Abstract: Despite various industry reports about the failure rates of software projects, theres still uncertainty about the actual figures. Researchers performed a global Web survey of IT departments in 2005 and 2007. The results suggest that the software crisis is perhaps exaggerated and that most software projects deliver. However, the overall project failure rate, including cancelled and completed but poorly performing projects, remains arguably high for an applied discipline.

Abstract: Open source software (OSS) has gained considerable attention recently in healthcare. Yet, how and why OSS is being adopted within hospitals in particular remains a poorly understood issue. This research attempts to further this understanding. A mixed-method research approach was used to explore the extent of OSS adoption in hospitals as well as the factors facilitating and inhibiting adoption. The findings suggest a very limited adoption of OSS in hospitals. Hospitals tend to adopt general-purpose instead of domain-specific OSS. We found that software vendors are the critical factor facilitating the adoption of OSS in hospitals. Conversely, lack of in-house development as well as a perceived lack of security, quality, and accountability of OSS products were factors inhibiting adoption. An empirical model is presented to illustrate the factors facilitating and inhibiting the adoption of OSS in hospitals.

Abstract: Background: Open source (OS) software is continuously gaining recognition and use in the biomedical domain, for example, in health informatics and bioinformatics. Objectives: Given the mission critical nature of applications in this domain and their potential impact on patient safety, it is important to understand to what degree and how effectively biomedical OS developers perform standard quality assurance (QA) activities such as peer reviews and testing. This would allow the users of biomedical OS software to better understand the quality risks, if any, and the developers to identify process improvement opportunities to produce higher quality software. Methods: A survey of developers working on biomedical OS projects was conducted to examine the QA activities that are performed. We took a descriptive approach to summarize the implementation of QA activities and then examined some of the factors that may be related to the implementation of such practices. Results: Our descriptive results show that 63% (95% CI, 54-72) of projects did not include peer reviews in their development process, while 82% (95% CI, 75-89) did include testing. Approximately 74% (95% CI, 67-81) of developers did not have a background in computing, 80% (95% CI, 74-87) were paid for their contributions to the project, and 52% (95% CI, 43-60) had PhDs. A multivariate logistic regression model to predict the implementation of peer reviews was not significant and neither was a model to predict the implementation of testing. Conclusions: Less attention is paid to peer review than testing. However, the former is a complementary, and necessary, QA practice rather than an alternative. Therefore, one can argue that there are quality risks, at least at this point in time, in transitioning biomedical OS software into any critical settings that may have operational, financial, or safety implications. Developers of biomedical OS applications should invest more effort in implementing systemic peer review practices throughout the development and maintenance processes.

Abstract: Defective software modules cause software failures, increase development and maintenance costs, and decrease customer satisfaction. Effective defect prediction models can help developers focus quality assurance activities on defect-prone modules and thus improve software quality by using resources more efficiently. These models often use static measures obtained from source code, mainly size, coupling, cohesion, inheritance, and complexity measures, which have been associated with risk factors, such as defects and changes.

Abstract: Open source projects have resulted in numerous high-quality, widely used products. Understanding the defect-handling strategies such projects employ can help us use the publicly accessible defect data from these projects to provide valuable quality-improvement feedback and to better understand the defect characteristics for a wider variety of software products. We conducted a survey to understand defect handling in selected open source projects and compared the particular approaches taken in different projects. We focused on defect handling instead of the broader quality assurance activities other researchers have previously reported. Our results provided quantitative evidence about the current practice of defect handling in an important subset of open source projects.

Abstract: A number of recent studies reported on the success of applying agile methods in scientific software development projects. These studies found that agile methods are well suited to the exploratory, iterative, and collaborative nature of scientific inquiry. However, these findings might not be applicable in all situations pertaining to scientific software development projects. In addition, they only constitute a subset of the important factors while deciding which development methods and practices should be adopted. Therefore, it becomes important to conduct further research before making recommendations regarding the adoption of certain development methods and practices in this domain. In this progress report, we discuss our on-going research that will empirically study the characteristics of various scientific software development projects according to a model suggested by Boehm and Turner. We plan to conduct interviews and collect data from various scientific software development projects in the Baltimore-Washington area. We expect that our qualitative results will increase our understanding of the characteristics in those projects favoring plan-driven approaches or agile methods, and the needs and conditions associated with those characteristics. Our research provides guidance to scientific software developers by enhancing their capacity to evaluate and understand their own project characteristics and select effective software practices. As a long-term benefit in the same direction, our qualitative results will generate a set of hypotheses that can be tested in different project environments to better understand and categorize scientific software development projects. Consequently, in the future, more generalizable and actionable recommendations can be made for scientific software development projects.

