Fauziah Baharom

SPQF: Software Process Quality Factor

Assuring a good quality software is vital as many software products are available in the market. For a newly developed, the quality of the product is hard to be determined through product based evaluation. Therefore, a study has been introduced an alternative approach for determining the quality level of software through the Software Process Assessment and Certification (SPAC) model. The model consists of seven main components. One of them is the Software Process Quality Factor (SPQF) which acts as a reference model of the SPAC. The SPAC model was validated through collaboration with three leading organizations in Malaysia. This paper discusses the construction of the SPQF by using Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) method which emphasizes on five main factors. The factors are the quality of process, the quality of people, the use of development technology, the quality of working environment and project constraints and were identified through the state of theory and practice. Based on GQM approach, nine measurement goals and forty seven quality metrics were derived. This reference model was embedded in the SPAC model.

COTS software evaluation and selection: A pilot study based in Jordan firms

This research paper aims to discuss the empirical study and analysis on current practices and benefits of COTS-Based System (CBS) from Jordan organizations perspectives. It arises because of the gap between state-of-art which represented by many methods that published in literature for evaluating and selecting COTS software and state-of-practice which still have problems in dealing with mismatches between COTS features and customer needs, in dealing with non-functional requirements and learning from past selection cases. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate the current practices, mechanisms and techniques for evaluating and selection COTS software in real industries. Survey and data collection was conducted in Jordon. Descriptive statistics analysis was used to rank the identification techniques according to their importance. This paper presents the data, the analysis and finding based on pilot survey. These actual findings of this survey will contribute to framework development for evaluating and selecting COTS software and also will provide useful information to those who are doing research in the same area.

The Development of Software Evaluation and Selection Framework for Supporting COTS-Based Systems: The Theoretical Framework

As a result of increasing demands on COTS technology, there is an increasingly huge market of COTS software. Therefore, one of the most critical activities in COTS-based system development is the COTS evaluation and selection. Unfortunately, most existing methods that have been proposed in previous studies for evaluating and selecting COTS software are still have many limitations to be applicable and used in the industry. So without an effective method to select and evaluate COTS software, the time spent for selecting the correct COTS software may offset the advantages of using it. This paper outlines and discusses the common problems in existing methods and the main processes and criteria (non-functional requirements) that are required for evaluating and selecting COTS software through theoretical and empirical studies which goal is to develop new framework to evaluate and select COTS software.

Embedding the concept of service oriented architecture into software sustainability evaluation model

Software sustainability evaluation is a measurement mechanism which involved several criteria of software development through the characteristic and sub-characteristic with requirement to meet the needs at the present until to the future generation. The measurement mechanism can support to achieve developing software towards sustainability perspective such as environment, economic and social. This paper embedded the concept of Service-Oriented Architecture into sustainability evaluation model to support the measurement criteria in the way to build software flexibility, reusability and agility. The objective is to propose several characteristic of software development with utilizing the concept of sustainability and embedded with SOA concept. The mapping criteria of SOA and software development characteristic significantly improve the measurement criteria that can be addressed in the measurement model.

Adapting Rational Unified Process (RUP) approach in designing a secure e-Tendering model

e-Tendering is an electronic processing of the tender document via internet and allow tenderer to publish, communicate, access, receive and submit all tender related information and documentation via internet. This study aims to design the e-Tendering system using Rational Unified Process approach. RUP provides a disciplined approach on how to assign tasks and responsibilities within the software development process. RUP has four phases that can assist researchers to adjust the requirements of various projects with different scope, problem and the size of projects. RUP is characterized as a use case driven, architecture centered, iterative and incremental process model. However the scope of this study only focusing on Inception and Elaboration phases as step to develop the model and perform only three of nine workflows (business modeling, requirements, analysis and design). RUP has a strong focus on documents and the activities in the inception and elaboration phases mainly concern the creation of diagram...

A secured e-tendering modeling using misuse case approach

Major risk factors relating to electronic transactions may lead to destructive impacts on trust and transparency in the process of tendering. Currently, electronic tendering (e-tendering) systems still remain uncertain in issues relating to legal and security compliance and most importantly it has an unclear security framework. Particularly, the available systems are lacking in addressing integrity, confidentiality, authentication, and non-repudiation in e-tendering requirements. Thus, one of the challenges in developing an e-tendering system is to ensure the system requirements include the function for secured and trusted environment. Therefore, this paper aims to model a secured e-tendering system using misuse case approach. The modeling process begins with identifying the e-tendering process, which is based on the Australian Standard Code of Tendering (AS 4120-1994). It is followed by identifying security threats and their countermeasure. Then, the e-tendering was modelled using misuse case approach. T...

Towards a balanced software team formation based on Belbin team role using fuzzy technique

In software engineering (SE), team roles play significant impact in determining the project success. To ensure the optimal outcome of the project the team is working on, it is essential to ensure that the team members are assigned to the right role with the right characteristics. One of the prevalent team roles is Belbin team role. A successful team must have a balance of team roles. Thus, this study demonstrates steps taken to determine balance of software team formation based on Belbin team role using fuzzy technique. Fuzzy technique was chosen because it allows analyzing of imprecise data and classifying selected criteria. In this study, two roles in Belbin team role, which are Shaper (Sh) and Plant (Pl) were chosen to assign the specific role in software team. Results show that the technique is able to be used for determining the balance of team roles. Future works will focus on the validation of the proposed method by using empirical data in industrial setting.

Factors influencing a problem-based learning implementation: A case study of IT courses

IT students must be trained to work efficiently as teamwork. One of the techniques that can be used to train them is through Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach. The PBL implementation can be influenced by various factors depending on the ultimate goal of the study. This study is focusing on the IT students’ perception of the PBL implementation. The student’s perception is important to ensure the successfulness of the PBL implementation. Therefore, it is important to identify the factors that might influence the implementation of PBL of IT courses. This study aims to identify some catalyst factors that may influence the PBL implementation of IT courses. The study involved three (3) main phases: identifying PBL implementation factors, constructing a PBL model, and PBL model validation using statistical analysis. Four main factors are identified: PBL Characteristics, PBL Course Assessment, PBL Practices, and PBL Perception. Based on these four factors, a PBL model is constructed. Then, based on the propos...

E-Tendering Security Issues and Countermeasures

Tendering is a process whereby the principal invited capable tenderer participates in competitive bid for winning a large project. Due to the E-tendering efficiency and effectiveness, this system is introduced and adopted in many countries. Although the system provides opportunities in improving business processes which may lead to paperless, reduced reliance on human capability during transaction, reduced costs and shortened evaluation period, however there still remain uncertainties in legal and security issues. These issues are strongly related to the threats of the E-tendering system.Therefore, this paper is intended to propose a secure solution of the E-tendering system development together with basic countermeasures to overcome the threats. The findings from this study are the identified threats, security technology and related countermeasure of E-tendering process. The procedure in identifying threats and countermeasures are following risk analysis process.Meanwhile, the selections of countermeasures are based on analysis from identified threats.The proposed countermeasures are based on ISO/IEC 27001 and 27002, STRIDE and NIST 800-53 standard.These findings will be used to construct a software architecture secure E-Tendering for IT project.