Paulo Anselmo da Mota Silveira Neto

A systematic mapping study of software product lines testing

ContextIn software development, Testing is an important mechanism both to identify defects and assure that completed products work as specified. This is a common practice in single-system development, and continues to hold in Software Product Lines (SPL). Even though extensive research has been done in the SPL Testing field, it is necessary to assess the current state of research and practice, in order to provide practitioners with evidence that enable fostering its further development. ObjectiveThis paper focuses on Testing in SPL and has the following goals: investigate state-of-the-art testing practices, synthesize available evidence, and identify gaps between required techniques and existing approaches, available in the literature. MethodA systematic mapping study was conducted with a set of nine research questions, in which 120 studies, dated from 1993 to 2009, were evaluated. ResultsAlthough several aspects regarding testing have been covered by single-system development approaches, many cannot be directly applied in the SPL context due to specific issues. In addition, particular aspects regarding SPL are not covered by the existing SPL approaches, and when the aspects are covered, the literature just gives brief overviews. This scenario indicates that additional investigation, empirical and practical, should be performed. ConclusionThe results can help to understand the needs in SPL Testing, by identifying points that still require additional investigation, since important aspects regarding particular points of software product lines have not been addressed yet.

On the Reliability of Mapping Studies in Software Engineering

Background: Systematic literature reviews and systematic mapping studies are becoming increasingly common in software engineering, and hence it becomes even more important to better understand the reliability of such studies. Objective: This paper presents a study of two systematic mapping studies to evaluate the reliability of mapping studies and point out some challenges related to this type of study in software engineering. Method: The research is based on an in-depth case study of two published mapping studies on software product line testing. Results: We found that despite the fact that the two studies are addressing the same topic, there are quite a number of differences when it comes to papers included and in terms of classification of the papers included in the two mapping studies. Conclusions: From this we conclude that although mapping studies are important, their reliability cannot simply be taken for granted. Based on the findings we also provide four conjectures that further research has to address to make secondary studies (systematic mapping studies and systematic literature reviews) even more valuable to both researchers and practitioners. (Less)

Agile software product lines: a systematic mapping study

Background: Software product lines and Agile methods have been an effective solution for dealing with the growing complexity of software and handling competitive needs of software organizations. They also share common goals, such as improving productivity, reducing time‐to‐market, decreasing development costs and increasing customer satisfaction. There has been growing interest in whether the integration of Agile and SPL could provide further benefits and solve many of the outstanding issues surrounding software development. Objective: This study investigates the state‐of‐the‐art in Agile SPL approaches, while identifying gaps in current research and synthesizing available evidence. It also provides a basis for a deeper understanding of the issues involved in the integration of Agile and SPL. Method: A mapping study was undertaken to analyze the relation between Agile and SPL methods. A set of four research questions were defined in which the 32 primary studies were evaluated. Results: This study provides insights into the integration of Agile and SPL approaches, it identifies the current gaps in the research, synthesize the available evidence and propose specific Agile methods and practices for integration in SPL. Conclusions: In general, few studies describe the underlying Agile principles being adopted by proposed Agile SPL solutions. The most common Agile practices proposed by the studies came from the XP and Scrum methods, particularly in the pro‐active SPL strategy. We identify certain Agile methods that are being overlooked by the Agile SPL community, and propose specific SPL practices areas suitable for adoption of Agile practices. Copyright

Twenty-eight years of component-based software engineering

We defined more precisely the identification of the gaps.We also defined more precisely the incentives for further research.In Section 4.3 we made explicit connection to the Fig. 15 and identified gaps.All pointed typos were fixed. The idea of developing software components was envisioned more than forty years ago. In the past two decades, Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) has emerged as a distinguishable approach in software engineering, and it has attracted the attention of many researchers, which has led to many results being published in the research literature. There is a huge amount of knowledge encapsulated in conferences and journals targeting this area, but a systematic analysis of that knowledge is missing. For this reason, we aim to investigate the state-of-the-art of the CBSE area through a detailed literature review. To do this, 1231 studies dating from 1984 to 2012 were analyzed. Using the available evidence, this paper addresses five dimensions of CBSE: main objectives, research topics, application domains, research intensity and applied research methods. The main objectives found were to increase productivity, save costs and improve quality. The most addressed application domains are homogeneously divided between commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS), distributed and embedded systems. Intensity of research showed a considerable increase in the last fourteen years. In addition to the analysis, this paper also synthesizes the available evidence, identifies open issues and points out areas that call for further research.

