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Enterprise architecture allows companies to deal with digital transformation through the proactive presentation and alignment of business and IT in a holistic manner. One important challenge is EA ...

UML is a commonly-used graphical language for the modelling of software. Works regarding UML’s effectiveness have studied projects that develop software systems from scratch. Yet the maintenance of software consumes a large share of the overall time and effort required to develop software systems. This study, therefore, focuses on the use of UML in software maintenance. We wish to elicit the practices of the software modelling used during maintenance in industry and understand what are perceived as hurdles and benefits when using modelling. In order to achieve a high level of realism, we performed a case study in a multinational company’s ICT department. The analysis is based on 31 interviews with employees who work on software maintenance projects. The interviewees played different roles and provided complementary views about the use, hurdles and benefits of software modelling and the use of UML. Our study uncovered a broad range of modelling-related practices, which are presented in a theoretical framework that illustrates how these practices are linked to the specific goals and context of software engineering projects. We present a list of recommended practices that contribute to the increased effectiveness of software modelling. The use of software modelling notations (like UML) is considered beneficial for software maintenance, but needs to be tailored to its context. Various practices that contribute to the effective use of modelling are commonly overlooked, suggesting that a more conscious holistic approach with which to integrate modelling practices into the overall software engineering approach is required.

Context Lack of coordination may create significant problems between work teams, this problem is even most critical when team workers are geographically distributed as it results in cost increases and delays in the projects. There exists a technique called Socio-Technical Congruence (STC) that aims at helping to measure and control the coordination level existing in an organization at their different levels. Objective The objective of this paper is to carry out a systematic mapping of the field of socio-technical congruence. The aspects of particular interest for this article are: Socio-Technical Congruence definition, different ways to measure it, available tools to measure or that can help to measure it, the areas of application, its benefits and the case studies that analyze the effects Socio-Technical Congruence has on the organization as regards the products quality and the improvements in performance in the long term development, in an attempt to characterize the state of the art of this field identifying gaps and opportunities for further research. Therefore, companies could use this work as a starting point to apply STC measures in their work teams. Results This paper presents the results of a systematic mapping of Literature about Socio-Technical Congruence (STC) in order to investigate and classify the existing articles and conferences about the subject, as well as summarizing the most important aspects in regards to provide a general overview about the existing studies. Conclusions After analyzing the 40 papers found, we can conclude that there is no one standard measure of socio-technical congruence, although most take the proposal by Kwan et al. applying adaptations and improvements on it as regards the environment that it will be focused on. In general, most case studies talk about the benefits of STC control in organizations. However, only one paper focus on global software development where the problems of communication, coordination and control are an important risk. Moreover, there are only a few papers that explore the risks of excessively overloading users with coordination iterations when controlling STC. In fact, no case study to examine these risks and their effect on developers’ productivity has been found. The small number of studies found on STC, together with the research gaps we have pointed out, suggest that further investigation on socio-technical congruence is required.

Every company wishes to improve its system quality and security, all the more so in these times of digital transformation, since having a good quality and security management system is essential to any company’s commercial survival. Such needs are even more pressing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), given their limited time and resources. To address these needs, a Spanish company, Proceso Social, has developed an innovative method called “SevenWeeks” to allow SMEs to create or improve their quality and security management systems in just seven weeks, with a view to obtaining one or both of the ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001 certifications. We have evaluated the effectiveness and usefulness of SevenWeeks by carrying out a multi-case study of 26 Spanish companies, based on independent sources of evidence. This allowed us to corroborate that SevenWeeks was indeed effective for and perceived as useful by all the companies, as it enabled them to create their own quality and security management systems in only seven weeks and to obtain the necessary ISO certification. The interviewees found SevenWeeks to be an agile and intuitive method, easy to implement, which reduces costs and effort. We also include some recommendations to improve and further develop the method.

