Björn Decker

Wiki-Based Stakeholder Participation in Requirements Engineering

Requirements elicitation and documentation are complex activities. So, not only the requirements themselves but also the people involved and the means for managing the requirements will evolve during the project. For example, it might be necessary to add RE personnel, to document templates, or to change the requirements classification scheme. In summary, especially in participative RE, the underlying platform as well the RE approach must be flexible. As the well-known Wikipedia shows, wikis provide a flexible platform for asynchronous collaboration to create content in general. In this article, we investigate how to adapt this approach to support active stakeholder participation in RE. We include a document structure for wiki-based RE and discuss potential problems and solutions based on our experience

Experience Management Wikis for Reflective Practice in Software Capstone Projects

Software engineering curriculum guidelines state that students should practice methods, techniques, and tools. A capstone project is one possibility to address this aim. A capstone project helps the students to increase their problem solving competencies, improve their social skills (e.g., communication skills), and gather practical experience. A crux of such projects is that students perform ldquoreflectiverdquo practice in order to learn from their experiences. The authors believe that experience gathering and reuse are effective techniques to stimulate reflective activities. An adapted free- and open-source Wiki-based system called software organization platform (SOP) is used to support students in managing their observations and experiences. The system can be used for experience exchange within the team and for experience reuse in forthcoming projects. The results of a case study show that standard Wiki functions improve communication and information sharing by means of explicit observation and experience documentation. A total of 183 documented observations and experiences at the end of the project provide a measure for the amount of reflection students have had during the capstone project. Still, the advantages of using Wikis will decrease when no technical adaptations of the Wiki to the learning objectives and to the software engineering tasks are made. Limitations of the case study, future evaluation steps, and planned developments of SOP will be provided in this paper.

The indiGo Project: Enhancement of Experience Management and Process Learning with Moderated Discourses

Within this paper we describe the indiGo approach to preparation, moderation, and analysis of discourses to enhance experience management. In the indiGo project this has been exemplified for the process learning domain. indiGo includes an integration of approaches for e-participation, experience management, process modeling and publishing, as well as text mining. We describe both the methodology underlying indiGo and the indiGo platform. In addition, we compare indiGo to related work. Currently a case study is ongoing for an in-depth evaluation of the indiGo approach.

eParticipative process learning: process-oriented experience management and conflict solving

The indiGo project offers a solution for tackling resistance against and problems while executing process models: eParticipative Process Learning. Via moderated, web-based discussions, consensus about a process is created and process models are reviewed to achieve better understandability or other quality aspects. Furthermore, problems during the execution of a process are solved collaboratively and captured as lessons learned to facilitate upcoming process executions. In this paper, we present the method and technical infrastructure to support eParticipative Process Learning. To show that eParticipative Process Learning leads to improved and accepted process models, three case studies are described.

Emerging Technologies for Semantic Work Environments: Techniques, Methods, and Applications

“This book provides an overview of the field of semantic work environments by bringing together various research studies from different subfields and underlining the similarities between the different processes, issues, and approaches.” Jörg Rech, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Germany Edited by: Jörg Rech, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Germany, Björn Decker, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Germany, and Eric Ras, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering, Germany 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-59904-877-2 372 pages; 2008 Copyright Price: US

The Integrated Corporate Information Network iCoIN: A Comprehensive, Web-Based Experience Factory

180.00 (hardcover and online access*) Pre-pub price§: US

The THESEUS Use Cases

165.00 Online Access only**: US

Enhancing Experience Management and Process Learning with Moderated Discourses: The indiGo Approach

132.00 Illustrations: figures, tables (8 1/2” x 11”) Translation Rights: World *Paperback is not available. §Pre-pub price is good through one month after publication.

Efficient implementation of intelligent office appliances with software product lines

During execution of projects, Software Organizations gain experience in their business. However, timely, effective and efficient reuse of this experience in subsequent projects is often problematic. The concept of an Experience Factory (EF), an infrastructure for continuous learning from experience, was designed to tackle these problems in the software development business. To install such an EF at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), the knowledge management initiative Corporate Information Network (CoIN) was started in 1999. This paper presents the vision for CoIN and the practical experiences gained in its business process modeling part.

Exploring communities of practice for product family engineering

The THESEUS research program assembled key companies with market power from all types of sectors to jointly develop the innovative products that will enable the knowledge society. There have been carried out six use cases to demonstrate applications based on the developements of the THESEUS Core Technology Cluster. In this article, we will give a short overview of selected results of each use case.