Search

PageRank is an algorithm concerning search queries over the Internet. The algorithm returns the best search results to the user based on the webpage relevancy by calculating the outgoing links from each webpage. Although useful, the algorithm consumes a considerable amount of time as it needs to calculate the available webpages, which are also increasing in number over time. Moreover, the returned results by the algorithm are biased towards old webpages because they have the volume due to their lifetime, thus resulting in newly created webpages to have lower page ranks even though they have comparatively more relevant and useful information. To overcome these issues, this paper proposes an alternative hybrid PageRank algorithm based on optimized normalization technique and content-based approach. The proposed algorithm reduces the number of iterations required to calculate the page rank, hence improves the efficiency, by calculating the mean of all page rank values and normalizes them through the use of the mean. Through this approach, the algorithm is also able to determine the relevancy of webpages based on validity of links rather than popularity. These claims are demonstrated by an experiment conducted on the proposed algorithm using a dummy web structure consisting of 12 webpages. The results showed that the traditional PageRank algorithm has 74% more iterations than the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm returned a mean value of 1.00 compared to 1.32 for the traditional algorithm. These results confirm that the proposed algorithm saves a substantial amount of computing power while being more precise and not biased.

PageRank is an algorithm that brings an order to the Internet by returning the best result to the users corresponding to a search query. The algorithm returns the result by calculating the outgoing links that a webpage has thus reflecting whether the webpage is relevant or not. However, there are still problems existing which relate to the time needed to calculate the page rank of all the webpages. The turnaround time is long as the webpages in the Internet are a lot and keep increasing. Secondly, the results returned by the algorithm are biased towards mainly old webpages resulting in newly created webpages having lower page rankings compared to old webpages even though new pages might have comparatively more relevant information. To overcome these setbacks, this research proposes an alternative hybrid algorithm based on an optimized normalization technique and content-based approach. The proposed algorithm reduces the number of iterations required to calculate the page rank hence improving efficiency by calculating the mean of all page rank values and normalising the page rank value through the use of the mean. This is complemented by calculating the valid links of web pages based on the validity of the links rather than the conventional popularity.

The potentially many software system input combinations make exhaustive testing practically impossible. To address this issue, combinatorial t-way testing (where t indicates the interaction strength, i.e. the number of interacting parameters (input)) was adopted to minimize the number of cases for testing. Complimentary to existing testing techniques (e.g. boundary value, equivalence partitioning, cause and effect graphing), combinatorial testing helps to detect faults caused by the faulty interaction between input parameters. In the last 15 years, applications of meta-heuristics as the backbone of t-way test suite generation have shown promising results (e.g. Particle Swarm Optimization, Cuckoo Search, Flower Pollination Algorithm, and Hyper-Heuristics (HHH), to name a few). Supporting the No Free Lunch theorem, as well as potentially offering new insights into the whole process of t-way generation, this article proposes a new strategy with constraint support based on the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA). Our work is the first attempt to adopt the WOA as part of a search-based software engineering (SBSE) initiative for t-way test suite generation with constraint support. The experimental results of the test-suite generation indicate that WOA produces competitive outcomes compared to some selected single-based and population-based meta-heuristic algorithms.

Information Security Management (ISM) is a systematic initiative in managing the organisation’s information security. ISM can also be defined as a strategic approach to addressing information security (IS) risks, breaches, and incidents that could threaten the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. Although organisations have complied with ISM requirements, security incidents are still afflicting numerous organisations. This issue shows that the current implementation of ISM is still ineffective. The ineffective ISM implementation illustrates the low maturity level. To achieve a higher level of maturity, organisations should always evaluate their ISM practices. Several maturity models have been developed by international organisations, consultants, and researchers to assist organisations in assessing their ISM practices. However, the current models do not evaluate ISM practices holistically. The measurement dimensions in current models are more focused on assessing certain factors only. This caused the maturity assessment to be not executed comprehensively. Therefore, this study aims to address this shortcoming by proposing a comprehensive maturity assessment model that takes into account ISM success factors to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation. This study adopted a mixed-method approach, which comprises qualitative and quantitative studies to strengthen the research finding. The qualitative study analyses the existing literature and conducts interviews with nine industry practitioners and six experts while the quantitative study involves a questionnaire survey. The data obtained from the qualitative study were analysed using content analysis while the quantitative data employed statistics analysis. The study identified fourteen success factors and fifty-seven maturity dimensions, which each contains five maturity levels. The proposed model was evaluated through experts’ reviews to ensure its accuracy and suitability. The evaluation shows that the model can identify the ISM maturity level systematically and comprehensively. This model will ultimately help the organisations to improve the weaknesses in the implementations thus diminishing security incidents.

