Mercedes Ruiz

Universidad de Cádiz | UCA · Department of Computer Engineering

Today, organizations require innovative and flexible solutions to digitize and automate their processes—particularly those processes designed to obtain information from users. Chatbots are one of the most widely used technological options for automating processes. This article aims to integrate chatbot technology with health information systems (HI...

In software engineering, the onboarding process of new software engineers is crucial. The primary goal of this process is to ensure that professionals gain the necessary knowledge and skills to comprehend the company’s culture, integrate into the organization, and perform their activities effectively. Enhancing corporate learning processes and addr...

In today’s technological and digital society, education in digital competencies through which students can make critical and safe use of the Information Society Technologies for work, leisure, and communication, is essential. This paper presents a serious game based on interactive fiction for the self-assessment of digital competence according to t...

Software testing is an essential knowledge area required by industry for software engineers. However, software engineering students often consider testing less appealing than designing or coding. Consequently, it is difficult to engage students to create effective tests. To encourage students, we explored the use of gamification and investigated wh...

Software testing is an essential knowledge area required by industry for software engineers. However, software engineering students often consider testing less appealing than designing or coding. Consequently, it is difficult to engage students to create effective tests. To encourage students, we explored the use of gamification and investigated wh...

Información (TI) es uno de los elementos que más influye en la calidad del proceso de Gestión de Incidencias de Servicios TI. Aumentar la motivación y el compromiso de los agentes de los grupos de soporte, así como mejorar sus habilidades y competencias para gestionar adecuadamente las incidencias de los servicios TI es fundamental para mejorar los...

Digital games are considered an effective and efficient instructional strategy for computing education. However, there are few empirical studies providing sound evidence on the benefits of such educational games. In this respect, the objective of this chapter is to present a comprehensive analysis in order to summarize empirical evidence on the ben...

Gamification is a potential approach to foster motivation and engagement in different contexts which popularity in recent years has encouraged its application in a diversity of domains, including health, education, business, society, or tourism. However, although all their promising benefits and rapidly developing, the gamification community should...

Despite the benefits of adopting IT Service Management (ITSM) reference models, such initiatives do not always produce the expected results. The research literature in this area concludes that motivation, engagement, skills, experience, performance and willingness to change of the personnel involved are among the critical factors for an effective I...

Gamification has rapidly emerged as one of the favorite persuasive technologies widely used with the aim of promoting a positive change in the user’s behavior by means of including game-like elements in non-game contexts. As a research discipline, gamification is growing fast, maturing from basic and fundamental questions such as what and why gamif...

Changes and continuous progress in logistics and productive systems make the realization of improvements in decision making necessary. Simulation is a good support tool for this type of decisions because it allows reproducing processes virtually to study their behavior, to analyze the impact of possible changes or to compare different design altern...

In this chapter, a framework to design engaging CLIL units that make use of motivational digital technologies is introduced. The framework collects the eight-year experience of the author as a content trainer using CLIL in a university context. The proposal grounds on consolidated knowledge on CLIL training, imports validated knowledge from the gam...

En la formación en Ingeniería del Software se observa una demanda de nuevos enfoques de aprendizaje que permitan modernizar el proceso tradicional de enseñanza y adaptarlo a los procesos de aprendizaje de las nuevas generaciones de alumnos. El uso de experiencias formativas basadas en gamificación, juegos serios y simulación es un enfoque que permi...

Human Factors (HF) is the study of the interaction between users and technology with the aim of improving the user’s experience of a product and avoid unwanted issues in the usage of the system. HF is largely applied in several fields such as industrial processes, education, training, and design. In software development, HF plays a crucial role in...

Driven the necessity of providing alternative approaches to the traditional pedagogical teaching process, the use of gamification and serious games has become a successful approach to motivate, engage and be effective for the current generation of learners. Considering the advantages of serious games, our work describes the experience of using a se...

