Mirna Muñoz

Expected Requirements in Support Tools for Software Process Improvement in SMEs

Nowadays being competitive is an important challenge for software development organizations. In order to achieve this, since last years, software process improvement has been an obvious and logical way. Unfortunately, even when many organizations are motivated to implement software process initiatives, not all know how best to do so, especially in Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) where due to its especial features, they have to be carefully in how to manage its resources to assure their market survival. Besides, even when there has been developed models which pretend to helps SMEs in the implementation of software process improvements, one of the main barrier that stopping SMEs to implement software process improvements are the lack of knowledge and support of software process improvement. This paper presents an analysis of software process improvement at SMEs focusing on identifying on the one hand, SMEs features and success factors in the implementation of SPI initiatives. On the other hand, the expected requirements in a software tool focus on providing support for SMEs in the implementation of software process improvements initiatives (SPI).

Reinforcing the applicability of multi-model environments for software process improvement using knowledge management

Nowadays software development organizations look for tools and methods that help them maintain their competitiveness. A key approach for organizations in order to achieve this competitiveness is a successful implementation of software process improvement (SPI). Unfortunately, most of the times, software process improvement involves a path full of obstacles due to the lack of knowledge for choosing the right implementation. The most common and critical problem consists of the selection and application of the right reference model for guiding this implementation. As an effort for helping organizations in the selection of the right implementation of improvements, multi-model environments arised enabling the use of best practices from different reference models. Multi-model approach facilitates the improvement task in order to achieve the organizations business goals. In this context, effective integration of models and standards can play a crucial role in the implementation of multi-model environments as reference support tool. Nevertheless the use of multi-model approaches presents difficulties related to the lack of knowledge of how to manage the amount of information and the correct integration of different models and standards. In this sense, knowledge management technologies have proven to be highly promising support for knowledge sharing and system integration. This work presents an ontological framework based on a multi-model approach, which facilitates and supports the SPI for small and medium companies for a life cycle process improvement. Life cycle process improvement pursues the necessary actions in a deliberate, structured and methodical manner, required in each stage of the life cycle of software development, capable for improving process to current organization needs. Finally, a case study is presented in order to show the performance of the framework. Presents a general ontological framework for managing multi-model in SPI.Focuses in the correct implementation of SPI using multi-model environments.Is capable of representing any software process.Captures and homogenizes the structure of processes found in software organizations.Allows establishing a common understanding of the process improvement technologies.

Gamification in software engineering teamworks: A systematic literature review

Nowadays, software development is done by teams where there are several factors involved in their performance. One of the most important factors is the collaborative work, fundamental skill that every professional should have, especially in the area of software engineering. Based on the above mentioned, the adequate integration of a teamwork influences its performance. Therefore, the skills, knowledge and interactive styles for each member it should be complemented, in order to get a high effective teams. In this context, one of the techniques currently being used for achieving activities related to collaborative work is the gamification, which aims to guide the improvement of the collaborative work. This study presents a comparison among the different gamification elements that can be applied to create a teamwork, reducing its integration time, and therefore, improve its performance.

Applying Software Engineering Standards in Very Small Entities: From Startups to Grownups

Very small entities (VSEs) are organizations with up to 25 people. The ISO/IEC 29110 series of standards and guides target VSEs with little or no experience or expertise in selecting the appropriate processes from lifecycle standards and tailoring them to a project’s needs. This article gives an overview of ISO/IEC 29110, some examples of VSEs that have implemented it, and those implementations’ results.

Gamification Proposal for Defect Tracking in Software Development Process

Software process improvement is an approach used by software industries to increase the productivity and quality of their processes and products. One important issue is the social interaction among the team members looking for productivity enhancement, motivation and training, among others. However, these social skills are difficult to train in a traditional way both in academic and industrial environments. This difficulty could be address-using gamification like a strategy to improve the social factors related to the software development process. In this paper, we present a gamification proposal focused on training in defect tracking. This training looks for evaluation, implementation and use of a pedagogical instrument (game) for train in defect tracking practices following the principles of gamification. Additionally this instrument promotes other skills like teamwork, negotiation and effective communication.

Establishing Effective Software Development Teams: An Exploratory Model

Nowadays software represents an important piece to support a wide diversity of industrial needs in different domains. However, software development is not always a successful task, mainly for human related reasons. A problem that deeply affects small and medium enterprises (SMEs), particularly when they invest in software process improvement or to get high performance technology. The development of software is teamwork; unfortunately, not all teams manage themselves to achieve an effective performance. This paper aims to show a proposal of a model to integrate highly effective teams for software development. The proposed model focuses on three factors: skills, interactive styles and knowledge; with an innovative way to integrate teams by avoiding the use of traditional questionnaires. The paper includes both the background for this research and a global view of the model fundamentals. A discussion of the components of the model is also included.

Systematic Review Tool to Support the Establishment of a Literature Review

Systematic Reviews provide to researchers a protocol in order to obtain scientific knowledge through the identification of relevant scientific papers, which contain research tendencies and experimentation about a specific topic. There are several studies about how to implement a systematic review, however these studies only indicate the systematic review protocol and do not provide some software tool or application to support the automation of this protocol, giving as a result that the researchers expend large amounts of time to search and identify relevant scientific articles in a manual way. Therefore, in this article is proposed a tool for systematic reviews protocol automation.

State of the Use of Gamification Elements in Software Development Teams.

One of the fundamental skill that every professional should have, especially in the area of software engineering, is collaborative work, because teams’ members are required to collaborate to develop software. In this environment, one of the techniques currently being used for achieving activities involving collaborative teamwork is gamification. However, there is a lack of techniques to create software development teams through gamification. This paper presents a study of the use of gamification elements in the software engineering environment for collaborative work, in order to identify those elements that can be applied to create highly effective teams for software development.

3D objects’ shape relevance for saliency measure

The shape of an object is one of the features that attracts viewers’ attention, making it salient from other objects in a scenario. However, the shape of an object might be linked to the viewer’s personal experiences. In order to verify if the shape of an object is a feature not linked to the meaning that the object has for the viewer, in this paper we replicate an empirical study, using abstract object. 23 male and 17 female ordered objects according to the most attractive shapes. Using a computational measurement of saliency of the shape of 3D objects in Virtual Reality, based on the proportion of empty and full space within its bounding box, we found that our metric matches, when abstract or non-abstract objects are evaluated.

Establishing the State of the Art of Frameworks, Methods and Methodologies Focused on Lightening Software Process: A Systematic Literature Review

There are several models used in the software process improvement such as CMMI and ISO/IEC 15504 that provide advantages to software organizations, like their improvement in ability and maturity which is reflected in their competitiveness. However, most of the time they are not properly implemented, demanding too many resources and long-term commitments, hindering its implementation in software organizations. Moreover, a properly implementation of a model or standard, involves not only the definition of processes, but introducing the organizations in the development of a continuous process improvement culture. In this context, a feasible way to achieve continuous process improvement is the optimization of processes through their lightening. This paper presents the results of a systematic review method in order to establish the state of art for lightening software process, focusing on three aspects: (1) frameworks, methods and methodologies; (2) targeted processes; and (3) strategies.