| 1. |
- Aaboen, Lise, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Nourishment for the piggy bank : facilitation of external financing in incubators
- 2011
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In: International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation. - : Inderscience. - 1470-6075 .- 1741-5284. ; 10 3-4, s. 354-374
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper, we argue that incubators facilitate access to external financing for their incubatees. Incubators use a wide range of activities to facilitate the accessing of external financing from public and private sources. We have grouped these into two sets of activities. The general activities aim to develop the conditions for external financing through information, education of incubatees, network-building and lobbying activities. The specific activities aim to assist the individual incubatee in their pursuit of external finance through help in application procedures, establishing need for capital, making contacts with the best public or private investor, etc. Based on the survey data, we have also shown that it is more common for incubatees to attract external capital compared to non-incubator firms. The incubatees seem especially successful in attracting public capital. The incubatees also attract more private external capital, however, the observed frequency of private capital in the incubatees are low.
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| 2. |
- Ahmad, E., et al.
(author)
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Assessment and support for software capstone projects at the undergraduate level: A survey and rubrics
- 2011
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In: Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT), 2011, Islamabad, 19-21 Dec. 2011. - Islamabad. - 9780769546254 ; , s. 25 - 32
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Software engineering and computer science students conduct a capstone project during the final year of their degree programs. These projects are essential in validating that students have gained required knowledge and they can synthesize and use that knowledge to solve real world problems. However, the external requirements on educational programs often do not provide detailed guidelines for how to conduct or support these capstone projects, which may lead to variations among universities. This paper presents the results from a survey conducted at 19 different Pakistani universities of the current management practices and assessment criteria used for the capstone project courses at Undergraduate level. Based upon the results of this survey and similar work on Master Thesis capstone projects in Sweden, we present assessment rubrics for software-related undergraduate capstone projects. We also present recommendations for the continuous improvement of capstone projects.
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| 3. |
- Alahyari, Hiva, 1979, et al.
(author)
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A study of value in agile software development organizations
- 2017
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In: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier BV. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 125, s. 271-288
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Agile manifesto focuses on the delivery of valuable software. In Lean, the principles emphasise value, where every activity that does not add value is seen as waste. Despite the strong focus on value, and that the primary critical success factor for software intensive product development lies in the value domain, no empirical study has investigated specifically what value is. This paper presents an empirical study that investigates how value is interpreted and prioritised, and how value is assured and measured. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 23 participants from 14 agile software development organisations. The contribution of this study is fourfold. First, it examines how value is perceived amongst agile software development organisations. Second, it compares the perceptions and priorities of the perceived values by domains and roles. Third, it includes an examination of what practices are used to achieve value in industry, and what hinders the achievement of value. Fourth, it characterises what measurements are used to assure, and evaluate value-creation activities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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| 4. |
- Alahyari, Hiva, 1979, et al.
(author)
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An exploratory study of waste in software development organizations using agile or lean approaches : A multiple case study at 14 organizations
- 2019
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In: Information and Software Technology. - : Elsevier B.V.. - 0950-5849 .- 1873-6025. ; 107, s. 78-94
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Context: The principal focus of lean is the identification and elimination of waste from the process with respect to maximizing customer value. Similarly, the purpose of agile is to maximize customer value and minimize unnecessary work and time delays. In both cases the concept of waste is important. Through an empirical study, we explore how waste is approached in agile software development organizations. Objective: This paper explores the concept of waste in agile/lean software development organizations and how it is defined, used, prioritized, reduced, or eliminated in practice Method: The data were collected using semi-structured open-interviews. 23 practitioners from 14 embedded software development organizations were interviewed representing two core roles in each organization. Results: Various wastes, categorized in 10 different categories, were identified by the respondents. From the mentioned wastes, not all were necessarily waste per se but could be symptoms caused by wastes. From the seven wastes of lean, Task-switching was ranked as the most important, and Extra-features, as the least important wastes according to the respondents’ opinion. However, most companies do not have their own or use an established definition of waste, more importantly, very few actively identify or try to eliminate waste in their organizations beyond local initiatives on project level. Conclusion: In order to identify, recognize and eliminate waste, a common understanding, and a joint and holistic view of the concept is needed. It is also important to optimize the whole organization and the whole product, as waste on one level can be important on another, thus sub-optimization should be avoided. Furthermore, to achieve a sustainable and effective waste handling, both the short-term and the long-term perspectives need to be considered. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.