Challenges and opportunities for software change request repositories: a systematic mapping study

Software maintenance starts as soon as the first artifacts are delivered and is essential for the success of the software. However, keeping maintenance activities and their related artifacts on track comes at a high cost. In this respect, change request (CR) repositories are fundamental in software maintenance. They facilitate the management of CRs and are also the central point to coordinate activities and communication among stakeholders. However, the benefits of CR repositories do not come without issues, and commonly occurring ones should be dealt with, such as the following: duplicate CRs, the large number of CRs to assign, or poorly described CRs. Such issues have led researchers to an increased interest in investigating CR repositories, by considering different aspects of software development and CR management. In this paper, we performed a systematic mapping study to characterize this research field. We analyzed 142 studies, which we classified in two ways. First, we classified the studies into different topics and grouped them into two dimensions: challenges and opportunities. Second, the challenge topics were classified in accordance with an existing taxonomy for information retrieval models. In addition, we investigated tools and services for CR management, to understand whether and how they addressed the topics identified. Copyright

A Regression Testing Approach for Software Product Lines Architectures

In the Software Product Lines (SPL) context, where products are derived from a common platform, the reference architecture can be considered the main asset. In order to maintain its correctness and reliability after modifications, a regression testing approach based on architecture specification and code was developed. It aims to reduce the testing effort, by reusing test cases, execution results, as well as, selecting and prioritizing an effective set of test cases. Taking advantage of SPL architectures similarities, this approach can be applied among product architectures and between the reference and product architecture. This study also presents an evaluation performed in order to calibrate and improve the proposed approach.

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.

Testing Software Product Lines

Two studies of testing practices for software product lines identify gaps between required techniques and existing approaches in the available literature. This Web extra offers extra details for the main article (specifically, the bibliography for the two studies described).

Software product line scoping and requirements engineering in a small and medium-sized enterprise: An industrial case study

HighlightsWe described a detailed qualitative study on software product line scoping and requirements engineering.We examine weaknesses regarding the iterativeness, adaptability, and communication.Agile methods can mitigate the iterativeness, adaptability, and communication weaknesses. Software product line (SPL) engineering has been applied in several domains, especially in large-scale software development. Given the benefits experienced and reported, SPL engineering has increasingly garnered interest from small to medium-sized companies. It is possible to find a wide range of studies reporting on the challenges of running a SPL project in large companies. However, very little reports exist that consider the situation for small to medium-sized enterprises and these studies try develop universal truths for SPL without lessons learned from empirical evidence need to be contextualized. This study is a step towards bridging this gap in contextual evidence by characterizing the weaknesses discovered in the scoping (SC) and requirements (RE) disciplines of SPL. Moreover, in this study we conducted a case study in a small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to justify the use of agile methods when introducing the SPL SC and RE disciplines through the characterization of their bottlenecks. The results of the characterization indicated that ineffective communication and collaboration, long iteration cycles, and the absence of adaptability and flexibility can increase the effort and reduce motivation during project development. These issues can be mitigated by agile methods.

25 Years of Software Engineering in Brazil: An Analysis of SBES History

The application of Software Engineering involves a systematic approach to the analysis, design, assessment, implementation, test, maintenance and reengineering of software. It first appeared in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering Conference as means to overcome the software crisis. This study aims to investigate how the Software engineering area is evolving, by analyzing the 24 editions of Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES), and understanding which is the impact of international research in this event. A scoping study was performed to figure out how the SE area is evolving and if it suffers influences from international research. We found 512 studies over the 24 SBES editions, which were analyzed and discussed. Based on the analysis, we observed that in the first years there were a few empirical studies; most of them were of theoretical nature. The industry participation and interest still continuous over the editions. Regarding to international impact, we did not find any relation with international research. Our findings suggest that greater attention should be given to the Software Engineering area, with the aim to attract research from industry with real data, and also international collaboration.