Search

Business process management (BPM) is a strategic advantage for all kinds of organizations, including information technology companies (ITCs), which cannot stay out of the BPM approach. ITCs manage business processes like projects to create and maintain software. Although Project Management Systems (PMSs), such as Microsoft™ Project Server® (MPS®), are considered as non-process-aware information systems (Non-PAISs), they may be a source to generate processes. In this paper, we propose a reverse engineering approach, which uses patterns to transform software projects stored in MPS® legacy databases into software business processes. For this, we base on the model-driven engineering paradigm and deal with the time perspective of the processes. &is kind of experiences are scarce or almost nonexistent, so we show the AQUA-WS project case study, which runs with MPS® as source system and software process modeling languages as target systems. ITCs can benefit from this research by gathering knowledge about perspectives of their processes that would otherwise be wasted, such as executed projects or expired documents used in Non-PAISs. &is fact can become a key factor for ITCs, which can increase their competitiveness and reduce software costs, as part of the BPM lifecycle of continuous improvement.

Context: Measurement enables organizations to gain knowledge about its processes and projects, also to reach predictable performance and high capability processes, which places organizations in better positions to make appropriate decisions. Measuring the software development process supports organizations in its endeavor to understand, evaluate, manage, and improve its development processes and projects. In the last decades, the software development process has evolved to meet the market needs and to keep abreast of modern technologies and infrastructures that have influenced the product development and its use. These changes in the development processes have increased the importance of the measurement and caused changes in the measurement process and the used measures. Objective: This thesis aims to contribute to the software process measurement domain in two main aspects; first, propose a novel solution to support the identification and the operational definition of the measurement concepts and objectives. The second is defining a measurement lifecycle and integrate it into the process lifecycle. Method: We have carried out a survey and mapping study to understand the current state of the art, and to identify existing gaps. After that, we have proposed a theoretical solution to support the software process measurement, and finally, we have developed this solution to allow its practical use in real environments, enabling its application and evaluation in a real project. Results: The proposed solution consists of three main components: (i) Measurement lifecycle; which define the measurement activities throughout the process lifecycle, (ii) Measurement metamodels; these metamodels support the measurement lifecycle and its integration into the process lifecycle, (iii) Transformation process; which allow the derivation of the necessary measurement models, artifacts, and activities throughout the process lifecycle. Conclusion: The solution presented in this dissertatio, Contexto: la medición permite a las organizaciones obtener conocimiento sobre sus procesos y proyectos, también alcanzar un rendimiento predecible y procesos de alta capacidad, lo que pone las organizaciones en mejores posiciones para tomar decisiones apropiadas. La medición del proceso de desarrollo de software apoya a las organizaciones en su esfuerzo para comprender, evaluar, gestionar y mejorar sus procesos y proyectos de desarrollo. Objetivo: Esta disertación propone una solución novedosa para respaldar la identificación y la definición de los conceptos y objetivos de medición en una forma operativa. Además, busca definir un ciclo de vida de la medición e integrarlo en el ciclo de vida del proceso. Método: Hemos llevado a cabo una encuesta y estudios de mapeo para comprender el estado del arte e identificar brechas existentes. Posteriormente, hemos propuesto una solución teórica para respaldar la medición del proceso del software y, finalmente, hemos desarrollado esta solución para permitir su uso práctico en entornos reales, permitiendo su aplicación y evaluación en un proyecto real. Resultados: La solución propuesta consta de tres componentes principales: (i) Ciclo de vida de la medición; que define las actividades de medición a lo largo del ciclo de vida del proceso, (ii) Metamodelos de medición; estos metamodelos apoyan el ciclo de vida de la medición y su integración en el ciclo de vida del proceso, (iii) Proceso de transformación; que permite la derivación de los modelos de medición, artefactos y actividades necesarios a lo largo del ciclo de vida del proceso. Conclusión: la solución presentada en este trabajo permite a las organizaciones gestionar y mejorar sus procesos y proyectos; El modelo de información propuesto apoya la unificación del vocabulario de los conceptos de medición, los conecta de forma coherente y garantiza la trazabilidad entre estos conceptos. El ciclo de vida del proceso de medición proporciona una guía clara y completa para que las

Nowadays most existing products and services are the result of the collaboration of a large number of companies that form a value chain known as Supply Chain (SC). Then individual Business Process Management (BPM) requires a holistic vision that incorporates an inter organizational view that supports SC decision making. This study proposes a novel idea trying to address collaborative BP modelling problem with a new perspective, a bottom-up approach, reusing process models that each organization may have created with a different modelling language. Collaborative Business Generation (CBG) Framework, following Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm, includes a meta model, a method, a set of model transformations and a support tool to create collaborative BP models from individual ones, maintaining privacy and autonomy in decision making. This paper presents main CBG-Framework elements as well as a real world case study for early validation.