Software engineering (SE) research addresses not only technical issues but also human behaviour. SE is considered as an immature discipline because many technical and social issues concerning software development and management have yet to be specified. SE in general is inclined towards quantitative approaches. Nevertheless, qualitative methods are still appropriate for SE research as the methods encourage deep understanding of subject matter. Grounded Theory (GT) is regarded as one of the potential qualitative methods that is applicable to SE research. The method is able to transform less and unknown SE phenomena into cohesive theories through systematic discovery of empirical data from the ground. This paper shares some encounters of using GT in SE research based on the reflection made on several SE research projects covering various phases of software development life cycle. The encounters are then transformed into adaptations and classified as GT practices for SE research, as an effort to inspire the spirit of using GT in SE particularly among novices. The practices embrace aspects concerning formulating research questions, handling preconceptions, utilising software tools, getting access to data and presenting theory and its development process. To illustrate on how the practices were derived, a case study is presented. The proposed GT practices could act as the starting point of adopting GT in SE research. They shall be refined and improved in future to possibly become best practices when more and more experience of using GT in SE are obtained.

Electronic Government (E-government) becomes one of the key elements for sustainable development of the country. Previous studies on E-government indicate that most governments are performing well in E-government implementation. However, the issues of process duplication and bureaucracy in services should be addressed to build trust and increase citizens’ satisfaction. Currently, there is a necessity to focus on the development of integrated and tailored-made services that suit with citizens’ needs. This initiative entails high commitment and collaboration from agencies, which can be achieved through the whole of government (WoG) approach. This study aims to identify the critical success factors of WoG towards the development of integrated E-government services. A preliminary review was conducted on previous studies and reports to get some insights of the subject being studied. The identified data were coded and analysed using content analysis method. The findings demonstrate that there are a number of critical success factors for WoG, which consist of technical and non-technical aspects. The findings act as a theoretical framework for better understanding about WoG approach for integrated E-government services. Keywords: E-government; integrated services; whole of government (WoG); connected government; joined-up government ABSTRAK Kerajaan Elektronik (Kerajaan-E) merupakan antara elemen utama bagi mengukur kestabilan pembangunan dan sosio-ekonomi sesebuah negara. Kajian terdahulu berkaitan Kerajaan-E menunjukkan peningkatan prestasi pembangunan Kerajaan-E di kebanyakan negara. Namun pun begitu, isu berkaitan pertindanan proses di antara organisasi dan birokrasi perkhidmatan perlu ditangani bagi meningkatkan tahap kepercayaan dan penerimaan rakyat terhadap perkhidmatan Kerajaan-E. Pada masa kini, keutamaan perlu diberikan kepada membangunkan perkhidmatan yang bersepadu dan berorientasikan rakyat. Inisiatif ini memerlukan kerjasama erat dalam kalangan agensi yang hanya akan dapat dicapai menerusi pendekatan keseluruhan kerajaan. Kajian ini bertujuan mengenalpasti faktor kejayaan kritikal di dalam pendekatan keseluruhan kerajaan yang menyokong kepada pembentukan perkhidmatan Kerajaan-E bersepadu. Soroton susastera dilaksana terhadap kajian terdahulu dan laporan berkaitan. Data yang telah dikenalpasti dikod dan dianalisis menggunakan kaedah analisis kandungan. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan terdapat beberapa faktor kejayaan kritikal untuk pendekatan keseluruhan kerajaan yang merangkumi dimensi teknikal dan bukan teknikal. Dapatan ini bertindak sebagai kerangka teoretikal untuk memahami pendekatan keseluruhan kerajaan bagi pembentukan perkhidmatan Kerajaan-E bersepadu dengan lebih baik. Kata kunci: Perkhidmatan bersepadu; perkhidmatan kerajaan-e; pendekatan keseluruhan kerajaan; platform bersepadu; interoperbiliti

