Computer Engineering / Bilgisayar Mühendisliği
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11147/10
Browse
10 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
Article Citation - WoS: 1Citation - Scopus: 1How Software Practitioners Perceive Work-Related Barriers and Benefits Based on Their Educational Backgrounds: Insights From a Survey Study(IEEE, 2023) Ünlü, Hüseyin; Yürüm, Ozan Raşit; Özcan Top, Özden; Demirörs, OnurSurvey results show that software practitioners from nonsoftware-related backgrounds face more barriers, have fewer benefits, and feel less satisfied in their work life. However, these differences reduce with more than 10 years of experience and involvement in software-related graduate programs, certificates, and mentorship.Article Citation - WoS: 3Citation - Scopus: 6An Exploratory Case Study Using Events as a Software Size Measure(Springer, 2023) Hacaloğlu, Tuna; Demirörs, OnurSoftware Size Measurement is a critical task in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It is the primary input for effort estimation models and an important measure for project control and process improvement. There exist various size measurement methods whose successes have already been proven for traditional software architectures and application domains. Being one of them, functional size measurement (FSM) attracts specific attention due to its applicability at the early phases of SDLC. Although FSM methods were successful on the data-base centric, transaction oriented stand-alone applications, in contemporary software development projects, Agile methods are highly used, and a centralized database and a relational approach are not used as before while the requirements suffer from a lack of detail. Today's software is frequently service based, highly distributed, message-driven, scalable and has unprecedented levels of availability. In the new era, event-driven architectures are appearing as one of the emerging approaches where the 'event' concept largely replaces the 'data' concept. Considering the important place of events in contemporary architectures, we focused on approaching the software size measurement problem from the event-driven perspective. This situation guided us to explore how useful event as a size measure in comparison to data-movement based methods. The findings of our study indicates that events can be promising for measurement and should be investigated further in detail to be formalized for creating a measurement model thereby providing a replicable approach.Article Citation - WoS: 41Citation - Scopus: 50Bim-Carem: Assessing the Bim Capabilities of Design, Construction and Facilities Management Processes in the Construction Industry(Elsevier, 2023) Gökçen, Yılmaz; Akçamete, Aslı; Demirörs, OnurBIM adoption has accelerated worldwide since it is an important enabling technology for digitalisation in the construction industry. Adopting BIM requires transforming the traditional building life cycle stages (planning, design, construction and facilities management) into BIM-integrated project deliveries. Assessing the BIM ca- pabilities of these stages helps organisations to identify gaps in their BIM uses and improve them. There is a lack of a comprehensive model in the literature for assessing the BIM capabilities of individual building life cycle stages and their processes. Existing assessment models focus on assessing the BIM maturity of construction projects and organisations which do not inform the required BIM improvements for individual stages and their processes. Hence, we iteratively developed the Building Information Modelling (BIM) Capability Assessment REference Model (BIM-CAREM) and demonstrated its usability through multiple explanatory case studies per- formed with two international design and engineering companies and two general contractors in Turkey. We assessed the BIM capabilities of design, construction and facility management processes of various buildings i.e. residential, stadiums, hospitals and airports. The results showed that the BIM capability levels of design, con- struction and facility management processes vary within and across the companies.Article Citation - Scopus: 1A Method for Integrated Business Process Modeling and Ontology Development(Emerald, 2022) Coşkunçay, Ahmet; Demirörs, OnurPurpose: From knowledge management point of view, business process models and ontologies are two essential knowledge artifacts for organizations that consume similar information sources. In this study, the PROMPTUM method for integrated process modeling and ontology development that adheres to well-established practices is presented. The method is intended to guide practitioners who develop both ontologies and business process models in the same or similar domains. Design/methodology/approach: The method is supported by a recently developed toolset, which supports the modeling of relations between the ontologies and the labels within the process model collections. This study introduces the method and its companion toolset. An explanatory study, that includes two case studies, is designed and conducted to reveal and validate the benefits of using the method. Then, a follow-up semi-structured interview identifies the perceived benefits of the method. Findings: Application of the method revealed several benefits including the improvements observed in the consistency and completeness of the process models and ontologies. The method is bringing the best practices in two domains together and guiding the use of labels within process model collections in ontology development and ontology resources in business process modeling. Originality/value: The proposed method with its tool support is a pioneer in enabling to manage the labels and terms within the labels in process model collections consistently with ontology resources. Establishing these relations enables the definition and management of process model elements as resources in domain ontologies. Once the PROMPTUM method is utilized, a related