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Theoretical and empirical studies on essence-based adaptive software engineering

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Abstract

The OMG Essence standard was published as the kernel for software engineering methods in 2014. We show that the Essence view of software engineering is reminiscent of a nondeterministic, multidimensional finite state machine, and that the Essence lends support to a semi-Markov decision process model of software engineering which, in practice, facilitates a goal-driven adaptive software engineering. We develop an activity-state mapping algorithm and a goal-activity cover algorithm based on the Essence, which can help automate the health monitoring of project states and the adaptive planning of project activities in a software engineering project. Practical applications of the model and algorithms are illustrated. Benefits to software practitioners of the proposed approach are measured through statistical experiments.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. B0101-16-1272, Development of Device Collaborative Giga-Level Smart Cloudlet Technology).

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Correspondence to June Sung Park.

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Dr. Park serves as President of SEMAT, Inc. (http://semat.org), and Chair of Essence 1.2 Revision Task Force in OMG.

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Park, J.S., Jang, J. & Lee, E. Theoretical and empirical studies on essence-based adaptive software engineering. Inf Technol Manag 19, 37–49 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-016-0273-5

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