Context The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has, after ten years, become established as the de facto standard for the modelling of object-oriented software systems. It is therefore relevant to investigate whether its use is important as regards the costs involved in its implantation in industry being worthwhile. Method We have carried out a systematic mapping study to collect the empirical studies published in order to discover “What is the current existing empirical evidence with regard to the use of UML diagrams in source code maintenance and the maintenance of the UML diagrams themselves? Results We found 38 papers, which contained 63 experiments and 3 case studies. Conclusion Although there is common belief that the use of UML is beneficial for source code maintenance, since the quality of the modifications is greater when UML diagrams are available, only 3 papers concerning this issue have been published. Most research (60 empirical studies) concerns the maintainability and comprehensibility of the UML diagrams themselves which form part of the system’s documentation, since it is assumed that they may influence source code maintainability, although this has not been empirically validated. Moreover, the generalizability of the majority of the experiments is questionable given the material, tasks and subjects used. There is thus a need for more experiments and case studies to be performed in industrial contexts, i.e., with real systems and using maintenance tasks conducted by practitioners under real conditions that truly show the utility of UML diagrams in maintaining code, and that the fact that a diagram is more comprehensible or modifiable influences the maintainability of the code itself. This utility should also be studied from the viewpoint of cost and productivity, and the consistent and simultaneous maintenance of diagrams and code must also be considered in future empirical studies.

Databases are considered to be a valuable asset for organizations because they contain all those organizations’ persistent pieces of data. Both databases and the information systems that use them undergo erosion as a consequence of uncontrolled maintenance over time. However, when information systems evolve to become modernized versions of them, existing databases must not be discarded because they contain much valuable business knowledge that is not present anywhere else. Some of the software industry's current demands, such as time-to-market developments and the provision of software as services entail additional challenges in the reuse of legacy systems during software modernization. This paper addresses this problem and proposes a reengineering process that follows model-driven development principles to recover Web services from legacy databases. The Web services that are mined manage access to legacy databases without discarding them. Legacy databases can thus be used by modernized information systems in service-oriented environments. The adoption of this process is facilitated by the implementation of a support tool, which is used to conduct an industrial case study involving a real-life legacy database. The study demonstrates that the proposal reduces development efforts and improves the return of investment by extending the lifespan of legacy databases. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Database and data model evolution cause significant problems in the highly dynamic business environment that we experience these days. To support the rapidly changing data requirements of agile companies, conceptual data models, which constitute the foundation of database design, should be sufficiently flexible to be able to incorporate changes easily and smoothly. In order to understand what factors drive the maintainability of conceptual data models and to improve conceptual modelling processes, we need to be able to assess conceptual data model properties and qualities in an objective and cost-efficient manner. The scarcity of early available and thoroughly validated maintainability measurement instruments motivated us to define a set of metrics for Entity-Relationship (ER) diagrams. In this paper we show that these easily calculated and objective metrics, measuring structural properties of ER diagrams, can be used as indicators of the understandability of the diagrams. Understandability is a key factor in determining maintainability as model modifications must be preceded by a thorough understanding of the model. The validation of the metrics as early understandability indicators opens up the way for an in-depth study of how structural properties determine conceptual data model understandability. It also allows building maintenance-related prediction models that can be used in conceptual data modelling practice.

The usefulness of measures for the analysis and design of object oriented (OO) software is increasingly being recognized in the field of software engineering research. In particular, recognition of the need for early indicators of external quality attributes is increasing. We investigate through experimentation whether a collection of UML class diagram measures could be good predictors of two main subcharacteristics of the maintainability of class diagrams: understandability and modifiability. Results obtained from a controlled experiment and a replica support the idea that useful prediction models for class diagrams understandability and modifiability can be built on the basis of early measures, in particular, measures that capture structural complexity through associations and generalizations. Moreover, these measures seem to be correlated with the subjective perception of the subjects about the complexity of the diagrams. This fact shows, to some extent, that the objective measures capture the same aspects as the subjective ones. However, despite our encouraging findings, further empirical studies, especially using data taken from real projects performed in industrial settings, are needed. Such further study will yield a comprehensive body of knowledge and experience about building prediction models for understandability and modifiability.

Although software measurement plays an increasingly important role in Software Engineering, there is no consensus yet on many of the concepts and terminology used in this field. Even worse, vocabulary conflicts and inconsistencies can be frequently found amongst the many sources and references commonly used by software measurement researchers and practitioners. This article presents an analysis of the current situation, and provides a comparison framework that can be used to identify and address the discrepancies, gaps, and terminology conflicts that current software measurement proposals present. A basic software measurement ontology is introduced, that aims at contributing to the harmonization of the different software measurement proposals and standards, by providing a coherent set of common concepts used in software measurement. The ontology is also aligned with the metrology vocabulary used in other more mature measurement engineering disciplines.