resource is managed as a single resource representing the same real-world object in both artifacts. An explanatory study has shown that improvement in consistency and completeness of process models and ontologies is possible with integrated process modeling and ontology development.Article Citation - WoS: 58Citation - Scopus: 72A Reference Model for Bim Capability Assessments(Elsevier Ltd., 2019) Yılmaz, Gökçen; Akçamete, Aslı; Demirörs, OnurVarious BIM capability and maturity models have been developed to assist architecture, engineering, construction and facilities management (AEC/FM) organizations in measuring the performance of their BIM utilizations. Due to differences in applicability and focus of these models, they are able to meet the demands of different BIM users. In this study, eight BIM capability and maturity models identified in the literature are compared based on several different criteria. The results show that there is no holistic model that includes process definitions that cover the facility life-cycle and contains measures for assessing all of these AEC/FM processes. A reference model for assessing BIM capability of AEC/FM processes was developed. It was grounded on the meta-model of ISO/IEC 330xx family of standards and developed iteratively via expert reviews and an exploratory case study. It includes AEC/FM processes which were evaluated using the BIM capability levels, their associated BIM attributes, and a four-point rating scale. BIM-CAREM was evaluated by conducting four explanatory case studies. The results showed that BIM-CAREM was capable of identifying BIM capabilities of different AEC/FM processes.Article Citation - WoS: 17Citation - Scopus: 20The Influence of Using Collapsed Sub-Processes and Groups on the Understandability of Business Process Models(Springer, 2020) Türetken, Oktay; Dikici, Ahmet; Vanderfeesten, Irene; Rompen, Tessa; Demirörs, OnurMany factors influence the creation of business process models which are understandable for a target audience. Understandability of process models becomes more critical when size and complexity of the models increase. Using vertical modularization to decompose such models hierarchically into modules is considered to improve their understandability. To investigate this assumption, two experiments were conducted. The experiments involved 2 large-scale real-life business process models that were modeled using BPMN v2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation) in the form of collaboration diagrams. Each process was modeled in 3 modularity forms: fully-flattened, flattened where activities are clustered using BPMN groups, and modularized using separately viewed BPMN sub-processes. The objective was to investigate if and how different forms of modularity representation (used for vertical modularization) in BPMN collaboration diagrams influence the understandability of process models. In addition to the forms of modularity representation, the presentation medium (paper vs. computer) and model reader's level of business process modeling competency were investigated as factors that potentially influence model comprehension. 60 business practitioners from a large organization and 140 graduate students participated in our experiments. The results indicate that, when these three modularity representations are considered, it is best to present the model in a 'flattened' form (with or without the use of groups) and in the 'paper' format in order to optimally understand a BPMN model. The results also show that the model reader's business process modeling competency is an important factor of process model comprehension.Article Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 9Process Ontology Development Using Natural Language Processing: a Multiple Case Study(Emerald Group Publishing, 2019) Gürbüz, Özge; Rabhi, Fethi; Demirörs, OnurPurpose: Integrating ontologies with process modeling has gained increasing attention in recent years since it enhances data representations and makes it easier to query, store and reuse knowledge at the semantic level. The authors focused on a process and ontology integration approach by extracting the activities, roles and other concepts related to the process models from organizational sources using natural language processing techniques. As part of this study, a process ontology population (PrOnPo) methodology and tool is developed, which uses natural language parsers for extracting and interpreting the sentences and populating an event-driven process chain ontology in a fully automated or semi-automated (user assisted) manner. The purpose of this paper is to present applications of PrOnPo tool in different domains. Design/methodology/approach: A multiple case study is conducted by selecting five different domains with different types of guidelines. Process ontologies are developed using the PrOnPo tool in a semi-automated and fully automated fashion and manually. The resulting ontologies are compared and evaluated in terms of time-effort and recall-precision metrics. Findings: From five different domains, the results give an average of 70 percent recall and 80 percent precision for fully automated usage of the PrOnPo tool, showing that it is applicable and generalizable. In terms of efficiency, the effort spent for process ontology development is decreased from 250 person-minutes to 57 person-minutes (semi-automated). Originality/value: The PrOnPo tool is the first one to automatically generate integrated process ontologies and process models from guidelines written in natural language. