Perspectives on improving software maintenance

This research focuses on analyzing and improving maintenance process by exploring novel applications of process mining and predictive analytics. We analyze the software maintenance process by applying process mining on software repositories, and address the identified inefficiencies using predictive analytics. To drive our research, we engage with practitioners from large, global IT companies and emphasize on the practical usability of the proposed solution approaches, which are evaluated by conducting a series of case studies on open source and commercial projects.

To build secure software, developers often work together during software development and maintenance to find, fix, and prevent security vulnerabilities. Examining the nature of developer interactions in security development can provide valuable insights for improving current practices. In this work, we first conduct a large-scale empirical study to mine developer interactions in security development regarding their security introducing and fixing activities on a benchmark dataset, which involves more 1.8M commits from nine large-scale open-source software projects. We then build software developer networks with the identified developer interactions and conduct network analysis to characterize and understand security development. For our analysis, we first study the interaction patterns between developers. Second, we characterize the nature of developer interaction in security development in comparison to developer interaction in non-security development. Then, we explore the relation between developer interaction and the quality of projects regarding security. Among our findings we identify that: the dominating interaction patterns among developers in the security and non-security development are different, which may suggest the needs of differing social and communication support for security and non-security development; the distribution of interaction patterns has a correlation with the quality of software projects; different from general software development, most of the projects are non hero-centric regarding security development. We believe the findings from this study can help developers understand how vulnerabilities originate and evolve under the interaction of developers and further improve software maintenance.

Effective software maintenance is essential to achieving global software competitiveness. Organizations' increasing dependency on software and the shortage of software skills combine to require an increase in the span of responsibility within the software maintenance function. The span of responsibility determines the cost of software ownership since it is the amount of software depended on by the enterprise divided by the number of people who maintain the software. Managers of software maintenance can improve the span of responsibility by •establishing and using organizational resources in five manners to sustain operational support for existing information systems, •applying resources to strengthen four views of software maintenance, from individual to national, •creating and applying action to eliminate the 26 main shortfalls in doing software maintenance, and •reducing the seven main risks to information system quality. This paper provides a call for action to improve software maintenance in order to strengthen enterprise and national global competitiveness. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Decision aid in software maintenance

The software that is being developed is becoming more complex and huge. The software industry has a huge problem with software maintenance. During the initial stages of software development, it becomes necessary to identify the ease with which a software system or component can be modified to correct faults, increase performance or adapt to a changing environment, i.e. software maintainability. This aids in the reduction of maintenance costs. A software is developed for some particular purpose, which may or may not change depending on the needs of the customer or the technological process. Hence, it leads to the evolution of the software to fit with the changing requirements. This non-trivial problem requires significant attention. According to some surveys, software maintenance accounts for about 80% of total software development costs. Therefore, this paper proposed a framework to integrate various World Class Manufacturing (WCM)-based technologies to create a model that can be utilized for improving maintenance, reduce time and cost of software maintenance

There is considerable effort to reduce the software budget devoted to the maintenance of applications systems. This effort will have the effect of improving productivity of development and maintenance programmers. This means that for a given system over a given time period, the amount spent on software maintenance can be reduced significantly. The reduction might even reach the eighty per cent sometimes shown in the literature. We support and applaud the efforts to improve software maintenance procedures. Despite this type of reduction, it is not certain that organizations will spend less on maintenance relative to development. It is likely that the opposite will occur as more systems are being supported. This paper shows how that can happen through the derivation of some simple cost equations.

Attitudes towards maintenance have been an overlooked source of problems in the software maintenance process. In the past, there has been little recognition of the significance of how attitudes affect the performance of maintenance functions. Investigation into the origin of these attitudes has led the author to formulate feasible solutions that foster productive attitudes through the educational and professional work environments.

