Shayne Flint | The Australian National University (original) (raw)

Papers by Shayne Flint

University of Portsmouth, 2019

Final-year capstone design projects in the Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Software Engin... more Final-year capstone design projects in the Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Software Engineering degree programs at the Australian National University (ANU) incorporate a student partnership model called the Many Eyes feedback process. This process has been successful in delivering real learning value to students and enabling students to deliver real value to clients by balancing project outcomes and good governance. This paper examines student’s perceptions of the value their team delivered to the client, and the value they personally delivered. We discuss how variations here can reveal aspects of team function and dysfunction

Innovate,Integrate & Invigorate: INCOSE2001, 2001

Engineering is often described as the application of scientific and technical knowledge to solve ... more Engineering is often described as the application of scientific and technical knowledge to solve problems. In this thesis, I support a more general view that engineering should be treated as a continuous process of learning and action that aims to make well understood improvements within dynamically complex environments of co-evolving social, man-made and natural systems. I argue that this can only be achieved by adopting an approach that systematically develops, manages and integrates the knowledge and expertise of many disciplines to conceive, develop, modify, operate and retire systems. A novel implementation of such an approach, called Aspect-Oriented Thinking, is presented. Aspect-Oriented Thinking begins with the development and verification of a set of Domain Models. Each Domain Model represents knowledge about a separate, autonomous and possibly discipline specific concern or view within a given context. Domain models are developed by engineers, scientists, sociologists, psy...

2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2013

Journal of Systems and Software, 2013

Background: Cloud Computing is increasingly booming in industry with many competing providers and... more Background: Cloud Computing is increasingly booming in industry with many competing providers and services. Accordingly, evaluation of commercial Cloud services is necessary. However, the existing evaluation studies are relatively chaotic. There exists tremendous confusion and gap between practices and theory about Cloud services evaluation. Aim: To facilitate relieving the aforementioned chaos, this work aims to synthesize the existing evaluation implementations to outline the state-of-the-practice and also identify research opportunities in Cloud services evaluation. Method: Based on a conceptual evaluation model comprising six steps, the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method was employed to collect relevant evidence to investigate the Cloud services evaluation step by step. Results: This SLR identified 82 relevant evaluation studies. The overall data collected from these studies essentially represent the current practical landscape of implementing Cloud services evaluation, and in turn can be reused to facilitate future evaluation work. Conclusions: Evaluation of commercial Cloud services has become a worldwide research topic. Some of the findings of this SLR identify several research gaps in the area of Cloud services evaluation (e.g., the Elasticity and Security evaluation of commercial Cloud services could be a long-term challenge), while some other findings suggest the trend of applying commercial Cloud services (e.g., compared with PaaS, IaaS seems more suitable for customers and is particularly important in industry). This SLR study itself also confirms some previous experiences and reveals new Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE) lessons.

2018 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC)

University-industry (U-I) collaboration has gained increased attention in recent years. Several b... more University-industry (U-I) collaboration has gained increased attention in recent years. Several best practices and models have been proposed to address the problem of establishing U-I collaborations and improving their effectiveness. It is important for the stakeholders to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of their collaborative efforts in order to identify and adopt improvements. One way to assess effectiveness is through the maturity models approach that has been applied successfully in other areas such as quality assurance, knowledge management, and business processes. Our literature review indicates a lack of existing collaboration maturity models. In this paper, we present the University-industry Collaboration Maturity Model (UICMM) - a collaboration maturity model based on the thorough review of best practices for collaboration described in existing literature, and existing maturity models relevant to collaborations. UICMM is intended to be a useful benchmarking tool for a range of stakeholders including universities and industry to assess and benchmark their collaborative efforts. The underlying hypothesis while developing this maturity model is that a higher level of maturity will lead to increased collaboration and improved outcomes.

1. ABSTRACT Ada is an ISO standard Object Oriented programming language specifically designed to ... more 1. ABSTRACT Ada is an ISO standard Object Oriented programming language specifically designed to support the cost effective development of robust, maintainable software. Because of this, Ada is widely used in the development of critical systems such as commercial aircraft. However, despite its advantages and general purpose nature, Ada is not often used for the development of main stream applications. This is partly because of Ada’s poor integration with contemporary technologies such as Graphical User Interfaces. Described within this paper is a technique which uses the Java Native Interface to provide Ada programmers with immediate access to any software that has a Java API, thus substantially improving the suitability of Ada for the development of a wide range of applications.

In March 2003 the Object Management Group (OMG) released an RFP for cus- tomisation of the Unied ... more In March 2003 the Object Management Group (OMG) released an RFP for cus- tomisation of the Unied Modeling Language (UML) to support the modeling of a wide range of systems including software, hardware, people, procedures and fa- cilities within the framework of OMG&amp;#39;s Model Driven Architecture (MDA). Much of the response to this RFP has focused on how the UML

2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2017

Preparing Software Engineering graduates with skills to satisfy the demands of industry has alway... more Preparing Software Engineering graduates with skills to satisfy the demands of industry has always been a challenge for universities. One way to overcome this challenge is to provide students with an authentic team project experience. Authentic student projects are those that are as close as possible to real projects in terms of uncertainty, complexity and diversity. In order to achieve this, collaboration with business and other external stakeholders is essential. However, such collaboration is often hindered by constraints around team structure, team and individual student assessment, the use of specific processes and technology, providing technical and other support, and fixed project durations. In this paper, we present a simple course structure and assessment process that has allowed us to remove the majority of such constraints, while maintaining integrity around student learning and assessment. By removing these constraints, we are providing students with authentic team proje...

