Phishing remains a persistent socio-technical threat that exploits cognitive and contextual vulnerabilities in organisational environments. Employees across organisations are often the target of phishing, posing a significant risk to themselves and their organisations. To address phishing threats, organisations invest time and financial resources in structured initiatives aimed at supporting employees’ ability to identify and respond to such threats. These initiatives are called Security Awareness Training (SAT) programmes, which typically include simulated phishing campaigns and training to help individuals recognise and respond to phishing attempts. However, the specific mechanisms through which SAT configurations influence user susceptibility remain insufficiently specified. To investigate the factors that influence SAT effectiveness, we conducted a case study at a large public organisation. In the first phase, we planned the design, implementation, and evaluation of the SAT intervention. In the second phase, we conducted a quantitative study with 4,457 employees to measure individuals' susceptibility to phishing attacks and their engagement with SAT programmes using the KnowBe4 platform. In the third phase, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 19 employees to explore their experiences, perceptions, and motivations related to the training. The results led to the identification of evidence-based design implications for improving SAT programmes. The results reveal key factors that influence the success of phishing awareness initiatives and offer actionable insights to enhance organisational strategies for phishing prevention. By integrating quantitative with qualitative data, the study provides evidence-based implications for adaptive SAT programmes and advances understanding of the cognitive and motivational processes shaping secure decision-making in organisational environments.

ABSTRACT Platform owners like SAP, Eclipse Foundation, and Microsoft have developed partnership models to expand their software ecosystems. These models govern the cluster of complementors, enabling the attraction and maintenance of partners and consumers. Companies aiming to define new partnership models when moving from a software product approach to an ecosystem face challenges that may limit their growth. When establishing an emerging ecosystem, platform providers (i.e., keystones) must perform several activities, such as attracting and retaining partners, defining rules of participation, managing risks, and maintaining the quality of the platform. This paper proposes three strategic patterns to assist companies in structuring their partnership models. The patterns provide actionable guidance to companies establishing new ecosystems. We adopted the Design Science Research (DSR) method to conduct the study. Following the DSR cycle, the strategic patterns were defined using a Multivocal Literature Review. The strategies described in the proposed patterns were validated by the industry professionals with experience in emerging software ecosystems. The proposed patterns help keystone companies adopt suitable strategies to address the following challenges: selecting partners, attracting and retaining consumers, technically structuring the platform while maintaining the robustness of the ecosystem, managing risks and conflicts, and assisting complementors in developing, selling, and distributing solutions in the ecosystem.

Software ecosystems play an important strategy in the IT industry. They involve the interaction of a set of actors on a common technological platform that results in a number of software solutions or services. Software ecosystems face intense competition and scrutiny of stakeholders and society as a whole. Therefore, they need to be aligned with principles of ethics, accountability and transparency. The governance of software ecosystems presents strategic procedures and processes to control, maintain, and evolve the platform. This article presents the application of a conceptual model for software ecosystem governance in the context of GNOME and SAP platforms. The case studies results suggest that governance of these platforms involve the need to manage software licenses, to define the type of collaboration in relation to governance (shared or closed), and to address social, technical and business risks in software ecosystems.

Hackathons and game jams are informal venues to engage STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) students in practical learning and nurturing interdisciplinary competencies (e.g., programming, design, communication). They also offer rich opportunities for networking and boosting the employability of participants. However, due to the not very inclusive culture created around them, these events may become hostile places for women. The low participation of women in hackathons and game jams may result in a loss of opportunity for them to improve their skills or to find jobs. Little is known about the motivations and perceptions of women participating in hackathons and game jams. We aimed at understanding (1) what are the typical gender-related problems women face in hackathons and game jams and how the perspective of men differ in regards to that problem; (2) how women perceive their motivations and their experience when participating in such events; and (3) what deters some women from participating. In this paper, we surveyed 211 participants of 8 events of this nature targeting higher education students with multidisciplinary backgrounds: 2 game jams (one of them women-focused) and 6 hackathons (one of them women-focused). Additionally, we applied a survey to hear the voice of 47 women who never attended these events to understand their lack of motivation. Through qualitative and quantitative data analysis, we compared the perspectives of men and women who participated in the studied hackathons and game jams. The qualitative data allowed us to investigate different experiences of women who reported discomfort in these events. As contributions of this paper, based on the collected data, we report different perspectives that men and women have about gender issues in these events and highlight the typical sexist behavior (bropriating, mansplaining, etc) of men participating in hackathons and game jams. Results showed that learning is the main motivation for both men and women to join these events. We also map the common reasons for women not being motivated to participate in these types of gatherings. Finally, we propose recommendations so that hackathons and game jams can increase gender equality. Our experience suggests these events, if well planned and executed, may become drivers to change attitudes and stereotypes regarding women in computing. By lowering those barriers, women can be more engaged and stimulated so they can also take advantage of more opportunities for STEAM learning in such informal settings.

Software startups play an important role to foster innovation, economic growth, and job creation in a region. Startups are likely to increase their odds of thriving if they are embedded in a startup ecosystem. Actors of an ecosystem cocreate value, share resources, and support the prosperous evolution of peers. In recent years, software startups have been the focus of intensive research by the software engineering community. In this paper, we conducted a tertiary study to synthesise literature in the field of requirements engineering in startups. We concluded that there are limited empirical studies reporting an in-depth contextual analysis on how software startups perform requirements engineering. In parallel, we conducted a case study of startups based at Digital Port ecosystem. Our empirical results confirm what has been presented by literature that startups adopt requirements practices in a flexible and informal manner. In fact, as novel empirical evidence, we observed that even as startups evolve by acquiring the first paying customers and growing the customer base, requirements practices remain very pragmatic. Our results also reveal how actors of the studied ecosystem interact to support the co-evolution of startups.