Software architectures and implementation technologies.- From Hubs Via Holons to an Adaptive Meta-Architecture - the AD-HOC Approach.- A C++ Workbench with Accurate Non-Blocking Garbage Collector for Server Side Internet Applications.- Scenario-based Component Behavior Filtration.- Mobile Ambients in Aspect-Oriented Software Architectures.- The architecture of distributed systems driven by autonomic patterns.- Modeling.- An optimizing OCL Compiler for Metamodeling and Model Transformation Environments.- Crossing the Borderline - From Formal to Semi-Formal Specifications.- Modeling of Component-Based Self-Adapting Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Devices.- A Performance Analysis Infrastructure for Component-Based System Hosted by Middleware.- Estimation of mean response time of multi-agent systems.- Integrated Approach to Modelling and Analysis using RTCP-nets.- Hybrid modeling and verification of Java based software.- Project management.- An evolutionary approach to project management process improvement for software-intensive projects.- Improved Bayesian Networks for Software Project Risk Assessment Using Dynamic Discretisation.- Software Risk Management: a Process Model and a Tool.- Software Quality.- An Approach to Software Quality Specification and Evaluation (SPoQE).- Feedback from Users on a Software Product to Improve Its Quality in Engineering Applications.- Reaching and Maintaining High Quality of Distributed J2EE Applications - BeesyCluster Case Study.- Verification methods.- Automatic software validation process.- j2eeprof - a tool for testing multitier applications.- An Analysis of Use Case Based Testing Approaches Based on a Defect Taxonomy.- Minimizing Test Execution Time During Test Generation.- An Integrated Regression Testing Framework to Multi-Threaded Java Programs.- DynAlloy as a Formal Method for the Analysis of Java Programs.- Verification of UML State Diagrams Using Concurrent State Machines.- Aspect-oriented Response Injection: an Alternative to Classical Mutation Testing.- Advanced mutation operators applicable in C# programs.- Data management.- An Open Platform of Data Quality Monitoring for ERP Information Systems.- Managing Data from Heterogeneous Data Sources Using Knowledge Layer.- Checkpoint-based resumption in data warehouses.- Software maintenance.- A C++ Refactoring Browser and Method Extraction.- ESC/Java2 as a Tool to Ensure Security in the Source Code of Java Applications.- Formalizing Software Refactoring in the Distributed Environment by aedNLC Graph Grammar.- Minik: A Tool for Maintaining Proper Java Code Structure.- Multidimensional Legacy Aspects of Modernizing Web Based Systems.

Is voluntary reporting of critical events effective for quality assurance?

This is a summary of the author's PhD Thesis, supervised by Clementina Galera - Casquet and defended on November, 25th, 2011 at the Department of Business Management and Sociology (University of Extremadura, Spain).The thesis is awarded by European Doctorate Mention. It is written in Spanish and it also includes a summary in English. The main aim of this doctoral thesis is to analyze antecedents and consequences of the consumer attitude toward cause-related marketing (CRM). There is not enough academic research about this topic, so more studies are needed to understand better the consumers’ response to this specific strategy.

