Ayaz Farooq

Research directions in verification & validation process improvement

Software process establishment, evaluation and improvement are key research areas in the software engineering field today. Extensive research has been carried out and many different kinds of approaches exist to improve the software process and even more efforts are underway. Verification & validation process, which is part of the broader software process activities, plays a vital role in quality and profitability of the developed product but is believed to consume major portion of the development expenses and resources. Probably, research towards improving the verification & validation process has not been as actively directed as compared to software process improvement research. This paper identifies several potential future research directions towards improving verification and validation process.

Developing and Applying a Consolidated Evaluation Framework to Analyze Test Process Improvement Approaches

Following the general software process improvement initiatives, improvement models particular to the software test process have also been developed. Although these models have been based on nearly similar principles, yet they differ in a variety of aspects. To compare and critically analyze strengths and weaknesses of these test process models, we need a common analysis framework. Existing SPI evaluation frameworks focus only on some basic and key process characteristics and elements. A number of critical success factors for software process improvement have been identified in literature which impose higher level of requirements on SPI approaches. We present a consolidated evaluation framework derived from critical success factors/literature review and apply it to analyze well known test process improvement approaches.

Challenges in Evaluating SOA Test Processes

Service-oriented architecture enables creation of enterprise-wide and cross-enterprise flexible, dynamic business processes and agile applications. The performance, reliability and other quality aspects of such systems, thus, become very important for the success of businesses. Testing is a way to evaluate these quality attributes. However, the new unique architecture style of SOA-based systems calls for reorienting testing procedures, methods, techniques, and tools etc. In this paper we discuss how we can evaluate efficiency and effectiveness of SOA test process. Considering an existing generic test process evaluation framework, we attempt to highlight areas where necessary adjustments to this framework are needed to care for the specialized testing perspectives of SOA-based systems.

An Empirical Analysis of Object-Oriented Metrics for Java Technologies

As a fact, the application of object-oriented approach is of high significance in the area of software development since it can abet efficiency or cost effectiveness and reduce error probability during software design and implementation. In order to quantify, especially qualitative aspects such as potential error hot spots caused by elevated design complexity, software measurement can strongly assist. Particularly, metrics proposed by Chidamber and Kemerer as well as Abreus MOOD metrics set are presumably most prevalent in practice and provide adequate explanatory power. Especially the object-oriented programming language Java cannot be dismissed from ones thoughts because a lot of Java libraries serve as foundation for contemporary applications. Thus, after initially defining language bindings for the aforementioned metrics, we perform measurement and evaluation of various Java standard libraries like J2SE, J2EE, J2ME, JWSDP and few others concerning different aspects. The results acquired are beneficial to be used by software designers for aligning and orienting their design with common industry practices. Furthermore, our extensive measurements enable us to carry out key metrics correlation studies incorporating many thousand Java classes

Analysis of the Risk Assessment Methods --- A Survey

Risk assessment methods are one of the most important elements in the process of risk management. They are a vital element of software project management and software testing. Practitioners, particularly researchers, are interested in evaluation of these methods for their applicability, strengths, and weaknesses for particular scenarios. This paper surveys and analyzes several risk assessment methods from different perspectives. The paper characterizes the methods appearing in literature during a considerably large time span. The survey is expected to be helpful both to the practitioners and researchers in providing relevant information that could be used for improving the process of risk assessment or for developing new methods and it gives information that could be used in the evolution process of the risk assessment methods.

A meta-measurement approach for software test processes

Existing test process assessment and improvement models intend to raise maturity of an organization with reference to testing activities. Such process assessments are based on ldquowhatrdquo testing activities are being carried out, and thus implicitly evaluate process quality. Other test process measurement techniques attempt to directly assess some partial quality attribute such as efficiency or effectiveness some test metrics. There is a need for a formalized method of test process quality evaluation that addresses both implicitly and partially of these current evaluations. This paper describes a conceptual framework to specify and explicitly evaluate test process quality aspects. The framework enables provision of evaluation results in the form of objective assessments, and problem-area identification to improve the software testing processes.

QuaD 2 - an ontology-based framework for quality driven design of architectures

The importance of providing integration architectures in every field of application is beyond controversy these days. Unfortunately existing solutions are focusing mainly on functionality. But for the success of systems integration in the long run, the quality of developed architectures is of substantial interest. Therefore a framework for quality-driven creation of architectures is proposed in this paper. Besides these quality-oriented characteristic, the usage of semantic knowledge and structured process descriptions enable an automatic procedure. Especially the combination of both is a promising approach.

A Metrics Data Base Maturity Model

The prominence of measurement and assessment of software development artifacts is beyond controversy, these days. To expand insular measurement to empirical series of measurement and thus to benefit from it in the long-run, a qualified measurement collection process is almost compulsory. Even though renowned measurement guidance recommends the usage of metrics data bases (MDB), it does not assist in their design or implementation. This paper is therefore intended to address the question of: which aspects account for mature and meaningful MDB? Based on an investigation in factors influencing an MDBs maturity, we introduce a first approach towards a MDB maturity model (MDBMM ) to appraise the maturity of an organizations measurement collection process with the aid of a five level ordinal scale