Information technology and communication (ICT) plays an important role as a catalyst for organisational development and innovation. However, old information systems that are known as legacy systems often expose organisations to the risk of business failure. These systems are not only impeding the advancement in technology strategy but also hindering the organisations’ business competitiveness. Nevertheless, legacy systems are essential in supporting critical functions in organisations including the public sector and could not be scrapped easily. These systems need to be given a new strength through modernisation to continue providing the best service in line with global trends. Modernisation is a complex task that involves several related aspects. In the context of the public sector, legacy systems involve a complicated information relationship, environment, and culture, while ensuring the citizens are of high priority. The implementation of a digital government represents the transformation of the public service delivery to the citizens that emphasises a citizen-centric design. This study, therefore, aims to address this concern by reviewing the factors involved and suggesting a guideline in the form of a conceptual model to assist in the modernisation of legacy systems for a citizen-centric digital government. Data from the theoretical study were analysed using content analysis. The results show that the legacy systems’ modernisation comprised four main aspects, namely human, process, product, and organisation aspects, with related factors and elements. This model contributes as a reference for the public sector and provides overall guidance in performing legacy systems modernisation.

Legacy systems continue to play an important role in the implementation of information systems in organisations. Many large organisations still rely heavily on these systems in delivering critical services. Legacy systems are important assets of organisations as they contain important business logics and data over several years. Although these systems are critical to the business yet organisations have to face technical difficulties and unnecessary expenses in maintaining the systems. In order to continue providing quality services in line with the global changes, legacy systems need to be refreshed through modernisation. This study therefore reviewed the phases involved in legacy systems modernisation to identify gaps and their insufficiencies. It aims to provide an overall guidance to the organisations in performing legacy systems modernisation.

Requirements elicitation is the most critical phase in software requirements engineering. The process is resource intensive, as it concerns with a lot of dedicated stakeholders gathering purposefully to present and stipulate software requirements. The extent of effectiveness of the process is greatly influenced by the suitability of the stakeholders in the process of gathering the requirements. Previous studies indicate that improper stakeholder selection normally lead to unsuccessful requirements elicitation process. Such phenomena would later cause serious impacts to projects such as costly rework, overrun schedule and poor quality software. This study addresses this issue by proposing a model for selecting the suitable stakeholders during requirements elicitation process. The study adopts both the quantitative data collection and analysis. The data gathering was done through survey questionnaire among 300 project managers and analysts. The study employs the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to analyse the quantitative data. The results indicate that selecting stakeholders with appropriate characteristics such as stakeholders role, knowledge and communication skills have significant effects on the requirements elicitation phase. The results also reveal that requirements elicitation phase has significant influence on requirements quality. This model is useful for project managers to decide on appropriate stakeholders who are going to be chosen based on their characteristics during requirements elicitation phase.

Rapid development of information technology and communication (ICT) has increased the use of information systems in organizations since a decade ago. At the same time, many organizations are still using old information systems to support their business, known as legacy systems. Even though these systems cause technical problems, but they are still used to support service delivery to the customer. These systems are also essential to organizations as they have been operated for many years and possess high business value. The operation of legacy systems cannot be stopped quickly, as it will affect daily business tasks. However, organizations with legacy systems need to think about the ability of the systems to support their future direction. Modernization of legacy systems needs to be implemented to ensure the systems are aligned with global changes as well as improving the competitiveness of the organizations. This study, therefore, reviewed the phases and factors involved in legacy systems modernization to identify gaps and their insufficiencies. There are many studies on legacy systems, but only a few have focused on the overall process of legacy systems modernization. Most studies on legacy systems are technical in nature and refer to specific aspects and phases of modernization. This study aims to provide overall guidance to the organizations in performing legacy systems modernization.