Despite the importance that computer thinking and programming have in the industrial field currently, the majority of the students consider that these competences have no relevance within their degrees, which causes absenteeism, lack of interest, and reduces the motivation and the engagement of the students within the related courses. Therefore, th...

GoRace is a suite of web applications to gamify the activities of your users. It easily integrates with the tools you use in your company, business, classroom, etc. and takes advantage of the activities that your users perform to provide them with a unique experience that increases their motivation.

In recent years, an increasing interest has been observed in the development and use of simulations, serious games (SGs) and gamification strategies to teach software project management (SPM) in a highly practical way. The current SGs for SPM have a quite specific scope, are not able to provide and dynamically change game scenarios during the life...

Driven by the need to provide more hands-on opportunities to computing students, educational digital and non-digital games have been used as an instructional strategy for teaching Software Project Management (SPM). However, a question that arises is to which regard the expected benefits of these games are real. Thus, the objective of this study is...

Non-digital educational games (board and card games, paper & pencil, etc.) are also being used for computing education. However, there are few empirical studies providing sound evidence on the benefits of this kind of games. Consequently, a question that arises is to which regard the expected benefits of these games are real. Thus, the objective of...

Digital games are considered an effective and efficient instructional strategy for computing education. However, there are few empirical studies providing sound evidence on the benefits of such educational games. In this respect, the objective of this chapter is to present a comprehensive analysis in order to summarize empirical evidence on the ben...

The development of personal and social skills of information technology students is a relevant task that can promote the employability of future computing professionals. In order to promote the importance of these skills and help students in their development and improvement, a workshop was organized based on serious games. Two serious games were a...

Today's IT systems and IT processes must be ready to handle change in an efficient and responsive manner to allow businesses to both evolve and adapt to a changing world. In this paper we describe an approach that consists of using simulation based multi-objective optimization to select optimal ITIL change management process strategies that help IT...

Context: In recent years the interest in using serious games for software engineering, software process, software project management and software process standards education has increased significantly. The ISO 21500 standard is an international reference standard that provides generic guidance and good practices in project management. Objective: T...

A key requirement for service providers is to define, manage and deliver Information Technology (IT) services to effectively support business goals and customer needs. Several process reference models for the IT service management (ITSM) have emerged, being Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) the reference model accepted as de fact...

Context: The interest in the use of serious games as learning resources for software process standards education and training has increased significantly in recent years. Objective: The main purpose of this work is to record, analyze and characterize the state of the art related to serious games for software process standards education with the goa...

Context: Gamification has been proven to increase engagement and motivation in multiple and different non-game contexts such as healthcare, education, workplace, and marketing, among others. However, many of these applications fail to achieve the desired benefits of gamification, mainly because of a poor design. Objective: This paper explores the c...

Companies of the defense sector use heavyweight methodologies such as the V-model to develop large systems in which reliability is a crucial factor. This model has well-known disadvantages but the necessity to maintain all the phases under control and its mandatory use by the public institutions prevent the companies from altering the methodology....

Support groups’ agents are a very important element of IT service incident management process, and to increase their motivation and commitment, to improve their skills and to modify their behaviors is fundamental for improving the process and meeting the business objectives. Gamification, the application of game elements in non-game contexts to mod...

Among agile methodologies, eXtreme Programming (XP) is one of the best known and better defined. However, one factor that hinders its application is the lack of native XP support for project management. One of the techniques that could help in the improvement of XP projects management is the simulation modeling. In this paper, we examine, through a...

Bringing professional practice into the learning/teaching process is an especially difficult task in the scope of software project management and can turn into a challenge in the context of software process standards education. The ISO 21500 standard is an international reference standard that provides generic guidance and good practices in project...

Teaching Software Project Management (SPM) for Information Technology (IT) learners is a relevance issue. The necessity of teaching SPM in a highly practical way moves trainers towards the use of new methods and techniques such as simulations, serious games or gamification strategies. The majority of the existing serious games for SPM do not offer...