Specialties Face New Recertification Norms

Objective. Over the last 30 years, the issue of the relationship of satisfaction of patient care to compliance is becoming increasingly acute in the world. Numerous studies around the world have shown that it is the satisfaction of patient with inpatient care that correlates positively with the compliance and disease outcomes in the field of psychiatry, as well as in any medical sector as a whole and is one of the most important elements of treatment. The Action Plan 2013-2020 developed by the Ministry of Health of Latvia, in line with the initiative announced by the WHO in health care, has mentioned that one of the priorities in promoting health is by improving the quality of available health care, especially in the field of mental health care (World Health Organization, 2015), which emphasizes the importance of the doctoral thesis studying patients' satisfaction with treatment in mental health care hospital. The aim of the work was to evaluate the relationship between satisfaction and such factors as compliance indirect measures and re-hospitalisation rates of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, affective and neurotic spectrum disorders. Material and methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted from 1 January 2018 to 1 December 2018 in patients with mental disorders who have been hospitalised in acute or subacute hospital units. The study tool was an adapted two-language questionnaire for self-assessment of patients' satisfaction of treatment. A total number of 1335 respondents have been analysed in the doctoral thesis work. The respondent rate was 62% (n=823). In statistical data processing, there the following methods were used: descriptive statistics for the respondents and non-respondents' groups, t-test or Welch test for comparing continuous variables, Chi-square test for comparing two categorical variables, linear regression for the relationship between socio-demographic factors with compliance undirect measures and Spearman correlation coefficient for the relationship between different indicators in diagnostic groups, satisfaction in questionnaire scales and surrogate ratios of compliance. Results. Respondents were elderly patients (p<0,001), women, with higher or secondary education (p<0,001), more often unemployed, with a status of disabled or retired (p<0.001), with relationship experience (p<0,001), more frequent with schizophrenia and affective spectrum disorders (p<0.001) with somatic co-diagnosis (p<0.001) and previous experience in mental health care (p<0.001). When compiling results for higher or lower satisfaction with treatment, older patients (p<0.001), women (p=0.003) with higher, secondary, and professional education (p=0.001), employees, patients with a disability or pensioner status (p<0,001), with relationship history (married, divorced, widowed) (p<0,001), patients with affective spectrum disorders and organic mental disorders (p<0,001), patients with somatic side diagnosis (p-0,010) were more satisfied in PIPEQ-OS questionnaire. Patients who scored treatment higher were more likely to take the medicine after discharge from inpatient (p<0.001). Age positively correlated with satisfaction in the interaction with patient (B 0.08, p=0.001) and in the structure and facility scale (B 0.10, p<0.001), lower education was positively correlated with satisfaction in the interaction with patient scale (B 0.569, p=0.003), the unemployed status negatively correlated with satisfaction in the outcomes scale (B -0.191, p=0.009). PIPEQ-OS questionnaire all three scales were identified for poor correlation of satisfaction with the number of subsequent outpatient visits in patients with affective spectrum disorders. In patients with affective spectrum disorders and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, a positive correlation was observed between satisfaction with interaction scale (rs 0.207, p=0.010; rs 0.151, p=0.000 as appropriate) and structure and facilities scale (rs 0.236, p=0.000; rs 0.184, p=0.001 as appropriate) and frequency of medication use. It was established that 3 questionnaire scales (interaction scale (rs -0.074, p=0.034), structure and facilities scale (rs -0.081, p=0.021) and outcome scale (rs -0.102, p=0.004) negatively correlated with the subsequent frequency of outpatient visits. A positive correlation was established for all questionnaire scales (interactions (rs 0.174, p<0.001), structure (rs 0.086, p<0.001) and outcomes (rs 0.073, p=0.039)) and further medication use. Conclusions. In the research work, we identified factors related to patients' satisfaction with treatment as well as we detected patients' satisfaction correlation with further outpatients visits and medication use. Higher satisfaction was detected among older age patients, women, those with professional and middle education, working, disabled or retired, patients with relationship history. The lowest score had questions about family involvement, possibilities to influence the treatment and provided information. Lowest satisfaction was among schizophrenia and neurotic and stress-related disorders. Higher satisfaction correlated with medication use. PIPEQ-OS can be used in inpatient mental health care to measure patients’ satisfaction with received care. Our findings could be used for improvements in the treatment process in inpatient care facilities and promoting personal to engage more in the care of patients. Our results could help to improve compliance in patients with different diagnoses and influence the treatment outcomes and patients' adjustment to their disorder.

The Software Engineering Institute's Softwares Process Maturity Model was developed to provide a basis for assessing an organization's ability to perform software engineering activities. It also provides a guide for improving an organization's software engineering capability. The maturity model was designed on the basis of concepts associated with developing new, large, complex systems. This has led to difficulties in applying the model to organizations involved entirely in software maintenance. The author addresses the tailoring issues encountered in applying the software maturity model to a large maintenance organization at Paramax Space Systems Operation. It is concluded that the issues that arise when the Capability Maturity Model is applied to a software sustaining engineering organization are significant but do not prohibit the use of the model as a guide for software process improvement. Issues mainly arise with the treatment requirements and differences in project management needs. The primary tailoring issues are ones of wording as opposed to applicability to maintenance activities. >

Software developers are increasingly having conversations about software development via online chat services. Many of those chat communications contain valuable information, such as code descriptions, good programming practices, and causes of common errors/exceptions. However, the nature of chat community content is transient, as opposed to the archival nature of other developer communications such as email, bug reports and Q&A forums. As a result, important information and advice are lost over time.

This paper presents a method for modeling and evaluating the performances of telecommunication software maintenance process. The method can be used as a special technique within the given generic model as part of an organizational effort to upgrade process maturity and efficiency. It is based on the modeling of software maintenance process as queueing networks and applies process simulation to determine its performances. The method allows efficient comparison of the alternative process designs without the risks associated with the experiments in real life. Its activities can be implemented in various telecommunication software maintenance processes and other software processes to be formally presented and analyzed for improvement purposes. Implementation is presented in a case study with software maintenance process in a telecommunications company. The results show practicability and applicability of the method in the software organization with the aim of improving software maintenance process.