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| 5. |
- Alégroth, Emil, 1984, et al.
(author)
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Maintenance of automated test suites in industry: An empirical study on Visual GUI Testing
- 2016
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In: Information and Software Technology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0950-5849 .- 1873-6025. ; 73, s. 66-80
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Context: Verification and validation (V&V) activities make up 20-50% of the total development costs of a software system in practice. Test automation is proposed to lower these V&V costs but available research only provides limited empirical data from industrial practice about the maintenance costs of automated tests and what factors affect these costs. In particular, these costs and factors are unknown for automated GUI-based testing. Objective: This paper addresses this lack of knowledge through analysis of the costs and factors associated with the maintenance of automated GUI-based tests in industrial practice. Method: An empirical study at two companies, Siemens and Saab, is reported where interviews about, and empirical work with, Visual GUI Testing is performed to acquire data about the technique's maintenance costs and feasibility. Results: 13 factors are observed that affect maintenance, e.g. tester knowledge/experience and test case complexity. Further, statistical analysis shows that developing new test scripts is costlier than maintenance but also that frequent maintenance is less costly than infrequent, big bang maintenance. In addition a cost model, based on previous work, is presented that estimates the time to positive return on investment (ROI) of test automation compared to manual testing. Conclusions: It is concluded that test automation can lower overall software development costs of a project while also having positive effects on software quality. However, maintenance costs can still be considerable and the less time a company currently spends on manual testing, the more time is required before positive, economic, ROI is reached after automation.
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| 6. |
- Alégroth, Emil, et al.
(author)
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On the long-term use of visual gui testing in industrial practice : a case study
- 2017
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In: Empirical Software Engineering. - : Springer. - 1382-3256 .- 1573-7616. ; 22:6, s. 2937-2971
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Visual GUI Testing (VGT) is a tool-driven technique for automated GUI-based testing that uses image recognition to interact with and assert the correctness of the behavior of a system through its GUI as it is shown to the user. The technique’s applicability, e.g. defect-finding ability, and feasibility, e.g. time to positive return on investment, have been shown through empirical studies in industrial practice. However, there is a lack of studies that evaluate the usefulness and challenges associated with VGT when used long-term (years) in industrial practice. This paper evaluates how VGT was adopted, applied and why it was abandoned at the music streaming application development company, Spotify, after several years of use. A qualitative study with two workshops and five well chosen employees is performed at the company, supported by a survey, which is analyzed with a grounded theory approach to answer the study’s three research questions. The interviews provide insights into the challenges, problems and limitations, but also benefits, that Spotify experienced during the adoption and use of VGT. However, due to the technique’s drawbacks, VGT has been abandoned for a new technique/framework, simply called the Test interface. The Test interface is considered more robust and flexible for Spotify’s needs but has several drawbacks, including that it does not test the actual GUI as shown to the user like VGT does. From the study’s results it is concluded that VGT can be used long-term in industrial practice but it requires organizational change as well as engineering best practices to be beneficial. Through synthesis of the study’s results, and results from previous work, a set of guidelines are presented that aim to aid practitioners to adopt and use VGT in industrial practice. However, due to the abandonment of the technique, future research is required to analyze in what types of projects the technique is, and is not, long-term viable. To this end, we also present Spotify’s Test interface solution for automated GUI-based testing and conclude that it has its own benefits and drawbacks.
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| 7. |
- Alégroth, Emil, et al.
(author)
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Replicating Rare Software Failures with Exploratory Visual GUI Testing
- 2017
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In: IEEE Software. - : IEEE Computer Society. - 0740-7459 .- 1937-4194. ; 34:5, s. 53-59
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Saab AB developed software that had a defect that manifested itself only after months of continuous system use. After years of customer failure reports, the defect still persisted, until Saab developed failure replication based on visual GUI testing. © 1984-2012 IEEE.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Alégroth, Emil, 1984, et al.
