Chunnian Liu

Automatic Replanning of Task Networks for Process Model Evolution in EPOS

Evolution is crucial in Software Process Modeling (PM) and its support systems. EPOS is a PM support system, using the same Configuration Management (CM) techniques for the Process Schema (types and meta-types) as for instances of these (tasks with related products and tools etc.).

Initial software process management in EPOS

EPOS* is an instrumentable, kernel software engineering environment (SEE), featuringchange-oriented versioning to manage evolving software products or configurations, through file-based workspaces attached to a versioned DBMS.management of the associated software development processes, i.e. to describe, plan, control and execute software activities.integration of the two areas above.An object-oriented ERA data model, EPOS-OOER, to describe ‘passive’ software products and ‘active’ tasks. Work procedures are expressed as task types, which may be customised through simple versioning in project-specific workspaces.The design, implementation and preliminary experience of EPOS process management is the subject of this paper.

Process Modeling Paradigms: An Evaluation

A software process is the set of software engineering activities needed to transform a user’s requirements into functioning software. A Semantic Data/Process Model (or Process Architecture) is a framework to incorporate generic process models, i.e. definitions, structures, standards, and relationships of the various process elements so that common technology, methods and measurements can be applied by any software project. A projectspecafic software process model (e.g. waterfall, spiral, and iterative enhancement models) is a refinement of the generic model to reflect the particular needs of the project. This again can be instantiated to an executable process (with subprocesses) to develop a particular software. Thus we have the following bindings: underlying semantic model generic process model -+ project-specific process model -+ concrete process(es). A Software Process Management (PM) environment should enact and control development activities semi-automatically and concurrently.

Some lessons learned in conducting software engineering surveys in china

Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) with Open Source Software and Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components, Open Source Software (OSS) based development, and Software Outsourcing (SO) are becoming increasingly important for the Chinese software industry. It is therefore necessary to establish pragmatic and possibly nation-specific guidelines for Chinese software companies regarding the use of CBSE, OSS, and SO. Such guidelines should be based on insights from actual practice, which are in our case, obtained through surveys. A European state-of-the-practice survey on COTS- and OSS-oriented CBSE was conducted in Germany, Italy, and Norway in 2004-2005. We repeated similar surveys in China, with an extended survey on OSS and SO. We encountered many difficulties in conducting the surveys, but in most cases managed to find working solutions. We report on the lessons learned while conducting these surveys. In particular, we address issues relating to sampling, contacting respondents, data collection, and data validation. The main lessons are: 1) it was necessary to cooperate with a third-party organization with close relations to Chinese software companies; 2) it was necessary to assign researchers to this third-party organization to facilitate data collection and to control the quality of the data collected; and 3) an email survey, after an initial telephone call to establish contact, was the best method for getting questionnaires completed by Chinese respondents.

PLANNING SUPPORT TO SOFTWARE PROCESS EVOLUTION

The ability to handle changes is a characteristic feature of successful software projects. The problem addressed in this paper is what should be done in project planning and iterative replanning so that the project can react effectively to changes. Thus the work presents research results in software engineering, as well as transfer of methods in knowledge engineering to software engineering, applying the AI planning technique to software process modeling and software project management. Our method is based on inter-project experience and evolution patterns. We propose a new classification of software projects, identifying and characterizing ten software process evolution patterns and link them to different project profile. Based on the evolution patterns, we discuss the planning support for process evolution and propose several methods that are new or significantly extend existing work, e.g. cost estimation of process changes, evolution pattern analysis, and a coarse process model for the initial planning and the iterative replanning process. The preliminary results have shown that the study of evolution patterns, based on inter-project experience, can provide valuable guidance in software process understanding and improvement.

A survey of software development with open source components in Chinese software industry

Chinese software companies are increasingly using Open Source Software (OSS) components in system development. Integrating such components into new software systems leads to challenges related to component selection, component integration and testing, licensing compliance, and system maintenance. Although these issues have been investigated industrially in other countries, few state-of-the-practice studies have so far been performed in China and with a representative subset of software companies. It is therefore difficult for Chinese software companies to be aware of special issues, or to plan improvement of OSS-related processes. This paper describes a questionnaire-based survey in Chinese software companies of software development with existing OSS components. Data from 47 finished development projects in 43 companies have been collected. The results show that use of web search engines was the most common method to locate OSS components. Local expertise combined with requirements compliance was the most decisive factors when choosing an identified component. To avoid legal exposure, the common strategy was to use components without licensing constraints. About 84% of the components needed bug fixing or other code changes, rarely relies on support from the OSS community. However, close participation with the OSS community was rare, although most developers meant that this was important.

A Survey on the Business Relationship between Chinese Outsourcing Software Suppliers and Their Outsourcers

The business relationship between a software outsourcer and its suppliers is gradually moving from contract relationship to partnership. The partnership type between the outsourcer and the supplier is considered as a key predictor of outsourcing success. Although several studies have investigated the practices and benefits of building partnership from an outsourcers perspective, few of them have studied these issues from the suppliers viewpoint, especially in the context of offshore software outsourcing. Since more and more Chinese software companies are getting outsourcing subcontracts from abroad, it is important to investigate the effect of business relationship on their performance, and to identify possible enhancements. Our study has collected data by a questionnaire-based survey from 53 finished projects in 41 Chinese software suppliers. Twenty-six of our investigated suppliers claim to have contract relationship with their outsourcers and the remaining 27 think they have partnership with outsourcers. Results from our study show, however, that 1) processes and methods used by suppliers to solve conflicts with outsourcers do not follow their self-claimed contract relationships or partnership; 2) there is no significant correlations between the type of relationship and the success of outsourced projects; 3) more personnel with proper language and communication skills need to be educated in order to facilitate Chinese companies to build and maintain a proper partnership with their outsourcers.

Planning Support for Cooperating Transactions in EPOS

This paper describes a way to reduce the number of conflicts that may arise when several users cooperate to solve a task using a common database. The manual interaction between the users are made easier by supporting the project managers in planning of activities. Based on some interaction and an initial project division, we can analyse the connections between the activities, given as the result of impact analysis. Based on this, the project manager can choose to adjust the initial partitioning to reduce the dependencies between activities.

Software process modelling in EPOS

EPOS is an instrumentable, kernel Software Engineering Environment (SEE). It consists of facilities for management of versioned products (configurations) through file-based workspaces attached to a versioned DBMS. EPOS will also manage the associated software development processes (tasks), being the subject of this paper.

Process Support for Mobile Work across Heterogeneous Systems

The emerging field of mobile computing (MC) studies systems in which computational components may change locations. In terms of hardware, mobile work is usually across heterogeneous systems in Web extended by novel mobile devices. In terms of software, mobile work technically involves mobile agents and new generation of middleware. However, in general mobile work presents a new challenge and great opportunities to research in software engineering as a whole. In this paper, we focus our attention on process support for mobile work, that is an important aspect of software engineering. We present a classification and characterisation of mobile work mainly from the process point of view, and specify the requirements of process support for mobile work. The last part of the paper compares three process centred environments in regards to mobility support, and identifies their shortcomings.