Lesley Pek Wee Land

Validating the defect detection performance advantage of group designs for software reviews: report of a laboratory experiment using program code

It is widely accepted that software development technical reviews (SDTRs) are a useful technique for finding defects in software products. Recent debates centre around the need for review meetings (Porter and Votta 1994, Porter et al 1995, McCarthy et al 1996, Lanubile and Visaggio 1996). This paper presents the findings of an experiment that was conducted to investigate the performance advantage of interacting groups over average individuals and artificial (nominal) groups. We found that interacting groups outperform the average individuals and nominal groups. The source of performance advantage of interacting groups is not in finding defects, but rather in discriminating between true defects and false positives. The practical implication for this research is that nominal groups constitute an alternative review design in situations where individuals discover a low level of false positives.

Capturing implicit software engineering knowledge

It is commonly accepted that all forms of software engineering knowledge should be captured and stored in a repository. This knowledge enables us to learn from past development experience and promotes reuse. Unfortunately there is not much work in the software engineering literature that emphasizes the importance of capturing implicit knowledge for the repository. This paper begins with a critical literature review on the epistemological dimensions of knowledge (explicit and implicit knowledge) in software development. Then it speculates a lack of attention on the capture of knowledge for the software experience factory. It suggests that the source of implicit knowledge extends beyond the software development team which accumulates implicit knowledge during practice. In this paper we formulate a conceptual framework that captures the implicit knowledge, and then organize the knowledge in a useful form for the software experience factory. This paper emphasizes the importance of implicit knowledge both on the individual and collective levels and suggests a combination of knowledge capture techniques to achieve this end. Though not within the scope of this paper, we recognize that knowledge must be organized in a useful way for easy access.

A framework for assessing ICT preparedness for e-health implementations

Electronic health (e-health) is probably one of the most significant contributions of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in present daypsilas healthcare. ICT efficiently bridges healthcare sector and technology for e-health implementation, which is a costly affair due to involvement of considerable amount of planning and investment. Preparedness, on the other hand can be defined as a state of readiness prior taking any action and applicable for implementing any e-health project. Study of preparedness essentially i) renders insight to the existing resources, ii) specifies the requirements for successful implementation of a project, and iii) helps set up strategies for the said implementation. Preparedness may be assessed at various levels of e-health implementations, such as ICT, Application, Service, Process and Government or Organizational levels. The present work focuses at the very initial level i.e. ICT and proposes an ICT-preparedness-framework for e-health implementation. The proposed ICT-preparedness framework is a conceptual one and is based on two different applications - A) connected graph-based approach to capture and in turn quantify some of the ICT constructs (Hardware, Connectivity, Software and Skills) and their respective indicators and B) a fuzzy set-based technique to assess the preparedness levels of these constructs. Finally the framework is discussed with an e-health scenario on Tele-cardiology.

Software Group Reviews and the Impact of Procedural Roles on Defect Detection Performance

This thesis addresses two main issues in software inspection-the need for review meetings and the use of roles in meetings. An overview of the research rationale, methodology, results and conclusions is presented in this paper.

Retaining Organizational Knowledge: A Case Study of an Australian Construction Company

Few would refute the importance of harnessing organizational knowledge — for reuse, learning, and process improvement. Once retained in a concrete form, knowledge becomes less fragmented and more easily accessible and useable. Such a knowledge management system indeed becomes a source of competitive advantage for an organization. The key to achieving this is by retaining the existing organizational knowledge so that we do not have to rely solely on available expertise. A number of knowledge management frameworks exist which help us to classify and structure knowledge. No single framework dominates, because different organizations have different needs depending on factors such as culture and business processes. At the same time, there is a lack of case studies on how organizations create or operate such a knowledge management system. In this paper, we present a case study of a knowledge management system used in a specific context — an Australian construction company. The study shows that, at least in this particular context, a knowledge management system can operate only where it does not interfere with the existing workflow of the organization. Furthermore, the importance of retaining valuable tacit knowledge is emphasized. We also discuss the implications for future research and practice.

An extension of the behavioral theory of group performance in software development technical reviews

In the original theory of group performance in software development technical reviews there was no consideration given to the influence of the inspection process, inspection performance, or the inspected artifact, on the structure of the theoretical model. We present an extended theoretical model, along with discussion and justification for components of the new model. These extensions include consideration of the software product quality attributes, the prescriptive processes now developed for reviews, and a more detailed consideration of the technical and nontechnical characteristics of the inspectors. We present both the structure of the model and the nature of the interactions between elements in the model. Consideration is also given to the opportunity for increased formalism in the technical review process. We show that opportunity exists to both improve industrial practice and extend research-based knowledge of the technical review process and context.

The effects of general privacy concerns and transactional privacy concerns on Facebook apps usage

This study elucidates the role of control in the context of information privacy to develop a better understanding of the interactions between general privacy concerns and transactional privacy concerns. We posit that general privacy concerns moderate the effects of information collection and profile control on transactional privacy concerns, which in turn, influence willingness to delegate profile to Facebook apps. We test the research model in the context of Facebook apps installation. Results support our propositions. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for service providers and users are discussed.

What Happens Before a Project Starts?—Project Start-up from the Supplier Perspective

Before an outsourced software project officially begins the contracting or supplier organization has already expended effort. Although project start and start-up effort impact on project success in most cases these are undefined concepts. There are no clear definitions of project start, start-up or the activities that should be completed before project start either in the literature or in practice. Ambiguity around project start sets up risks to the profitability of a project and therefore makes the real success of a project not only uncertain but difficult to measure. A vague project start also makes comparisons between projects and between organizations unreliable. In this paper, we describe a pilot study that reviews project start, project start-up, and project start date, and then investigates what the key activities of the supplier are normally performed by the end of the project start-up phase. We use interviews with software supplier practitioners to define those key activities.

An approach for E-Health system assessment & specification

One of the key benefits of E-Health systems is in the digitization of data, which allows electronic digital transmission, sorting, retrieval and other manipulations. E-Health directly supports healthcare prevention, patient diagnosis and patient management and care, both at the local site and at a distance. This study proposes an approach for the assessment and requirement specification of E-Health systems. We view assessment as a tool for developing requirements specifications as well as continuous assessment of the system.

Investigating training effects on software reviews: a controlled experiment

The software review/inspection task is a labour and time intensive activity. Naturally, any activity aimed at improving the performance of inspectors would be deemed favourable to both practitioners as well as to researchers. This study is motivated by previous work by Chowdhury and Land, on the effects of inspector training on inspection performance. There have been few studies in this area. One classic controlled experiment, consisting of 86 subjects was conducted. We manipulated one independent variable (training). The control group undertook no training, the other 3 treatments were process training, process training with practice and process training with worked examples. The results show practice and worked examples proceeding process training, were both very promising training approaches. They did not affect false positive identification. However, their relative benefits were less clear. We also pinpointed a few possible areas for future research from this work.