Agile methods adoption has increased in recent years because of its contribution to the success rate of project development. Nevertheless, the success rate of projects implemented using Agile methods has not completely reached its expected mark, and selecting the appropriate Agile methods is one of the reasons for such lag. Selecting the appropriate Agile methods is a challenging task because there are so many methods to select from. In addition, a lot of organizations consider the selection of Agile methods as a mammoth task. Therefore, to assist Agile team members, this study aimed to investigate how the appropriate Agile methods can be determined for different projects. Based on a Grounded Theory study, 23 Agile experts drawn from 19 teams across thirteen countries were interviewed. Hence, this study employed the Ground Theory of selecting Agile methods. Sixteen factors, grouped into five categories, have been found to affect the selection of twenty Agile methods. The nature of project (size, maturity, criticality and decomposability), development team skills (communication skills, domain knowledge, team technical skills and maturity), project constraints (cost/value/ROI, cost of change, time, scope and requirements volatility), customer involvement (collaboration, commitment and domain knowledge) and organizational culture (type of organizational culture) are the key factors that should guide Agile team members in the selection of an appropriate Agile methods based on the value these factors have for different organizations and/or different projects.

Information Security Management (ISM) concerns shielding the integrity, confidentiality, availability, authenticity, reliability and accountability of the organisation’s information from unauthorised access in order to ensure business continuity and customers’ confidence. The importance of information security (IS) in today’s situation should be given due attention. Recognising its importance, organisations nowadays have devoted wide efforts in protecting their information. They establish information security policy, processes, and procedures as well as reengineer their organisational structures to align with ISM principles. Regardless of the efforts, security incidents continue to occur in many organisations. This phenomenon shows that the current implementation of ISM is still ineffective due to unaware of the factors contributing to the success of ISM. Thus, the objective of this paper is to identify ISM success factors and their elements through a large-scale survey. The survey involves 243 practitioners from statutory bodies, public and private organisations in Malaysia. The results of the survey indicate that top management, IS coordinator team, ISM team, IS audit team, employees, third parties, IS policy, IS procedures, resource planning, competency development and awareness, risk management, business continuity management, IS audit and IT infrastructure are the factors that contribute to the success of ISM implementation. These factors shall guide practitioners in planning and refining ISM implementation in their organisations.

Requirements change has been regarded as a substantial risk in software development projects. The factors that contribute to the risk are identified through impact analysis, which later determine the planning of the change implementation. The analysis is however not straightforward as the risk factors that constitute requirements change implementation is currently not much explored. This paper identifies the risk factors by firstly collating them qualitatively through a review of related work and a focus group study. The factors are then confirmed quantitatively through a survey in which data is analysed by using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The survey comprise of 276 practitioners from software industry who are involved in the impact analysis. The results indicate that User, Project Team, Top Management, Third Party, Organisation, Identification of Change, Existing Product and Planning of Change Implementation are the significant risk factors in planning of requirements change implementation.

Rapid and unpredictable technology advancements cause a rise in demand for software products that can be delivered faster, adapt to volatile changes and save cost. Over the years, Agile Software Development (ASD) becomes more suitable as the software process that can cater to those demands while still maintaining the quality desired. With this Agile nature, it is apparent that the team that develops the software product need to have unique features as well. The team should also be formed correctly to gain effectiveness, strong performance and ultimately project success. Ineffective teams can be caused by, among others, conflict, inadequate skillset, unbalanced role assignment, lack of teamwork and non-competent team members. However, by far, the characteristics that need to be considered in forming effective teams are yet to be formalized. Thus, this study aims to identify the necessary characteristics in composing a competent team that is well balanced and can create coherent teamwork. The study involves a qualitative literature review which includes past studies about team formation specifically in the software development domain. The data were collected from online journal databases and analyzed using content analysis. From the analysis, six characteristics together with their attributes were identified as vital in team formation. Another two characteristics were also identified as influencing the six-team formation characteristics. These findings will need further empirical rigor before they can become a complete Agile Software Development team composition model. This model is believed to assist Agile practitioners in forming effective teams for their development projects.

