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In 2007 the decision to broaden the adoption of Scrum to all development teams forced Kelley Blue Book (KBB) to seek out a more efficient and effective Scrum tool. KBBpsilas use of SharePoint was nascent at the time and was a fine tool for several small Scrum teams. However with the total number of teams now at fifteen, SharePoint alone was just not keeping pace with the needs of the organization. Deciding to move to a more robust tool to promote agility while keeping up with product release plans can be a complicated challenge. KBB chose VersionOne to replace SharePoint. Migration to VersionOne involved numerous departments and two offshore facilities. With KBB sharing their experience of this common situation, other companies can learn about and adopt proven techniques to ensure a successful tool migration. This paper will cover KBBpsilas Scrum implementation, goals of tool migration, the selection process, migration approach, and results.

Several activities of the COTS-based systems lifecycle are supported not only by the analysis of their technical quality but also (and sometimes mostly) by considering how they fulfill some non-technical quality features considered relevant (licensing, reputation, costs and similar issues). Whilst many catalogues of technical quality features exist, it is not the case for non-technical ones, which are often managed in an ad-hoc form. In a recent work, we proposed a catalogue of non-technical quality features, designed to integrate smoothly into the ISO/IEC 9126-1 standard. In this paper, we detail the process used for the composition of the catalogue, which embraces the inclusion of several non-technical quality features already identified in the literature as well as others which have emerged form our own experience in industrial COTS components selection processes. We also outline some potential applications of the resulting catalogue, intended to support several activities of the COTS-based systems lifecycle. Finally, we describe a COTS selection process carried out in a telecommunications company.

Currently, information systems are mainly built by integrating or customizing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components acquired or licensed from the marketplace. The processes necessary to steer a suitable acquisition are different from traditional software development processes. Among them, we are interested in the process of selection of COTS components. COTS selection requires discipline to coordinate the selection team and the set of new activities that are necessary to support a successful selection. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) contains important guidelines for process improvement, and specifies "what" we must have into account to achieve the disciplined processes (among others things). On the other hand, agile methods are playing nowadays an important role in software engineering practices, because they are specifying "how" the software practices must be addressed to attain agility and improvement in the software processes. The contribution of this work is to propose a framework to reconcile agile and discipline-based approaches in the COTS selection domain, by including agile practices into the 5 levels of CMMI for COTS acquisition

Selecting Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products is a challenging process that utilizes and generates a lot of information. Repositories play a crucial role in the management of the COTS selection information. In fact, it is generally believed in literature that repositories are of great importance to the COTS selection process and indeed to the entire process of developing software using COTS products. However, the process of developing, managing, and accessing these repositories has attracted very little attention. This paper presents a framework for establishing and maintaining the following five different repositories for the COTS selection process: COTS repository, user repository, discussions repository, lessons-learned repository, and historical information repository. The framework supports distributed contribution and access to the repositories, as well as systematic and hierarchical evaluation and integration of the contributions. Moreover, this paper presents a description of a database that was implemented as part of a Decision Support System (DSS) for the selection of COTS products. The database accommodates the different repositories for the COTS selection process.

Component selection and composition are the main issues in component-based development (CBD). Existing approaches suffer from the problem that the components retrieved usually do not exactly fit with other components in the system being developed. While formal methods can be used to describe and check semantic characteristics to better match components, there are practical limitations which restrict their adoption. In this paper, we propose a framework to support a semantic description and selection of components. Towards this we first introduce a Simple Component Interface Language (SCIL). SCIL files can be translated to a variety of models including those that have a formal basis. We report our experience with two specific tools, viz., Reactive Modules and Alloy with a view to using tools based on formal methods but without exposing the details of the tools.

The use of quality models during the selection of Commercial, Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products provides a framework for the description of the domains which the COTS products belong to. Descriptions of COTS products and user quality requirements may be translated into the quality concepts defined in the model, making selection more efficient and reliable. In this paper we address the construction of quality models for Composite COTS-based Software Systems (CCSS), defined as systems that are composed by several interconnected COTS products. Selection processes carried out when procuring a CCSS require not a single COTS product to be selected but a set of them. As a consequence, instead of a classical quality model, we need a more elaborated one, defined as the composition of those models that belong to the domains of the COTS products that form the CCSS. We propose a method aimed at supporting the construction of quality models for CCSS as a composition of four activities. Most of the new quality features that appear in the CCSS model are defined in terms of the quality features of the component COTS products. As a result, we obtain quality models easier to understand, maintain and reuse, as well as compliant with the ISO/IEC 9126-1 quality standard.

A list is presented of fourteen important parameters to consider when selecting a local area network (LAN) for a LAN laboratory course. The parameters described are: LAN technology, LAN features, operation and use, network expandability, compatibility, obsolescence, administration, technical support, security, reliability, cost, installation, physical layout, and support equipment. The relative importance of each parameter is explained, and practical examples are provided through experience gained during the development of an electrical engineering technology LAN course in the School of Technology at Purdue University. >

Adaptive random testing (ART) has recently been introduced to improve the fault-detection effectiveness of random testing (RT) for certain types of failure-causing patterns. However, ART requires extra computations to ensure an even spread of test cases, which may render ART to be less cost-effective than RT. In this paper, we introduce an innovative approach, namely Mirror Adaptive Random Testing (MART), to reduce these computations. Our simulation results clearly show that MART does improve the cost-effectiveness of ART.

A simplified, user-oriented classification of available computer-aided control engineering (CACE) tools is discussed. Two classes of CACE tools are distinguished. (1) The language-oriented CACE tools are universal in the sense of supported problems as well as in the sense of supported methodologies. (2) The non-language-oriented CACE tools which are based on simpler dialogues, e.g. menu and form-fill-in dialogues, support only some classes of problems and methodologies. Therefore, they are specialized to some extent. A personal view of the selection of CACE tools is given. It is based on three kinds of control problems, i.e. exotic, difficult, and ordinary ones, which play a crucial role in problem solving. >

Firewalls are one of the major products in the network and Internet security arsenal. No satisfactory criterion is currently available for evaluating firewalls. This paper enumerates considerations that have to be taken into account in order to develop an appropriate and meaningful evaluation criteria, and proposes a multi-dimensional criterion for evaluating firewalls. The criterion consists of three major components: security, performance and management. The analytical results of applying the proposed criteria on Check Point's Firewall-1 show the strengths and benefits of the proposed multi-dimensional approach.