Systems Thinking refers to a set of approaches that can be used to learn about and make decisions... more Systems Thinking refers to a set of approaches that can be used to learn about and make decisions regarding improvements to dynamically complex systems. They are distinguished from other approaches by their focus on the whole and the study of interactions among the parts of a system, rather than the parts themselves. While a focus on interactions helps in understanding complex systems and identifying appropriate improvements, it is necessary to use detailed knowledge of the parts and other aspects of a system to implement any improvements. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a novel Systems Thinking approach which uses detailed knowledge of the parts to both understand the whole, and to build the systems required to implement necessary improvements.

Large scale systems, 2011

International Journal of Engineering Education, 2020

This paper presents a model for coaching students through open-ended capstone design projects. Th... more This paper presents a model for coaching students through open-ended capstone design projects. The model contains two novelelements: a Project Value Map for guiding, judging and benchmarking value throughout a project; and a formative feedbackprocess called the Many Eyes Process. The Project Value Map is a teaching tool that provides a common language for describing,discussing and comparing the value of project work across many varied projects and stakeholders; and the Many Eyes Processgenerates feedback from multiple perspectives to guide the team in project decision-making. The Many Eyes Process is informed byfour key stakeholder perspectives: self-evaluation, a ‘shadow’ perspective, a teaching assistant (TA) perspective and a clientperspective. The Many Eyes Process is run during three Project Audit Weeks, spaced throughout the 12-week semester. The outputfrom the Many Eyes Process provides both quantitative and qualitative feedback to the team and its stakeholders. Thecombinatio...

Involvement in the production of software often reduces a scientist’s productivity. While this ha... more Involvement in the production of software often reduces a scientist’s productivity. While this has attracted the attention of software engineering researchers, much of the work to date has focused on improvement of the software itself, and has not investigated how the productivity of scientific research has or could be improved. The aim of the proposed research is to help scientists improve their productivity. This will be achieved by applying Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) within the scientific software domain. We postulate that DSM will result in an improvement in the productivity of scientists through increased software development productivity, usability, transparency, reusability, and improved transfer of knowledge within the scientific community.

One of the challenges in the area of software engineering research has been the low rate of adopt... more One of the challenges in the area of software engineering research has been the low rate of adoption by industry of the tools and methods produced by university researchers. We present a model to improve the situation by providing tangible evidence that demonstrates the real-world effectiveness of such tools and methods. A survey of practising software engineers indicates that the approach in the model is valid and applicable. We apply and test the model for providing such evidence and demonstrate its effectiveness in the context of static analysis using FindBugs. This model can be used to analyse the effectiveness of academic research contributions to industry and contribute towards improving their adoption.

2018 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC), 2018

TENCON 2017 - 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference

University-industry collaboration has gained increased attention in recent years. The literature ... more University-industry collaboration has gained increased attention in recent years. The literature has illustrated motivation and benefits of collaboration, types of interactions, barriers to establishing and sustaining successful collaboration, and measures to improving it. However, there remains considerable scope for further improving the effectiveness of such collaborations. This paper presents the results of a workshop of industry practitioners and university researchers working in the area of software development within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). This workshop aimed to understand the current state of university-industry collaboration and to identify the measures that can be adopted to bridge the gap between university and industry. Our results, while confirming the previous work, provide some additional insight into the barriers to university-industry collaboration. They emphasise the role of universities in improving the collaboration, and identify the measures that can be adopted by them to close the gap.

Many tertiary institutions use project-based courses as a capstone for final year engineering, so... more Many tertiary institutions use project-based courses as a capstone for final year engineering, software engineering, computing and informatics students. Such courses give students an opportunity to draw together the apparently disparate learning they have undertaken during the preceding years. Students often work as members of a team, gaining team skills, as well as interacting with industry rather than academics only. In this paper we describe how we have restructured our project courses by forming teams comprising 4th year students as team leaders and 3rd year students. We discuss our experiences as well as evaluating the new course structure and its outcomes. We believe we have improved the outcomes for all stakeholders - students, clients and academics - and we have reduced significantly the work load of the academics involved, while gaining an improved ability to differentiate between students' contribution.

Journal of Industry-University Collaboration

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to improve the effectiveness of univer... more PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to improve the effectiveness of university–industry collaboration (UIC). This work enhances the existing body of literature and knowledge regarding collaboration and offers concrete steps to be taken for effective collaboration between universities and industries.Research MethodologyA literature review to study the best practices, impediments to collaboration and the various models proposed in the past for successful UIC was conducted. A workshop and focus-group meetings of practitioners and academic researchers was designed and organised to explore the current state of the university–industry engagement within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) region and gather inputs regarding possible approaches to improve collaboration. The findings from the literature review and the results from this qualitative research regarding the approaches to improve the effectiveness of the collaboration were analysed.Results and implication...