05 Fakultät Informatik, Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/handle/11682/6
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Item Open Access Experiences with applying STPA to software-intensive systems in the automotive domain(2013) Abdulkhaleq, Asim; Wagner, StefanHazard analysis is one of the most important elements in developing safe-critical systems. STPA (Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis) is a modern technique based on the new accident causation model STAMP (System-Theoretic Accident Model and Process) for analyzing hazard and safety issues, which can be applied early in the design process of a system to achieve an acceptable risk level. We have applied STPA to a well-known example of safety-critical systems in the automotive industries: Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC). The results of the application of STPA to our case study and the limitations and difficulties of applying STPA are presented.Item Open Access Field study on requirements engineering: investigation of artefacts, project parameters, and execution strategies(2012) Méndez Fernández, Daniel; Wagner, Stefan; Lochmann, Klaus; Baumann, Andrea; Carne, Holger deContext Requirements Engineering (RE) is a critical discipline mostly driven by uncertainty, since it is influenced by the customer domain or by the development process model used. Volatile project environments restrict the choice of methods and the decision about which artefacts to produce in RE. Objective We aim to investigate RE processes in successful project environments to discover characteristics and strategies that allow us to elaborate RE tailoring approaches in the future. Method We perform a field study on a set of projects at one company. First, we investigate by content analysis which RE artefacts were produced in each project and to what extent they were produced. Second, we perform qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews to discover project parameters that relate to the produced artefacts. Third, we use cluster analysis to infer artefact patterns and probable RE execution strategies, which are the responses to specific project parameters. Fourth, we investigate by statistical tests the effort spent in each strategy in relation to the effort spent in change requests to evaluate the efficiency of execution strategies. Results We identified three artefact patterns and corresponding execution strategies. Each strategy covers different project parameters that impact the creation of certain artefacts. The effort analysis shows that the strategies have no significant differences in their effort and efficiency. Conclusions In contrast to our initial assumption that an increased effort in requirements engineering lowers the probability of change requests or project failures in general, our results show no statistically significant difference between the efficiency of the strategies. In addition, it turned out that many parameters considered as the main causes for project failures can be successfully handled. Hence, practitioners can apply the artefact patterns and related project parameters to tailor the RE process according to individual project characteristics.Item Open Access Where do we stand in requirements engineering improvement today? : first results from a mapping study(2014) Méndez Fernández, Daniel; Ognawala, Saahil; Wagner, Stefan; Daneva, MayaRequirements engineering process improvement (REPI) approaches have gained much attention in research and practice. So far, however, there is no comprehensive view on the research in REPI in terms of solutions and current state of reported evidence. This paper aims to provide an overview on the existing solutions, their underlying principles and their research type facets, i.e. their state of empirical evidence. To this end, we conducted a systematic mapping study of the REPI publication space. This paper reports on the first findings regarding research type facets of the contributions as well as selected methodological principles. We found a strong focus in the existing research on solution proposals for REPI approaches that concentrate on normative assessments and benchmarks of the RE activities rather than on holistic RE improvements according to individual goals of companies. We conclude, so far, that there is a need to broaden the work and to investigate more problem-driven REPI which also targets the improvement of the quality of the underlying RE artefacts.Item Open Access The use of application scanners in software product quality assessment(2011) Wagner, StefanSoftware development needs continuous quality control for a timely detection and removal of quality problems. This includes frequent quality assessments, which need to be automated as far as possible to be feasible. One way of automation in assessing the security of software are application scanners that test an executing software for vulnerabilities. At present, common quality assessments do not integrate such scanners for giving an overall quality statement. This paper presents an integration of application scanners into a general quality assessment method based on explicit quality models and Bayesian nets. Its applicability and the detection capabilities of common scanners are investigated in a case study with two open-source web shops.Item Open Access Introduction of static quality analysis in small- and medium-sized software enterprises: experiences from technology transfer(2014) Gleirscher, Mario; Golubitskiy, Dmitriy; Irlbeck, Maximilian; Wagner, StefanToday, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the software industry face major challenges. Their resource constraints require high efficiency in development. Furthermore, quality assurance (QA) measures need to be taken to mitigate the risk of additional, expensive effort for bug fixes or compensations. Automated static analysis (ASA) can reduce this risk because it promises low application effort. SMEs seem to take little advantage of this opportunity. Instead, they still mainly rely on the dynamic analysis approach of software testing. In this article, we report on our experiences from a technology transfer project. Our aim was to evaluate the results static analysis can provide for SMEs as well as the problems that occur when introducing and using static analysis in SMEs. We analysed five software projects from five collaborating SMEs using three different ASA techniques: code clone detection, bug pattern detection and architecture conformance analysis. Following the analysis, we applied a quality model to aggregate and evaluate the results. Our study shows that the effort required to introduce ASA techniques in SMEs is small (mostly below one person-hour each). Furthermore, we encountered