Shuji Okuda, Hironori Washizaki, Katsutoshi Shintani and Natsuki Mimura, “Linking business strategies and system demands using GQM+Strategies and Systems Modeling Language,” 4th International Conference on Enterprise Architecture and Information Systems (EAIS 2019) as a part of 8th International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics (IIAI AAI 2019), regular paper, July 7–12, 2019, Toyama, Japan

Many businesses align their business goals and IT strategies to strengthen the validity of business processes. However, the relationships between goals and strategies are often vague. Thus, the level of success derived from their interrelationships may be ambiguous. By coupling GQM+Strategies and SysML, we propose a framework to systematically associate business requirements and system functions. Moreover, we define a profile in Unified Modeling Language (UML), which allows a model to be created by coupling GQM+Strategies and a SysML-requirement diagram.

Weibin Luo, Hironori Washizaki and Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “Generating Linear Temporal Logics based on Property Specification Templates,” 20th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2019), July 8-10, 2019, Toyama, Japan (CORE Rank C)

Temporal logics are widely used in software verification such as model checking. However, creating temporal logics such as linear temporal logics (LTLs) based on property specifications written in a natural language is difficult due to practitioners’ unfamiliarity with property specifications and notations of temporal logics. Although property specification patterns have been introduced to help write correct temporal logics, creating temporal logics using property specification patterns requires an understanding of the pattern system. Since some patterns are difficult to understand, especially for beginners, and the final temporal logics are usually complicated, creating temporal logics using pattern systems is time consuming and error-prone. Here, we introduce a method to create LTLs based on property specification patterns. We experimentally compare the required time and accuracy of our approach to those using property specification patterns. Our approach can improve the creation of LTLs in terms of speed and accuracy. Although our experiment is implemented in Japanese, the results should be applicable to other languages such as English. We also provide a visualization scheme so that practitioners can understand the generated LTLs and confirm that they are correct.

Taketo Tsunoda, Hironori Washizaki, Yosiaki Fukazawa, Sakae Inoue, Yoshiiku Hanai, Masanobu Kanazawa, “Metrics to Predict Future Modifications and Defects Based on Software Requirements Specifications (SRSs),” IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing, Vol. 8, pp. 1-9, 2019. (invited from TENCON 2018)(Scopus indexed)

In software development, the quality of the upstream process greatly affects the quality of the downstream process. However, few have applied metrics to estimate quality, controlled the quality quantitatively, or verified the relationship between specifications and software quality. One reason is that specifications are described in a natural language, making it difficult to quantitatively evaluate software metrics such as complexity. Although high-quality software requirement specifications (SRSs) lead to successful implementation, neither a simple quantitative evaluation nor an effective indicator to predict modification-prone SRSs exist. Herein the effectiveness of two specification metrics (number of pages and number of previous modifications) to predict future modifications of SRSs and software defects are evaluated. We confirmed that specification quality measured by the specification metrics and software quality measured by the number of defects are related. We also revealed that future modifications are correlated with the size of SRSs.

Haruhiko Kaiya, Atsuo Hazeyama, Shinpei Ogata, Takao Okubo, Nobukazu
Yoshioka, Hironori Washizaki, “Towards A Knowledge Base for Software Developers to Choose Suitable Traceability Techniques,” 23rd International Conference on Knowledge Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES 2019), pp. 1-9, Budapest, Hungary, September 4-6, 2019. (CORE Rank B)

早稲田大学にてスマートエスイーセミナー「国際規格SQuaREに基づくソフトウェア品質の測定評価と認証セミナー」を情報処理学会 情報規格調査会JTC 1/SC 7専門委員会、文部科学省社会人教育事業enPiT-Pro スマートエスイー、コンピュータソフトウェア協会（CSAJ）、早稲田大学グローバルソフトウェアエンジニアリング研究所の共催により開催しました。具体的には2019年4月19日に、SQuaRE シリーズの 2020 年に向けた大幅な改訂状況、SQuaRE シリーズに基づく品質評価の枠組みWSQF/WSQB、品質認証制度 PSQ 認証のPSQ-Lite, Standard, Premium への大幅リニューアルについて詳しく解説する機会を開催し、約160名の多くの参加をいただきました。有難うございました。