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.Article Citation - WoS: 67Citation - Scopus: 91A Survey on Modeling and Model-Driven Engineering Practices in the Embedded Software Industry(Elsevier Ltd., 2018) Akdur, Deniz; Garousi, Vahid; Demirörs, OnurSoftware-intensive embedded systems have become an essential aspect of our lives. To cope with its growing complexity, modeling and model-driven engineering (MDE) are widely used for analysis, design, implementation, and testing of these systems. Since a large variety of software modeling practices is used in the domain of embedded software, it is important to understand and characterize the-state-of-the-practices and also the benefits, challenges and consequences of using software modeling approaches in this domain. The goal of this study is to investigate those practices in the embedded software engineering projects by identifying to what degree, why and how software modeling and MDE are used. To achieve this objective, we designed and conducted an online survey. Opinions of 627 practicing embedded software engineers from 27 different countries are included in the survey. The survey results reveal important and interesting findings about the state of software modeling and MDE practices in the worldwide embedded software industry. Among the results: (1) Different modeling approaches (from informal sketches to formalized models) are widely used in the embedded software industry with different needs and all of the usages could be effective depending on the various modeling characteristics; (2) The majority of participants use UML; and the second most frequently selected response is “Sketch/No formal modeling language” which shows the wide-spread informal usage of modeling; (3) In model-driven approaches, it is not so important to have a graphical syntax to represent the model (as in UML) and depending on the type of target embedded industrial sector, modeling stakeholders prefer models, which can be represented in a format that is readable by a machine (as in DSL); (4) Sequence diagrams and state-machines are the two most popular diagram types; (5) Top motivations for adopting MDE are: cost savings, achieving shorter development time, reusability and quality improvement. The survey results will shed light on the state of software modeling and MDE practices and provide practical benefits to embedded software professionalsArticle Citation - WoS: 33Citation - Scopus: 46A Semi-Automated Approach for Generating Natural Language Requirements Documents Based on Business Process Models(Elsevier Ltd., 2018) Aysolmaz, Banu; Leopold, Henrik; Reijers, Hajo A.; Demirörs, OnurContext: The analysis of requirements for business-related software systems is often supported by using business process models. However, the final requirements are typically still specified in natural language. This means that the knowledge captured in process models must be consistently transferred to the specified requirements. Possible inconsistencies between process models and requirements represent a serious threat for the successful development of the software system and may require the repetition of process analysis activities. Objective: The objective of this paper is to address the problem of inconsistency between process models and natural language requirements in the context of software development. Method: We define a semi-automated approach that consists of a process model-based procedure for capturing execution-related data in requirements models and an algorithm that takes these models as input for generating natural language requirements. We evaluated our approach in the context of a multiple case study with three organizations and a total of 13 software development projects. Results: We found that our approach can successfully generate well-readable requirements, which do not only positively contribute to consistency, but also to the completeness and maintainability of requirements. The practical use of our approach to identify a suitable subcontractor on the market in 11 of the 13 projects further highlights the practical value of our approach. Conclusion: Our approach provides a structured way to obtain high-quality requirements documents from process models and to maintain textual and visual representations of requirements in a consistent way.Article Citation - WoS: 66Citation - Scopus: 85Factors Influencing the Understandability of Process Models: a Systematic Literature Review(Elsevier Ltd., 2018) Dikici, Ahmet; Türetken, Oktay; Demirörs, OnurContext Process models are key in facilitating communication in organizations and in designing process-aware information systems. Organizations are facing increasingly larger and more complex processes, which pose difficulties to the understandability of process models. The literature reports several factors that are considered to influence the understandability of process models. However, these studies typically focus on testing of a limited set of factors. A work that collects, abstracts and synthesizes an in-depth summary of the current literature will help in developing the research in this field. Objective We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) focusing on the empirical studies in the existing literature in order to better understand the state of the research on process model understandability, and identify the gaps and opportunities for future research. Method We searched the studies between the years 1995 and 2015 in established electronic libraries. Out of 1066 publications retrieved initially, we selected 45 publications for thorough analysis. We identified, analyzed and categorized factors that are considered to influence the understandability of process models as studied in the literature using empirical methods. We also analyzed the indicators that are used to quantify process model understandability. Results Our analysis identifies several gaps in the field, as well as issues of inconsistent findings regarding the effect of some factors, unbalanced emphasis on certain indicators, and methodological concerns. Conclusions The existing research calls for comprehensive empirical studies to contribute to a better understanding of the factors of process model understandability. Our study is a comprehensive source for researchers working on the understandability of process models and related fields, and a useful guide for practitioners aiming to generate understandable process models.