Jonás Montilva

Developing Instructional Web Sites – A Software Engineering Approach

This paper focuses on the application of software engineering practices to the development of instructional web sites. The development of a web site, to support a distance or campus-based online course, is a very complex process that involves many instructional and technical aspects, including the instructional purpose of the course, its content, its structure, its interface, and its teaching–learning activities. The use of a method is essential for dealing with the complexity of this process. We describe, in this paper, a software engineering method that helps course designers and teachers to develop high quality instructional web sites. The design of the method was based on the integration of well-known principles, concepts and process models borrowed from instructional design, method engineering, and object-oriented software engineering. The method addresses the managerial processes required to plan, organize, and control the project, as well as the instructional and technical activities involved in the development of high quality course sites.

An integration architecture for the automation of a continuous production complex.

The development of integrated automation systems for continuous production plants is a very complicated process. A variety of factors must be taken into account, such as their different components (e.g., production units control systems, planning systems, financial systems, etc.), the interaction among them, and their different behavior (continuous or discrete). Moreover, the difficulty of this process is increased by the fact that each component can be viewed in a different way depending on the kind of decisions to be made, and its specific behavior. Modeling continuous production complexes as a composition of components, where, in turn, each component may also be a composite, appears to be the simplest and safest way to develop integrated automation systems. In order to provide the most versatile way to develop this kind of system, this work proposes a new approach for designing and building them, where process behavior, operation conditions and equipment conditions are integrated into a hierarchical automation architecture.

A process model based on Enterprise Architecture for ICT management

The successful application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in an enterprise depends on the implanted processes for managing such technologies. We consider that the use of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) concept for organizing these technologies into a framework would allow us to achieve a better ICT - business alignment. This article presents a process model for the ICT Management that is oriented to medium and small enterprises. The main difference between the proposed model and the others found in domains literature is that our model places EA concept at the center of the organization of ICT management activities. It provides a better definition, organization and comprehension of the essential business activities. Consequently, our model would facilitate the restructuring of organizational units responsible for the ICT management. The described model is used in several Venezuelan enterprises as a referential framework in order to improve their current ICT management processes. This experience would serve to refine and optimize its application in other Latin-American enterprises.

Integrating the methodological frameworks WATCH and SCRUM: A method engineering approach

This paper focuses on the integration of two software development frameworks: Blue WATCH y SCRUM. SCRUM is a well known agile framework for software development; meanwhile, Blue WATCH is a balanced (agile + disciplined) methodological framework for enterprise application development. The first one is combined with concepts derived from the second one. The emphasis of the paper is on the process of integration and its result: the integrated framework. The combined framework that emerges from the integration process provides a better description, not only of the project management processes, but also of the technical and support processes which are proper of the software development endeavor. The proposed framework is expected to provide a better guidance to software development teams, since it mixes managerial and technical processes into a unique framework.