Context: Measurement is essential to reach predictable performance and high capability processes. It provides support for better understanding, evaluation, management, and control of the development process and project, as well as the resulting product. It also enables organizations to improve and predict its process’s performance, which places organizations in better positions to make appropriate decisions. Objective: This study aims to understand the measurement of the software development process, to identify studies, create a classification scheme based on the identified studies, and then to map such studies into the scheme to answer the research questions. Method: Systematic mapping is the selected research methodology for this study. Results: A total of 462 studies are included and classified into four topics with respect to their focus and into three groups based on the publishing date. Five abstractions and 64 attributes were identified, 25 methods/models and 17 contexts were distinguished. Conclusion: capability and performance were the most measured process attributes, while effort and performance were the most measured project attributes. Goal Question Metric and Capability Maturity Model Integration were the main methods and models used in the studies, whereas agile/lean development and small/medium-size enterprise were the most frequently identified research contexts.

Assisted reproductive technologies are a combination of medical strategies designed to treat infertility patients. Ideal stimulation treatment has to be individualized, but one of the main challenges which clinicians face in the everyday clinic is how to select the best medical protocol for a patient. This work aims to look for behavior patterns in this kind of treatments, using fuzzy logic models with the objective of helping gynecologists and embryologists to make decisions that could improve the process of in vitro fertilization. For this purpose, a real-world dataset composed of one hundred and twenty-three (123) patients and five hundred and fifty-nine (559) treatments applied in relation to such patients provided by an assisted reproduction clinic, has been used to obtain the fuzzy models. As conclusion, this work corroborates some known clinic experiences, provides some new ones and proposes a set of questions to be solved in future experiments.

El Trabajo Fin de Grado (TFG) juega un papel muy im portante en el proceso formativo de los grados en Inge niería Informática, ya que, a través de la ejecución sa tisfactoria de un proyecto, se pretende que el alumno/a tenga su primera experiencia profesional tutorada co mo ingeniero/a en proyectos de ingeniería y tecnología del Software. En este artículo se presenta una propues ta de metodología de trabajo seguida por nuestro grupo de investigación a la hora de tutorar, dirigir y ejecutar los TFG de las titulaciones de grado relacionadas con la Ingeniería Informática. Esta metodología, está com puesta por tres fases principales: la fase de diseño del producto (basada en metodología Design Sprint), la fa se de análisis de la solución (basada en la metodología NDT) y el diseño, implementación y pruebas de la so lución (basada en metodologías ágiles de desarrollo). Gracias a esta forma de trabajo, el alumno es capaz de ejecutar el TFG de una forma sistemática, ordenada y teniendo una visión clara del producto y solución que debe desarrollar., The final project plays a very important role in the for mative process of the degrees in Computer Enginee ring, because, the satisfactory execution of a project, intends that the student has his first professional tuto red experience as real engineer in projects of software engineering and technology. In this paper we present a proposal of work methodology followed by our re search group when it comes to tutoring, directing and executing the final project in the degree programs re lated to Computer Engineering. This methodology is composed of three main phases: the design phase of the product (based on Design Sprint methodology), the solution analysis phase (based on the NDT methodo logy) and the design, implementation and testing of the solution phase (based on in agile development metho dologies). Thanks to this kind of working, the student is able to execute the final project in a systematic and orderly way, having a clear vision of the product and solution to be developed.

Gherkin scenarios are examples of the behavior of the system under development. They maybe part of the requirement specification, they may be part of the test suite and they are an excellenttool for gathering information among stakeholders, testers and developers. However,little work have been done formalizing Gherkin scenarios and modelling them as part of UMLdiagrams. This paper introduces an abstract syntax and concrete syntax for modeling Gherkinscenarios in UML Use Case diagrams. This paper also introduces a tool for running Gherkinscenarios from UML Use Case diagrams as test cases

