Luiz Fernando Capretz

The University of Western Ontario | UWO · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Variability management (VM) in software product line engineering (SPLE) is introduced as an abstraction that enables the reuse and customization of assets. VM is a complex task involving the identification, representation, and instantiation of variability for specific products, as well as the evolution of variability itself. This work presents a co...

Software testing is vital to improve software quality. However, software tester role is stigmatized, partly due to misperception and partly due to the treatment of the testing process within the software industry. The present study analyses this situation aiming to explore what might inhibit an individual from taking up a software testing career. I...

Software testing is vital to improve software quality. However, software tester role is stigmatized, partly due to misperception and partly due to the treatment of the testing process within the software industry. The present study analyses this situation aiming to explore what might inhibit an individual from taking up a software testing career. I...

Context. Recently, a family of studies highlighted the unpopularity of software testing careers among undergraduate students in software engineering and computer science courses. The original study and its replications explored the perception of students in universities in four countries (Canada, China, India, and Malaysia), and indicated that most...

Customer churn is a critical issue impacting enterprises and organizations, particularly in the emerging and highly competitive telecommunications industry. It is important to researchers and industry analysts interested in projecting customer behavior to separate churn from non-churn consumers. The fundamental incentive is a firm's intent desire t...

Experimental Software Engineering has straightforwardly evolved in the last decades due to the effort of the community in providing consolidated training, teaching and practice. Particularly, for controlled experiments and quasi-experiments, the software engineering community has discussed on the lack of reproducibility and the missing of experimen...

Background: Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive technology that uses persuasive digital data and real-world surroundings to expand the user's reality, wherein objects are produced by various computer applications. It constitutes a novel advancement in medical care, education, and training. Objective: The aim of this work was to assess how eff...

Context. Recently, a family of studies highlighted the unpopularity of software testing careers among undergraduate students in software engineering and computer science courses. The original study and its replications explored the perception of students in universities in four countries (Canada, China, India, and Malaysia), and indicated that most...

Context Transfer learning techniques have been proved to be effective in the field of Cross-project defect prediction (CPDP). However, some questions still remain. First, the conditional distribution difference between source and target projects has not been considered. Second, facing multiple source projects, most studies only rarely consider the...

To improve and sustain the quality of software products, software process improvement (SPI) is needed. Currently, small and medium software enterprises (SMSEs) represent a high proportion of companies around the world and become a cornerstone in the worldwide industry economy. These companies have realized that improving their process is crucial fo...

This study attempts to understand motivators and de-motivators that influence the decisions of software students to take up and sustain software testing careers across three different Asian countries, i.e., China, India, and Malaysia. The re-search question can be framed as How many software students across different Asian geographies are keen to t...

This study attempts to understand motivators and de-motivators that influence the decisions of software students to take up and sustain software testing careers across three different Asian countries, i.e., China, India, and Malaysia. The research question can be framed as “How many software students across different Asian geographies are keen to t...

As a result of the rapid advancement of mobile and internet technology, a plethora of new mobile security risks has recently emerged. Many techniques have been developed to address the risks associated with Android malware. The most extensively used method for identifying Android malware is signature-based detection. The drawback of this method, ho...

Blockchain is a cutting-edge technology that is transforming and reshaping many industries. Hence, the adoption of Blockchain is becoming an increasingly significant topic. The number of publications discussing the potential of Blockchain adoption has been expanding significantly. In addition, not enough attention has been given to Blockchain adopt...

Institutions of higher learning are currently facing the challenging task of attracting new students who can effectively meet their diverse academic demands. With these demands come the need for those institutions to develop strategies that can enhance students' learning experiences at various educational levels. Predicting the academic success at...

A good fit between the person and the organization is essential in a better organizational performance. This is even more crucial in case of institutionalization of a software product line practice within an organization. Employees participation, organizational behavior and management contemplation play a vital role in successfully institutionalizi...

Heart failure is the most common cause of death in both males and females around the world. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), in particular, are the main cause of death worldwide, accounting for 30% of all fatalities in the United States and 45% in Europe. Artificial intelligence (AI) approaches such as machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) mo...

Application of machine learning for stock prediction is attracting a lot of attention in recent years. A large amount of research has been conducted in this area and multiple existing results have shown that machine learning methods could be successfully used toward stock predicting using stocks historical data. Most of these existing approaches ha...

New mobile platforms, connected seamlessly to the Internet via wireless access have become increasingly more powerful and have found usage in a diverse set of application areas, including the education sector. The educational institutions are becoming more open to embracing new learning platforms, which in turn has sparked the interest in developin...

Developing a Suitability Assessment Criteria for Software Developers: Behavioral Assessment Using Psychometric Test

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in modeling the elements that need to be considered when assigning people to roles in software projects, as evidenced by the number of available publications related to the topic. However, for the most part, these studies, have taken only a partial approach to the issue. Some have focused...

The high dimensionality of software metric features has long been noted as a data quality problem that affects the performance of software defect prediction (SDP) models. This drawback makes it necessary to apply feature selection (FS) algorithm(s) in SDP processes. FS approaches can be categorized into three types, namely, filter FS (FFS), wrapper...

