Pedro Pablo Alarcón

Agile product line engineering—a systematic literature review

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) demands upfront long‐term investment in (i) designing a common set of core‐assets and (ii) managing variability across the products from the same family. When anticipated changes in these core‐assets have been predicted with certain accuracy, SPLE has proved significant improvements. However, when large/complex software product line projects have to deal with changing market conditions, alternatives to supplement SPLE are required. Agile Software Development (ASD) may be an alternative, as agile processes harness change for the customers competitive advantage. However, when the aim is to scale Agile projects up to effectively manage reusability and variability across the products from the same family, alternatives to supplement agility are also required. As a result, a new approach called Agile Product Line Engineering (APLE) advocates integrating SPLE and ASD with the aim of addressing these gaps. APLE is an emerging approach, which implies that organizations have to face several barriers to achieve its adoption. This paper presents a systematic literature review of experiences and practices on APLE, in which the key findings uncover important challenges about how to integrate the SPLE model with an agile iterative approach to fully put APLE into practice. Copyright

Automated integrated support for requirements-area and validation processes related to system development

This paper describes a research work to enhance the automation of system development with the particularity of obtaining an increased degree of integration for requirements analysis and validation processes. The automated support described within this paper requirements and validation tests become a pivot of the development process. In combination with simulation, the current approach provides a good support for incremental component-based development processes, useful for large systems

Flexible working architectures: agile architecting using PPCs

Software systems need software architectures to improve their scalability and maintenance. However, many agile practitioners claim that the upfront design of software architectures is an investment that does not pay off, since customers can rarely appreciate the value delivered by architectures. Furthermore, conventional architectural practices may be considered unacceptable from the Agile values and principles perspective. In this paper, the development of working architectures in agile iterations is presented as an attempt to solve the problem of designing software architectures in Agile. This contribution is based on the new concept of Plastic Partial Component (PPC). PPCs are highly malleable components that can be partially described, what increases the flexibility of architecture design. PPCs based architectures let reinforce some of the agile values and principles. Our experience of putting this contribution into practice is illustrated through the agile development of a Testing Framework for Biogas Plants.

A Systematic and Lightweight Method to Identify Dependencies between User Stories

The order in which user stories are implemented can have a significant influence on the overall development cost. The total cost of developing a system is non commutative because of dependencies between user stories. This paper presents a systematic and lightweight method to identify dependencies between user stories, aiding in the reduction of their impact on the overall project cost. Initial architecture models of the software product are suggested to identify dependencies. Using the method proposed does not add extra load to the project and reinforces the value of the architecture, facilitates the planning and improves the response to changes.

Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies

Agile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies.

Open Drugstores Mobile App

Nowadays, various mobile applications are used to solve everyday problems, saving time, and resources to users. The present research aims to solve one of the needs from the city of Loja that is related to health services. The city of Loja as well as the rest of the Ecuadorian country does not have the technology that facilitates quick search of the drug stores on duty. The model of the proposed mobile app includes interactivity features, automatic update of easy use for users that do not offer other applications of similar characteristics. During the development of this work, it has been considered various aspects related to the users that will make use of this application as: the type of mobile device that is used, the operating system, and software architectures. Considering the features and services, it was chosen the SOA-based architecture. Through this work, it is intended to measure the impact that the application might have in the city of Loja and the benefits that this can bring. Likewise, it has been specified the operation of the application as well as the options of search; in the same way, it is presented all the prototype from the perspective of the user in order to provide an efficient service to customers, who are looking for a drug store on duty according to the sectors of the city during 24 h a day.

A Generic Gateway for Testing Heterogeneous Components in Acceptance Testing Tools

Acceptance testing tools and Systems Under Test (SUT) require a gateway that will set up the communication link between them. Nevertheless, SUTs are often large systems composed of heterogeneous components that are executed in heterogeneous networks and platforms. Therefore, a non trivial communication problem between testing tools and these SUT heterogeneous components arises. A significant effort is invested in designing and implementing gateways for each specific component interface to cope with heterogeneity. This problem may be addressed through the use of middleware technologies that hide heterogeneity. However, this solution is too specific for each SUT domain. It may require a noteworthy effort to support the wide range of currently available interface standards that are provided by the different platforms and networks. An approach for testing heterogeneous components based on a generic gateway is presented in this paper. The generic gateway implements a service-oriented middleware named OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative). OSGi helps to solve the heterogeneity problem and reduces the impact of designing a gateway for each specific SUT domain. The solution has been validated using the acceptance testing tool TOPEN (Test and Operation ENvironment) in a home automation scenario.

Motivation in engineering education a framework supported by evaluation instruments and enhancement resources

Motivation is a critical factor in the academic performance, especially in the EHEA context, where the active learning must be promoted. In the case of engineering education, it is particularly necessary to care the student motivation by several reasons. The difficulty of engineering degrees can hinder the motivation of students and it can affect the high levels of absenteeism and dropping out. Thus, it is important to work up frameworks to evaluate and enhance, in addition to technical competences, other competences such as motivation. This paper presents the definition of a motivational framework composed by several instruments, resources, mechanisms and technologies. It allows teachers and academic institutions to evaluate and enhance the motivation of their students. But the most innovative characteristic of the framework lies in the student side; it also allows students to self-evaluate and enhance their motivation by performing questionnaires, recommendations and complementary training activities. In order to validate the proposed solutions, a case study has been successfully performed with 152 students of the Technical University of Madrid. The empirical experience has enabled to confirm the usefulness of the provided framework and to explore motivational aspects related with the engineering education.

Identifying Application Key Knowledge through System Operations Modeling

One of the problems associated with complex systems engineering is identifying the system knowledge relevant to build system implementation. System operations are an essential part of this knowledge. Software and system engineering standards highlight the importance of system operations; templates for a concept of operations document are available from different standard bodies in the context of requirements engineering and specification. However, specific guidelines for operations modeling are not usually provided. This paper introduces an approach to systematically model system operations. The cornerstone for this is an operations metamodel; this metamodel is presented within this paper and has been defined using UML 2.x. The baseline for the metamodel is a schema, also introduced within the paper, which formalizes system operations in terms of commands acting on systems, inputs to the system, and different kinds of outputs classified into responses, notifications and alarms. Operations models, as presented here, comprise system knowledge essentials from a functional point of view but reduced in size compared to the whole system specification. They can be deployed in several ways; this paper presents their use as drivers for system development and validation from early lifecycle stages.

Metadata Quality Assessment Metrics into OCW Repositories

In this research work, it has been justified that ensuring OCW repositories metadata quality should be approached in haste, because of the relevance and influence it make search and discovery tools of resources and its direct impact on reuse of them. Through data analysis made, it has been possible to determine a quality level of OCW metadata repositories, regarding completeness and consistence metrics, where it has been determined that the completeness of the metadata of a resource does not necessarily ensure that it is described consistently. Finally, it is encouraged to apply other metrics in order to get a more complete evaluation.