computer school: Software Engineering Research Project

Software Engineering Research Group

Our Software Engineering Research Group (SERG) is actively carrying out research on a set of software engineering knowledge areas aimed to improve the current techniques, methods and processes. Its primary objective is to produce high-quality research results in its research areas, which all concentrate on quality software and systems development, and maintenance activities.

Current research areas of interest include

1) Software development methodology

The aim of this research is to enhance the existing techniques and approaches associated to software development life cycle and its process. Some existing methodologies such as Water Fall, SADM, RUP and Agile need to be explored and reviewed to improve the software process. Issues at the development phases particularly at the higher business requirement and design levels need to be revealed and brought to light to strengthen its validity and consistency within software components. Research on requirements traceability in particular is being carried out to establish links between requirements and their lower level artifacts of object-oriented software.

2) Software maintenance and evolution

Basic knowledge of software maintenance comprises thoroughly understanding and re-examining the existing software design and code through reverse engineering and restructuring of change and its associated components. The ultimate aim of this research is to explore mechanisms and better ways to support its maintenance and evolution activities. The study involves its related knowledge that includes reverse engineering, program understanding, visualization, requirements traceability, impact analysis, software measurement, re-documentation, cost estimation and impact evaluation.

3) Software Quality and Testing

The primary objective of this research is to reduce issues on software quality through management viewpoints, validation and verification. As user confidence via testing levels is very critical, our research embarks into study that includes effective testing, testing techniques, methods and practices. Among the possible topics that fall in this research such as quality assurance, quality measurement, regression testing, functional testing, test management and defect removal.

4) Software Process Improvement

The ultimate aim of this research is to support the capability and maturity improvement of software development and deployment from the organizational perspective. Current process improvement initiatives through CMMI, Six Sigma, IDEAL, etc. provide some detailed knowledge of standards, guidelines and practices. However, some issues still prevail towards its practice and realism particularly on SMEs, individual commitment and support. Our exposure to consultancy and synergy effort between CASE and local industries spurs new research interest on the implementation of CMMI, quality management and measurement.

5) Web Services

The objective of this research is to explore new techniques and mechanisms to address overheads and issues related to web services and their deployment. The potential components of the web services need to be analyzed and reengineered to improve web accessibility and performance. The state-of-the-art and new technologies are explored to include approaches to support web service composition such as OWL-S, BPEL4WS, WSMO and AI-Planning.

6) Advanced Software Technologies

This research focuses on some advanced technologies to alleviate issues related to the state-of-the-art software technologies such as object-oriented design modeling, cooperative computing environment, data retrieval, run-time component technologies and component-based system.

For further enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact

Dr. Suhaimi bin Ibrahim,
SERG Coordinator,
Centre For Advanced Software Engineering,
UTM City Campus, Jalan Semarak, Kuala Lumpur

Research Publication

Contact : suhaimiibrahim@utm.my

Research Grants

	Development of Change Impact Analysis Tool to Support Software Maintenance, eScienceFund Vot No. 79276, March 2008 – Sept 2009 (Project Leader: Dr. Suhaimi Ibrahim)
	Development of an Automated Redocumentation Process to Support Software Development and Evolution, eScienceFund Vot No. 79277, March 2008 – Sept 2009 (Project Leader: Dr. Suhaimi Ibrahim)
	Development of automated Composer Tool to Support Semantic Web Service Composition, eScienceFund, Vot No. 79364, March 2009 – Sept 2010 (Project Leader: Dr. Suhaimi Ibrahim)
	Development of an Automated Tool to Support Effective Requirement Change Propagation, eScienceFund Vot No. 79265, Jan 2008 – June 2009 (Project Leader: Noraini Ibrahim)
	Development of Advanced Methods in Reverse Engineering Technique for Software Maintenance, IRPA Vot No. 74075, August 2002 – August 2005 (Project Leader: Dato' Prof. Dr. Norbik Bashah Idris)