only few technical problems. By means of the analyses, we could detect multiple defects in production code. The participating companies perceived the analysis results to be a helpful addition to their current QA and will include the analyses in their QA process. With the help of the Quamoco quality model, we could efficiently aggregate and rate static analysis results. However, we also encountered a partial mismatch with the opinions of the SMEs. We conclude that ASA and quality models can be a valuable and affordable addition to the QA process of SMEs.Item Open Access The Quamoco product quality modelling and assessment approach(2012) Wagner, Stefan; Lochmann, Klaus; Heinemann, Lars; Kläs, Michael; Trendowicz, Adam; Plösch, Reinhold; Seidl, Andreas; Goeb, Andreas; Streit, JonathanPublished software quality models either provide abstract quality attributes or concrete quality assessments. There are no models that seamlessly integrate both aspects. In the project Quamoco, we built a comprehensive approach with the aim to close this gap. For this, we developed in several iterations a meta quality model specifying general concepts, a quality base model covering the most important quality factors and a quality assessment approach. The meta model introduces the new concept of a product factor, which bridges the gap between concrete measurements and abstract quality aspects. Product factors have measures and instruments to operationalise quality by measurements from manual inspection and tool analysis. The base model uses the ISO 25010 quality attributes, which we refine by 200 factors and 600 measures for Java and C# systems. We found in several empirical validations that the assessment results fit to the expectations of experts for the corresponding systems. The empirical analyses also showed that several of the correlations are statistically significant and that the maintainability part of the base model has the highest correlation, which fits to the fact that this part is the most comprehensive. Although we still see room for extending and improving the base model, it shows a high correspondence with expert opinions and hence is able to form the basis for repeatable and understandable quality assessments in practice.Item Open Access Modelling the quality economics of defect-detection techniques(2006) Wagner, StefanThere are various ways to evaluate defect-detection techniques. However, for a comprehensive evaluation the only possibility is to reduce all influencing factors to costs. There are already some models and metrics for the cost of quality that can be used in that context. These models allow the structuring of the costs but do not show all influencing factors and their relationships. This paper proposes an analytical model for the economics of defect-detection techniques that can be used for analysis and optimisation of the usage of such techniques. In particular we analyse the sensitivity of the model and how the model can be applied in practice.Item Open Access Software quality models : purposes, usage scenarios and requirements(2009) Deißenböck, Florian; Juergens, Elmar; Lochmann, Klaus; Wagner, StefanSoftware quality models are a well-accepted means to support quality management of software systems. Over the last 30 years, a multitude of quality models have been proposed and applied with varying degrees of success. Despite successes and standardisation efforts, quality models are still being criticised, as their application in practice exhibits various problems. To some extent, this criticism is caused by an unclear definition of what quality models are and which purposes they serve. Beyond this, there is a lack of explicitly stated requirements for quality models with respect to their intended mode of application. To remedy this, this paper describes purposes and usage scenarios of quality models and, based on the literature and experiences from the authors, collects critique of existing models. From this, general requirements for quality models are derived. The requirements can be used to support the evaluation of existing quality models for a given context or to guide further quality model development.Item Open Access Get started imminently: using tutorials to accelerate learning in automated static analysis(2012) Ostberg, Jan-Peter; Wagner, StefanStatic analysis can be a valuable quality assurance technique as it can find problems by analysing the source code of a system without executing it. Getting used to a static analysis tool, however, can easily take several hours or even days. In particular, understanding the warnings issued by the tool and rooting out the false positives is time consuming. This lowers the benefits of static analysis and demotivates developers in using it. Games solve this problem by offering a tutorial. Those tutorials are integrated in the setting of the game and teach the basic mechanics of the game. Often it is possible to repeat or pick topics of interest. We transfer this pattern to static analysis lowering the initial barrier of using it as well as getting an understanding of software quality spread out to more people. In this paper we propose a research strategy starting with a piloting period in which we will gather information about the questions static analysis users have as well as hone our answers to these questions. These results will be integrated into the prototype. We will evaluate our work then by comparing the fix times of user using the original tool versus our tool.Item Open Access Clone detection in automotive model-based development(2008) Deißenböck, Florian; Hummel, Benjamin; Juergens, Elmar; Schätz, Bernhard; Wagner, Stefan; Girard, Jean-François; Teuchert, StefanModel-based development is becoming an increasingly common development methodology. In important domains like embedded systems already major parts of the code are generated from models specified with domain-specific modelling languages. Hence, such models are nowadays an integral part of the software development and maintenance process and therefore have a major economic and strategic value for the software-developing organisations. Nevertheless almost no work has been done on a quality defect that is known to seriously hamper maintenance productivity in classic code-based development: Cloning. This paper presents an approach for the automatic detection of clones in large models as they are used in model-based development of control systems. The approach is based on graph theory and hence can be applied to most graphical data-flow languages. An industrial case study demonstrates the applicability of our approach for the detection of clones in Matlab/Simulink models that are widely used in model-based development of embedded systems in the automotive domain.