ABSTRACT Researchers, organizations, and professionals have a great interest in defining sustainability indicators within the framework of Green Business Process Management (Green BPM), together with business process models that allow the impact of those indicators to be assessed in organizations. However, there is a lack of procedures that help organizations to incorporate indicators in Green BPM. For this reason, the so‐called Gaia method has been developed based on the Green BPM lifecycle. This method allows the implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of sustainability in business processes based on sustainability indicators. This paper presents an empirical validation of Gaia through a case study carried out in a higher education institution, emphasizing the definition and evaluation of sustainability indicators in business processes. The evaluation of sustainability indicators into the BPM lifecycle allowed sustainability indices to be obtained for each process, leading to the calculation of an organization's sustainability coefficient. The proposal has been applied to a higher education organization, which obtained a sustainability coefficient , corresponding to the medium sustainability level (). The case study has been the basis for the re‐elaboration of objectives, lines of action, and the redesign of business processes that contribute to evaluating and improving the levels of sustainability desired by the organization under study. The main limitation of our study is that the Gaia method has been applied on one organization only. A tool that automates the method to assess the sustainability of business processes is being developed.

Heuristic evaluation provides usability auditors with a structured flow of activities that enables them to obtain reliable, comparable and cost-effective usability evaluation results. Tools supporting heuristic evaluation are scarce in literature. Usevalia is an Internet-based tool that manages usability audits on the basis of heuristic evaluation. This article presents the main features of Usevalia, together with a validation of the software by following the Technology Acceptance Model, which verified the users’ perceptions of Usevalia as regards usefulness, ease of use, attitude and intention to use. A total of 22 students enrolled on a human–computer interaction course were involved in the validation. According to the results of the survey conducted with them, the proposed tool is easy to use (MD = 4.00 out of 5) and useful for conducting usability audits based on heuristic evaluation (MD = 4.00 out of 5). An expert-based validation was also carried out in order to thoroughly compare Usevalia’s features with those of a spreadsheet-based tool that performs usability audits in the traditional manner. This comparative analysis made it possible to conclude that the Usevalia tool has a higher perceived usefulness (M = 4.43) and perceived ease of use (M = 4.13) than a traditional audit tool, such as the Usability Datalogger spreadsheet (M = 2.43 and M = 3.03, respectively).

The new era of mobile technologies has revolutionized all fundamental human pursuits in that many sectors have been reshaped and tangibly improved, such as education, finance, and healthcare. Referred to as mHealth, the use of mobile technologies to track and improve health outcomes is a rapidly expanding trend. A plethora of mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are being constantly developed thanks to the rapid adoption of mobile devices. From basic exercise trackers to powerful self-management tools, mHealth apps play several roles towards the provision of better healthcare. To induce playful experiences and boost engagement, gamification has proven to be extremely effective with mHealth apps. This paper presents a catalog of reusable requirements for gamified mHealth apps in terms of gamification, functional suitability, usability, and security, Further improvements are intended to be made continuously to the catalog by adding additional requirements scattered from other standards and information sources.

This paper presents the results of an educational experiment conducted to determine whether an automated, card-based gamification strategy has an impact on the learning of Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristic usability rules. The participants in the experiment were 55 students enrolled on a human-computer interaction course. According to the results of the experiment and the hypothesis tests performed to compare both traditional and gamified approaches, there were no significant differences (t (53) = 0.66, p = 0.52), although the scores attained by the students who used the gamification strategy were slightly better when evaluated one week later ( M = 6.29 and M = 6.57 out of 10, respectively). Moreover, the students’ perceptions reflect that the proposed tool is easy to use (MD = 4.00 out of 5) and useful as regards learning (MD = 4.00 out of 5). Further research is needed to determine whether incorporating other gamification elements, such as rankings, difficulty levels, and game modes, would have a positive impact on student motivation, engagement and performance.