Smartphones have become the most used electronic devices. They carry out most of the functionalities of desktops, offering various useful applications that suit the user’s needs. Therefore, instead of the operator, the user has been the main controller of the device and its applications, therefore its reliability has become an emergent requirement....

Finding defects early in a software system is a crucial task, as it creates adequate time for fixing such defects using available resources. Strategies such as symmetric testing have proven useful; however, its inability in differentiating incorrect implementations from correct ones is a drawback. Software defect prediction (SDP) is another feasibl...

Smartphones have become the most used electronic devices. They carry out most of the functionalities of desktops, offering various useful applications that suit the users needs. Therefore, instead of the operator, the user has been the main controller of the device and its applications, therefore its reliability has become an emergent requirement....

This work attempts to fill a gap by exploring the human dimension in particular, by trying to understand the motivation of software professionals for taking up and sustaining their careers as software testers. Towards that goal, four surveys were conducted in four countries - India, Canada, Cuba, and China - to try to understand how professional so...

Lessons learned (LL) records constitute the software organization memory of successes and failures. LL are recorded within the organization repository for future reference to optimize planning, gain experience, and elevate market competitiveness. However, manually searching this repository is a daunting task, so it is often disregarded. This can le...

Search-based software engineering that involves the deployment of meta-heuristics in applicable software processes has been gaining wide attention. Recently, researchers have been advocating the adoption of meta-heuristic algorithms for t-way testing strategies (where t points the interaction strength among parameters). Although helpful, no single...

This study attempts to provide a better understanding of the user dimension as a factor in software game success. It focuses mainly on an empirical investigation of the effect of user factors on the software game development process and finally on the quality of the resulting game. A quantitative survey was developed and conducted to identify key u...

Search-based software engineering that involves the deployment of meta-heuristics in applicable software processes has been gaining wide attention. Recently, researchers have been advocating the adoption of meta-heuristic algorithms for t-way testing strategies (where t points the interaction strength among parameters). Although helpful, no single...

Feature selection is known to be an applicable solution to address the problem of high dimensionality in software defect prediction (SDP). However, choosing an appropriate filter feature selection (FFS) method that will generate and guarantee optimal features in SDP is an open research issue, known as the filter rank selection problem. As a solutio...

As data size increases drastically, its variety also increases. Investigating such heterogeneous data is one of the most challenging tasks in information management and data analytics. The heterogeneity and decentralization of data sources affect data visualization and prediction, thereby influencing analytical results accordingly. Data harmonizati...

This work attempts to fill a gap by exploring the human dimension in particular, by trying to understand the motivation of software professionals for taking up and sustaining their careers as software testers. Towards that goal, four surveys were conducted in four countries—India, Canada, Cuba, and China—to try to understand how professional softwa...

The design of recommendation systems is based on complex information processing and big data interaction. This personalized view has evolved into a hot area in the past decade, where applications might have been proved to help for solving problem in the software development field. Therefore, with the evolvement of Recommendation System in Software...

As software systems are becoming more pervasive, they are also becoming more susceptible to failures, resulting in potentially lethal combinations. Software testing is critical to preventing software failures but is, arguably, the least understood part of the software life cycle and the toughest to perform correctly. Adequate research has been carr...

As software systems are becoming more pervasive, they are also becoming more susceptible to failures, resulting in potentially lethal combinations. Software testing is critical to preventing software failures but is, arguably, the least understood part of the software life cycle and the toughest to perform correctly. Adequate research has been carr...

This paper presents the components of a newly developed Malaysian SMEs - Software Process Improvement model (MSME-SPI) that can assess SMEs soft-ware development industry in managing and improving their software processes capability. The MSME-SPI is developed in response to practitioner needs that were highlighted in an empirical study with the Mal...

Selecting the most suitable filter method that will produce a subset of features with the best performance remains an open problem that is known as filter rank selection problem. A viable solution to this problem is to independently apply a mixture of filter methods and evaluate the results. This study proposes novel rank aggregation-based multi-fi...

This paper presents the components of a newly developed Malaysian SMEs-Software Process Improvement model (MSME-SPI) that can assess SMEs software development industry in managing and improving their software processes capability. The MSME-SPI is developed in response to practitioner needs that were highlighted in an empirical study with the Malays...

Context: Creativity is one of the essential ingredients in successful software engineering. However, majority of the work related to creativity in software engineering has focused on creativity in requirement engineering. Furthermore, there are very few studies that examine programmer creativity and the impact of individual and contextual factors o...

The way a database schema is designed has a high impact on its performance in relational databases, which are symmetric in nature. While the problem of schema optimization is even more significant for NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases, existing modeling tools for relational databases are inadequate for this asymmetric setting. As a result, NoSQL mod...

Abstract: Over the past decade, there has been a marked interest in understanding the personal traits of software developers and their influence on the process of assigning people to roles, as has been evident from the growing number of related publications on this topic. This study is part of a larger research project focussed on identifying the e...

