Aziz Deraman

Measuring unmeasurable attributes of software quality using Pragmatic Quality Factor

Software quality is evolving beyond static measurement to a wider scope of quality definition. Previous studies have indicated the importance of human aspect in software quality. But the quality models have not included comprehensively this aspect together with the behavioural aspect of software quality. This research has proposed a Pragmatic Quality Factors (or PQF) as a software quality measurement and metrics that includes both aspects of quality. These aspects of quality are essential as to balance between technical and non-technical (human) facet. In addition, this model provides flexibility by giving priorities and weights to the quality attributes. The priority and weight are necessary to reflect business requirement in the real business environment. Therefore, it is more practical that suits with different users and purposes. It is implemented through collaborative perspective approach between users, developers and independent assessor. This model shows how the unmeasurable characteristics can be measured indirectly using measures and metrics approach. It has been tested involving assessment and certification exercises in real case studies in Malaysia.

SCfM_Prod: A Software Product Certification Model

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in software development and ICT as they become a central issue for business surviving. Companies and software houses are competing to produce software which are claimed to be good and fulfil users expectation. Therefore, quality aspect of a software product has seen as an important issue but companies that develop the software could not justify and guarantee the quality of their products, thus leaving users in uncertainties. Previous studies have indicated that assessment and certification by an independent assessor may help determining confident in the product. The certification reports are beneficial not only to the users and stakeholders but also to the developers and suppliers. This research proposes a software certification model by end product quality approach or SCfM_Prod. It is an alternative approach to monitor and guarantee level of quality of a software product. This model consists of four main entities: pragmatic quality factor (PQF), assessment team, certification representation method and repository. This paper explains in detail of this model

The success factors and barriers of information technology implementation in small and medium enterprises: an empirical study in Malaysia

The use of information technology IT among entrepreneurs is one of the critical aspects as the usage of IT effectively and efficiently will enable to increase productivity and performance in small and medium enterprises SMEs. Previous reports revealed that SMEs in Malaysia have many concerns about the durability, competitiveness and efficiency due to problems associated such as financial, lack of information and knowledge, capability and capacity. This research is derived based on the issues related to IT implementation in SMEs in Malaysia. It determines the problems and issues related to the implementation, and identify factors for the successful implementation of IT in SMEs. The research approach includes the usage of questionnaires, interviews and case studies. Literature study identified ten critical success factors that include the management, staff, IT planning, financial, consultants, vendors, organisational culture, relationship management and change, and perception. This paper presents the success factors and the barrier of IT implementation based on the empirical study.

Towards anti-ageing model for the evergreen software system

Over the years, software ageing became a significant field of study. The degradations of software performance and the accumulation of errors or software faults are the sign of software system is getting old. Past researcher had drawn the analogies between the ageing of software systems and biological systems. Contradict with human ageing, software ageing can be delayed by understand the influenced factors. As ageing is inescapable, there are numbers of researches that have been conducted in order to indicate the factors that might influence the occurrence of the software ageing phenomenon. Degradation performance based on software quality has been observed. Previous study specifies that software ageing factors can be possibly classified into some categorization such as technology, functionality, cost, human and environment. Anti-ageing is a process that slows down and prevents ageing from occurring. Software anti-ageing is a process to prevent software from ageing which results the young and evergreen software. Our past experiences in software quality and certification inspires us to the development of the preliminary anti-ageing model. This paper presents the empirical study on software ageing factors, the conceptual software anti-ageing model, and validation by a case study.

Software ageing measurement model (SAMM): The conceptual framework

In the first software evolution theory, good software must evolve to fulfil the user requirement or it will be progressively less satisfactory. In order to fulfil the requirements, software should be well maintain and the quality of the software should be assured. However, once the maintenance activities interrupted by any causes the quality of software might be degraded and this phenomenon known as software ageing. In this study software ageing is defined as a phenomenon of software is not useful to users and not relevant to the environment because of certain causes. Software ageing cannot be prevented but we can slow down the effects by understanding the cause of it. This paper presents a conceptual framework on how software evolution and maintenance, software quality, software ageing, software measurements and indexing concept can be used to the development of Software Ageing Measurement Model (SAMM). This paper also shows analysis of empirical study that conducted among software practitioners in Malaysia. From the analysis of empirical study there are four factors that can cause software ageing. The factors are product profile, functional, environment and human. Factors derived from the literature review strongly supported by empirical research and discussions with expert will be used as input to the development of the SAMM. This paper will explain all the concept that included in developing SAMM.