Scrum and Kanban methods handle and manage the progress of software development. These methods are used in different situations and workflows. Hence, they are effective for different Agile team members and projects in diverse situations. However, the use of inappropriate method or practice leads to software development processes that are inflexible and wasteful, impacting the organization and causing inefficient development. Adopters of Scrum and Kanban believe that wrong practices of both methods are risky and thus, Agile team members should be assisted in their decision making. The aim of this study is to determine the main factors to consider during the selection of Kanban and Scrum method. The identification of the factors was conducted through in-depth review of the relevant work, after which, content analysis was employed in the analysis of data. As discovered, method prescription, roles and responsibilities, adoption time, team size, batch size, requirements prioritization, feature size, lead time, technical practices, cost and quality were the main factors that guide Agile team members in choosing Scrum or Kanban as well as their practices.

Persekitaran dan proses perniagaan yang dinamik menyebab perubahan keperluan dalam perisian tidak dapat dielak. Perubahan keperluan perisian perlu diurus dengan sebaiknya melalui analisis impak yang melibatkan pengenalpastian faktor penyumbang dan penilaian kesan perubahan keperluan terhadap persekitaran semasa. Analisis impak ini perlu disempurna oleh pasukan yang khas iaitu Jawatankuasa Kawalan Perubahan (JKP). Pada dasarnya, analisis impak membantu JKP memperoleh gambaran potensi impak sesuatu perubahan terhadap organisasi sebelum melaksananya. Ini perlu kerana analisis impak yang tidak sempurna boleh menjejas projek sekali gus kemampanan organisasi. Kajian lampau mengenal pasti beberapa faktor teknikal dan bukan teknikal yang perlu diambil kira semasa analisis impak perubahan keperluan perisian. Namun faktor tersebut dikaji secara bersendiri dan berasingan menyebabkan analisis impak menyeluruh sukar dilakukan. Justeru, kajian ini bertujuan mengenal pasti dan menggabung faktor tersebut sebagai model analisis impak perubahan keperluan yang bersepadu. Kajian ini bersifat kualitatif dengan data dikumpul mengguna teknik temu bual secara kumpulan fokus. Data yang dikumpul dianalisis mengguna teknik analisis kandungan. Hasil analisis mendapati terdapat empat kategori faktor yang terlibat iaitu Manusia, Proses, Teknologi (sedia ada) dan Organisasi. Setiap kategori faktor mengandungi faktor dan elemen tertentu yang dihubungkan untuk menggambarperkaitannya. Model ini dapat diguna oleh JKP sebagai panduan menilai sesuatu permintaan bagi perubahan keperluan perisian.

Case Method (CM) is a teaching technique that uses real cases as a tool for delivering a particular subject. Software Engineering (SE) is a discipline that concerns the principles, methods and tools for developing and improving software. SE education therefore tends to be too theoretical. To impose realism where the students can be exposed to real scenarios and learn to apply those theories through discovery, CM is seen as necessary for SE education. This paper presents a survey conducted to a set of students who employed CM in learning SE. The objective of the survey was to assess the degree of acceptance among SE students on the usage of CM. The participants were Undergraduates and Masters that comprise local, international and matured students. The data were analysed quantitatively using descriptive statistics and qualitatively through content analysis. The results indicate that CM can be useful for SE education. The participants accepted CM because it improves the understanding of subject matter, enhances interpersonal skills and provides meaningful learning experience. Nonetheless, CM is seen as effective only when certain conditions are met. The results can be used by SE educators to enhance teaching and learning in future.

