Renata Mendes de Araujo

Reconciling software development models: A quasi-systematic review

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to characterize reconciliation among the plan-driven, agile, and free/open source software models of software development. Design/methodology/approach: An automated quasi-systematic review identified 42 papers, which were then analyzed. Findings: The main findings are: there exist distinct - organization, group and process - levels of reconciliation; few studies deal with reconciliation among the three models of development; a significant amount of work addresses reconciliation between plan-driven and agile development; several large organizations (such as Microsoft, Motorola, and Philips) are interested in trying to combine these models; and reconciliation among software development models is still an open issue, since it is an emerging area and research on most proposals is at an early stage. Research limitations: Automated searches may not capture relevant papers in publications that are not indexed. Other data sources not amenable to execution of the protocol were not used. Data extraction was performed by only one researcher, which may increase the risk of threats to internal validity. Implications: This characterization is important for practitioners wanting to be current with the state of research. This review will also assist the scientific community working with software development processes to build a common understanding of the challenges that must be faced, and to identify areas where research is lacking. Finally, the results will be useful to software industry that is calling for solutions in this area. Originality/value: There is no other systematic review on this subject, and reconciliation among software development models is an emerging area. This study helps to identify and consolidate the work done so far and to guide future research. The conclusions are an important step towards expanding the body of knowledge in the field.

Towards Collaboration Maturity in Business Processes: An Exploratory Study in Oil Production Processes

Abstract Organizations have been relying on collaboration for knowledge sharing and productivity improvement in order to reduce costs or boost revenue. However, organizations still cannot assure that collaboration is properly conducted in daily work. This paper presents an approach to stimulating collaboration between professionals in an organization. The approach, combining a BPM methodology with the CollabMM collaboration maturity model and its corresponding method, is a result of an exploratory study in a real setting in an oil company in Brazil. The project is a move towards improving decision-making during one of the companys business processes and establishing collaboration among professionals through information sharing.

The CSCW Lab for Groupware Evaluation

The aim of this paper is to report the initiative of a research project called the CSCW Lab. The CSCW Lab is an approach for applying evaluation methodologies in the context of a groupware research group. We identify the major dimensions of groupware evaluation and describe how the CSCW Lab addresses them. The first experiments using CSCW Lab are also described.

Extending the Software Process Culture - An Approach Based on Groupware and Workflow

This work proposes the use of groupware technology as an element for extending software process culture within development teams. The proposal relies on the application of workflow systems for software process support and on awareness mechanisms for software process visualization and understanding. We argue that this awareness information may help participants to both understand the processes they execute, and to better accept the idea of defining, standardizing and continuously improve their work tasks. We built an environment - PIEnvironment - using a commercial workflow system and evaluated its use for the enactment of some software process activities.

The role of collaborative support to promote participation and commitment in software development teams

This work discusses the use of collaborative technology as an element for extending software process culture within development teams. This discussion starts with the idea that collaboration support comprises an important element for software process improvement (SPI) and an agent for process learning. We argue that improving awareness information about work processes and about the collaboration intrinsic to it may help software development teams to better accept the idea of defining, standardizing and continuously improving their work. Our approach relies on the use of workflow systems for software process support. We have built an environment—PIEnvironment—by extending a commercial workflow system with awareness information mechanisms and participation channels. Through case studies, we have evaluated its use for the enactment of software process activities. Copyright

A conceptual framework for designing and conducting groupware evaluations

The aim of this paper is to report the initiative of a research project called the CSCW Lab. The CSCW Lab is an approach for applying evaluation methodologies in the context of a groupware research group. We identify the major dimensions of groupware evaluation and describe how the CSCW Lab addresses them. We also present an ontology for groupware evaluation where we establish the main concepts related to the evaluation processes and to the dimensions identified.

Supporting multiple viewpoints in collaborative graphical editing

This work presents a proposal for a collaborative editor, CO2DE, that deals with the representation and awareness of different viewpoints of participants over an artifact. The underlying CO2DE concept is the mask metaphor. This concept uses a versioning mechanism for collaborative graphic editing in which changes on the artifact can be created independently from the overall work, and in which different viewpoints can be identified and discussed. Studies conducted with the tool demonstrate that CO2DE allows the use of different editing strategies as a resource to provide participants with awareness of the discussion flow and of different viewpoints concerning the artifacts.

Reinforcing Shared Context to Improve Collaboration

Contributing with and using knowledge is a communication process among the organizations actors. As a communication process, the transfer of knowledge among actors can only be effective if there is a common interpretive focus and context where they can understand each other and communicate. The concept of context plays an important role in collaboration, specially on what is concerned to facilitate communication, interaction and knowledge sharing, reflecting on group work productivity, quality and satisfaction. What we expect to do in this work is to explore the formalization of context in order to understand how context is shared in a group. We address the representation and dynamics of context discussing its implications and opportunities to improving collaborative work support.

A maturity model to promote collaboration in business processes

This research aims at providing an approach for designing business processes for adequate collaborative support. This approach comprises the explicit representation of collaboration practices in business processes. It is argued that, by explicitly considering collaboration in process models, collaboration can be discussed within the organisation. Moreover, requirements for collaborative support can be identified. This paper proposes a process maturity model (CollabMM) which organises collaboration practices and a method providing a progressive step for introducing those practices into business process models. Two case studies are described to illustrate the method and the model.

Supporting Collaborative Drawing with the Mask Versioning Mechanism

This work presents a synchronous collaborative graphical editor that implements a proposal of an awareness mechanism of a collaborative artifact evolution. The graphical editor allows real-time, highly interactive collaborative work, using the mask metaphor to help participants in creating new diagram versions without interrupting the interaction as also to provide awareness of the diagram versions created. This paper describes the mask metaphor, the collaborative editor that implements this metaphor and discusses a case study conducted with the use of the tool.