As software systems are becoming more pervasive, they are also becoming more susceptible to failures, resulting in potentially lethal combinations. Software test-ing is critical to preventing software failures but is, arguably, the least understood part of the software life cycle and the toughest to perform correctly. Adequate re-search has been ca...

Software testing is one of the crucial supporting processes of software life cycle. Unfortunately for the software industry, the role is stigmatized, partly due to misperception and partly due to treatment of the role in the software industry. The present study aims to analyse this situation to explore what inhibit an individual from taking up a so...

Automated Driving System refers to a vehicle system where hardware and software are collectively capable of on-road operational and tactical functions. Therefore, appropriate verification and validation procedures should be followed to mitigate unreliability and hazardousness. Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports and Autonomous Vehicle Collisio...

While software development productivity has grown rapidly, the weight values assigned to count standard Function Point (FP) created at IBM twenty-five years ago have never been updated. This obsolescence raises critical questions about the validity of the weight values; it also creates other problems such as ambiguous classification, crisp boundary...

End users positive response is essential for the success of any software. This is true for both commercial and Open Source Software (OSS). OSS is popular not only because of its availability, which is usually free but due to the user support it provides, generally through public platforms. The study model of this research establishes a relationship...

Software effort estimation in the early stages of the software life cycle is one of the most essential and daunting tasks for project managers. In this research, a new model based on non-linear regression analysis is proposed to predict software effort from use case diagrams. It is concluded that, where software size is classified from small to ver...

Software developers agree that software portability is a desirable attribute for their software quality. Software portability is mostly acquired by ad-hoc techniques when trying to port existing products. There is a lack of unified measuring approach of software portability in most computing platforms. This paper presents preliminary results of a s...

Software testing is one of the crucial supporting processes in software devel-opment. Unfortunately, the role of testers is stigmatized partly due to misper-ception of the role requirements and partly due to treatment of the role in the industry. The present study aims to analyze the situation exploring what pre-vents an individual from taking up a...

As software systems are becoming more pervasive, they are also becoming more susceptible to failures, resulting in potentially lethal combinations. Software testing is critical to preventing software failures but is, arguably, the least understood part of the software life cycle and the toughest to perform correctly. Adequate research has been carr...

Smartphones are becoming necessary tools in the daily lives of millions of users who rely on these devices and their applications. There are thousands of applications for smartphone devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android, thus their reliability has become paramount for their users. This work aims to answer two related questions: (1) Ca...

Smartphones are becoming necessary tools in the daily lives of mil-lions of users who rely on these devices and their applications. There are thou-sands of applications for smartphone devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android, thus their reliability has become paramount for their users. This work aims to answer two related questions: (1)...

End users' positive response is essential for the success of any software. This is true for both commercial and Open Source Software (OSS). OSS is popular not only because of its availability, which is usually free but due to the user support it provides, generally through public platforms. The study model of this research establishes a relationshi...

Context Lessons learned (LL) records constitute the software organization memory of successes and failures. LL are recorded within the organization repository for future reference to optimize planning, gain experience, and elevate market competitiveness. However, manually searching this repository is a daunting task, so it is often disregarded. Thi...

Job rotation is a managerial practice to be applied in the organizational environment to reduce job monotony, boredom, and exhaustion resulting from job simplification, specialization, and repetition. Previous studies have identified and discussed the use of project-to-project rotations in software practice, gathering empirical evidence from qualit...

Application of neural network architectures for financial prediction has been actively studied in recent years. This paper presents a comparative study that investigates and compares feed-forward neural network (FNN) and adaptive neural fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) on stock prediction using fundamental financial ratios. The study is designed to e...

This paper attempts to understand motivators and de-motivators that influence the decisions of software professionals to take up and sustain software testing careers across four different countries, i.e. Canada, China, Cuba, and India. The research question can be framed as "How many software professionals across different geographies are keen to t...

Despite its importance, software testing is, arguably, the least understood part of the software life cycle and still the toughest to perform correctly. Many researchers and practitioners have been working to address the situation. However, most of the studies focus on the process and technology dimensions and only a few on the human dimension of t...

Application of neural network architectures for financial prediction has been actively studied in recent years. This paper presents a comparative study that investigates and compares feed-forward neural network (FNN) and adaptive neural fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) on stock prediction using fundamental financial ratios. The study is designed to e...

Despite its importance, software testing is, arguably, the least understood part of the software life cycle and still the toughest to perform correctly. Many researchers and practitioners have been working to address the situation. However, most of the studies focus on the process and technology dimensions and only a few on the human dimension of t...

This paper attempts to understand motivators and de-motivators that influence the decisions of software professionals to take up and sustain software testing careers across four different countries, i.e. Canada, China, Cuba, and India. The research question can be framed as "How many software professionals across different geographies are keen to t...

Context: Job rotation is a managerial practice to be applied in the organizational environment to reduce job monotony, boredom, and exhaustion resulting from job simplification, specialization, and repetition. Previous studies have identified and discussed the use of project-to-project rotations in software practice, gathering empirical evidence fr...