inspections on the software requirements. This will improve how the security aspects are being considered during the development of secure software and will help to establish the security as an important discipline on the organizational culture.

Institutionalization of an Organizational Measurement Process

Software development is a complex activity which demands a series of factors to be controlled. In order for this to be controlled in an effective manner by project management, it is necessary to use software process measurement to identify problems and to consider improvements. This paper presents an organizational software measurement process resulting from the mapping of five relevant software measurement processes: CMMI-SW, ISO/IEC 15939, IEEE Std 1061, Six Sigma, and PSM (Practical Software Measurement). The best practices of each one were used, including relevant keys to facilitate the applicability of a measurement process focused on project management, as well as assuring the software quality.