Hoy en día la mayoría de productos y servicios existentes son fruto de la colaboración de un gran número de compañías que forman una cadena de valor, a veces denominada cadena de suministro (CdS). La globalización y las tecnologías de la información han ayudado a que en la actualidad existan complejas y dinámicas CdS. Aunque cada organización tiene sus propios objetivos e intereses, su capacidad de optimizar las decisiones está cada vez más condicionada por las decisiones que toman aquellas compañías que forman parte de su CdS. La competencia ya no se establece entre organizaciones individuales sino entre las propias CdS. De esta forma, las organizaciones colaboran para optimizar decisiones que van más allá de las mejoras que una compañía pueda hacer a nivel individual. La gestión individual de los procesos requiere de una visión holística que incorpore una vista inter organizacional como apoyo a la toma de decisiones en la CdS. Para conseguir e_ciencia las organizaciones gestionan sus procesos y crean modelos de los mismos para analizarlos, mejorarlos, optimizarlos, así como para garantizar su uso de forma sistemática e institucionalizada. Existen muchos lenguajes que soportan el modelado de procesos, si bien la mayoría de ellos se centra en la perspectiva individual y no en la colaboración en la CdS. Aquellos que cubren la colaboración plantean un modelo top-down, partiendo del diseño del proceso global y posteriormente detallando el comportamiento individual, para lo cual todas las organizaciones deben acordar un único lenguaje tanto para modelar tanto su operativa interna como la colaboración en la CdS, lo que en la práctica impide la reutilización de la perspectiva individual que cada organización tenga de su operativa. Por ello este trabajo de tesis se centra en la necesidad de crear modelos de procesos de CdS reutilizando los modelos de los procesos que cada organización pueda haber creado, incluso con diversos lenguajes de modelado, incluyendo las capacidade

Organizar excursiones o meriendas, montar un equipo del juego on-line de moda, estudiar en grupo y muchas cosas más son actividades habituales en jóvenes (y no tan jóvenes). Las actividades anteriores pueden enmarcarse en la definición de proyecto, ya que todas cuentan con un marco temporal definido, tienen recursos limitados que es necesario gestionar y plantean objetivos que se desea cumplir. Sin embargo, basándonos en nuestra experiencia docente en asignaturas universitarias relacionadas con la gestión y dirección de proyectos informáticos, la enseñanza de esta materia es difícil. Al ser asignaturas de últimos cursos universitarios los alumnos llegan con malos hábitos adquiridos. El objetivo de este trabajo es doble: 1) Exponer cómo en actividades cotidianas aplicamos conocimientos de gestión de proyectos, aunque muchas veces no somos conscientes de ello. Queremos mostrar a nuestros futuros estudiantes el uso de buenas prácticas de gestión de proyectos tomando como referencia la Guía de los Fundamentos para la Dirección de Proyectos (Guía del PMBOK®) del Project Management Institute (PMI) y aplicándolo a la organización de una barbacoa. Así, el alumnado aprenderá que detrás de cada una de las preguntas que se plantean: ¿dónde lo haremos?, ¿cuántos seremos?, ¿qué llevaremos?, ¿cuándo? y otras tantas preguntas, se esconden buenas prácticas de gestión de proyectos; y 2) Plantear al profesorado, tanto universitario como no universitario, la importancia de ir incorporando en etapas tempranas de la formación de nuestro alumnado conceptos básicos sobre diferentes disciplinas aplicadas de forma amena y motivadora. Nuestros jóvenes saben más de gestión de proyectos de lo que ellos mismos creen y ayudarles a sacar este conocimiento a la luz les ayudará a gestionar un proyecto de forma natural cuando lleguen a la universidad. Para ello expondremos técnicas y herramientas sencillas para que su barbacoa sea un éxito., Organizing excursions or afternoon snacks, putting together a team of the most fashionable online game as well as studying in groups and many other things are common activities among young people. Such activities are framed in a project, since they all have a defined time framework, they have limited resources that need to be managed and they set goals that must be met. However, according to our professional experience in university subjects related to IT projects management, teaching this module is difficult because it is taught in the last courses of their degrees and students may reach this level with bad acquired habits. For this reason, we have set out two objectives to carry out this work: On the one hand, to identify everyday activities where we usually apply project management skills without being aware of it. We aim to show our future students the use of good project management practices, following the Project Management Fundamentals Guide (PMBOK® Guide) of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and how to apply them. In this case, we have taken the organization of a barbecue as an example. Thus, the new university student will learn that questions such as where and when will it take place? how many people will be there? what will we bring? among others, hide good project management practices. Young people know more about project management than they think they know. Therefore, bringing this knowledge to light will help them manage a project, naturally and unconsciously, when they reach university degrees. For this purpose, we will display simple techniques and tools in order to make a barbecue be a successful event. On the other hand, to make teachers, both university and nonuniversity, aware of the importance of incorporating basic concepts related to project management, in an entertaining and motivating way, in the early stages of students’ education.