(author)
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Visual GUI testing in practice: challenges, problemsand limitations
- 2015
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In: Empirical Software Engineering. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1573-7616 .- 1382-3256. ; 20:3, s. 694-744
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In today's software development industry, high-level tests such as Graphical User Interface (GUI) based system and acceptance tests are mostly performed with manual practices that are often costly, tedious and error prone. Test automation has been proposed to solve these problems but most automation techniques approach testing from a lower level of system abstraction. Their suitability for high-level tests has therefore been questioned. High-level test automation techniques such as Record and Replay exist, but studies suggest that these techniques suffer from limitations, e.g. sensitivity to GUI layout or code changes, system implementation dependencies, etc. Visual GUI Testing (VGT) is an emerging technique in industrial practice with perceived higher flexibility and robustness to certain GUI changes than previous high-level (GUI) test automation techniques. The core of VGT is image recognition which is applied to analyze and interact with the bitmap layer of a system's front end. By coupling image recognition with test scripts, VGT tools can emulate end user behavior on almost any GUI-based system, regardless of implementation language, operating system or platform. However, VGT is not without its own challenges, problems and limitations (CPLs) but, like for many other automated test techniques, there is a lack of empirically-based knowledge of these CPLs and how they impact industrial applicability. Crucially, there is also a lack of information on the cost of applying this type of test automation in industry. This manuscript reports an empirical, multi-unit case study performed at two Swedish companies that develop safety-critical software. It studies their transition from manual system test cases into tests automated with VGT. In total, four different test suites that together include more than 300 high-level system test cases were automated for two multi-million lines of code systems. The results show that the transitioned test cases could find defects in the tested systems and that all applicable test cases could be automated. However, during these transition projects a number of hurdles had to be addressed; a total of 58 different CPLs were identified and then categorized into 26 types. We present these CPL types and an analysis of the implications for the transition to and use of VGT in industrial software development practice. In addition, four high-level solutions are presented that were identified during the study, which would address about half of the identified CPLs. Furthermore, collected metrics on cost and return on investment of the VGT transition are reported together with information about the VGT suites' defect finding ability. Nine of the identified defects are reported, 5 of which were unknown to testers with extensive experience from using the manual test suites. The main conclusion from this study is that even though there are many challenges related to the transition and usage of VGT, the technique is still valuable, flexible and considered cost-effective by the industrial practitioners. The presented CPLs also provide decision support in the use and advancement of VGT and potentially other automated testing techniques similar to VGT, e.g. Record and Replay.
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| 10. |
- Ali, Nauman bin, et al.
(author)
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The impact of a proposal for innovation measurement in the software industry
- 2020
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In: International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. - New York, NY, USA : IEEE Computer Society. - 1949-3789 .- 1949-3770. - 9781450375801
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Measuring an organization's capability to innovate and assessing its innovation output and performance is a challenging task. Previously, a comprehensive model and a suite of measurements to support this task were proposed. Aims: In the current paper, seven years since the publication of the paper titled Towards innovation measurement in the software industry, we have reflected on the impact of thework. Method:We have mainly relied on quantitative and qualitative analysis of the citations of the paper using an established classification schema. Results: We found that the article has had a significant scientific impact (indicated by the number of citations), i.e., (1) cited in literature from both software engineering and other fields, (2) cited in grey literature and peerreviewed literature, and (3) substantial citations in literature not published in the English language. However, we consider a majority of the citations in the peer-reviewed literature (75 out of 116) as neutral, i.e., they have not used the innovation measurement paper in any substantial way. All in all, 38 out of 116 have used, modified or based their work on the definitions, measurements or the model proposed in the article. This analysis revealed a significant weakness of the citing work, i.e., among the citing papers, we found only two explicit comparisons to the innovation measurement proposal, and we found no papers that identify weaknesses of said proposal. Conclusions: This work highlights the need for being cautious of relying solely on the number of citations for understanding impact, and the need for further improving and supporting the peer-review process to identify unwarranted citations in papers. © 2020 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
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