ICWE 2008 - Tutorials

Tutorial 1: Web Cost Estimation, Productivity Assessment and Benchmarking

Emilia Mendes
The University of Auckland, NZ

Abstract

Effort estimation, productivity assessment and benchmarking are essential elements to the effective management of Web projects. Unfortunately, they are not used effectively by a large number of Web companies, contributing to projects that are late and over budget. The goals of tutorial are to present these topics and how to apply them in practice. It provides an introduction and motivation for Web cost estimation, productivity assessment and benchmarking and then covers cost estimation techniques, Web sizing, estimation accuracy assessment, productivity measurement principles, productivity assessment of Web projects and benchmarking. Where possible, material is improved with real industrial case studies of real effort models and productivity baselines. The tutorial is targeted at researchers and practitioners who are interested in learning more about Web cost estimation, productivity assessment and benchmarking. The intended audience does not need to have prior knowledge or experience of Web cost estimation or productivity assessment and benchmarking. This tutorial has been successfully presented at ICWE’05 and ICWE’06.

Aims

The goals of this tutorial are to provide an introduction to Web cost estimation and productivity benchmarking and also some in-depth knowledge of their application to industrial Web project data sets.

Learning Outcomes

Web cost estimation:

• Recognize the importance of cost estimation for the effective management of a project.
• Distinguish the different types of estimation techniques and when to apply each one.
• Distinguish the differences between Web applications and other software and the corresponding implications for size measurement.
• Apply basics of cost estimation to Web projects.
• Understand the use of cost estimation on a real case study.

Web productivity assessment and benchmarking:

• Recognize the importance of productivity assessment and benchmarking for the effective management of a project.
• Apply our proposed productivity assessment and benchmarking to Web projects.
• Understand the use of productivity assessment and benchmarking on a real case study.

Intended Audience and Assumed background

This tutorial is aimed at those who wish to gain a general understanding of Web cost estimation and productivity assessment/benchmarking and also some in-depth knowledge of their application to industrial Web project data sets.

No prior knowledge of Web cost estimation or cost models is assumed.

Short Bio

Emilia is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Auckland, NZ. She is the principal investigator in the Tukutuku Research project, which aims to collect worldwide Web project data to develop Web cost estimation models and to benchmark productivity across and within Web Companies. She chairs and lectures a Masters course, “software measurement principles”, lectures another Masters course on Hypermedia Systems and Applications and is director of the WETA (Web Engineering, Technology and Applications) research group. She has presented numerous lectures, conference presentations and workshops on Web cost estimation and chaired two industry events on Web cost estimation and productivity benchmarking in 2005 and 2007, respectively. She has also given this tutorial at ICWE’05 and ICWE’06, and both were quite successful.
She has active research interests in Web quality and metrics, Measurement, effort Prediction and Productivity benchmarking for Web applications, in which areas she has published widely. She has also provided consulting for Web companies on Web cost estimation, usability and process improvement. She has been on numerous conference program committees, including recent international World-Wide Web, ICWE and Hypertext conferences, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Web Engineering Technology (IJWET), the Journal of Web Engineering (JWE), the Journal of Software Measurement, the International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications, and the Empirical Software Engineering Journal. In 2007 she had her book on Cost Estimation Techniques for Web Projects published by IGI Publishing (424 pages).

Tutorial 2: sMash

Nell Gawor
Project Zero, IBM, USA

Abstract

The turorial will provide an ovierview and introduction to IBM's WebSphere sMash. In addition, it will deeply discuss the insights of this development and execution environment for dynamic web applications. WebSphere sMash advances Smart SOA's simplicity and accelerates the alignment of Business and IT by allowing Developers to quickly deliver dynamic Web 2.0 based applications.

Short Bio

Nell Gawor is an advisory software engineer at IBM working on Project Zero, an agile development and execution environment leveraging REST and scripting. She received a Masters Degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For further information, feel free to check her linkedin profile.