The ISO/IEC 29110 standard aims to assist and encourage Very Small Entities (VSEs) in understanding, adopting, assessing and improving their software processes to their specific needs. Although the integration of international software standards in VSEs is a relevant topic, the learning/teaching process is a considerable challenge for industrial tr...

La necesidad de formar en dirección y gestión de proyectos software de una forma práctica junto a las preferencias en el aprendizaje de las nuevas generaciones de alumnos requiere que los formadores adopten nuevos métodos de aprendizaje y los integren en el proceso de aprendizaje/enseñanza con el fin de motivar a los alumnos durante su formación y...

The growing demand of mobile applications in the market has raised questions in the software industry as to the most appropriate development methods to satisfy current software special characteristics. Numerous studies propose the adoption of agile methods as the most appropriate ones, given their flexibility to adapt to such a changing context. Ho...

Curriculum guidelines for IT learners need to be aligned with the current generation of students, the so-called millennials, own features and style of learning. It is necessary explore ways of adapting the teaching/learning process, the methods, the techniques and the resources we use, to reach them and teach them more effectively. Computer-based s...

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es estudiar los conocimientos que giran en torno al ámbito de los juegos serios y la simulación para la formación en dirección y gestión de proyectos software, con el fin de proponer una solución efectiva a la necesidad real que surge en la formación práctica de este área de conocimientos. Además, se propone un...

The topic of commitment in software process improvement (SPI) has been a recurrent topic of research that has not received enough attention in the recent years. In many situations, the lack of commitment in SPI initiatives is appointed as the major cause leading to failure. In this paper, we propose the use of simulation-based process functional pr...

The highly theoretical methodology, in which software engineering is frequently taught, causes that learners usually lose their interest in learning software engineering. This study introduce SmartProject, a learning environment based on serious games and social networks to teach and motivate learners in software engineering, and evaluates its educ...

La dirección y gestión de proyectos software es un área de gran relevancia a tener en cuenta por los profesionales del sector, en el camino para alcanzar el éxito en la realización de los proyectos software. Debido a ello, de igual o mayor importancia debe ser la formación que los futuros profesio-nales reciben en dicha materia. No obstante, podemo...

La formación que reciben los futuros profesionales en dirección y gestión de proyectos software es un tema de gran relevancia a tener en cuenta en el sector de la educación. La revisión sistemática de la literatura que se presenta en este trabajo persigue analizar y resumir el estado del arte actual de los diferentes métodos y procedimientos usados...

La formación en proceso software es un tema de gran relevancia a tener en cuenta por los profesionales de la industria de la ingeniería del software en el camino hacia el desarrollo de software de calidad con éxito. Sin embargo, los estudios realizados muestran como dicha formación es altamente teórica y en la mayoría de los casos suele impartirse...

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for improving Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) processes that is based on as follows: (a) to build a simulation model of the process to improve that enables IT managers to assess the process performance and analyze the effects of changes in the process before their implementation in the org...

Software process is a very important area of knowledge that supports software development. However, we can observe a lack of methods and tools that allow teaching software process in a highly practical way and attached to the software development learning. In this paper, we analyze the software lifecycle process groups of the ISO/IEC 12207 and the...

El aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lengua es esencial para el perfil profesional del ingeniero del software. Dicho aprendizaje debe realizarse de manera práctica y llevando a cabo experiencias de la vida real. Tomando como base el principio de que 'el nivel de interactividad dentro de un ambiente de aprendizaje es lo que impulsa dicho aprendi...

Training that future practitioners receive in software project management is a topic of great importance. The objective of this systematic literature review is to summarize the current state of the art of the different methods and procedures used to assess serious games. The review follows a predefined procedure that involves automatically searchin...

This paper describes the approach we followed to integrate content and language learning in an undergraduate subject of the Software Engineering degree at the University of Cadiz. Based on the principle that ‘the level of interactivity within a learning environment is what drives learning’, our experience was aimed at the design and use of interact...