Usability has been increasingly recognized as a significant quality dimension to determine the success of mobile applications. Due to its importance, a number of usability guidelines have been proposed to direct the design of usable applications. The guidelines are intended particularly for desktop and web-based applications. Mobile applications on the other hand are different in many ways from those applications due to the mobility nature of mobile devices. To date, the usability guidelines for mobile applications are very limited. They in fact are isolated, which makes usability evaluation for mobile devices more difficult. This study aims to address this issue by proposing a set of usability dimensions that should be considered for designing and evaluating mobile applications. The dimensions are illustrated as a model that considers four contextual factors: user, environment, technology and task/activity. The model was proposed based on the reviews of previous related studies, which were analyzed by using content analysis approach. Twenty-five dimensions were found from the analysis. The dimensions however were synthesized and prioritized based on their importance towards designing usable mobile applications. As a result, ten most important dimensions were outlined in the model. The model can be used by practitioners and researchers as a guideline to design usable mobile applications and further research can be conducted in the near future.

Student Centered Learning Environment is a learning environment that describes thinking methods about learning and teaching that emphasizes student responsibility in learning activities such as planning, interacting with lecturers and other students, doing research and evaluating learning. This means that students play an important and active role in learning. Applying the concept to Computer Science final year project requires students to be independent in carrying out activities related to the research literature, mastering software tools or libraries, designing, developing and testing software, and writing reports. Theoretically, a supervisor plays the role of an advisor to ensure the project is successfully completed within the designated timeframe. However, most of the time, students are often given the freedom to manage their project, sometimes without adequate guidance from supervisors. This is a rather complicated problem for moderate and weak students. For students to actively participate in their own learning they must possess self-monitoring and other meta-cognitive skills which are not necessarily inherent in every individual. A survey done in our faculty shows that Computer Science students face a number of problems in the course of accomplishing their final year project which include time management, anxiety, academicachievements, and capability of managing project and strategy to complete the project (listed according to factors that most affected them). This paper will discuss the role of the Final Year Project Supervision Management System in support of student-centered learning for final year project at the School of Computer Science. Mapping between system features and principles of student centered learning is also presented. The system has been developed to monitor students’ progress both in software development and report writing, as well as managing the process of allocating supervisors and examiners to students and grading.

Problem statement: Education management is a centralized process of planning, monitoring and controlling entities involved in education affairs so that they align with educational aspirations. It normally concerns several layers of administration that requires different types of information from various operational units. Operational units in education however are scattered and managed independently. As a result, most information is isolated where it is not easily and readily available. This hinders executives from making good judgment since a holistic view about the operations cannot be obtained instantly. Approach: This issue can be resolved, for instance, by having an Executive Information System (EIS). EIS is a dedicated information system that has the capacity to not only retrieving and storing information but also performing comparative analyses through its mapping and merging feature. EIS however does not depend entirely on technology. To succeed, an EIS should be developed based on concrete underlying bases that consider both operational and business aspects. The bases are called Critical Success Factors (CSF). This study discusses the CSF that influence EIS development for education domain. The factors were identified through reviews of related work and two iterations of field work that used semi-structured interviews as the means of data collection. The study adopted qualitative approach where the data were analyzed by using content analysis. Results: The collated CSF form a framework of successful EIS development, which can be employed by education stakeholders as a guideline for developing EIS in the institution. Conclusion: The framework is seen as feasible and practical to be applied in education domain as it considers the necessary elements of education business.

Software testing outsourcing appears to be the best alternative to acquire better software quality with competent ratification by extrinsic parties who have the capability to do it. Through the effort, organizations are peeking to promising benefits constitute in it such as current testing technology, experts, an abridgment of the project’s duration and more concentration on the main organisation’s activity. Along with these benefits, one important reason that encourages the decision is optimization of cost expenditure, which the strategy is perceived as a good move for a competitive organization. However, implementing such preference eventually results in a different outcome. Organizations have to bear the higher cost and incur losses of cost deviation from the expected estimation. The conflicting between cost and benefits raises an important concern of striving better cost estimation for such projects. This paper aims to address this interest by analyzing the existing literature in order to identify the contributing factors towards better cost estimation for software testing outsourcing project-context. The analysis is done using the content analysis method. The results could be divided into two categories; which are the cost items and contributing factors. Cost items consist of direct cost and indirect cost, which refers to the expenses for the project. While the contributing factors consist of people and environment, which are needed to produce accurate cost estimation. The findings provide an insight to excogitate attentively the essentials in the endeavor of improving the exactitude of cost estimation for software testing outsourcing project.

