Call for Papers: Continuous Software Engineering 2016 (Workshop at SE 2016)

Leave a reply

In order to develop and deliver high-quality products to their customers, software companies have to adopt state-of-the-art software development processes. To face this challenge, companies are applying innovative methods, approaches and techniques like agile methods, DevOps, Continuous Delivery, test automation, infrastructure as code or container-based virtualization. These new approaches have a high impact on the specification, design, development, maintenance, operation and the evolution of software systems. Therefore, common software engineering activities, organizational forms and processes have to be questioned, adapted and extended to ensure continuous and unobstructed soft-ware development (Continuous Software Engineering). So far, there is a lack of systematic approaches to face these challenges. The goal of this workshop is to present and discuss innovative solutions, ideas and experiences in the area of Continuous Software Engineering (CSE).

Topics of Interest

Continue reading →

Amazon Echo and Skype

Leave a reply

I’ve been using my Amazon Echo for a couple of months now and I’m still in awe. The speech recognition, without any training, is great. “Alexa, play KQED” is reacted to promptly and will actually play KQED. It is also intuitive. I did not need a manual to try “Alexa, set volume to 3.” It worked right away. Take this from someone who, according to one former boss, still has a strong German accent.

The Echo is still U.S. focused. When asked to play Deutschlandfunk (German public radio), Alexa asked back: “Do you want to play dog sled funk?” As much as I would like to unleash some dog sled funk in my living room, this is not what I what I was asking for. So I got an Amazon Fire tablet and the Alexa app and got DLF to play. Ever paranoid, I intend to eventually switch off voice recognition and/or ban the Echo to my kitchen, as I dislike the thought of having my voice print stored on U.S. American servers.

Continue reading →

Should Cars be Programmed to Make Life or Death Decisions?

5 Replies

With self-driving cars in our near future, I’ve seen more and more articles about the moral dilemma of what the car should do when faced with an impossible decision, for example, to either kill a grandmother or drive into a flock of children. In my mind, the pundits are getting it all wrong; the underlying assumption that the car’s behavior must be predictable is plain wrong.

Here is how one pundit explains the problem:

Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, you own a self-driving car. One day, while you are driving along, an unfortunate set of events causes the car to head toward a crowd of 10 people crossing the road. It cannot stop in time but it can avoid killing 10 people by steering into a wall. However, this collision would kill you, the owner and occupant. What should it do?

Continue reading →

Another Take on Explaining Open Source Business Models

Leave a reply

Open source remains popular and I find myself explaining the economics of it to ever broader audiences. Rather than talking legalese or philosophy, I’ve been wondering about a pitch that focuses on the high-level strategic objective of the companies that are paying for open source. Here is a short summary; let me know if you think it works.

I’ll start out with disclaimer:

Open source is a tool, not a philosophy. Open source licenses are a legal tool, open source foundations are a governance tool, and open source processes are better ways of developing software. As a consequence, these tools can be used to create very different business models, not just one.

I’ll then launch into the examples:

Continue reading →

Student Startup Passion vs. Market Potential

Leave a reply

As part of my Startupinformatik initiative (in German), I’m trying to motivate student startups. Here, I want to talk about student startups coming out of a Master’s program. These are different from startups coming out of my research lab, which are based on work with my Ph.D. students. Master student startups are typically smaller, not based on significant intellectual property, and my working relationship with the team has been much shorter than with my Ph.D. students.

What are the three most important factors that make a startup successful? As the old saying goes: Team, team, and team. There is plenty of advice on the web on finding and building teams. I have a bit to add to this as well, but will do so in a different post. Here, I would like to focus on the next two most important success factors, which are product and passion. Without a good product there is no money to be made, and without passion, the startup will fall apart too quickly.

Sadly, being a student, having a good product idea, and having passion for it are factors that are hard to align. The following figure helps illustrate the problem.

Continue reading →

Only German Financial Websites….

Leave a reply

One of those cultural things: German financial services websites (but then: all of them) will remind you upon logging in that you did not properly log out last session. Streamlining social behavior at its best, even if it makes little sense. At least it is a good example localized semantics for an HCI course.

Example Login Designed to Make Users Go Away

Leave a reply

Schufa is a German credit rating agency. By law it is required to provide information to consumers (while it makes all its money, for now, off corporate customers). As a consequence, its password and login screens have been designed, I suggest, to be as unusable as possible. Below please find a screen-shot of the PIN setting dialog, (The pin is the second of two passwords you need to login.) There are plenty of requirements. My favorite requirement is “use at least one special character but don’t use any illegal special characters”. Also, kind of amusing, the admonishment “to think really hard to remember your PIN”.

schufa