Category: Okategoriserade

Evolution of Long-Term Industrial – new paper

Darko Durisic has done an interesting work on the evolution of industrial-class meta-models. The work has been accepted as full paper at SEAA (Software Engineering for Advanced Applications) Euromicro Conference.

Title: Evolution of Long-Term Industrial Meta-Models – A Case Study

Abstract: Meta-models in software engineering are used to define properties of models. Therefore the evolution of the metamodels influences the evolution of the models and the software instantiated from them. The evolution of the meta-models is particularly problematic if the software has to instantiate two versions of the same meta-model – a situation common for longterm software development projects such as car development projects. In this paper, we present a case study of the evolution of the standardized meta-model used in the development of the automotive software systems – the AUTOSAR meta-model – at Volvo Car Corporation. The objective of this study is to assist the automotive software designers in planning long term development projects based on multiple AUTOSAR meta-model versions. We achieve this by visualizing the size and complexity increase between different versions of the AUTOSAR meta-model and by calculating the number of changes which need to be implemented in order to adopt a newer AUTOSAR meta-model version. The analysis is done for each major role in the Automotive development process affected by the changes.

Stay tuned for the full version of the paper and congrats to Darko!

Choosing reliability growth model for open source software (new article review)

Choosing reliability growth model for open source software, online first from IEEE Computer

Link to full text at IEEE

Predicting the number of unknown defects has always been an important problem to solve. A lot has been done in the area and a lot will be done before the problem is solved.

This paper highlights different types of reliability models (e.g. Convex, Concave) and how to choose between them for open source projects. It’s a magazine article so it reads nicely and gives useful pointers. Recommended as Friday evening reading:)

Directing high-performance software teams – article highlight

Directing high-performance software development teams

Link to full text

Speed, speed, speed – who wouldn’t like their team to be fast, effective, high-performing. The only question is how to achieve this goal.

In this paper the author presents a methods for identifying capabilities of high-performance agile teams. For example, for being agile the team has to have conscious sensitivity and responsiveness to customer and environment needs and changes. Sound quite like one has to be on alert and flexible, ready to embrace changes.

The entire method/analyzer consists of 6+1 questions that can help to assess the maturity. It has been tested in a number of organizations by the author. Sounds simple and nice. Can’t wait to start using it in practice…

Agile metrics, Software Engineering Institute, review

Agile metrics in technology acquisition
Link to full text

Recently the Software Engineering Institute has published an interesting article on the use of Agile metrics in DoD contracts. They have defined a few metrics of interest:

    • Velocity – volume of work accomplished in a specified period of time
    • Sprint Burn-Down – progress for the development team during a sprint
    • Release Burn-Up – release readiness metrics

The report recognizes a number of advanced metrics and discusses their use and relation to the DoD standards, which makes a nice reading.

@MiroslawStaron

Measures for the Lean Start-ups

During my development of course material for DIT595 (Industrial Best Practice) for the Bachelor Program in Software Engineering and Management I got inspired by the Lean Start-up by Eric Ries (Crown Business Publishing, theleanstartup.com). The book is a very good material for entrepreneurs willing to start their own businesses. It is also very good for our students who want to do their bachelor and master theses in industry.

I also did some extra search for more articles on how measuring should be done in the lean start-ups. I have found the following article with tips for creating metrics – 8 tips…. The article proposes the following:

    • Be actionable
    • Be understandable and trustworthy
    • Measure results
    • Understand the downside
    • Understand the upside

Since the article is free I will not quote more – I recommend reading it and reflecting upon the metrics that we create.

The Adoption of Software Measures:, A Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) Perspective – article review

The Adoption of Software Measures:, A Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) Perspective
Link to full text at ScienceDirect

Adopting software metrics has been studied multiple times already. One would think that success factors like management commitment or actionability are well known. However, most of the current research has studied the existing measurement programs and reflected on their success.

About this blog

Welcome to the blog about Software metrics, measurement systems and software engineering.

This blog is a continuation of semetrics.blogspot.com and contains reviews of empirical research papers, highlights of research conducted in the area by our researchers and notifications about upcoming events.

If you want to get involved in the activity, please do contact us.

@MiroslawStaron