Luanna Lopes Lobato

Risk management in software product lines: an industrial case study

Software Product Lines (SPL) adoption can affect several aspects of an organization and it involves significant investment and risk. This way, SPL risk management is a crucial activity of SPL adoption. This study aims to identify SPL risks during the scoping and requirement disciplines to provide information to better understand risk management in SPL. In order to achieve the previous stated goal, a case study research was applied in an industrial project in the medical information management domain. Using the captured risks, a classification scheme was built and risk mitigation strategies were identified. We spent five months, totaling 79 hours, performing risk management (RM) in the scoping discipline and twelve months, totaling 148 hours, performing RM on the requirements discipline. We identified 32 risks during the scoping discipline and 20 risks during the requirements discipline, 14 risks occurred in both disciplines. Some identified risks are not particular to SPL development, however, they have their impact increased due to the SPL characteristic. All the study results and lessons learned are useful for all project managers and researchers who are considering the introduction of SPL risk management in industry or academia.

Web communication and interaction modeling using model-driven development

During the development of web-based applications, communication and interaction issues have become even more important, due to the variety of user types that can work together. In this paper we describe the adoption of Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach to support a feasible way to help developers to take into account the issues, regarding to the Web users variety. In general, a good design of the interactions and communication issues implies in high cost and time consuming tasks, and requires that developers be flexible and rapidly change the conception of the interfaces. The meta-models approach presented in this paper aims to map interaction and communication requirements in a practical and useful way during the web application development.

The importance of documentation, design and reuse in risk management for SPL

Software Product Lines (SPL) is a methodology focusing on systematic software reuse, multiple benefits have been reported as a result of this type of software development. However, establishing a SPL is not a simple task. It is a challenging activity raising many challenges for engineering and management. This research aims to manage the risks during SPL development to provide traceability among them. For this, it is important that the risks are documented and there is a common design related to them. As solution, we identified the strengths and weakness in SPL development and the importance in designing of communication for risk documentation.

RISK MANAGEMENT IN SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINE ENGINEERING: A MAPPING STUDY

Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering focuses on systematic software reuse, which has benefits such as reductions in time-to-market and effort, and improvements in the quality of products. However, establishing a SPL is not a simple matter, and can affect all aspects of the organization, since the approach is complex and involves major investment and considerable risk. These risks can have a negative impact on the expected ROI for an organization, if SPL is not sufficiently managed. This paper presents a mapping study of Risk Management (RM) in SPL Engineering. We analyzed a set of thirty studies in the field. The results points out the need for risk management practices in SPL, due to the little research on RM practices in SPL and the importance of identifying insight on RM in SPL. Most studies simply mention the importance of RM, however the steps for managing risk are not clearly specified. Our findings suggest that greater attention should be given, through the use of industrial case studies and experiments, to improve SPL productivity and ensure its success. This research is a first attempt within the SPL community to identify, classify, and manage risks, and establish mitigation strategies.

Accessible organizational elements in wikis with model-driven development

Wiki is a web collaborative tool for promoting rapid publication of information, by allowing users to edit, add or revise content through a web browser. Despite various benefits offered by the use of wikis, there is no guarantee of a good structure of its content. This occurs, especially, because of the flexibility and easiness on creating and referencing pages and also for the reason that difficulty to graphically visualize the information architecture. In this paper it is proposed a Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach that supports creating graphical models of namespaces to generate structured wikis code. In addition, this approach also aims to include accessibility features on models from official W3C guidelines such as WCAG and ATAG, allowing access by a wider range of users.

AN APPROACH TO TRAINING TEAMS FOR DEVELOPING ACCESSIBLE WEB APPLICATIONS

The interaction with Web applications is becoming increasingly present daily, being useful to provide resources that allow the execution of services, education or entertainment. But many of the resources present barriers in relation to accessibility, hindering disabled users use them efficiently. As solution to this problem, guidelines to develop accessible Web applications have been proposed. However, despite the guidelines definition, the current scenario shows that there are difficulties related to the development considering accessibility requirements. Thus, this paper presents an approach to support effective training in best practices for developing Web accessibility, from the establishment of such guidelines in the environment of the development teams. It was observed that, using the approach, a better support for the training of practical development in relation to the requirements of accessibility, which results in better quality output for Web applications.

Applying an Approach to Develop Web Applications Considering Accessibility Practices Using Design Rationale

Regardless of the techniques and methods that have been developed to improve web applications, there are still gaps that need to be solved in order to reduce the accessibility barriers. Aiming to contribute to this area, this study presents an controlled experiment to validate an approach which uses Design Rationale. The participants attended an initial training and, after being classified according to their experience and divided into different groups, they were asked to develop a web application. Such process gave rise to useful concerns that were shared among the work teams. This paper reports this experiment and presents relevant contributions to approach accessibility issues.

Handling Variability and Traceability over SPL Disciplines

SPL has proven to be a successful approach in many business environments (Clements & Northrop, 2001a; Pohl et al., 2005a). Nevertheless, the SPL advantages do not come for free. They demand mature software engineering, planning and reuse, adequate practices of management and development, and also the ability to deal with organizational issues and architectural complexity. If these points are not considered, the product line success could be missed (Birk & Heller, 2007). Therefore, the development should be supported by auxiliar methods and tools, specially due to the complexity of the software systems that a SPL is supposed to deal with, represented by the variabilities.

Support for Collaboration in Wikis using Graphical Modeling to Achieve Improvements in Information Architecture and Accessibility

Wiki is a collaborative tool for designing web communications allowing users to edit, add or revise content through a web browser. Despite of various benefits offered by the wikis use, there is no guarantee of a good structure of its content. This occurs especially by the difficulty to graphically visualize the information architecture. In this paper is proposed a Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach that supports creating graphical models of namespaces to generate wikis and facilitates the collaboration organization. Finally, the approach also aims to include accessibility features on models from official W3C guidelines such as WCAG and ATAG, allowing the wiki access by a wider range of user’s types.