La dirección y gestión de proyectos software es un área de gran relevancia a tener en cuenta por los profesionales del sector, en el camino para alcanzar el éxito en la realización de los proyectos software. Debido a ello, de igual o mayor importancia debe ser la formación que los futuros profesionales reciben en dicha materia. No obstante, podemos...

Simulation modelling is widely used to support decision-making in different business areas and management tasks. Given the growing importance for real-world organizations to improve Information Technology Service Management (ITSM), this paper focuses on the application of these techniques to support decision-making in this field. A review of publis...

Context This paper is developed in the context of Usability Engineering. More specifically, it focuses on the use of modelling and simulation to help decision-making in the scope of usability evaluation. Objective The main goal of this paper is to present UESim: a System Dynamics simulation model to help decision-making in the make-up of the usabi...

We propose to use simulation modeling to support decision making in IT service strategy scope. Our main contribution is a simulation model that helps service providers analyze the consequences of changes in both the service capacity assigned to their customers and the tendency of service requests received on the fulfillment of a business rule assoc...

Nowadays, we can observe a lack of tools that allow teaching and assessing in Software Project Management in a more real-life way. In this paper, we discuss the need of developing tools to teach in the scope of Software Project Management, and how we can achieve that learners test their knowledge and cover the needed educational objectives, in a ri...

Organizations need to be agile and flexible to meet the continuous changes. Business Process Management (BPM) is harnessing the continuous changes suffered by organizations in the value chain and, therefore, in their processes. Simulation models offer the ability to experience different decisions and analyze their results in systems where the cost...

Software process engineering is a discipline, which aims to study and improve software development and maintenance processes. The explicit definition of software processes is essential. To this end, the Object Management Group consortium proposed the Software & Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model (SPEM) that exploits the benefits of the Model Dr...

Although there are some works related to the application of serious games for software project management training, there is a lack of tools that combine training and assessment in a single tool and that provide an environment for the learner where they can experiment decision making in real-life like scenarios. Project Decision (ProDec) is a simul...

Los estudios realizados han permitido observar la carencia de herramientas que permiten la formación y evaluación de los alumnos en la planificación y gestión de proyectos software. ProDec (Project Decision) es un “serious game” creado con la intención de formar y evaluar a los alumnos en dicho ámbito. Su principal objetivo es que los alumnos adqui...

Estimates of task duration or the amount of resources needed in software projects are often very inaccurate. To avoid this problem, project management must be effective and dynamic, that is, being proactive rather than reactive. Among the tasks needed in this approach, reassigning resources, hiring new personnel or adapting estimates to new situati...

Service-Level Agreements (SLA) is one of the well-known mechanisms to manage the services offered by a provider. In software engineering, it is usually taken as the starting point to define the collaboration between the development team and clients. More concretely, an SLA is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defin...

Traditionally, simulation has been used by project managers in optimising decision making. However, current simulation packages only include simulation optimisation which considers a single objective (or multiple objectives combined into a single fitness function). This paper aims to describe an approach that consists of using multiobjective optimi...

En este trabajo se presenta una propuesta para obtener modelos de simulación a partir de modelos de procesos de negocio usando para ello un enfoque de Ingeniería Dirigida por Modelos (MDE). La propuesta se llevará a cabo partiendo de un modelo representado en BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) sobre el que se aplicarán varias transformacion...

La simulación se ha utilizado con frecuencia en lo ultimos años como herramienta de ayuda a la optimización de la toma de deci-siones en la gestión de proyectos software. Sin embargo, las herramientas actuales que permiten construir y simular los modelos solamente incluyen módulos que permiten la optimización de u unico objetivo. Esto no parece suf...

In the context of the European Higher Education Area adaptation process, a group of teachers of the Computer Science degree of the University of Cadiz have developed an initiative for the collaborative creation of a set of educational resources that are used or supplemented in diverse courses of software engineering and information systems core sub...

This paper presents a dynamic simulation model applied within the field of web services capacity management. The main purpose of the model is to help manage the web services capacity that providers assign their customers accordingly so as to ensure the fulfillment of the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) established.Therefore, the model allows for th...

