arXiv subjects

Jürgen Münch

Publications and source records attributed to Jürgen Münch.

63 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Inspection and Test Process Integration Based on Explicit Test Prioritization Strategies

Today's software quality assurance techniques are often applied in isolation. Consequently, synergies resulting from systematically integrating different quality assurance activities are often not exploited. Such combinations promise benefits, such as a reduction in quality assurance effort or higher defect detection rates. The integration of inspection and testing, for instance, can be used to guide testing activities. For example, testing activities can be focused on defect-prone parts based upon inspection results. Existing approaches for predicting defect-prone parts do not make systematic use of the results from inspections. This article gives an overview of an integrated inspection and testing approach, and presents a preliminary case study aiming at verifying a study design for evaluating the approach. First results from this preliminary case study indicate that synergies resulting from the integration of inspection and testing might exist, and show a trend that testing activities could be guided based on inspection results.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

Linking Software Development and Business Strategy Through Measurement

Most of today's products and services are software-based. Organizations that develop software want to maintain and improve their competitiveness by controlling software-related risks. To do this, they need to align their business goals with software development strategies and translate them into quantitative project management. There is also an increasing need to justify cost and resources for software and system development and other IT services by demonstrating their impact on an organisation's higher-level goals. For both, linking business goals and software-related efforts in an organization is necessary. However, this is a challenging task, and there is a lack of methods addressing this gap. The GQM+Strategies approach effectively links goals and strategies on all levels of an organization by means of goal-oriented measurement. The approach is based on rationales for deciding about options when operationalizing goals and for evaluating the success of strategies with respect to goals.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

Integrating Inspection and Test Processes Based on Context-Specific Assumptions

Inspections and testing are two of the most commonly performed software quality assurance processes today. Typically, these processes are applied in isolation, which, however, fails to exploit the benefits of systematically combining and integrating them. In consequence, tests are not focused based on early defect detection data. Expected benefits of such process integration include higher defect detection rates or reduced quality assurance effort. Moreover, when conducting testing without any prior information regarding the system's quality, it is often unclear how to focus testing. A systematic integration of inspection and testing processes requires context-specific knowledge about the relationships between inspections and testing. This knowledge is typically not available and needs to be empirically identified and validated. Often, context-specific assumptions can be seen as a starting point for generating such knowledge. Based on the In2Test approach, which uses inspection data to focus testing, we present in this article how knowledge about the relationship between inspections and testing can be gained, documented, and evolved in an analytical or empirical manner. In addition, this article gives an overview of related work and highlights future research directions.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

Incrementally Introducing Process Model Rationale Support in an Organization

Popular process models such as the Rational Unified Process or the V-Modell XT are by nature large and complex. Each time that a new release is published software development organizations are confronted with the big challenge of understanding the rationale behind the new release and the extent to which it affects them. Usually, there is no information about what has changed or most importantly why. This is because of the lack of a flexible approach that supports organizations responsible for evolving such large process models in documenting their decisions and that reflects the extent of the capabilities to which they can provide this information. This paper describes an approach to incrementally deploying rationale support as needed to match an organisation's needs, the capabilities and interests of the organisation's process engineering teams, and the organisation's willingness to support the effort required for the collection and application of the rationale information.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

Experiences and Insights from Applying GQM+Strategies in a Systems Product Development Organisation

Aligning software-related activities with corporate strategies and goals is increasingly important for several reasons such as increasing the customer satisfaction in software-based products and services. Several approaches have been proposed to create such an alignment. GQM+Strategies is an approach that applies measurement principles to link goals and strategies on different levels of an organisation. In this paper, we describe experiences from applying GQM+Strategies to elicit, link, and align the goals of an integrated systems product development organisation across multiple organisational levels. We provide insights into how GQM+Strategies was applied during a five- month period. The paper presents the enacted application process and main lessons learnt. In addition, related approaches are described and an outlook on future work is given.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

How Does Kanban Impact Communication and Collaboration in Software Engineering Teams?

Highly iterative development processes such as Kanban have gained significant importance in industry. However, the impact of such processes on team collaboration and communication is widely unknown. In this paper, we analyze how the Kanban process aids software team's behaviours -- in particular, communication and collaboration. The team under study developed a mobile payment software product in six iterations over seven weeks. The data were collected by a questionnaire, repeated at the end of each iteration. The results indicate that Kanban has a positive effect at the beginning to get the team working together to identify and coordinate the work. Later phases, when the team members have established good rapport among them, the importance for facilitating team collaboration could not be shown. Results also indicate that Kanban helps team members to collectively identify and surface the missing tasks to keep the pace of the development harmonized across the whole team, resulting into increased collaboration. Besides presenting the study and the results, the article gives an outlook on future work.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

Onboarding in Open Source Software Projects: A Preliminary Analysis

Nowadays, many software projects are partially or completely open-source based. There is an increasing need for companies to participate in open-source software (OSS) projects, e.g., in order to benefit from open source ecosystems. OSS projects introduce particular challenges that have to be understood in order to gain the benefits. One such challenge is getting newcomers onboard into the projects effectively. Similar challenges may be present in other self-organised, virtual team environments. In this paper we present preliminary observations and results of in-progress research that studies the process of onboarding into virtual OSS teams. The study is based on a program created and conceived at Stanford University in conjunction with Facebook's Education Modernization program. It involves the collaboration of more than a dozen international universities and nine open source projects. More than 120 students participated in 2013. The students have been introduced to and supported by mentors experienced in the participating OSS projects. Our findings indicate that mentoring is an important factor for effective onboarding in OSS projects, promoting cohesion within distributed teams and maintaining an appropriate pace.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

A Survey on the State of the Practice in Distributed Software Development: Criteria for Task Allocation

The allocation of tasks can be seen as a success-critical management activity in distributed development projects. However, such task allocation is still one of the major challenges in global software development due to an insufficient understanding of the criteria that influence task allocation decisions. This article presents a qualitative study aimed at identifying and understanding such criteria that are used in practice. Based on interviews with managers from selected software development organizations, criteria currently applied in industry are identified. One important result is, for instance, that the sourcing strategy and the type of software to be developed have a significant effect on the applied criteria. The article presents the goals, design, and results of the study as well as an overview of related and future work.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2013

Identifying Potential Risks and Benefits of Using Cloud in Distributed Software Development

Cloud-based infrastructure has been increasingly adopted by the industry in distributed software development (DSD) environments. Its proponents claim that its several benefits include reduced cost, increased speed and greater productivity in software development. Empirical evaluations, however, are in the nascent stage of examining both the benefits and the risks of cloud-based infrastructure. The objective of this paper is to identify potential benefits and risks of using cloud in a DSD project conducted by teams based in Helsinki and Madrid. A cross-case qualitative analysis is performed based on focus groups conducted at the Helsinki and Madrid sites. Participants' observations are used to supplement the analysis. The results of the analysis indicated that the main benefits of using cloud are rapid development, continuous integration, cost savings, code sharing, and faster ramp-up. The key risks determined by the project are dependencies, unavailability of access to the cloud, code commitment and integration, technical debt, and additional support costs. The results revealed that if such environments are not planned and set up carefully, the benefits of using cloud in DSD projects might be overshadowed by the risks associated with it.

cs.SE↗