Abstract: As software engineering educators, it is important for us to realize the increasing domain-specificity of software, and incorporate these changes in our design of teaching material. Bioinformatics software is an example of immensely complex and critical scientific software and this domain provides an excellent illustration of the role of computing in the life sciences. To study bioinformatics from a software engineering standpoint, we conducted an exploratory survey of bioinformatics developers. The survey had a range of questions about people, processes and products. As software engineering educators, we realized that the survey results had important implications for the education of bioinformatics professionals. We also investigated the current status of software engineering education in bioinformatics, by examining the curricula of more than fifty bioinformatics programs and the contents of over fifteen textbooks. We observed that there was no mention of the role and importance of software engineering practices essential for creating dependable software systems. Based on our findings and existing literature we present a software engineering education in bioinformatics.

Abstract: Web applications have rapidly become a critical part of business for many organizations. However, increased usage of web applications has not been reciprocated with corresponding increases in reliability. Unique characteristics, such as quick turnaround time, coupled with growing popularity motivate the need for efficient and effective web application testing strategies. In this paper, we propose several new test suite prioritization strategies for web applications and examine whether these strategies can improve the rate of fault detection for three web applications and their preexisting test suites. We prioritize test suites by test lengths, frequency of appearance of request sequences, and systematic coverage of parameter-values and their interactions. Experimental results show that the proposed prioritization criteria often improve the rate of fault detection of the test suites when compared to random ordering of test cases. In general, the best prioritization metrics either (1) consider frequency of appearance of sequences of requests or (2) systematically cover combinations of parameter-values as early as possible.

Abstract: Previous research on closed-source software found that highly coupled software modules were more defect prone, which makes it important to understand the effect of coupling on defect proneness in open-source software (OSS) projects. For this purpose, we used Cox proportional hazards modeling with recurrent events. We found that the effect of coupling was significant, and we quantified this effect on defect proneness.

Abstract: We describe our findings and experiences from our technical review of vote verification systems for the Maryland State Board of Elections (SBE). The review included the following four systems for possible use together with Marylands existing Diebold AccuVote-TS (touch screen) voting system: VoteHere Sentinel; SCYTL Pnyx.DRE; MIT-Selker audio system; Diebold voter verified paper audit trail. As a baseline, we also examined the SBEs procedures for “parallel testing” of its Diebold system. For each system, we examined how it enables voters who use touch screens to verify that their votes are cast as intended, recorded as cast, and reported as recorded. We also examined how well it permits post-election auditing. To this end, we considered implementation, impact on current state voting processes and procedures, impact on voting, functional completeness, security against fraud, attack and failure, reliability, accessibility, and voter privacy. Our principal findings are, first, that each system we examined may at some point provide a degree of vote verification beyond what is available through the Diebold System as currently implemented, provided the system were fully developed, fully integrated with the Diebold system, and effectively implemented. Second, none of the systems is yet a fully developed, commercially ready product. This interdisciplinary study-the first of its kind-is of interest for the way in which it evaluates the systems, for the technical questions it raises about standard interfaces, and as a snapshot of the state of vote verification technologies and their commercial development.

Abstract: Human memory organization has been shown to be related to how programmers understand programs. In recent years, agile methods brought the emphasis back on human and social aspects of software engineering with a set of new principles and practices. One of them, pair programming has been shown to improve quality and reduce the development costs. In this position paper, we propose a controlled experiment to evaluate the effect of human memory organization through chunking on code reviews under different single and pair code reviewing scenarios.

Abstract: After examining the specific problems of testing and quality assurance for Web-based applications, we propose a strategy by integrating existing testing techniques and reliability analyses in a hierarchical framework. This strategy combines various usage models for statistical testing to perform high level testing and to guide selective testing of critical and frequently used subparts or components using traditional coverage-based structural testing. Reliability analysis and risk identification form an integral part of this strategy to help assure and improve the overall reliability for Web-based applications. Some preliminary results are included to demonstrate the general viability and effectiveness of our approach.

Abstract: Widely used software process improvement approaches are based on the experiences gained in other disciplines. However, inherent characteriestics of software development can prevent obtaining satisfactory results when these approaches are applied. In this paper, we discuss potential problems with using the classical process improvement approaches by considering the special structures of software process improvement problems. We classify software process improvement problems as mechanical and organic problems, explain the horizontal change approac HOC-A, as a solution to organic problems and finally suggest the use of the most appropriate approach according to the specific software process improvement problem.

Abstract: Top-down process improvement approaches have inherent difficulties for software development organizations. HOC-A (Horizontal Change Approach) is a process improvement approach to solve these inherent problems. We applied HOC-A to a change management process in an object-oriented software development environment as a case study. In this paper, we report our experience and explain the benefits of HOC-A. We show how individuals can model their own processes within a larger goal of total process improvement. We also specify conflict resolution activities between the agents. Finally, we explain local parameter resolution technique and express its importance in HOC-A.