（Dis）Economies of Scale in Business Software Systems Development and Enhancement Projects

In the software engineering literature, it is commonly believed that economies of scale do not occur in case of software Development and Enhancement Projects （D＆EP）. Their per-unit cost does not decrease but increase with the growth of such projects product size. Thus this is diseconomies of scale that occur in them. The significance of this phenomenon results from the fact that it is commonly considered to be one of the fundamental objective causes of their low effectiveness. This is of particular significance with regard to Business Software Systems （BSS） D＆EP characterized by exceptionally low effectiveness comparing to other software D＆EP. Thus the paper aims at answering the following two questions： （1） Do economies of scale really not occur in BSS D＆EP？ （2） If economies of scale may occur in BSS D＆EP, what factors are then promoting them？ These issues classify into economics problems of software engineering research and practice.

Fuzzy Logic Based Group Maturity Rating for Software Performance Prediction

Driven by market requirements, software services organizations have adopted various software engineering process models （such as capability maturity model （CMM）, capability maturity model integration （CMMI）, ISO 9001：2000, etc.） and practice of the project management concepts defined in the project management body of knowledge. While this has definitely helped organizations to bring some methods into the software development madness, there always exists a demand for comparing various groups within the organization in terms of the practice of these defined process models. Even though there exist many metrics for comparison, considering the variety of projects in terms of technology, life cycle, etc., finding a single metric that caters to this is a difficult task. This paper proposes a model for arriving at a rating on group maturity within the organization. Considering the linguistic or imprecise and uncertain nature of software measurements, fuzzy logic approach is used for the proposed model. Without the barriers like technology or life cycle difference, the proposed model helps the organization to compare different groups within it with reasonable precision.

Optimizing Bidders Selection of Multi-Round Procurement Problem in Software Project Management Using Parallel Max-Min Ant System Algorithm

This paper presents a Game-theoretic optimization via Parallel Min-Max Ant System(PMMAS)algorithm is used in practice to determine the Nash equilibrium value to resolve the confusion in choosing appropriate bidders of multi-round procurement problem in software project management.To this end,we introduce an approach that proposes:(i)A Game-theoretic model of multiround procurement problem(ii)A Nash equilibrium strategy corresponds to multi-round strategy bid(iii)An application of PSO for the determination of global Nash equilibrium.The balance point in Nash Equilibrium can help to maintain a sustainable structure not only in terms of project management but also in terms of future cooperation.As an alternative of procuring entities subjectively,a methodology to support decision making has been studied using Nash equilibrium to create a balance point on benefit in procurement where buyers and suppliers need multiple rounds of bidding.Our goal focus on the balance point in Nash Equilibrium to optimizing bidder selection in multi-round procurement which is the most beneficial for both investors and selected tenderers.Our PMMAS algorithm is implemented based on MPI(message passing interface)to find the approximate optimal solution for the question of how to choose bidders and ensure a path for a win-win relationship of all participants in the procurement process.We also evaluate the speedup ratio and parallel efficiency between our algorithm and other proposed algorithms.As the experiment results,the high feasibility and effectiveness of the PMMAS algorithm are verified.

Development and Experience of“Software Project Practice”Course for the Master of Software Engineering

Practice is an important phase in the teaching of software engineering.How to improve students' practical ability is a common problem for many software colleges.The course of Software Project Practice is proposed to enhance students' practical skills.In this course,the students participate in the whole process of software development practice and take the exercise of entrepreneurial project development in their learning stage.

Optimal Budget Spending for Software Testing under the Condition of Nonlinear Constraint

Software testing is a very important phase of the software development process. It is a very difficult job for a software manager to allocate optimally the financial budget to a software project during testing. In this paper the problem of optimal allocation of the software testing cost is studied. There exist several models focused on the development of software costs measuring the number of software errors remaining in the software during testing. The purpose of this paper is to use these models to formulate the optimization problems of resource allocation: Minimization of the total number of software errors remaining in the system. On the assumption that a software project consists of some independent modules, the presented approach extends previous work by defining new goal functions and extending the primary assumption and precondition.

Software Project Management Approaches for Global Software Development： A Systematic Mapping Study

Global Software Development （GSD） is a well established field of software engineering with the benefits of a global environment. Software Project Management （SPM） plays a key role in the success of GSD. As a result, the need has arisen to study and evaluate the downsides of SPM for GSD, to thereby pave the way for the development of new methods, techniques, and tools with which to tackle them. This paper aims to identify and classify research on SPM approaches for GSD that are available in the literature, to identify their current weaknesses and strengths, and to analyze their applications in industry. We performed a Systematic Mapping Study （SMS） based on six classification criteria. Eighty-four papers were selected and analyzed. The results indicate that interest in SPM for GSD has been increasing since 2006. As a class of approaches, the most frequently reported methods （40%） are those used for coordination, planning, and monitoring, along with estimation techniques that can be used to better match a distributed project. SPM for GSD requires further investigation by researchers and practitioners, particularly with respect to cost and time estimations. These findings will help overcome the challenges that must to be considered in future SPM research for GSD, especially regarding collaboration and time-zone differences.

How to manage a task-oriented virtual assistant software project:an experience report

Task-oriented virtual assistants are software systems that provide users with a natural language interface to complete domain-specific tasks.With the recent technological advances in natural language processing and machine learning,an increasing number of task-oriented virtual assistants have been developed.However,due to the well-known complexity and difficulties of the natural language understanding problem,it is challenging to manage a task-oriented virtual assistant software project.Meanwhile,the management and experience related to the development of virtual assistants are hardly studied or shared in the research community or industry,to the best of our knowledge.To bridge this knowledge gap,in this paper,we share our experience and the lessons that we have learned at managing a task-oriented virtual assistant software project at Microsoft.We believe that our practices and the lessons learned can provide a useful reference for other researchers and practitioners who aim to develop a virtual assistant system.Finally,we have developed a requirement management tool,named SpecSpace,which can facilitate the management of virtual assistant projects.