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Software systems are becoming increasingly complex. Their ubiquitous presence makes users more dependent on their correctness in many aspects of daily life. As a result, there is a growing need to make software systems and their decisions more comprehensible, with more transparency in software-based decision making. Transparency is therefore becoming increasingly important as a non-functional requirement. However, the abstract quality aspect of transparency needs to be better understood and related to mechanisms that can foster it. The integration of explanations into software has often been discussed as a solution to mitigate system opacity. Yet, an important first step is to understand user requirements in terms of explainable software behavior: Are users really interested in software transparency and are explanations considered an appropriate way to achieve it? We conducted a survey with 107 end users to assess their opinion on the current level of transparency in software systems and what they consider to be the main advantages and disadvantages of embedded explanations. We assess the relationship between explanations and transparency and analyze its potential impact on software quality. As explainability has become an important issue, researchers and professionals have been discussing how to deal with it in practice. While there are differences of opinion on the need for built-in explanations, understanding this concept and its impact on software is a key step for requirements engineering. Based on our research results and on the study of existing literature, we offer recommendations for the elicitation and analysis of explainability and discuss strategies for the practice.

Agile methods and the related concepts of employee empowerment, self-management, and autonomy have reached large-scale software organizations and raise questions about commonly adopted principles for authority distribution. However, the optimum mechanism to balance the need for alignment, quality, and process control with the need or willingness of teams to be autonomous remains an unresolved issue. In this paper, we report our findings from a multiple-case study in two large-scale software development organizations in the telecom industry. We analysed the autonomy of the agile teams in the organizations using Hackman’s classification of unit authority and found that the teams were partly self-managing. Further, we found that alignment across teams can be achieved top-down by management and bottom-up through membership in communities or through dialogue between the team and management. However, the degree of team autonomy was limited by the need for organizational alignment. Top-down alignment and control were maintained through centralized decision-making for certain areas, the use of supervisory roles, mandatory processes, and checklists. One case employed a bottom-up approach to alignment through the formation of a community composed of all teams, experts, and supporting roles, but excluding managers. This community-based alignment involved teams in decision-making and engaged them in alignment initiatives. We conclude that implementation of such bottom-up structures seems to provide one possible mechanism for balancing organizational control and team autonomy in large-scale software development.

ContextSoftware selection in large-scale software development continues to be ad hoc and ill-structured. Previous proposals for software component selection tend to be technology-specific and/or do not consider business or ecosystem concerns.ObjectiveOur main aim is to develop an industrially relevant technology-agnostic method that can support practitioners in making informed decisions when selecting software components for use in tools or in products based on a holistic perspective of the overall environment.MethodWe used method engineering to iteratively develop a software selection method for Ericsson AB based on a combination of published research and practitioner insights. We used interactive rapid reviews to systematically identify and analyse scientific literature and to support close cooperation and co-design with practitioners from Ericsson. The model has been validated through a focus group and by practical use at the case company.ResultsThe model consists of a high-level selection process and a wide range of criteria for assessing and for evaluating software to include in business products and tools.ConclusionsWe have developed an industrially relevant model for component selection through active engagement from a company. Co-designing the model based on previous knowledge demonstrates a viable approach to industry-academia collaboration and provides a practical solution that can support practitioners in making informed decisions based on a holistic analysis of business, organisation and technical factors.

The overwhelming acceptance and growing need for Internet of Things (IoT) products in each aspect of everyday living is creating a promising prospect for the involvement of humans, data, and procedures. The vast areas create opportunities from home to industry to make an automated lifecycle. Human life is involved in enormous applications such as intelligent transportation, intelligent healthcare, smart grid, smart city, etc. A thriving surface is created that can affect society, the economy, the environment, politics, and health through diverse security threats. Generally, IoT devices are susceptible to security breaches, and the development of industrial systems could pose devastating security vulnerabilities. To build a reliable security shield, the challenges encountered must be embraced. Therefore, this survey paper is primarily aimed to assist researchers by classifying attacks/vulnerabilities based on objects. The method of attacks and relevant countermeasures are provided for each kind of attack in this work. Case studies of the most important applications of the IoT are highlighted concerning security solutions. The survey of security solutions is not limited to traditional secret key-based cryptographic solutions, moreover physical unclonable functions (PUF)-based solutions and blockchain are illustrated. The pros and cons of each security solution are also discussed here. Furthermore, challenges and recommendations are presented in this work.

With the increase in the amount of data captured during the manufacturing process, monitoring systems are becoming important factors in decision making for management. Current technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensors can be considered a solution to provide efficient monitoring of the manufacturing process. In this study, a real-time monitoring system that utilizes IoT-based sensors, big data processing, and a hybrid prediction model is proposed. Firstly, an IoT-based sensor that collects temperature, humidity, accelerometer, and gyroscope data was developed. The characteristics of IoT-generated sensor data from the manufacturing process are: real-time, large amounts, and unstructured type. The proposed big data processing platform utilizes Apache Kafka as a message queue, Apache Storm as a real-time processing engine and MongoDB to store the sensor data from the manufacturing process. Secondly, for the proposed hybrid prediction model, Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN)-based outlier detection and Random Forest classification were used to remove outlier sensor data and provide fault detection during the manufacturing process, respectively. The proposed model was evaluated and tested at an automotive manufacturing assembly line in Korea. The results showed that IoT-based sensors and the proposed big data processing system are sufficiently efficient to monitor the manufacturing process. Furthermore, the proposed hybrid prediction model has better fault prediction accuracy than other models given the sensor data as input. The proposed system is expected to support management by improving decision-making and will help prevent unexpected losses caused by faults during the manufacturing process.