Abstract Connected health applications are efficient tools to improve health care services. The aim of this paper is to define a reusable requirements repository (catalog) for sustainable connected health applications based on the main related software engineering standards, e‐health technology standards, and literature. The catalog contains requirements which cover the individual, social, environmental, and technical dimensions of sustainability. The requirements presented in this paper can be very useful to connected health application stakeholders and can be adapted to specific m‐health applications. Moreover, the requirements catalog can be used to generate a checklist of requirements to evaluate and audit connected health applications. An application example is presented to show that the evaluation of connected health applications using the generated checklist is realistic.

Background: Mobile Personal Health Records (mPHRs) are mobile applications that allow organizing and saving the patients' health data in order to ease their management and access for both patients and doctors. Objective: This study aims to evaluate, based on ISO/IEC 25010 quality standard, the software quality of mPHRs for pregnancy monitoring. Method: An External quality evaluation was carried out on 17 pregnancy monitoring mPHRs for iOS and Android. The evaluation consisted of performing a set of tasks and filling in a quality assessment questionnaire that covers the four External quality characteristics: Functional suitability, Operability, Performance efficiency and Reliability. Moreover, 14 mPHRs for pregnancy monitoring were used to study the relationship between the External quality and the Quality in-use by means of four classification techniques: Iterative Dichotomiser 3 (ID3), C4.5, K-nearest neighbors (K-NN) and Naïve Bayes. Results: Functional suitability and Reliability are the most covered quality characteristics by the 17 apps compared to Operability and Performance efficiency. Furthermore, K-NN and C4.5 obtained the highest accuracy rates, as evaluating the accuracy rate of each classification technique can determine if a classifier can be designed to predict the Quality in-use from the External Quality for the apps used in this study. Conclusion: The need of studying the relationship between fulfilling the External quality and the Quality in-use for pregnancy monitoring mPHRs, is of great importance for the developers of these apps for future improvements.

GlobalSoftware Engineering implies a paradigm shift towards globally-distributed development that can be advantageous, but at the cost of having to address the specific challenges that arise when the stakeholders are not colocated. Reusing assets during the initial processes of the software development life cycle could be beneficial, but automated support is essential if the expected benefits of requirements reuse are to be actually obtained. The main contribution of this paper is the specification of a collection of software features for a tool support for distributed, catalogue-based natural-language requirements reuse. Two additional contributions are also made: (1) an implementation of the requirements specifications previously mentioned using Drupal, a Content Management System; and (2) an empirical assessment of this tool support using distributed university students as subjects (n=57). According to our findings, the tool helps in making requirements reuse better than requirements specification from scratch and in managing traceability, is easy to use, useful, and easy to learn. In contrast, the tool is not particularly suitable for managing users and user roles.

Global Software Development (GSD) poses inherent risks to projects success. Project managers are now faced with new challenges related to the geographical, temporal and socio-cultural distances between stakeholders. The objective of this research is to identify challenges associated with Software Project Management (SPM) activities in a GSD context and present an integrative framework encompassing them. Using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), 39 risk factors were identified and later compiled into a framework inspired from the model of organizational change.

In order to improve the management of the patients' health data and promote the exchange between the patients and healthcare providers, mobile personal health records (mPHRs), as mobile applications, are used to access, store and manage these data. In this paper, a design of the software quality evaluation of free mPHRs for pregnancy monitoring is introduced. Ten mobile applications (4 for iOS and 6 for Android) are selected for the evaluation. A list of tasks is set to be executed in order to answer a quality assessment questionnaire that is developed for this purpose, covering the four quality characteristics: Functional suitability, Operability, Performance efficiency and Reliability, by using the ISO/IEC 25010 quality standard. This evaluation aims to analyze the degree of meeting these quality characteristics, in addition to the compliance between the users' ratings in the apps stores and the fulfillment of the quality characteristics by the mPHRs for pregnancy monitoring. This study is intended to be developed by conducting the proposed design of the evaluation, which will be of great use for the developers of these apps for further improvements.

