arXiv subjects

Maria Spichkova

Publications and source records attributed to Maria Spichkova.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Analysis of LLM Performance on AWS Bedrock: Receipt-item Categorisation Case Study

This paper presents a systematic, cost-aware evaluation of large language models (LLMs) for receipt-item categorisation within a production-oriented classification framework. We compare four instruction-tuned models available through AWS Bedrock: Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Claude 4 Sonnet, Mixtral 8x7B Instruct, and Mistral 7B Instruct. The aim of the study was (1) to assess performance across accuracy, response stability, and token-level cost, and (2) to investigate what prompting methods, zero-shot or few-shot, are especially appropriate both in terms of accuracy and in terms of incurred costs. Results of our experiments demonstrated that Claude 3.7 Sonnet achieves the most favourable balance between classification accuracy and cost efficiency.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

One-Year Internship Program on Software Engineering: Students' Perceptions and Educators' Lessons Learned

The inclusion of internship courses in Software Engineering (SE) programs is essential for closing knowledge gaps and improving graduates' readiness for the software industry. Our study focuses on year-long internships at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia), which offers in-depth industry engagement. We analysed how the course evolved over the last 10 years to incorporate students' needs and summarised the lessons learned that can be helpful for other educators supporting internship courses. Our qualitative analysis of internship data based on 91 reports during 2023-2024 identified three challenge themes the students faced, and which courses were found by students to be particularly beneficial during their internships. On this basis, we proposed recommendations for educators and companies to help interns overcome challenges and maximise their learning experience.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Embedding Quality Assurance in project-based learning

In this paper, we share our lessons learned from more than a decade of teaching software quality aspects within Software Engineering (SE) courses, where the focus is on Agile/Scrum settings: final year software development projects and the course on SE Project Management. Based on the lessons learned, we also provide a number of recommendations on embedding quality assurance topics in the project-based learning with Agile/Scrum context.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Towards the analysis of team members well-being

Many recent research studies have focused on the well-being of software development team members, as this aspect may be critical not only for productivity and performance at work but also for the physical health and personal life of employees. Many studies agree that an important factor of team member well-being is whether team members feel appreciated and acknowledged for their contributions. This paper presents the results of a project on the team well-being analysis as well as the prototype developed within the project.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Spatio-Temporal view on the Topological Functioning Model

The spatial and temporal aspects of system properties are crucial for many types of systems. In this short paper, we present a TopFunST framework to analyse topological dependencies among features of the system, covering also spatial and temporal aspects. TopFunM is based on an extended version of the language of Topological Functioning Models (TFM). The TFM language describes the topological relationships among functional features of the system, which allows not only to analyse system functionality, as well as feature interactions and functioning cycle structures, but spatial and temporal aspects haven't been covered yet. This paper presents a solution to this problem.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2025

Towards Analysing Invoices and Receipts with Amazon Textract

This paper presents an evaluation of the AWS Textract in the context of extracting data from receipts. We analyse Textract functionalities using a dataset that includes receipts of varied formats and conditions. Our analysis provided a qualitative view of Textract strengths and limitations. While the receipts totals were consistently detected, we also observed typical issues and irregularities that were often influenced by image quality and layout. Based on the analysis of the observations, we propose mitigation strategies.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2025

Scrum Sprint Planning: LLM-based and algorithmic solutions

Planning for an upcoming project iteration (sprint) is one of the key activities in Scrum planning. In this paper, we present our work in progress on exploring the applicability of Large Language Models (LLMs) for solving this problem. We conducted case studies with manually created data sets to investigate the applicability of OpenAI models for supporting the sprint planning activities. In our experiments, we applied three models provided OpenAI: GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4.0 Turbo, and Val. The experiments demonstrated that the results produced by the models aren't of acceptable quality for direct use in Scrum projects.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Visualisation for the CIS benchmark scanning results

In this paper, we introduce GraphSecure, a web application that provides advanced analysis and visualisation of security scanning results. GraphSecure enables users to initiate scans for their AWS account, validate them against specific Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks and return results, showcase those returned results in the form of statistical charts and warn the users about their account status.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Cultural Impact on Requirements Engineering Activities: Bangladeshi Practitioners' View

Requirements Engineering (RE) is one of the most interaction-intensive phases of software development. This means that RE activities might be especially impacted by stakeholders' national culture. Software development projects increasingly have a very diverse range of stakeholders. To future-proof RE activities, we need to help RE practitioners avoid misunderstandings and conflicts that might arise from not understanding potential Cultural Influences (CIs). Moreover, an awareness of CIs supports diversity and inclusion in the IT profession. Bangladesh has a growing IT sector with some unique socio-cultural characteristics, and has been largely overlooked in this research field. In this study, we aim to investigate how the RE process is adopted in the context of Bangladeshi culture and what cultural influences impact overall RE activities.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Towards Using Personas in Requirements Engineering: What Has Been Changed Recently?