Software development process (SDP) is a complex and long endeav-or, the quality and management of this process affect the quality of its results. Measuring the SDP is essential to gain insight on its performance and to discover improvements. This work proposes to use Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm to integrate the measures lifecycle within the process lifecycle in order to explicitly and operationally model measures during the process modeling. Also defines transformation rules to derive executable code to run these measures into enterprise tools in order to support the measures lifecycle.

Systems of Systems (SoS) are emerging applications composed by subsystems that interacts in a distributed and heterogeneous environment. Web-based technologies are a current trend to achieve SoS user interaction. Model Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) is the application of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) into the Web development domain. This paper presents a MDWE methodology to include Web-based interaction into SoS development. It's composed of ten models and seven model transformations and it's fully implemented in a support tool for its usage in practice. Quality aspects covered through the traceability from the requirements to the nal code are exposed. The feasibility of the approach is validated by its application into a real-world project. A preliminary analysis of potential benets (reduction of eort, time, cost; improve of quality; design vs code ratio, etc) is done by comparison to other project as an initial hypothesis for a future planned experimentation research.

Over the last decade, processes have become an important asset for daily life in organizations because an adequate Business Processes Management (BPM) of an organization (e.g. software development companies) can help achieve organizational objectives. Especially, it is important to efficiently manage these processes vital for the organizational performance in order to continually improve, therefore increasing productivity and competitiveness within the organization (e.g. software processes in software companies). This management is associated with the process lifecycle and, at present, there are many tools (Business Process Management Suites, BPMS) for managing this lifecycle. However, all BPMSs do not provide full support for this lifecycle what makes it more difficult to choose the right BPMS (according to the needs of the organization). This paper presents a survey on BPMS highlighting each phase of the process lifecycle what enables organizations to compare specific BPMS according to their own organizational objectives. This survey has been carried out using a methodology that combines systematic literature review with quality models. This methodology has been used successfully in other contexts. Finally, this paper also describes how this survey has been instantiated on specific open source BPMSs.

Business Process Management (BPM) es un factor estratégico en el sector de las tecnologías de la información (TI), así como en otros sectores productivos. Las TI utilizan sistemas heredados (legacy systems) para gestionar su negocio, donde sus bases de datos (legacy databases) almacenan estados históricos de la ejecución de todo tipo de procesos, razón por la cual pueden considerarse como una fuente para extraer perspectivas o dimensiones de estos procesos: i) el tiempo, ii) los recursos, iii) la información y iv) los casos. Algunos estándares para representar procesos del software como UML AD, BPMN, SPEM e Iso/Iec 24744 están sustentados por robustos Meta-modelos. El paradigma Model Driven Engineering (MDE) es cada vez más aceptado al ofrecer modelos y Meta-modelos de diversos niveles de abstracción así como mecanismos para realizar transformaciones entre ellos. MDE puede emplearse para tanto para extraer modelos mediante ingeniería inversa como para generar modelos desde una especificación de alto nivel. Esta tesis define una propuesta general basada en MDE para hacer ingeniería inversa de legacy databases extrayendo la perspectiva temporal de procesos de TI. Se ha analizado la definición de dimensiones BPM sobre distintas categorías de legacy systems de uso frecuente en TI, concluyendo que casi toda TI organiza su actividad bajo proyectos que tiene que planificar y controlar. Un estudio sistemático de la literatura realizado sobre la especificación de la dimensión temporal de los procesos nos ha llevado a aportar una taxonomía de reglas que cubre la tipología que aparecen en las TI y también en otros sectores. Esta taxonomía nos ha permitido evaluar carencias de lenguajes de procesos de uso frecuentemente en TI y proponer Meta-modelos UML y OCL que permiten formalizar dichas reglas para resolver estas debilidades, además de facilitar la extracción de procesos desde legacy databases. MS Project (como legacy system) y BPMN (como estándar de modelación e intercambio

