Konstantina Georgieva

Challenges in Evaluating SOA Test Processes

Service-oriented architecture enables creation of enterprise-wide and cross-enterprise flexible, dynamic business processes and agile applications. The performance, reliability and other quality aspects of such systems, thus, become very important for the success of businesses. Testing is a way to evaluate these quality attributes. However, the new unique architecture style of SOA-based systems calls for reorienting testing procedures, methods, techniques, and tools etc. In this paper we discuss how we can evaluate efficiency and effectiveness of SOA test process. Considering an existing generic test process evaluation framework, we attempt to highlight areas where necessary adjustments to this framework are needed to care for the specialized testing perspectives of SOA-based systems.

Analysis of the Risk Assessment Methods --- A Survey

Risk assessment methods are one of the most important elements in the process of risk management. They are a vital element of software project management and software testing. Practitioners, particularly researchers, are interested in evaluation of these methods for their applicability, strengths, and weaknesses for particular scenarios. This paper surveys and analyzes several risk assessment methods from different perspectives. The paper characterizes the methods appearing in literature during a considerably large time span. The survey is expected to be helpful both to the practitioners and researchers in providing relevant information that could be used for improving the process of risk assessment or for developing new methods and it gives information that could be used in the evolution process of the risk assessment methods.

A meta-measurement approach for software test processes

Existing test process assessment and improvement models intend to raise maturity of an organization with reference to testing activities. Such process assessments are based on ldquowhatrdquo testing activities are being carried out, and thus implicitly evaluate process quality. Other test process measurement techniques attempt to directly assess some partial quality attribute such as efficiency or effectiveness some test metrics. There is a need for a formalized method of test process quality evaluation that addresses both implicitly and partially of these current evaluations. This paper describes a conceptual framework to specify and explicitly evaluate test process quality aspects. The framework enables provision of evaluation results in the form of objective assessments, and problem-area identification to improve the software testing processes.

A General Model for Measurement Improvement

The following paper describes our approach for characterizing software measurement in a holistic manner. Therefore software measurement was defined as a system including all aspects of software measurement, evaluation, estimation and exploration. First of all, we define these components of software measurement considering the different levels of each component in order to classify the different levels of the software measurement itself. First examples have shown the appropriateness of this approach for paradigm related measurement comparisons and improvements. In this paper, we extend our modelling approach and demonstrate the meaningfulness of comparing software measurement practices for different standards and process improvement approaches. These examples help for identifying essential key areas for measurement improvement as basics of quality assurance.

Process Improvement Based on Causal Networks

This paper includes a causal-based modelling of software measurement processes in order to clarify the empirical reasoning in software engineering field. A first overview about existing causal network approaches shows the problems and possible benefits using these formal techniques in the software engineering area. The definition and extension of the causal modelling using causal networks helps to understand the relationships between the different software process artefacts and their causalities. The causal network based process model (CNPM) concept is based on the causal network idea of Pearl. The description of first applications of the CNPM approach for CMMI demonstrates the empirical reasoning of the software improvement processes in an explicit manner.