[Background] Partnership models enable the generation and sharing of value among stakeholders of software ecosystems. Large companies like SAP and Microsoft form partnerships with complementors to develop applications and service solutions for customers. Partnership models are important strategic tools to manage software ecosystems. Several partnership models have been proposed and discussed in the literature. So far, there is no comprehensive understanding of the key elements and goals of such models. [Objective] This paper aims to synthesize the research knowledge in partnership models for software ecosystems. [Method] We conducted a systematic mapping study to understand the goals of partnership models and discuss their benefits and application domains. [Results] We found 23 studies published between 2006 and 2018. Partnership models provide coordination mechanisms that structure the definition of benefits, roles and responsibilities of actors in an ecosystem. We identified the key goals of the proposed models are related to the creation and maintenance of partnerships. [Conclusion] We observed the opportunity to develop partnership models focusing on the co-creation of value and the definition of business models. Our analysis also suggests the need for further studies in the context of open source ecosystems.

The increasing demand of society for improved services has driven public sector organisations to embrace process-centric approaches. The adoption of Business Process Management (BPM) requires an in-depth understanding of the organisational culture, business rules, and stakeholders needs. BPM should be adapted to suit the specific context of organisations, which often involve the development of process-oriented systems to enhance process execution. In this paper, we present our experience during a five-year study aimed at implementing BPM at Pernambuco Court of Accounts, in Brazil. We propose a novel BPM method in which requirements modelling activities intertwine with business process modelling in the BPM lifecycle. Finally, we propose a set of good practices to successfully integrate requirements into a BPM project. These practices provide a rich reflection on the adoption of BPM by a public organisation.

The software ecosystem paradigm is a means for companies to obtain benefits by joining a network of partners that supply infrastructure, software and services for a shared market. In this paper, we analyse the relationships among partners participating in software ecosystems by means of established power theories. We report the findings of a multiple case study of two software ecosystems formed by small-to-medium enterprises. Our main contribution is to investigate the role of power in software ecosystems by describing how companies exercise coercive, expert, legitimate, referent and reward power. In addition, we explore how power-balancing operations can lead these partnerships to thrive and sustain the evolution of software ecosystems.

Previous studies have emphasized the necessity for software platform owners to govern their platform ecosystem in order to create durable opportunities for themselves and the app developers that surround the platform. To date, platform ecosystems have been widely analyzed from the perspective of platform owners. However, how and to what extent app developers collaborate with their peers needs to be investigated further. In this article, we study the interfirm relationships among app developers in commercial platform ecosystems and explore the causes of variation in the network structure of these ecosystems. By means of a comparative study of four commercial platform ecosystems of Google (Google Apps and Google Chrome) and Microsoft (Microsoft Office365 and Internet Explorer), we illustrate substantial variation in the extent to which app developers initiated interfirm relationships. Further, we analyze how the degree of enforced entry barriers to the app store, the use of a partnership model, and the domain of the software platform that underpins the ecosystem affect the properties of these commercial platform ecosystems. We present subsequent explanations as a set of propositions that can be tested in future empirical research.

Increasingly, small to medium software producing organisations are working together in collaboration networks to supply complex compositions of their products and services to customers. In this paper, we present a case study of two software companies that are evolving their partnership towards the creation of a software ecosystem. We investigate the impacts of their tightening partnership on software product management, with a focus on requirements engineering practices. We observe that the requirements definition and negotiation processes are directly affected by their fluid collaborative and competitive relationships. Power disputes, volatile roles and mismatches in release synchronisation are also aspects observed in the studied software ecosystem.We extract several observations from the case study that support small to medium software firms in making decisions within their software ecosystem.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) represent a significant percentage of software companies. Although there are some experience reports on using Software Product Line (SPL) techniques in SMEs, there is a lack of such reports on the Mobile Games domain. This domain is attractive both economically and technically, with a significant amount of variability, thus suggesting the use of a SPL approach. Accordingly, we conduct an exploratory study in a company in this domain, eliciting the main challenges, determining if and how SPL approaches help to address them, and raising hypotheses to guide future studies.

The development of new market-driven software products involves several challenges for the requirements engineering process. The challenges are deeper in the case these products are mobile video games. In particular, the mobile games must satisfy a number of critical non-functional requirements (e.g. portability, gameplay, emotional issues). In addition to that, mobile games are developed for mass market, demanding from the development team to understand the requirements of very diverse and sometimes unknown groups of stakeholders. This paper presents the experience of meantime, a global mobile game developing company, in conducting requirements engineering activities during the development of the Frogman game. It also presents some lessons learned in the process.

The development of COTS-based systems largely depends on the success of the selection process. This activity encompasses the evaluation of COTS packages against customer requirements, so that it is necessary to perform a complex decision-making process to select the most suitable package. We argue that analysing the matching between features and requirements is a core task of COTS decision-making. In particular, it is very likely that mismatches occur, as COTS are designed to meet very general requirements rather than specific needs. In this paper, we investigate the different types of conflicts that can arise from these mismatches. We propose a goal driven framework to deal with such conflicts. We demonstrate the approach with the mail server case study.

This position paper outlines the problems and risks of selecting COTS products. In particular, we highlight the challenges of the decision-making process where requirements specification plays an essential role to evaluate and compare products features. It is necessary to perform a careful balancing between requirements and COTS features. Customers may have to compromise on requirements not satisfied by any available product or request products modifications. We analyse the problems and risks arising in the selection process and review related work. We argue that a goal-oriented approach can support an effective balancing between requirements and COTS feature during the decision-making.