Perspective and perception on software ageing: The empirical study

The notion of software ageing was introduced about twenty years ago. Since then the knowledge and idea of it were increasingly accepted by the academia and researchers. Software ageing is a phenomenon when the software is degraded in its quality, users satisfaction and dynamic environment adaptation. In human being, ageing is inevitable process, but with an understanding of the causes, it way helps to delay the ageing process. But unlike human ageing, software ageing can be delayed by identifying factors that influence and accelerate the ageing process. In this study software ageing is defined as the phenomenon when the software drops its quality values accepted by the users and environment. This paper presents the empirical study done to investigate the issues of software ageing among software practitioners in Malaysia. The findings show that software ageing factors can be classified into four main classifications: functional, human, environment and product profile.

Evergreen Software Preservation: The Conceptual Framework of Anti-Ageing Model

The symptom of degradation in term of quality is observed as the indicator of ageing phenomenon in software system. In human and living creators, ageing is an inescapable manifestation for every living creature on earth. In human being, this phenomenon of delaying the ageing process is normally known as anti-ageing. We try to understand and learn the process of ageing in software through understanding the human ageing process. Unlike human ageing, software ageing can be delayed by identifying factors that influence the ageing. Ageing in software is occurring when the software is degraded in term of its quality, user’s satisfaction and dynamic. Previous studies indicated that software ageing factors possibly will be classified into some categorization such as cost, technology, human, functionality and environment. Our past experiences in software quality and certification motivate us to the development of software anti-ageing model and its related areas which are the ageing factors and rejuvenation index. This paper presents the background issues in software ageing which includes software quality and certification, and focus further on the conceptual framework of software anti-ageing model and preliminary formulation of anti-ageing model.

The Role of Human in Software Configuration Management

Two common problems in software development projects are falling behind schedule and software that does not fulfil its purpose. These problems can be attributed to on-going changes made to software products especially during development and maintenance, leading to more work than initially anticipated, diminishing quality as new changes are implemented. One approach for addressing these problems is through a systematic Software Configuration Management (SCM) process. However, after more than 50 years after its inception, these problems are still prevalent in software development, questioning the effectiveness of SCM implementation by software organizations. Although guided by international standards, industry best practices, and array of tools to support its implementation, the role of human has received little attention (if any), in mainstream SCM research, compared to other areas in software engineering. As such, this research project challenges the traditional view of SCM and puts forth a notion of People-Centric SCM, a holistic approach for managing changes to software products, focused on human rather than tools, and that is based on existing standards and best practices. The model and assessment framework were validated by means of Subject Matter Expert reviews and 5 case studies involving 9 software practitioners from the public sector, higher education institutions and the private sector in Malaysia, in addition to 2 international experts. Results of the validation demonstrated the soundness of the model, the plausibility of the assessment framework, and the practically of the People-Centric SCM approach to software organizations.

An Ensemble Similarity Model for Short Text Retrieval

The rapid growth of World Wide Web has extended Information Retrieval related technology such as queries for information needs become more easily accessible. One such platform is online question answering (QA). Online community can posting questions and get direct response for their special information needs using various platforms. It creates large unorganized repositories of valuable knowledge resources. Effective QA retrieval is required to make these repositories accessible to fulfill users information requests quickly. The repositories might contained similar questions and answer to users newly asked question. This paper explores the similarity-based models for the QA system to rank search result candidates. We used Damerau-Levenshtein distance and cosine similarity model to obtain ranking scores between the question posted by the registered user and a similar candidate questions in repository. Empirical experimental results indicate that our proposed ensemble models are very encouraging and give a significantly better similarity value to improve search ranking results.

Software Quality and Productivity Model for Small and Medium Enterprises

The enterprises today including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are dependent on software to accomplish their objectives and maintain survivability and sustainability in their businesses. Although many studies in software quality have been carried out previously, they still lack for the correlation between software quality and the impact to SMEs productivity. The objectives of this study are to determine the quality factors from management’s perspective and to determine the impact of software quality and the productivity of SMEs. It is implemented through a survey conducted in Malaysia which involves 43 respondents who are among the managers and management of SME companies. The survey indicates that efficiency, expandability, functionality, reusability, safety and usability are the most influential factors from a management perspective. The research hypotheses defined are accepted with strong relationships between the defined variables. It shows that the level of software quality assessment in SMEs is correlated with the level of its productivity. Based on these findings, a software quality and productivity (SQAP) model for SME is developed. This paper presents the development of SQAP model which can be used as the standard and guideline in the process of obtaining and upgrading software in SMEs and can further be applied in quality assessment in the organisations.