Context: Business Process Management (BPM) is becoming a strategic advantage for organizations tostreamline their operations. Most business experts are betting for OMG Business Process Model and No- tation (BPMN) as de-facto standard (ISO/IEC 19510:2013) and selected technology to model processes. Thetemporal dimension underlies in any kind of process however, technicians need to shape this perspectivethat must also coexist with task control flow aspects, as well as resource and case perspectives. BPMNpoorly gathers temporary rules. This is why there are contributions that extend the standard to coversuch dimension. BPMN is mainly an imperative language. There are research contributions showing timeconstraints in BPMN, such as (i) BPMN patterns to express each rule with a combination of artifacts, thusthese approaches increase the use of imperative BPMN style, and (ii) new decorators to capture timerules semantics giving clearer and simpler comprehensible specifications. Nevertheless, these extensionscannot yet be found in the present standard.Objective: To define a time rule taxonomy easily found in most business processes and look for an ap- proach that applies each rule with current BPMN 2.0 standard in a declarative way.Method: A model-driven approach is used to propose a BPMN metamodel extension to address time- perspective.Results: We look at a declarative approach where new time specifications may overlie the main controlflow of a BPMN process. This proposal is totally supported with current BPMN standard, giving a BPMNmetamodel extension with OCL constraints. We also use AQUA-WS as a software project case study whichis planned and managed with MS Project. We illustrate business process extraction from project plans.Conclusion: This paper suggests to handle business temporal rules with current BPMN standard, alongwith other business perspectives like resources and cases. This approach can be applied to reverse engi- neering processes from legacy databases.

Poderosa Mine is an abandoned pyrite mine, located in the Iberian Pyrite Belt which pours its acid mine drainage (AMD) waters into the Odiel river (South-West Spain). This work focuses on establishing possible reasons for interdependence between the potential redox and pH, with the load of metals and sulfates, as well as a set of variables that define the physical chemistry of the water—conductivity, temperature, TDS, and dissolved oxygen—transported by a channel from Poderosa mine affected by acid mine drainage, through the use of techniques of artificial intelligence: fuzzy logic and data mining. The sampling campaign was carried out in May of 2012. There were a total of 16 sites, the first inside the tunnel and the last at the mouth of the river Odiel, with a distance of approximately 10 m between each pair of measuring stations. While the tools of classical statistics, which are widely used in this context, prove useful for defining proximity ratios between variables based on Pearson’s correlations, in addition to making it easier to handle large volumes of data and producing easier-to-understand graphs, the use of fuzzy logic tools and data mining results in better definition of the variations produced by external stimuli on the set of variables. This tool is adaptable and can be extrapolated to any system polluted by acid mine drainage using simple, intuitive reasoning.

Business Process Management (BPM) is becoming the modern core to support business in all type of organizations and software business is not an exception. Software companies are often involved in important and complex collaborative projects carried out by many stakeholders. Each actor (customers, suppliers or government instances, among others) works with individual and shared processes. Everyone needs dynamic and evolving approaches for managing their software projects lifecycle. Nevertheless, many companies still use systems that are out of the scope of BPM for planning and control projects and managing enterprise content (Enterprise Content Management, ECM) as well as all kinds of resources (ERP). Somehow systems include scattered artifacts that are related to BPM perspectives: control and data flow, time, resource and case, for example. It is aimed to get interoperable BPM models from these classical Legacy Information Systems (LIS). Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) allows going from application code to higher-level of abstraction models. Particularly, there are standards and proposals for reverse engineering LIS. This paper illustrates LIS cases for software project planning and ECM, looking at time and resource perspectives. To conclude, we will propose a MDE-based approach for taking out business models in the context of software process management.

Context: Although various success stories of model-based approaches are reported in literature, there is still a significant resistance to model-based development in many software organizations because the UML is perceived to be expensive and not necessarily cost-effective. It is also important to gather empirical evidence in which context and under which conditions the UML makes or does not make a practical difference. Objective: Our objective is to provide empirical evidence as to which UML diagrams are more helpful during software maintenance: Forward Designed (FD) UML diagrams or Reverse Engineered (RE) UML diagrams. Method: We carried out a family of experiments which consisted of one experiment and two replications with a total of 169 Computer Science undergraduate students. Results: The individual data analysis and the meta-analysis conducted on the whole family, show a tendency in favor of FD diagrams and are significantly different as regards the effectiveness and efficiency of the subjects who participated and played the role of maintainers. The analysis of the qualitative data, collected using a post-experiment survey, reveals that the subjects did not consider RE diagrams helpful. Conclusions: Our findings show that there are some objective results (descriptive statistics or statistical tests) related to the maintenance effectiveness and efficiency in favor of the use of FD UML diagrams during software maintenance. Subjective opinions also lead us to recommend the use of UML diagrams (especially class diagrams) created during the design phase for software maintenance because they improve the understanding of the system in comparison with RE diagrams. Nevertheless, we can only assume that these results are valid in the context of Computer Science undergraduate students when working with small systems related to well-known domains, and other contexts should be explored in order to reaffirm the results in an industrial context by carrying out replications w