Graham Low

Function points in the estimation and evaluation of the software process

The authors report the results of an empirical research project on the consistency and limitations of the number of function points as an a priori measure of system size rather than the traditional lines-of-code measure. They conclude that function points are a more consistent a priori measure of system size. The results also indicate that the function-point estimate of size is lower for analysts experienced both in software development and in function-point estimation. >

Exploring individual user satisfaction within user-led development

User-led development is gaining popularity with organizations wishing to increase user involvement and control. Typically in this approach a small group of users is given the responsibility for managing the project and representing the user community in determining requirements, testing, training, and system implementation. This paper explores the end users perception of the quality of his or her representation and satisfaction with the application system within an organization employing user-led development. The end-user communities for two systems developed in a large Australian government corporation were surveyed. The results indicate that the user perception of representation is the most significant influence on user satisfaction-the correlation scores for the two systems studied were in excess of 0.6. Also of importance is the users perception of management support. Both systems recorded a low average score for user representativeness (2.5 and 2.7), which is attributed in part to the large number and geographic spread of the users and to the approach adopted by the user representatives in the user-led development team.

FAML: A Generic Metamodel for MAS Development

In some areas of software engineering research, there are several metamodels claiming to capture the main issues. Though it is profitable to have variety at the beginning of a research field, after some time, the diversity of metamodels becomes an obstacle, for instance to the sharing of results between research groups. To reach consensus and unification of existing metamodels, metamodel-driven software language engineering can be applied. This paper illustrates an application of software language engineering in the agent-oriented software engineering research domain. Here, we introduce a relatively generic agent-oriented metamodel whose suitability for supporting modeling language development is demonstrated by evaluating it with respect to several existing methodology-specific metamodels. First, the metamodel is constructed by a combination of bottom-up and top-down analysis and best practice. The concepts thus obtained and their relationships are then evaluated by mapping to two agent-oriented metamodels: TAO and Islander. We then refine the metamodel by extending the comparisons with the metamodels implicit or explicit within five more extant agent-oriented approaches: Adelfe, PASSI, Gaia, INGENIAS, and Tropos. The resultant FAML metamodel is a potential candidate for future standardization as an important component for engineering an agent modeling language.

A comparison of function point counting techniques

Effective management of the software development process requires that management be able to estimate total development effort and cost. One of the fundamental problems associated with effort and cost estimation is the a priori estimation of software size. Function point analysis has emerged over the last decade as a popular tool for this task. Criticisms of the method that relate to the way in which function counts are calculated and the impact of the processing complexity adjustment on the function point count have arisen. SPQR/20 function points among others are claimed to overcome some of these criticisms. The SPQR/20 function point method is compared to traditional function point analysis as a measure of software size in an empirical study of MIS environments. In a study of 64 projects in one organization it was found that both methods would appear equally satisfactory. However consistent use of one method should occur since the individual counts differ considerably. >

The Success Factors Powering Industry-Academia Collaboration

Collaboration between industry and academia supports improvement and innovation in industry and helps to ensure industrial relevance in academic research. This article presents an exploratory study of the factors for successful collaboration between industry and academia in software research.

MOBMAS: A methodology for ontology-based multi-agent systems development

Ontologies offer significant benefits to multi-agent systems: interoperability, reusability, support for multi-agent system (MAS) development activities (such as system analysis and agent knowledge modeling) and support for MAS operation (such as agent communication and reasoning). This paper presents an ontology-based methodology, MOBMAS, for the analysis and design of multi-agent systems. MOBMAS is the first methodology that explicitly identifies and implements the various ways in which ontologies can be used in the MAS development process and integrated into the MAS model definitions. In this paper, we present comprehensive documentation and validation of MOBMAS.

A security-aware metamodel for multi-agent systems (MAS)

This paper adopts a model-based security (MBS) approach to identify security requirements during the early stages of multi-agent system development. Our adopted MBS approach is underpinned by a metamodel independent of any specific methodology. It allows for security considerations to be embedded within any situated agent methodology which then prescribes security considerations within its work products. Using a standard model-driven engineering (MDE) approach, these work products are initially constructed as high abstraction models and then transformed into more precise models until code-specific models can be produced. A multi-agent system case study is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed security-aware metamodel.

ERP innovation implementation model incorporating change management

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to develop and provide a preliminary validation of a model for how change management during an ERP implementation affects the effectiveness of that ERP implementation.Design/methodology/approach – This paper proposes a revised Klein et al. innovation implementation model that explicitly considers change management. The applicability of the revised model to describe the effect of change management on the implementation climate and implementation effectiveness of an ERP implementation is assessed using a case study at a large Australian multinational organisation.Findings – Specific change management activities are identified and described. Qualitative verification of a proposed ERP innovation implementation model that incorporates the effect of change management is provided.Originality/value – Change management was seen as being an important factor in influencing the effectiveness of the ERP project. This study is the first step in the longer‐term empirical validat...

Developing and evaluating a generic metamodel for MAS work products

MAS development requires an appropriate methodology. Rather than seek a single, ideal methodology, we investigate the applicability of method engineering, which focuses on project-specific methodology construction from existing method fragments and provides an appealing approach to organize, appropriately access and effectively harness the software engineering knowledge of MAS methodologies. In this context, we introduce a generic metamodel to serve as a representational infrastructure to unify the work product component of MAS methodologies. The resultant metamodel does not focus on any class of MAS, nor does it impose any restrictions on the format of the system requirements; rather, it is an abstraction of how the work product elements in any MAS are structured and behave both at design time and run-time. Furthermore, in this paper we validate this representational infrastructure by analysing two well-known existing MAS metamodels. We sketch how they can be seen as subtypes of our generic metamodel, providing early evidence to support the use of our metamodel towards the construction of situated MAS methodologies.

Identification of ontologies to support information systems development

Ontologies can provide many benefits during information systems development. They can provide domain knowledge to requirement engineers, are reusable software components for web applications or intelligent agent developers, and can facilitate semi-automatic model verification and validation. They also assist in software extensibility, interoperability and reuse. All these benefits critically depend on the provision of a suitable ontology (ies). This paper introduces a semantically-based three stage-approach to assist developers in checking the consistency of the requirements models and choose the most suitable and relevant ontology (ies) for their development project from a given repository. The early requirements models, documented using the i^@? language, are converted to a retrieval ontology. The consistency of this retrieval ontology is then checked before being used to identify a set of reusable ontologies that are relevant for the development project. The paper also provides an initial validation of each of the stages.