In requirements engineering (RE), personas are now being used to represent user expectations and needs. This systematic mapping study (SMS) aims to explore the most recent studies and to cover recent changes in trends, especially related to the recent evolution of Generative AI approaches. Our SMS covers the period between April 2023 and April 2025. We identified 22 relevant publications and analysed persona representation, construction, validation, as well as RE activities covered by personas. We identified that a number of studies applied AI-based solutions for persona construction and validation. We observed that template-based personas are becoming more popular nowadays. We also observed an increase in the proportion of studies covering validation aspects.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Advanced approach for Agile/Scrum Process: RetroAI++

In Agile/Scrum software development, sprint planning and retrospective analysis are the key elements of project management. The aim of our work is to support software developers in these activities. In this paper, we present our prototype tool RetroAI++, based on emerging intelligent technologies. In our RetroAI++ prototype, we aim to automate and refine the practical application of Agile/Scrum processes within Sprint Planning and Retrospectives. Leveraging AI insights, our prototype aims to automate and refine the many processes involved in the Sprint Planning, Development and Retrospective stages of Agile/Scrum development projects, offering intelligent suggestions for sprint organisation as well as meaningful insights for retrospective reflection.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Agile and Student-Centred Teaching of Agile/Scrum Concepts

In this paper, we discuss our experience in designing and teaching a course on Software Engineering Project Management, where the focus is on Agile/Scrum development and Requirement Engineering activities. The course has undergone fundamental changes since 2020 to make the teaching approach more student-centred and flexible. As many universities abandoned having face-to-face exams at the end of the semester, authentic assessments now play an even more important role than before. This makes assessment of students' work even more challenging, especially if we are dealing with large cohorts of students. The complexity is not only in dealing with diversity in the student cohorts when elaborating the assessment tasks, but also in being able to provide feedback and marks in a timely and fairly. We report our lessons learned, which might provide useful insights for teaching Agile/Scrum concepts to undergraduate and postgraduate students. We also analyse what course structure might be effective to support a blended learning approach, as well as what could be a reasonable structure of online assessments, to keep them both authentic and scalable for large cohorts of students.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Analysis of cost-efficiency of serverless approaches

In this paper, we present a survey of research studies related to the cost-effectiveness of serverless approach and corresponding cost savings. We conducted a systematic literature review using Google Scholar search engine, covering the period from 2010 to 2024. We identified 34 related studies, from which we extracted 17 parameters that might influence the relative cost savings of applying the serverless approach.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

FocusE: A semantic extension of FocusST

To analyse and verify the safety and security properties of interactive systems, a formal specification might be necessary. There are many types of formal languages and frameworks. The decision regarding what type of formal specification should be applied in each particular case depends on many factors. One of the approaches to specify interactive systems formally is to present them as a composition of components processing data and control streams. In this short paper, we present FocusE, a formal approach for modelling event-based streams. The proposed approach is based on a formal language FocusST, and can be seen as its semantic extension.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2025

Agile Retrospectives: What went well? What didn't go well? What should we do?

In Agile/Scrum software development, the idea of retrospective meetings (retros) is one of the core elements of the project process. In this paper, we present our work in progress focusing on two aspects: analysis of potential usage of generative AI for information interaction within retrospective meetings, and visualisation of retros' information to software development teams. We also present our prototype tool RetroAI++, focusing on retros-related functionalities.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Concurrent Networks

Many very large-scale systems are networks of cyber-physical systems in which humans and autonomous software agents cooperate. To make the cooperation safe for the humans involved, the systems have to follow protocols with rigid real-time and real-space properties, but they also need to be capable of making competitive and collaborative decisions with varying rewards and penalties. Due to these tough requirements, the construction of system control software is often very difficult. This calls for applying a model-based engineering approach, which allows one to formally express the time and space properties and use them as guidance for the whole engineering process from requirement definition via system design to software development. Moreover, it is beneficial, if one can verify with acceptable effort, that the time and space requirements are preserved throughout the development steps. This paper focuses on modelling spatio-temporal properties and their model-checking and simulation using different analysis tools in combination with the methods and tool extensions proposed here. To this end, we provide an informal overview of CASTeL, our CASTeLogic. CASTeL is stochastic and includes real-time concurrency and real-space distribution.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Cultural influence on RE activities: An extended analysis of state of the art

Designing mobile software that aligns with cultural contexts is crucial for optimizing human-computer interaction. Considering cultural influences is essential not only for the actual set of functional/non-functional requirements, but also for the whole Requirement Engineering (RE) process. Without a clear understanding of cultural influences on RE activities, it's hardly possible to elaborate a correct and complete set of requirements. This research explores the impact of national culture on RE-related activities based on recent studies. We conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of studies published in 2019-2023 and compared them to an older SLR covering 2000-2018. We identified 17 relevant studies, extracted 33 cultural influences impacting RE activities, and mapped them to the Hofstede model, widely used for cultural analysis in software development research. Our work highlights the critical role of national culture in RE activities, summarizes current research trends, and helps practitioners consider cultural influences for mobile app/software development.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Creating a Trajectory for Code Writing: Algorithmic Reasoning Tasks

Many students in introductory programming courses fare poorly in the code writing tasks of the final summative assessment. Such tasks are designed to assess whether novices have developed the analytical skills to translate from the given problem domain to coding. In the past researchers have used instruments such as code-explain and found that the extent of cognitive depth reached in these tasks correlated well with code writing ability. However, the need for manual marking and personalized interviews used for identifying cognitive difficulties limited the study to a small group of stragglers. To extend this work to larger groups, we have devised several question types with varying cognitive demands collectively called Algorithmic Reasoning Tasks (ARTs), which do not require manual marking. These tasks require levels of reasoning which can define a learning trajectory. This paper describes these instruments and the machine learning models used for validating them. We have used the data collected in an introductory programming course in the penultimate week of the semester which required attempting ART type instruments and code writing. Our preliminary research suggests ART type instruments can be combined with specific machine learning models to act as an effective learning trajectory and early prediction of code-writing skills.

cs.SE↗