Requirements Engineering (RE) includes processes intended to elicit, analyse, specify and validate systems and software requirements throughout the software life cycle. Mastering the principles of RE is key to achieving the goals of better, cheaper and quicker systems and software development projects. It is also important to be prepared to work with remote teammates, as distributed and global projects are becoming more common. This paper presents an experiment with a total of 31 students from two universities in Spain and Morocco who were assigned to either a co-located or a distributed team. Both traditional and reuse-based requirements specification techniques were applied by the participants to produce requirements documents. Their outcomes were then analysed, and the approaches were compared from the point of view of their effect on a set of performance-based and perception-based variables in co-located and distributed settings. We found significant differences in only productivity (Z = −2.320, p = 0.020) and difficulty (Z = −2.124, p = 0.034) as regards the scores attained for non-reuse and reuse conditions, both in the co-located modality. Our findings show that, in general, the participants attained similar results for requirements specification when using the two strategies in both distributed and non-distributed environments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Software cost estimation plays a central role in the success of software project management in the context of global software development (GSD). The importance of mastering software cost estimation may appear to be obvious. However, as regards the issue of customer satisfaction, end-users are often unsatisfied with software project management results. In this paper, a systematic mapping study (SMS) is carried out with the aim of summarising software cost estimation in the context of GSD research by answering nine mapping questions. A total, of 16 articles were selected and classified according to nine criteria: publication source, publication year, research type, research approach, contribution type, software cost estimation techniques, software cost estimation activity, cost drivers and cost estimation performances for GSD projects. The results show that the interest in estimating software cost for GSD projects has increased in recent years and reveal that conferences are the most frequently targeted publications. Most software cost estimation for GSD research has focused on theory. The dominant contribution type of software cost estimation for GSD research is that of models, while the predominant activity was identified as being software development cost. Identifying empirical solutions to address software cost estimation for GSD is a promising direction for researchers.

Evaluating software product quality (SPQ) is an important task to ensure the quality of software products. In this paper a systematic mapping study was performed to summarize the existing SPQ evaluation (SPQE) approaches in literature and to classify the selected studies according to seven classification criteria: SPQE approaches, research types, empirical types, data sets used in the empirical evaluation of these studies, artifacts, SQ models, and SQ characteristics. Publication channels and trends were also identified. 57 papers were selected. The results show that the main publication sources of the papers identified were journals. Data mining techniques are the most frequently approaches reported in literature. Solution proposals were the main research type identified. The majority of the selected papers were history-based evaluations using existing data, which were mainly obtained from open source software projects and domain specific projects. Source code was the main artifacts used by SPQE approaches. Well-known SQ models were mentioned by half of the selected papers and reliability is the SQ characteristic through which SPQE was mainly achieved. SPQE-related subjects seem to attract more interest from researchers since the past years.

Software quality requirements (SQR) play a central role in software quality (SQ) success. The importance of mastering SQR can be seen as obvious, however, when it comes to customer satisfaction, end-users are often dissatisfied with SQ. In this paper, a systematic mapping study aims to summarize SQR research by answering nine mapping questions. In total, 51 articles were selected and classified according to multiple criteria: publication source, publication year, research type, research approach, contribution type of SQR literature, requirements engineering activity, well-known SQ model, software artifact and SQR type. The results show an increased interest in SQR research in recent years and reveal that conferences are the main SQR publication target. Most SQR research has used case studies. The dominant contribution type of SQR research is method while specification is the main requirements engineering activity identified. SQ models need to be more used for SQR identification. Design module and requirements documentation are the principal artifacts reported in SQR literature. External and internal SQR were the main SQR types addressed in literature. Identifying empirical solutions to address SQR is a promising research direction for researchers.

Mutation has been recognized to be an effective software testing technique. It is based on the insertion of artificial faults in the system under test (SUT) by means of a set of mutation operators. Different operators can mutate each program statement in several ways, which may produce a huge number of mutants. This leads to very high costs for test case execution and result analysis. Several works have approached techniques for cost reduction in mutation testing, like n-order mutation where each mutant contains n artificial faults instead of one. There are two approaches to n-order mutation: increasing the effectiveness of mutation by searching for good n-order mutants, and decreasing the costs of mutation testing by reducing the mutants set through the combination of the first-order mutants into n-order mutants. This paper is focused on the second approach. However, this second use entails a risk: the possibility of leaving undiscovered faults in the SUT, which may distort the perception of the test suite quality. This paper describes an empirical study of different combination strategies to compose second-order mutants at system level as well as a cost-risk analysis of n-order mutation at system level.

