M.J.I.M. van Genuchten

e-collaboration: the reality of virtuality

With the development of new technologies, and particularly information and communication technologies (ICTs), teams have evolved to encompass new forms of interaction and collaboration. By focusing on the communicative dimensions of global virtual teams, this paper demonstrates that e-collaboration is more than a technological substitution for traditional face-to face collaboration. It places special emphasis on the importance of structuring activities for balancing electronic communication during e-collaboration (i.e., videoconference, email, chat session, distributed use of group support system) to bridge cultural and stereotypical gaps, to increase profitable role repartition between the participants, and to prevent and solve conflicts. During the past four years, the authors have developed a project involving hundreds of participants from different national cultures working together for six weeks on a specific project. In this paper, we present our experiences and draw conclusions, giving special attention to the structure of the electronic communication required to support efficient virtual teaming in education and industry.

Exploratory research on the role of national and professional cultures in a distributed learning project

The impact of differing national and professional cultural backgrounds is a salient issue that interacts with technological support of distributed teams. As we prepare for the world of the future it becomes imperative that we give students the experience of working in multicultural distributed teams. In order to gain experience in this area, a project between ten teams of students from the City University of Hong Kong and the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands was initiated. A variety of group support technologies, primarily Group Systems, were used to service the teams as they learned to work together. This paper documents experiences from the Hong Kong-Netherlands project. Eight out of ten student teams successfully concluded a seven-week exercise resulting in an integrated report related to software engineering. Data collected on the process are reported and discussed. Those student teams who succeeded were found to be particularly attuned and accommodating to aspects of national and professional culture.

Using Software Reliability Growth Models in Practice

The amount of software in consumer electronics has grown from thousands to millions of lines of source code over the past decade. Up to a million of these products are manufactured each month for a successful mobile phone or television. Development organizations must meet two challenging requirements at the same time: be predictable to meet market windows and provide nearly fault-free software. Software reliability is the probability of failure-free operation for a specified period of time in a specified environment. The process of finding and removing faults to improve the software reliability can be described by a mathematical relationship called a software reliability growth model (SRGM). Our goal is to assess the practical application of SRGMs during integration and test and compare them with other estimation methods. We empirically validated SRGMs usability in a software development environment. During final test phases for three embedded software projects, software reliability growth models predicted remaining faults in the software, supporting managements decisions.

Using group support systems for software inspections

Software engineering sometimes appears to be years behind other disciplines in terms of predictability and quality. But we like to argue that the software industry is facing problems now that other industries have yet to face. Constructing a high-quality, million-line program is daunting. Fortunately, progress is occurring and merging two important areas: software process improvement and technological support. The authors describe their experience implementing a group support system (GSS) for software inspections in an industrial environment. The results confirm their belief that such support can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of inspections, provided the inspections are properly conducted.

Calibrating a software cost estimation model: why and how

Abstract Calibration, has been found to be difficult in practice. Wide experience in using the estimation model is necessary; experience which the beginner naturally lacks. This paper indicates why it is important to calibrate a model and how the inexperienced user can be helped by an expert system. In addition, the development of, and experience with, the prototype of an expert system are described. The system dealt with here is intended for the calibration of the PRICE SP estimation.

Distributed experimental learning: the Hong Kong-Netherlands project

As we prepare for the world of the future, it becomes imperative that we give students the experience of working in multi-cultural distributed teams. In order to gain experience in this area, a project between ten teams of students from the City University of Hong Kong and the Eindhoven University of Technology was initiated. A variety of group support technologies, primarily GroupSystems, were used to provide support for the teams as they learned to work together. This paper documents experiences from the Hong Kong-Netherlands project. Data collected on the process are reported and discussed. Strident response was enthusiastic with high levels of perceived learning. Lessons learned underscored the importance of focus on team building preceding project initiation.

Supporting inspections with an electronic meeting system

Fagan inspections are a structured review of development documents that consists of individual preparation, a meeting and rework by the author of the document. The meeting is used to log the defects found in preparation and to search for more defects. The effectiveness and efficiency of the meeting is typically low as compared to that of the preparation. The paper describes the use of an EMS to support the logging meeting of a total of 14 electronic inspections in Philips Medical Systems and Baan Company. The results indicate that the electronic logging meeting contributed much more to the overall result of the inspection than was the case in a traditional inspection. The results have implications, both for the software inspections and EMS. The implications for EMS as they are discussed in the paper are: the increased use of meeting metrics, the use of inspections as a guinea pig, and the benefits of fixed format input in an EMS.

Group support systems and virtual collaboration : The HKNet project

Groupware, and particularly Group Support System (GSS) tools, support organisational co-ordination and interaction between various organisational structures working within a decentralised market that evolves in different times and places. In 1998, 1999 and 2000 an educational project (HKNet) between the City University of Hong Kong (China) and the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) has shown that remote collaboration can lead to successful problem solving in multicultural groups. This study focused on 178 participants, all of whom were involved in academic courses on software engineering, informatics and management using e-mail, videoconferencing, Internet phone connections and GroupSystemsT for both synchronous and asynchronous interactions. The task was to participate in a joint project on a chosen IT-related subject resulting in a joint report. The HKNet project created a win-win situation for both universities. Throughout the three-year project, GroupSystemsT supported efficient group problem solving, development of new-shared meaning and cultural attitude changes. The groups wrote creative reports that reflected their having worked successfully together. This paper presents selected results in an abbreviated form and the lessons learned from the last three years of the HKNet experience. Special emphasis is given to social and cultural phenomena. Limitations of our study will be discussed before to conclude with future research plans.

Software Mileage

Looking back on the first seven Impact columns for IEEE Software, the editors propose a new metric called software mileage, defined as the number of new customers per year per line of code.

Empirical study of software maintenance

Abstract The paper describes an empirical study of software maintenance that was carried out in a system software department in 1989 and 1990. The study focused on error occurrence and fault detection. Over 400 problem reports were studied. The study showed some unexpected results. It showed, for example, no relation between the phase of error occurrence and the solution time. An explanation is the gap between the methods as they are supposed to be applied and reality. Assessment of the size of the gap is one of the contributions of this kind of empirical study.