日経xTECH, DX時代の新ソフト工学体系を世界へ、スター4人が集結
https://tech.nikkeibp.co.jp/atcl/nxt/column/18/00001/01934/

鷲崎教授と平鍋氏・萩本氏・羽生田氏によるビジネスと社会のためのソフトウェア工学体系化の取り組みが記事に取り上げられました。科目「ソフトウェア工学B」に組み入れていきます。

Interview of Prof. Washizaki and is posted on Waseda News.
鷲崎教授のインタビューが取り上げられました。

Nomura Securities Co.,Ltd.×Waseda Research

Jati H. Husen, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “Potential GQM+Strategies Improvement using Balanced Scorecard’s Perspectives,” IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing, Vol. 8, pp. 1-11, 2019.

Business-IT alignment, which is linking IT based strategies to higher business goals, is becoming more critical as organizations rely more on IT solution to conduct their business activities. While GQM+Strategies provides a platform to achieve a good business-IT alignment, lack of attention on different aspects of organization may lead to failure to do so. In this paper, we evaluated three cases of GQM+Strategies implementation to find possibilities of integrating balanced scorecard’s perspectives into GQM+Strategies framework by classifying the goals and strategies into balanced scorecard’s perspectives and evaluating based on rules of balanced scorecard framework. We found that GQM+Strategies has problem in maintaining balanced distribution of goals and strategies across different perspectives. We also saw signs that inexperienced grids developers may align the goals and strategies poorly by classifying the goals and strategies to the perspectives. Lastly, we found that transition between different balanced scorecard perspectives happened exclusively at derivation of goals from a strategy. Based on those findings, we proposed three potential methods to improve GQM+Strategies in detecting potential problems. On top of that, we explained what is needed for each method before we can finally utilize them.

Makoto Shiraishi, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa and Joseph Yoder, “Mob Programming: A System Literature Review,” 13th IEEE International Workshop on Quality Oriented Reuse of Software (QUORS 2019) collocated with COMPSAC 2019, Hosted by Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, July 15-19, 2019.

Here, we present a systematic literature review of mob programming. Mob programming is a new software development approach, a whole team (more than two people) works together on a code at the same time, in the same space, and on the same computer. The objective is to determine the current reported knowledge of mob programming. We searched two digital libraries, but only ten papers were found. These papers were analyzed and the benefits and risks of mob programming as well as the future research direction are discussed.

Devansh Tiwari, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, Tomoyuki Fukuoka, Junji Tamaki, Nobuhiro Hosotani and Munetaka Kohama, “Metrics driven architectural analysis using dependency graphs for C language projects,” 43rd IEEE Computer Society Signature Conference on Computers, Software and Applications (COMPSAC 2019), short paper, Hosted by Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, July 15-19, 2019. (CORE Rank B)

The highest share of cost for a software product is software maintenance. Hence, it is crucial to determine whether a product will succeed or fail. Identifying the quality merit of the software architecture is extremely vital as the quality merit directly relates to software maintenance. A good design always exhibits good quality characteristics because they are due to the software architecture. Although C language is a major language in the software industry, few studies investigate the quality of the architecture in C language. This study aims to evaluate the quality of C language projects in a quantifiable form by focusing on dependency graphs, associated metrics, and software architecture. In particular, this study (i) formulates the architecture of C projects, (ii) determines the metrics capturing the quality of architecture, (iii) defines code smell and metrics relations and (iv) conducts an empirical analysis on 58 C projects. We show which metrics derived from dependency graphs can detect architectural issues and verify their relation to software architecture quality.