International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering

ISO 14143-1 specifies that a functional size measurement (FSM) method must provide measurement procedures to quantify the functional user requirements (FURs) of software. Such quantitative information, functional size, is typically used, for instance, in software estimation. One of the international standards for FSM is the COSMIC FSM method — ISO 19761 — which was designed to be applied both to the business application (BA) software domain and to the real-time software domain. A recurrent problem in FSM is the availability and quality of the inputs required for measurement purposes; that is, well documented FURs. Business process (BP) models, as they are commonly used to gather requirements from the early stages of a project, could be a valuable source of information for FSM. In a previous article, the feasibility of such an approach for the BA domain was analyzed using the Qualigram BP modeling notation. This paper complements that work by: (1) analyzing the use of BPMN for FSM in the BA domain; (2) presenting notation-independent guidelines for the BA domain; and (3) analyzing the possibility of using BP models to perform FSM in the real-time domain. The measurement results obtained from BP models are compared with those of previous FSM case studies.

Usability is currently a key feature for developing quality systems. A system that satisfies all the functional requirements can be strongly rejected by end-users if it presents usability problems. End-users demand intuitive interfaces and an easy interaction in order to simplify their work. The first step in developing usable systems is to determine whether a system is or is not usable. To do this, there are several proposals for measuring the system usability. Most of these proposals are focused on the final system and require a large amount of resources to perform the evaluation (end-users, video cameras, questionnaires, etc.). Usability problems that are detected once the system has been developed involve a lot of reworking by the analyst since these changes can affect the analysis, design, and implementation phases. This paper proposes a method to minimize the resources needed for the evaluation and reworking of usability problems. We propose an early usability evaluation that is based on conceptual models. The analyst can measure the usability of attributes that depend on conceptual primitives. This evaluation can be automated taking as input the conceptual models that represent the system abstractly.

This study describes a new method of development visualization along with empirical evidence of its usefulness.

Typically, development activities such as program design, programming, and unit testing are not disclosed to the procurement organization (project owner). However, during integration and testing, various issues require collaboration between the procurement organization and developers. When this occurs, it is important to make the development process visible. Recent reports indicate the usefulness for project management of various in-process project measurements which allow visualization of the formerly invisible software project progress [1–6].

Based on this background, the authors investigated a case study where in-process measurement during the integration and test phase helped to make development issues visible. In this study, data obtained from the integration and testing phase were compared to a development process model.

This model was based on the author's experience, and provided a vivid picture of the development activity. By applying in-process measurements in collaboration during the integration test phase, the development activity was clearly visualized, and the procurement organization understood problems.

This paper reports on the findings of a case study in a company in the financial services sector in which we replicated the use of a previously published approach to systematically balance the contextual uncertainties in the estimation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects. The approach is based on using three techniques, a parametric model, namely COCOMO II, a portfolio management model, and Monte Carlo simulations. We investigated (i) whether the adjustment of uncertain cost drivers in the COCOMO II model increases the chance of project success in a portfolio of ERP projects, (ii) which cost drivers of the COCOMO II model can be adjusted in a way that maximized the chance of portfolio success under time constraints, and (iii) which cost drivers of the COCOMO II model can be adjusted in a way that maximized the chance of portfolio success under effort constraints. We found that 11 COCOMO II cost drivers can be changed so that the change impacts the project outcomes under both time and effort constraints. This result is different from the result in the first case study in which 13 such factors were found.

A number of methods have been proposed to build a relationship between effort and size. These models are generally based on regression analysis and a widely accepted model is not yet available. Although in some sizing methods, such as MKII and IFPUG, different multipliers for the base functional components (BFC) exist, their origin and the purpose of their usage are undefined. The COSMIC method does not treat components separately and assigns the same measurement unit to each of them. In this study we used the Artificial Neural Network and regression based methods to create effort estimation models that take the four components of the COSMIC method into consideration. In the research we compared several functional size based effort models in terms of accuracy using a reliable company dataset. These models comprised not only the generic models proposed in the literature or currently in use, but also specific models that we generated using our dataset with a single and multi-variate regression analysis and the ANN method. We also explored the effect of functional similarity (FS) using our specific models. We found that using BFC instead of total size improved effort estimation models and the ANN method is a useful approach to calibrate these components according to the company characteristics.

Applying new learning methodologies in education, such as visual learning based on virtual reality and three-dimensional (3D) environments, is an important aspect in education, since it offers possibilities that can remarkably improve the current education system. Technological advances, along with the chance to create and represent the varying contents offered by information technologies, make the new learning methodologies the focus of attention in the future. Currently, 3D methodologies are only used in Computer Science to improve physical characteristics (virtual laboratories, virtual worlds, etc.), but they are not used to improve the internal mental processes by which human beings understand and retain abstract concepts. In these cases, the use of visual learning helps to clarify them. In Computer Science, particularly in Software measurement courses, the complexity of the concepts is possibly greater than in other courses because there is a lot of learning material that is based on abstract concepts that students find hard to recognize in the real world. In this paper, we present a visual environment that can be used to learn software measurement concepts like the IFPUG functional size measurement method. To validate the new learning model, an experiment was carried out.

Due to complex applications, such as the reactive system, the importance of graphic user interface (GUI) component modeling has increased. The existing GUI modeling methods, however, do not focus on hierarchical GUI and business component modeling based on the MDD and MVC patterns. Furthermore, there is a lack of systematic component-mapping mechanisms integrating GUI and business/DB component modeling, which consequently makes it difficult to establish a GUI component modeling process integrated with business tasks and ultimately deteriorates the reusability of GUI-business application models.

This paper proposes a layered metamodel and an integrated modeling process that can hierarchically build a GUI-business component model based on MDD and MVC. Towards this end, the GUI metamodel and the component metamodel hierarchically established based on the PIM/PSM (MDD) and MVC styles are first defined. Then a GUI-business component modeling process is constructed based on these metamodels, in three modeling phases. Finally, the result of a case study in which the proposed method is applied to an ISMS system is discussed.

With the use of the modeling elements and modeling process of the well-defined metamodels based on MDD and MVC, it is hoped that it can be shown that a systematic and layered GUI-business component model can be established, and that the reusability of the constructed GUI-business model can be maximized.