Chung-Yang Chen

A holistic approach to managing software change impact

Change is inevitable in the software product lifecycle. When a software change occurs, all of the stakeholders and related artifacts should be considered in determining the success of the change action in a collaborative development environment such as JAD (joint application development). In this regard, current implementation-based or homogeneous impact analyses are insufficient; therefore, this paper presents a holistic approach to change impact analysis in handling not only software contents but also other items such as requirements, documents and data. This approach characterizes product contents and relates heterogeneous items by using attributes and linkages. It also uses an object-oriented propagation mechanism to handle dynamic looping in determining the impact of changes. A prototype, EPIC, was built to realize this approach and these concepts. A walkthrough example is provided in order to verify the work of the proposed approach. An empirical study is presented to discuss the benefits of the proposed approach and the application of EPIC in a software company. Lessons learned from the case study and improvement issues of the proposed approach and the tool are also discussed.

Teaching quality in higher education: An introductory review on a process-oriented teaching-quality model

For improving the quality of teaching in higher education, besides the organisational focus or the result-oriented and momentary evaluations, attention can be paid to teachers and their ‘teaching processes’. With this in mind, the information systems quality (ISQ) laboratory developed a process-oriented model that offered teachers a systematic and incremental way for superior teaching excellence. The model, which is termed teaching capability maturity model (T-CMM), is an application of total quality management and the software CMM/CMMI. However, unlike the CMM/CMMI, which is for organisations, the ISQs T-CMM is designed for individual teachers. Due to its novelty and interdisciplinary nature, the model is reviewed introductorily and its applied concepts and design examined, as well as evaluated in comparison with existing teaching methods. In summarising the roles of the T-CMM in teaching quality management, its value has been highlighted, for serving as a portable quality profile for teachers in pursuing their individual teaching careers.

Software Project Team Characteristics and Team Performance: Team Motivation as a Moderator

This study examines the relationship between software project team characteristics and team performance by focusing on two questions: whether or not different team characteristics in software project team affect project performance, and whether or not different types of team motivation lead to different level of influence to the relationship between team characteristics and performance? In this study, we argue that team motivation should be considered as a moderate between the relationship of team characteristics and performance. Different kind and level of team motivation can result in different project performance outcome. We examine the interaction effects between team characteristics and team motivation before their final impact to the performance. The results show that the relationship between project team characteristics and performance can be interfered with team motivation. Management should pay more attention to team motivation within project teams so that a better project performance could be achieved.

An object-based, attribute-oriented approach for software change impact analysis

Change impact analysis is a critical issue in software project management. This paper presents an object-based, attribute-oriented approach for software change impact analysis. Such an approach handles changes in heterogeneous product items and yields a holistic impact result for the purpose of total quality management. A computerized prototype is implemented to demonstrate the theoretical work and the use of the proposed method.

Integrated projects planning in IS departments: A multi-period multi-project selection and assignment approach with a computerized implementation

This paper highlights the subject of integrated projects planning (IPP) in contemporary IS departments, and presents a multi-period, multi-project selection and assignment approach (MPPA) to assist the departments in handling continuous project-based IS requests. The MPPA features a model to optimize the selection and assignment of IS projects. In the scope of multi-project, multi-period planning, the model innovatively considers the losses due to (1) the accumulated postponement of a previously unselected IS request and (2) the expected delay of ongoing projects when inserting a new project request. The MPPA also features an event-based decisional process for cumulative selection and assignment on a multi-period basis. Due to the complex and contextual nature of data in this paper, a computerized system is implemented for aiding the execution of the model and the process. The paper reports on an industrial case for a demonstration of the proposed work. Finally the paper compares the MPPA with related work to summarize the value and role it may play in the IPP context.

Organizing project-based group communication events: A macro perspective

Communication, often conducted in the form of meeting, is critical to the success of collaboration in project-based and human-intensive business activities. This paper reviews current literature in the areas of group and organizational communication and argues the need of (1) a holistic perspective in planning and organizing project-based group communications, (2) establishing and sustaining a continuous venue for communication, and (3) taking advantage of meetings and introducing the meeting-flow (MF) concept to facilitate the macro-level planning of communication and its venue.

Applying open grid computing to quality-aware web service composition

This paper presents a framework that addresses the problem of application reliability in service-oriented virtual enterprises. The aim of the framework is to build composite web services by connecting distributed service providers that offer homogeneous or heterogeneous web services. The proposed framework enhances service quality by applying grid computing standard technologies to manage the lifecycles of computing resources, improve service performance, and extend the service orientation and collaboration goals of composite web services. Given the model of a web services composition, computing plans are designed using the framework to create service components in an Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) system.

A Preliminary study of meeting flow management for software project development: the prototype (MfPMIS)

This paper presents a Web-based software tool, MfPMIS, for facilitating and institutionalizing the collaborative project management environment. The software tool is constructed based on the meeting flow concept, an idea of managing software projects by the meetings and their contextual flows. MfPMIS is a prototype of meeting flow concept that elaborates process-oriented project management. It models ad-hoc formal or anonymous meetings during software project development and provides better managerial resolution on projects by managing the meeting flows.