In an increasingly globalized world, the diversity of languages and cultures of the students requires the adaptability of the learning environment to satisfy their needs and preferences. In order to achieve this aim, current and future e-learning tools should take into account the internationalization aspects. With this purpose, and to help in the process of review and analysis of these features, we present an internationalization requirements catalog, obtained from the main related standards, together with the identification of the central elements needed to perform an effective e-learning software audit regarding these characteristics.

Requirements engineering (RE) is critical to the success of a software development project. In order to have professionals who are capable of accomplishing software projects successfully, Requirements engineering education (REE) is therefore an important endeavor. The objective of this paper is to identify and to present the current research on REE in order to discuss their contribution types, identify deficits and to extract the useful approaches. A search was conducted using bibliographic databases to find as much research as possible. The papers found in this study are classified with respect to research types and their empirical type. We believe that this study will be a reliable basis for further research in Requirements engineering education.

This paper presents an experience of generating diagnostic feedback for guided learning in an introductory programming course. An on-line Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) system is integrated with a neural network based data analysis. Some empirical results about how students use the system in a CS1 course are presented. Research with an experimental group of 61 students suggests that the feedback addresses the level of knowledge of the individual and guides them towards a greater understanding of particular concepts. Moreover the approach proposed promotes the students' interest and produces statistically significant differences in the scores between the experimental group and control group.

This paper presents a proposal aimed at active learning of iterative design in CS1. Two main contributions are made: first, a novel approach to tackle iterative algorithms design problems based on inductive reasoning, sequential access models and algorithmic schemes; second, a web tool called SAMTool (Sequential Access Model Tool) to support this approach. Students use SAMTool in three stages: (1) to obtain problem-dependent code to solve an iterative problem (2) to define an algorithmic scheme in a sequential access model; (3) to generate a program starting from a problem, an algorithmic scheme, a programming language and a sequence in the chosen programming language. The effectiveness of SAMTool as a tool to enhance learning has been demonstrated through empirical evaluation on a course with 114 undergraduate students. In a controlled study, programming students trained in the use of SAMTool were found to make fewer errors than a control group, which suggests that our approach helps students to construct iterative algorithms correctly.

This paper presents a proposal for implementing iterative algorithms based on the definition of algorithmic schemes starting from identifying four sequential access models. A learning method is applied to get students to develop their cognitive capabilities in such a way that they are able to deduce the algorithmic schemes for a sequential access model given. In a controlled study, programming students trained using the sequential access models were found to make fewer errors than a control group which suggests that our approach helps students to construct iterative algorithms correctly.

High dropout rates are commonly the main problem we must face in Computer Science degrees. There are two main causes of dropout: the implicit complexity of the matter, and a lack of motivation among students. The second-year programming course of our university suffered dropout rates of over 70% of the more than three hundred enrolled students. In order to overcome this problem, we have adopted a new teaching methodology based on two key ideas: replacing the traditional final exam with a series of activities in a continuous evaluation context; and making those activities more appealing to the students. In particular, most of the activities are designed as on-line programming competitions; they are carried out by using a web-based automatic evaluation system, the on-line judge. Experimental results show the high effectiveness of the proposed approach. On average, the dropout rate decreased to 45% while the pass rate doubled. Some strategies are used to ensure the authorship of the programs and to detect source code plagiarism.

The Unified Modeling Language, UML, is the object oriented notation adopted as the standard for object oriented analysis and design by the Object Management Group. The paper reports on research to facilitate the formal revision of UML informal specifications. The approach is based on algebraic specification formal theory, which is used to formalize the UML Statechart diagrams and subsequently verify them. To illustrate the proposal, the so-called orthogonality property is investigated. This property is modeled at the UML metamodel level so that its fulfillment on the part of any particular UML Statechart diagram can be mathematically proven or disproven. The formal models obtained are specified in the executable formal language Maude, thus providing the additional advantage of using them as functional prototypes. These results lead to a whole formalization of the UML, which can be used in practice, and lay the foundations for the construction of rigorous UML CASE tools.