Lisandra M. Fontoura

Activity-Based Software Process Lines Tailoring

Software process definition requires choosing the process elements that appropriately fulfil the tailoring requirements, such as to prevent risks or to satisfy quality goals. The selection of appropriate process elements is usually done manually, making this process complex, time-consuming and error-prone. Our main objective is to define a systematic approach to tailor software process and a support tool to simplify and to support the tailoring process by improving the selection process of reusable process elements. We developed a systematic approach to tailor software process based on software process architectures and lines. This approach selects the process elements that appropriately match the tailoring requirements. A web tool was developed to support the use of the proposed approach. We concluded that the approach aids process engineer to make decisions for selecting a set of process elements suitable to the tailoring requirements and to the project context.

Virtual Lab: An Immersive Tool to Assist in the Teaching of Software Engineering

With the technological progress, new alternatives that help complement the activities carried out in the educational context, such as virtual worlds have emerged. This paper presents a proposal to use the virtual world OpenSim in education, in conjunction with Moodle through Sloodle plug in. A virtual laboratory with various activities related to Software Engineering was built, in which GenMyModel tool was used for educational practice of diagrams and UML modeling. The lab was used by students and evaluated to verify its potential as an educational alternative that can help both teachers and students in the process of knowledge construction in this area of domain.

Software process tailoring using Situational Method Engineering based on criteria of quality improvement

There is not an appropriate process for all software projects. Models such as CMMI, ISO/IEC 15504 and MPS.BR propose the process tailoring to meet the project specific needs. Situational Method Engineering (SME) focuses to construct a specific software process for each project according to the situational at hand from method fragments. This paper proposes a set of method fragments created using SME concepts, which describe actions to implement quality goals recommended by CMMI. These fragments can be used in process tailoring, inserting the activities described in these to create software processes adhering to quality goals of the CMMI.

Metodologia de Avaliação de Mundos Virtuais Educacionais: uma proposta segundo critérios tecnológicos e pedagógicos

Este artigo apresenta um levantamento sobre ambientes virtuais tridimensionais educacionais que estao sendo desenvolvidos, bem como criterios avaliativos, apresentado uma proposta de metodologia para a avaliacao de mundos virtuais, segundo criterios tecnologicos e pedagogicos. A validacao foi realizada no ambiente TCN5, expondo uma avaliacao positiva da aplicacao. O resultado do questionario pode ser considerado de confianca, segundo o coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach, que diagnosticou o mesmo como aceitavel.

Learning from the Past: a Process Recommendation System for Video Game Projects using Postmortems Experiences

Abstract Context: The video game industry is a billion dollar industry that faces problems in the way games are developed. One method to address these problems is using developer aid tools, such as Recommendation Systems. These tools assist developers by generating recommendations to help them perform their tasks. Objective: This article describes a systematic approach to recommend development processes for video game projects, using postmortem knowledge extraction and a model of the context of the new project, in which “postmortems” are articles written by video game developers at the end of projects, summarizing the experience of their game development team. This approach aims to provide reflections about development processes used in the game industry as well as guidance to developers to choose the most adequate process according to the contexts they’re in. Method: Our approach is divided in three separate phases: in the first phase, we manually extracted the processes from the postmortems analysis; in the second one, we created a video game context and algorithm rules for recommendation; and finally in the third phase, we evaluated the recommended processes by using quantitative and qualitative metrics, game developers feedback, and a case study by interviewing a video game development team. Contributions: This article brings three main contributions. The first describes a database of developers’ experiences extracted from postmortems in the form of development processes. The second defines the main attributes that a video game project contain, which it uses to define the contexts of the project. The third describes and evaluates a recommendation system for video game projects, which uses the contexts of the projects to identify similar projects and suggest a set of activities in the form of a process.

A Knowledge Engineering Process for the Development of Argumentation Schemes for Risk Management in Software Projects.

The engagement of project stakeholders in collaborative debates of risk management has an important contribution to software projects. To promote the identification, (re)use and critical analysis of stakeholders’ arguments in these debates, this paper lays out a knowledge engineering process for the development of “argumentation schemes” for risk management. This process covers activities of identification, interpretation and causal-and-effect analysis of typical risk statements. From such risk management information and reusing generalized argumentation templates from argumentation catalogues discussed in the field of Artificial Intelligence, the process leads to the specification, generalization, validation and indexing of the developed schemes. As implemented in our project, a web-based system to support the execution of these development activities allows the recording of these schemes in a semi-structured representation format. An argumentation scheme for risks of non-stable requirements is presented so as to show the reusable argumentation artifacts that can be produced when our development process is followed. Keywords-component: Risk Management; Argumentation Schemes; Argumentation.

System of Systems Requirements: A Systematic Literature Review using Snowballing.

System of Systems (SoS) is a subject of interest for many researchers from different research lines. System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) deals with many challenges mainly in the activities related to requirements. In order to explore studies related to Requirements Engineering (RE) for SoS, this Systematic Literature Review, using the Snowballing approach, aims to answer four research questions. These questions are related to the activities of translating capability objectives in SoS requirements, SoS requirements specification, SoS requirements management during the evolutionary process of a SoS, and as the main goal, understanding the research challenges of RE for SoS which still need to be explored.

Argumentation Schemes for the Collaborative Debate of Requirement Risks in Software Projects.

Managing risks in real-world software projects is of paramount importance. A significant class of such risks is related to the engineering of requirements, commonly involving the presentation and analysis of risk management arguments from both software engineers and clients involved in collaborative debates. In this work, drawing inspiration from argumentation theory in Artificial Intelligence, we introduce a number of “argumentation schemes” and associated “critical questions” to support such discussions. In doing so, we propose schemes related to risks due to excessive numbers of requirements; inadequate client representatives and poor understanding of client needs; incorrect, incomplete and conflicting requirements, and complex and non-traceable requirements. We also present a case study where the developed schemes were used to support the discussion of requirement risks in the context of a research and prototyping software project for the Brazilian Army. Keywords-component: Argumentation Schemes; Requirement Risks; Risk Management; Argumentation.

Argumentation Schemes for Collaborative Debate of Requirement Risks in Software Projects

Managing risks in real-world software projects is of paramount importance. A significant class of such risks is related to the engineering of requirements, commonly involving the presentation and analysis of risk management arguments from both software engineers and clients involved in collaborative debates. In this work, drawing inspiration from argumentation theory in Artificial Intelligence, we introduce a number of “argumentation schemes” and associated “critical questions” to support such discussions. In doing so, we propose schemes related to risks due to excessive numbers of requirements; inadequate client representatives and poor understanding of client needs; incorrect, incomplete and conflicting requirements; complex and non-traceable requirements; non-stable requirements; and low quality requirements. We also discuss a case study and two experiments where the developed schemes supported the discussion of requirement risks in software projects. The overall results of these experiments indicate t...

Uma Ontologia para Apoiar Discussões de Riscos em Projetos de Software

Um gerenciamento de riscos efetivo em projetos de software e importante para garantir que os fatores que podem impactar no sucesso e na qualidade de um sistema desenvolvido estao sob controle. Alem disso, melhorar a comunicacao entre participantes de um projeto, bem como integrar suas diferentes experiencias e perspectivas sobre este dominio de problema e imprescindivel. O objetivo deste trabalho e demonstrar como explorar a representacao de um dominio de conhecimento por meio de ontologias para suportar a identificacao e analise colaborativa de riscos em projetos de software. Para isso, a ontologia proposta foi criada para apoiar o desenvolvimento de atividades de gerenciamento de riscos tipicamente envolvidas nestas discussoes colaborativas de riscos.