Model-driven development platforms shift the focus of software development activity from coding to modeling for enterprises. A significant number of such platforms are available in the market. Selecting the best fitting platform is challenging, as domain experts are not typically model-driven deployment platform experts and have limited time for acquiring the needed knowledge. We model the problem as a multi-criteria decision-making problem and capture knowledge systematically about the features and qualities of 30 alternative platforms. Through four industry case studies, we confirm that the model supports decision-makers with the selection problem by reducing the time and cost of the decision-making process and by providing a richer list of options than the enterprises considered initially. We show that having decision knowledge readily available supports decision-makers in making more rational, efficient, and effective decisions. The study’s theoretical contribution is the observation that the decision framework provides a reliable approach for creating decision models in software production.

In software engineering, organizational debt (OD) is a crucial but little-researched phenomena. OD refers to the accumulation of outdated structures, policies, and processes that hinder an organization’s advancement and adaptability. This multivocal literature review (MLR) synthesizes insights from software practitioners to elucidate OD causes, consequences, identification, and mitigation approaches that is considered a first step in illuminating the OD for software practitioners. After a thorough search, nine peer-reviewed articles and twenty-two recent blog posts on OD were included, indicating an emerging topic. Through inductive thematic analysis, four key topics emerged: definitions, causes like poorly managed change and siloed efforts, effects such as reduced innovation and agility, and mitigation strategies including agile principles, decentralized decision-making, and leveraging staff insights. While relying partly on non-peer-reviewed sources raises validity concerns, the review still provides a holistic and practical understanding of OD dynamics and complexities grounded in diverse perspectives. Further empirical research across diverse organizations would strengthen these preliminary findings. Effective OD management necessitates collaboration between academia and industry, considering technical debt (TD) best practices while tailoring interventions to OD’s distinct socio-technical characteristics.

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) more broadly have great immediate and future potential for transforming almost all aspects of medicine. However, in many applications, even outside medicine, a lack of transparency in AI applications has become increasingly problematic. This is particularly pronounced where users need to interpret the output of AI systems. Explainable AI (XAI) provides a rationale that allows users to understand why a system has produced a given output. The output can then be interpreted within a given context. One area that is in great need of XAI is that of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs). These systems support medical practitioners in their clinic decision-making and in the absence of explainability may lead to issues of under or over-reliance. Providing explanations for how recommendations are arrived at will allow practitioners to make more nuanced, and in some cases, life-saving decisions. The need for XAI in CDSS, and the medical field in general, is amplified by the need for ethical and fair decision-making and the fact that AI trained with historical data can be a reinforcement agent of historical actions and biases that should be uncovered. We performed a systematic literature review of work to-date in the application of XAI in CDSS. Tabular data processing XAI-enabled systems are the most common, while XAI-enabled CDSS for text analysis are the least common in literature. There is more interest in developers for the provision of local explanations, while there was almost a balance between post-hoc and ante-hoc explanations, as well as between model-specific and model-agnostic techniques. Studies reported benefits of the use of XAI such as the fact that it could enhance decision confidence for clinicians, or generate the hypothesis about causality, which ultimately leads to increased trustworthiness and acceptability of the system and potential for its incorporation in the clinical workflow. However, we found an overall distinct lack of application of XAI in the context of CDSS and, in particular, a lack of user studies exploring the needs of clinicians. We propose some guidelines for the implementation of XAI in CDSS and explore some opportunities, challenges, and future research needs.

As the world's largest coal producer, China was accounted for about 46% of global coal production. Among present coal mining risks, methane gas (called gas in this paper) explosion or ignition in an underground mine remains ever-present. Although many techniques have been used, gas accidents associated with the complex elements of underground gassy mines need more robust monitoring or warning systems to identify risks. This paper aimed to determine which single method between the PCA and Entropy methods better establishes a responsive weighted indexing measurement to improve coal mining safety. Qualitative and quantitative mixed research methodologies were adopted for this research, including analysis of two case studies, correlation analysis, and comparative analysis. The literature reviewed the most-used multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods, including subjective methods and objective methods. The advantages and disadvantages of each MCDM method were briefly discussed. One more round literature review was conducted to search publications between 2017 and 2019 in CNKI. Followed two case studies, correlation analysis and comparative analysis were then conducted. Research ethics was approved by the Shanxi Coking Coal Group Research Committee. The literature searched a total of 25,831publications and found that the PCA method was the predominant method adopted, and the Entropy method was the second most widely adopted method. Two weighting methods were compared using two case studies. For the comparative analysis of Case Study 1, the PCA method appeared to be more responsive than the Entropy. For Case Study 2, the Entropy method is more responsive than the PCA. As a result, both methods were adopted for different cases in the case study mine and finally deployed for user acceptance testing on 5 November 2020. The findings and suggestions were provided as further scopes for further research. This research indicated that no single method could be adopted as the better option for establishing indexing measurement in all cases. The practical implication suggests that comparative analysis should always be conducted on each case and determine the appropriate weighting method to the relevant case. This research recommended that the PCA method was a dimension reduction technique that could be handy for identifying the critical variables or factors and effectively used in hazard, risk, and emergency assessment. The PCA method might also be well-applied for developing predicting and forecasting systems as it was sensitive to outliers. The Entropy method might be suitable for all the cases requiring the MCDM. There is also a need to conduct further research to probe the causal reasons why the PCA and Entropy methods were applied to each case and not the other way round. This research found that the Entropy method provides higher accuracy than the PCA method. This research also found that the Entropy method demonstrated to assess the weights of the higher dimension dataset was higher sensitivity than the lower dimensions. Finally, the comprehensive analysis indicates a need to explore a more responsive method for establishing a weighted indexing measurement for warning applications in hazard, risk, and emergency assessments.