Not all the model constraints can be defined using only UML graphical features due to the limited expressiveness of diagram-based UML notation. To solve this problem, the OCL language was defined as a textual add-on to the UML diagrams, allowing the specification of a wide range of constraints of objects. Aware of the lack of metrics to capture the quality aspects of UML/OCL models and the importance of models in recent initiatives of model-Driven software engineering (such as Model-Driven Development and Model-Driven Architecture), we define a set of metrics for measuring the structural properties of OCL constraints in UML/OCL models. Many of these metrics are defined in terms of navigations, a core concept of OCL that defines coupling between objects. This paper carefully describes a family of experiments we have conducted to ascertain whether any relationship exists between object coupling (defined through metrics related to navigations and collection operations) and two maintainability subcharacteristics: understandability and modifiability of OCL expressions. Empirical evidence that such a relationship exists is shown in the obtained results, however they must be considered as preliminaries results. Further validation is needed to strengthen the conclusions and external validity.

The complexity of software artifacts is widely believed to be an important determinant of maintenance effort. This paper conducts an experimental analysis of the impact of complexity on the maintenance of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams. This represents an analysis of the effect of an internal quality attribute on an external quality attribute. A range of complexity metrics are proposed based on an ontological analysis of the UML language and previous research. The relative influence of these metrics on maintenance effort is then evaluated using a laboratory experiment. A within-subjects design was used, with subjects required to modify a range of UML class diagrams with different levels of complexity. Only two of the metrics emerged as significant determinants of maintenance effort: number of methods and number of associations. Together these explain around 28% of the variation in maintenance effort. While these findings are encouraging, further research is necessary to explore the ability of these metrics to predict maintenance effort. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Several authors have pointed out that current conceptual models have two main shortcomings. First, they are clearly oriented to a specific development paradigm (structured, objects, etc.). Second, once the conceptual models have been obtained, it is really difficult to switch to another development paradigm, because the model orientation to a specific development approach. This fact induces problems during development, since practitioners are encouraged to think in terms of a solution before the problem at hand is well understood, thus anticipating perhaps bad design decisions.An appropriate analysis task requires models that are independent of any implementation issues. In concrete, models should support developers to understand the problem and its constraints before any solution is identified. This paper proposes such an alternative approach to conceptual modelling, called "problem-oriented analysis method".

It is generally accepted in the information system (IS) field that IS quality is highly dependent on the decisions made early in the development life cycle. The construction of conceptual data models is often an important task of this early development. Therefore, improving the quality of conceptual data models will be a major step towards the quality improvement of the IS development. Several quality frameworks for conceptual data models have been proposed, but most of them lack valid quantitative measures in order to evaluate the quality of conceptual data models in an objective way. In this article we will define measures for the structural complexity (internal attribute) of entity relationship diagrams (ERD) and use them for predicting their maintainability (external attribute). We will theoretically validate the proposed metrics following Briand et al.'s framework with the goal of demonstrating the properties that characterise each metric. We will also show how it is possible to predict each of the maintainability sub-characteristics using a prediction model generated using a novel method for induction of fuzzy rules.

The design of web information systems (WISs) often relies on a domain model and some informal guidelines, signifying that many design decisions which may directly affect usability are left to the designers. The study presented here has been carried out to analyse whether it is possible to limit this arbitrariness. The authors have therefore carried out a controlled experiment and its replica to test whether it is effectively possible to obtain more easily navigable WISs by using a navigation model, including certain design characteristics, as a starting point. These characteristics are: the use of a main menu which only contains the services required by the user, and the signposting of the sequence of steps necessary to carry out each service correctly, denominated as a route. The empirical study carried out has demonstrated that, given two WISs with the same functionality and identical interface styles, users prefer a WIS with routes and a main menu including the beginning of each route, and perceive it to be more easily navigable. In addition, the use of routes in the navigation model improves the navigability of the WIS built from it, particularly for subjects with less experience.