Browsing by Author "Wang, Zhe"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    An Axiom Based Metamodel for Software Process Formalisation: An Ontology Approach
    (Springer, Cham, 2017) Kabaale, Edward; Wen, Lian; Wang, Zhe; Rout, Terry
    Software development usually follows well known process models and standards for development processes. However, these are usually diverse and described in natural language which complicates their automation, adaptivity and verification. The need for process formalization has long been highlighted, and we have provided a formalization and translation algorithm to that effect in earlier work. However, to systematically and faithfully formalize heterogeneous processes from different standards and process models, there is a need to utilize uniform concepts to underpin the formalization process. Meta models and ontologies have been explored recently to lay a foundation for structuring and expressing additional rigour to process formalization. In this study, we develop an axiom based meta model utilizing power type patterns as a conceptual framework to underpin homogeneous process formalization. The advantage of an axiomatic and power type based meta model approach lies in its potential to determine the meta model basic constituents and formalism as well as its extensibility and adaptability. We formalize the meta model using ontologies while adopting use cases from ISO/IEC 29110 and ISO/IEC 24744 standards for meta model illustrations. Ontology based process descriptions enable process automated verification and adaptivity capability through the use of ontology reasoning support engines
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    Ensuring Conformance to Process Standards Through Formal Verification
    (Springer, Cham, 2018) Kabaale, Edward; Wen, Lian; Wang, Zhe; Rout, Terry
    Software process standards and models encapsulate best practices and guidelines for engineering and managing software. These are usually prescribed in natural language. However, natural language based process specifications can be inconsistent and ambiguous that makes it difficult to monitor and verify if they have been fully implemented and adhered too in a given software project. Besides the process of defining and documenting the necessary evidence to comply with process standard requirements is often manual, time consuming and laborious. In earlier studies, we developed a translation scheme and metamodel for consistent and uniform software process formalisation. In the current study, we leverage the formal process specification to develop a two-step formal process verification approach; first we extract process requirements from the standard documents and translate them into logical axioms. We then augment these axioms with additional informationin a process verification ontology. This ontology is then utilised in conformance verification of a performed process.We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with software requirements analysis process and a case study.
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    Integrating Culture Awareness and Formalisation in Software Process Assessment and Improvement for Very Small Entities (VSEs)
    (Springer, Cham, 2018) Nonoyama, Tatsuya; Kabaale, Edward; Wen, Lian; Tuffley, David; Wang, Zhe
    Software process assessment and process improvement are fundamentally essential if software companies are to improve their development processes and perform at best practice level. However, established software process assessment models (PAMs) like SPICE or CMMI are scaled to be applicable to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) all the way up to very large companies. So far, there is no mature PAM applicable to Very Small Entities (VSEs), which are usually defined as companies with 25 or less employees. As the majority of software companies are classified as VSEs, the lack of a mature PAM is a glaring omission in the Software Engineering domain in need of rectification. A major challenge with producing a VSE-appropriate PAM is the cultural diversity of VSEs. It is not amenable to a one size fits all solution suitable for all VSEs. Another challenge is the high human resource cost of a SPICE or CMMI process assessment. It is often cost-prohibitive for VSEs. This paper therefore proposes a model to meet the need; the Culture Impact on Software Assessment (CISA). CISA facilitates the development of PAMs that are both lightweight, making them easy and cheap to apply, while also being highly relevant to individual VSE, thereby significantly increasing the efficiency of PAMs. Additionally, this paper introduces a formal specification (ontology) of CISA to enable future development of software process semi-automatic assessment tools that will greatly reduce the cost for software process assessment for VSEs.
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    Representing Software Process in Description Logics: An Ontology Approach for Software Process Reasoning and Verification
    (Springer, Cham., 2016) Kabaale, Edward; Wen, Lian; Wang, Zhe; Rout, Terry
    Software process is critical for producing high quality software. However, software processes are usually described in natural language which makes it difficult to verify if they have been fully or how well implemented in complex software projects. It’s also hard for practitioners to implement processes from different standards and make sure they work harmonically, consistently and completely. Composition Tree (CT) notation, a Behavior Engineering approach has been successfully used to formalize software process in previous work. However, there are no reasoning tools for CT to automatically check and verify the modeled software processes. In this study we explore the synergy of software process modeling and Description Logics (DLs). Given the rich expressiveness of DLs and their efficient and automated reasoning support, DLs can be used to reason and verify software processes more effectively. We propose an algorithm for transforming CT software process model into a DL so that DL reasoning engines can be used to perform automated software process analysis.