Hannu Jaakkola

Knowledge-oriented software engineering process in a multi-cultural context

In software engineering, leading trends can be detected that will affect the characteristic features of a product and its development process. On a product level, the growth of size and complexity is apparent—but on the one hand only. On the other hand, there is also a growing demand for simple and reasonable small software products executed by handheld terminals and smartphones; these applications are in many cases expected to collaborate with databases over the Internet. In addition, different kinds of service concepts (ASP, SaaS) are becoming recognized alternatives to the traditional way of buying software. Increasingly, software products are also distributed in a wide geographical scope to users with different cultural backgrounds and expectations. In software engineering work, as a consequence of this growth in size and complexity, the development work is more and more often distributed. The software business itself is becoming global because of acquisitions, offshoring, and international subcontracting. The globalization of work sets new requirements to the engineering processes: in international teams the organisational and cultural differences of the development subteams have to be recognized. In this paper, the focus is on the software development and its global dimension—especially the roles of multi-cultural and cross-organizational issues in software engineering. Our paper presents the results of the first phase of our three phases research project related to “Culture-Aware Software Engineering.” The main result of the first phase is the multi-cultural software engineering working model introduced in our paper. Culture is seen as one example of the context, i.e. the situation at hand. The concept of culture has also different meanings, which have to be understood in well-organized software engineering. Software engineering work is analyzed as a knowledge creation process, in which both explicit and tacit knowledge are recognized and the transformation between these establishes baselines along the development life cycle.

Visual SQL – High-Quality ER-Based Query Treatment

Query formulation is still a difficult task whenever a database schema is large or complex. The user has to entirely understand the schema before a correct and complete formulation of the query will be found. Furthermore, users may overlook types in the SQL schema that must be used in the query. We show in this paper that visualization led in this case to higher conceptual correctness and conceptual completeness. Visualization is based on Visual SQL. Visual SQL follows the paradigm of entity-relationship representation. At the same time, it has the same expression power as SQL-92. The quality of query formulation is, however, higher.

Models and Success Factors of Process Change

Software process improvement is a popular way to increase the quality of software and the predictability of software engineering. In order to acquire effective processes, the software process improvement needs to be continuous. In this article we analyze the improvement models, which aim to introduce detailed actions for continuous process improvement and the key success factors of improvement based on various literary sources. As a result of the comparison of the two, we have pointed out issues, which, if considered in the improvement models, would help organizations in their improvement efforts.

Fundamentals of technology diffusion and mobile phone case study

The fundamentals of technology diffusion are introduced in this paper. Mathematical and heuristic (loose) modeling are defined and illustrated with real data. Starting with the embryonic phase, diffusion undergoes growing and mature phases and ends in the aging phase. The cumulative adoption function (of time) denoting the total number of users of a certain product is the output of the diffusion model used to either predict future trends (e.g. sales) or estimate certain model parameters. Problems often encountered in mathematical modeling and analysis are presented. Some of these shortcomings can be alleviated through loose modeling. A case study of mobile telephone diffusion in Finland is presented to illustrate some of the modeling principles and analysis.

Comparison and Analysis of Diffusion Models

A real diffusion process consists of a huge amount of interrelated variables. This complexity can be modelled by diffusion models building a simplified mathematical representation of the main features of the process as a time series of indicators describing the phenomenon in interest. Mathematical models are mostly used for technological forecasting purposes; forecasting is based on the best fit of the empirical data to the model formula and trend extrapolation outside the empirical period. The fit gives numeric values to the parameters of the model. Some of the models include also explanative factors — values of parameters describe behavioral properties of the process. The paper concentrates on mathematical diffusion models. The variety of models derived from the literature is introduced and analyzed. As an application of mathemat ical approach to the diffusion the diffusion of mobile phones is discussed. The focus of this paper is to point out problems in mathematical analysis and to discuss about alternative approaches.

Framework for high-quality software design and development: a systematic approach

Software design and development coexist and co-evolve with quality provision, assessment and enforcement. However, most and also modern research ‘provides only bread-and-butter lists of useful properties without giving a systematic structure for evaluating them’. Software engineers have been putting forward several three-score quantities of metrics for software products, processes and resources whereas a theoretical foundation is still missing. A framework for quality property specification, quality control, quality utilisation and quality establishment is proposed. This framework has a theoretical basis that is adaptable to all stages of software development.

Multicultural Software Development: The Productivity Perspective

Productivity management is a challenge for software engineering companies and, in this regard, there is a current trend toward globalization. Via acquisitions and mergers, business has become international and employs different national cultures. Therefore, the focus of this article is on the understanding of cultural differences affecting productivity in globalized software production. The relation between productivity and non coding activities in software development projects has not been proven. Software development is expert work, typically made in closely collaborating local teams and global distribution of expert work increases the degree of difficulty. In this paper, the authors analyze multicultural ICT companies from their productivity perspective through the lens of cultural differences. The purpose of this study is to report findings based on general cultural studies and reported experiences that seem to affect productivity in the software industry. Some company cases are also described and analyzed.

Trust Building in Globalized Software Engineering: A Cultural Perspective

Abstract Commitment is the manifestation of trust. Therefore the building of trust in global software engineering (SE) companies is a relevant question to study. The objective of this research is to explore the trust-building processes in global SE from a cultural perspective. In this research, staff from five large multinational SE companies were interviewed. In the conceptual part of the article, firstly the domain of SE is introduced, secondly there is a discussion on the concept of trust and trust-building processes and thirdly, cultural dimensions affecting trust-building processes are examined. Finally, findings from the case companies are discussed.

From local to global – path towards multicultural software engineering

One of the trends in software engineering is globalisation. Software development is expert work made in closely collaborating teams. The most natural way to do this kind of work is to implement it in local teams. Distribution of expert work increases the grade of difficulty; an additional grade of difficulty appears if the organisational parts represent different cultural backgrounds. The organisations that are distributed and multicultural must be adaptive. Adaptation can be done in two ways: either to adapt the people to the organisation or to adapt the processes of the organisation to take into account the differences. There is also a lot of knowledge available concerning the differences between cultures. The aim of this paper is to analyse multicultural information and communication technology (ICT) companies. The viewpoints discussed cover the global organisation as an adaptive and learning network and the maturity of the global organisation.

Harmonizing emergency management knowledge representation

Despite technological advances, the interoperability of the information and decision support systems of the various parties in the emergency and crisis management community remains a difficult task. The Finnish Emergency Response Center (ERC) is responsible for taking all emergency calls in any emergency. This operating model differs from the operating models in most countries, in that the ERC operators can alert all the necessary authorities directly. The response plans (RP), which are the procedures and instructions on how to react and whom to alert in case of a particular emergency situation, are scripted by the corresponding authorities (rescue, health, police, etc.) and ERC officers are obligated to follow the plans. Currently the Finnish ERC is specifying a new software system and this study was set up in part to support some of the needs of this large national project. This paper discusses how a business process modeling notation (BPMN) could be adapted in a multi-authority field and whether BPMN is suitable for the demands of emergency authorities. Another aim was to describe and specify the relevant organizational structure and the interfaces required in the response plans. The modeled process descriptions were clarified by investigating literature sources and through discussions with emergency experts. The results show how process descriptions could be used to harmonize the emergency response plans and organization in the Finnish Emergency Center. Process descriptions can also help the ERC to carry out requirement engineering for their new emergency management system.