Scrumban is a combination of practices from Kanban and Scrum practices to manage the development of software based on different project situations. Scrumban practices formation can differ based on different projects and team members. However, since each method has its own pros and cons, inappropriate formation of Scrumban practices may lead to increased waste and time of development, and decreased quality, which in turn, affect the Agile organizations and cause inefficient and ineffective development. Practitioners of Kanban and Scrum are convinced that a combination of both methods is better than the use of one and thus, practitioners should be guided in their decision making. This study aims to show how Scrumban method is formed based on a combination of Kanban and Scrum methods. Scrumban formation and the identification of the factors, which assist in the combination of Kanban and Scrum were conducted through a review of the previous work and semi-structured interviews with 7 Agile experts, after which, content analysis was conducted to analyse the gathered data. Different factors - the method prescription, roles and responsibilities, adoption time, team size, batch size, requirements prioritization, feature size, lead time, technical practices, cost and quality, assist Agile team members in the formation of Scrumban by combining appropriate Kanban and Scrum practices. In addition, Scrumban were found to be more appropriate than Scrum or Kanban in saving time, improving quality and minimizing waste.

Problem statement: Formal notations employ mathematical symbols and interpretation to illustrate system elements. The formality imposed by the notations allows the accuracy and consistency of a system model to be confirmed by verification tools. Formal notations on the other hand are difficult to understand and use by most users. As supporting instruments, verification tools are expected to be as usable as possible to overcome this limitation. Approach: This study presented a survey conducted on two instances of verification tools that support a formal method, namely B. The focus of the survey was to identify the important features that are necessary for verification tools to become usable to users. The survey assessed the tools’ usability based on the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations (CD) framework and several criteria suggested by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Sixty-three participants responded to the survey. The data was analyzed by using the grounded theory. Results: The analysis enabled the identification of abstract concepts and properties that formed a design guideline for usable verification tools. The guideline includes there main aspects; Interface, Utilities and Resources Management. Conclusion: The guideline acts as a roadmap for tool designers to design verification tools that promote the use of formal notations.

The modeling of computer software is complex and error prone. Modeling methods and languages must be usable which implies easy to learn. Cognitive dimensions and grounded theory were used to analyse the usability and learnabilty of the new modeling language Unified Modeling Language- B: UML-B. A systematic survey of users’ encounters and interactions with UML-B clarified its good and bad features. The results indicate that UML-B is more usable and learnable than comparative modeling languages such as ‘B’. The results of this study will improve the future development of UML-B to increase its learnability hence its usability.

Conceptual models communicate the important aspects of a problem domain to stakeholders. The quality of the models is highly dependent on the usability of the modeling method used. This paper presents a survey conducted on a method that integrates the use of a semiformal notation, namely the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and a formal notation, namely B. The survey assessed the usability of the method by using the grounded theory, the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations (CD) framework, and several criteria suggested by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Ten participants responded to the survey. The results suggest that the method is accessible to users when the principles and roles of each notation are obvious and well understood, and when there is strong support from the environment. Supported by the findings, a usability profile based on CD for designing a method that integrates semiformal and formal notations is proposed.

Software testing outsourcing is becoming attractive among organisations that desire to gain high quality products within reasonable cost while allowing testing experts to assure its quality. Despite these promising advantages however, organisations have yet to learn the factors that contribute to such projects’ success. The necessary planning and actions could not thus be taken towards the effort. Consequently, software testing outsourcing projects still fail. This study aimed to address this concern by collating the factors from previous research. The investigation continued by confirming the factors besides discovering other relevant factors from software testing practitioners. This study adopted qualitative approach where it employed semi-structured interviews involving five practitioners, who represented both client and vendor. The data were analysed using content analysis. The results show that there are two aspects to be considered, namely Process and People. The former contains nine factors and the latter comprises four factors. Each factor has specific elements, which delineates the characteristics or roles that it owns. The findings provide practitioners with understanding of conducting software testing outsourcing projects effectively.