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) holds promise for business agility since it allows business process to change to meet new customer demands or market needs without causing a cascade effect of changes in the underlying IT systems. Business rules are the instrument chosen to help business and IT to collaborate. In this paper, we propose the utili...

Among usability inspection methods, heuristic evaluation, or expert evaluation, is considered the most used and well-known usability evaluation method. The number of evaluators and their expertise are essential aspects that affect the quality of the evaluation, the cost that its application generates, and the time that it is necessary to spend. Thi...

Resumen. Las técnicas de modelado y simulación ofrecen la posibilidad de experimentar diferentes decisiones y analizar sus resultados en sistemas donde el coste o el riesgo de una experimentación real son prohibitivos. En este trabajo se ofrece una visión global de las posibles aplicaciones de estas técnicas en el ámbito de los procesos de ITIL V3...

En este trabajo se presentan dos alternativas para obtener un modelo de simulación, representado mediante diagramas de Forrester de la Dinámica de Sistemas, a partir de un modelo de proceso de negocio representado en BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). La primera alternativa consiste en crear un esquema de transformación entre ambos modelos,...

In the context of the European Higher Education Area adaptation process, a group of teachers of the Computer Science degree of the University of Cadiz have developed an initiative for the collaborative creation of a set of educational resources that are used or supplemented in diverse courses of software engineering and information systems core sub...

As a consequence of the growing customer orientation of business, organizationsare now showing a big interest in the development of technological solutions thatallow them both to offer a quick respond to their customers and procuring operationalefficiency. In this sense, SOA can be seen as a mechanism to help achieve thealignment of business goals...

Aplicación de técnicas de modelado dinámico para la mejora de procesos software

This paper describes the main elements of a multilevel architecture aimed at helping in the developmen of modular and reusable software process simulation models. The architecture is based on the principles of metamodeling of ISO's Information Resource Dictionary System and formalized using UML. The paper includes an example of how this architectur...

In this paper we present the main concepts and principles of a multilevel architecture to help in the development of modularized and reusable software process models under the System Dynamics approach. The conceptual ideas of the multilevel architecture have been formalized using UML as a notation. Metamodeling is used to support the process of abs...

Desde los albores de la disciplina de la ingeniería del software, queda patente la dificultad para que los artefactos generados alcancen un nivel de calidad óptimo dentro de unos límites de tiempo y coste. Dada la naturaleza lógica del producto, se asume que la calidad de un sistema software depende sobremanera de la calidad del proceso usado para...

Resumen Las técnicas de modelado y simulación se han aplicado desde la década de los 90 para dar respuesta a distintas cuestiones relacionadas con el proceso de desarrollo de software. Una de las principales ventajas del modelado y simulación es la posibilidad de predecir las consecuencias que podrían tener determinadas decisiones en el desarrollo...

In the last several years, software industry has undergone a significant transition to the use of existing component products in building systems. Nowadays, more and more solutions are built by integrating Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products rather than building from scratch. This new approach for software development has specific features tha...

A Correction to this article has been published in Software Process: Improvement and Practice 2005; 10(3):355 In this article, we present an integrated framework for software process improvement according to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The framework is double‐integrated. First, it is based on the systematic integration of dynamic modules t...

Resumen. La usabilidad de los Sistemas Interactivos se reconoce ya como una componente fundamental del éxito de estos sistemas. Para garantizar la usabilidad, las organizaciones de desarrollo de software deben considerar la aplicación de procesos de Diseño Centrados en el Usuario (DCU). Sin embargo, existen inconvenientes que dificultan la aplicaci...

Resumen. Desde los albores de la disciplina de la ingeniería del software, que-da patente la dificultad para que los artefactos generados alcancen un nivel de calidad óptimo dentro de unos límites de tiempo y coste. Dada la naturaleza ló-gica del producto, se asume que la calidad de un sistema software depende so-bremanera de la calidad del proceso...