Lectures and Slides

Introduction to the Course

• Here's the SLIDES with the general introduction to the course: motivations, goals, and practical information.

Part 0. About the Projects (Class of 2015)

• Introduction to the Case Studies on Smart Social Services
• A Lecture on Collective Intelligence by F. Zambonelli.

Part I-a. Software Engineering and Software Processes: Concepts and Tools

• Introduction to Software Engineering
  Chapter 1 of Sommerville book. General introduction to key software engineering concepts.
  Further readings:
  • "Why Software Fails?", IEEE Spectrum, Sept. 2005.
  • "Who Killed the Virtual Case File", IEEE Spectrum, Sept. 2005.


• Socio-Technical Systems
  Chapter 2 of Sommerville book. Discussion on why modern software systems are socio-technical systems.


• Critical Systems
  Chapter 3 of Sommerville book. Explain what are the factors that make modern software systems critical for business and, often, for life.


• Software Processes
  Chapter 4 of Sommerville book. An overview of the different models of software processes and their phases.
  Further readings:
  • "Process Models in Software Engineering", W. Scacchi, Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, Feb. 2001.
  • "Software Processes are Software Too", L. Osterweil, ICSE Conference, 1987.


• Software Requirements
  Chapter 6 of Sommerville book. Introduction to the concepts of user and system requirements, functioanl and non-functional ones, and to requirements documentation.


• Object-oriented Modeling
  Introduces the basic concepts of the object oriented paradigm and of object-oriented software modeling.


• UML: Unified Modeling Language
  Introduces the basic concepts and diagram of UML. Please refer to the UML distilled book for more examples and details.
  Further readings:
  • Requirements Engineering
    Chapter 7 of Sommerville book. Discussion on the issue of properly engineering the process of collecting and documenting requirements for software systems. Partially overlaps with the UML slides.
  • System Models
    Chapter 8 of Sommerville book. Discussion on the system models that can be adopted to model software systems. Partially overlaps with the Object-oriented and the UML slides.
  • Architectural Design
    Chapter 11 of Sommerville book. Discussion on the architectural models that can be adopted to design software systems. Partially overlaps with the UML slides.

Part I-b. Software Engineering and Software Processes: Management

• Project Management from a Software Engineering Perspective
  Chapter 5 of Sommerville book. Introduction to the key concept of project management, with the spcific issues that arise in the management of software projects.


• Software Cost Estimation
  Chapter 26 of Sommerville book. Discussion on the issue of measuring the cost of producing a software system, and on the possible quantitative software metrics.


• Quality Management
  Chapter 27 of Sommerville book. The issue of quality management in the software development process, the role of standards in quality management, and the use and limitations of software measurement.


• Process Improvement
  Chapter 28 of Sommerville book. Discusses how it is possible to improve the quality of a software development process, how to develop simple models of software processes, and introduces the notion of process capability and the CMMI model.
  Further readings:
  • "Can You Trust Software Capability Evaluation?", E. O'Connel and Hossein Saiedia, IEEE Computer, Feb. 2000.
  
  
• Security Engineering
  Chapter 30 of Sommerville book. What does it mean to protect a system in a secure way. The concept of assets and the costs of security. Managing risks and good design practice.

Part II. Service Engineering and Complex Adaptive Systems

• Service-oriented Software
  Chapter 31 of Sommerville book. What are software services. Software-oriented architectures: components and issues. Technologies and standards for service-oriented architectures.
  Further reading:
  • "Service-oriented Computing: Key Concepts and Principles", M. Huhns and M. Singh, IEEE Internet Computing, Jan. 2006.


• Software as a Service: towards a Service Science
  Why software is a service. Why everything is going to become a service. Why there is need of a new economic/computing science of services.
  Further Readings:
  • "On Value and Value Co-Creation: A Service Systems and Service Logic Perpective", S.L. Vargo et al., European Management Systems, 2008.
  • "Steps Toward a Science of Service Systems", J. Spohrer et al., IEEE Computer, Jan. 2007..
  • "Service Science: toward a Smarter Planet"", J. Spohrer and P. Maglio, in Service Engineering, Wiley, 2009.
  • "Above the Clouds: a View of Cloud Computing"", M. Armvbrust et al., Communications of the ACM, 2010.


• Complex Adaptive Systems: Basic Concepts
  What are complex adaptive systems. Global system dynamics. Emergent behaviors in nature. Implications for ICT/service systems.


• Middleware Technologies for Service Systems
  Middleware as a basic ingredient of service-centric computing. Models of middleware. Message, event, and dataspace-based middleware models. Distribution models.


• Cellular Automata
  What are cellular automata. The 1-D 256 binary cellular automata. Cellular automata as complex systems. Perturbed cellular automata. Implications for modern ICT/service systems.
  Further readings:
  • "A Survey on Cellular Automata", N. Ganghuly, BISON Technical Report, 2004.
  • "What Can CA Tell us about the Behavior of Large Scale Agent Systems", F. Zambonelli, A. Roli, M. Mamei, SELMAS 2003 Workshop, 2003.
  • See also the CA Examples on the NetLogo Models Library.


• Social Networks: Small World
  Basic concepts of networks. Lattice networks and random networks. The Watts-Strogatz model of small-world networks. Properties of small world networks. Implications for models ICT/service sytems.
  Further readings:
  • "Collective Dynamics of Small World Networks", D. Watts, S. Strogatz, Nature, 1998.
  • "Scaling and Percolation in Small World Networks", M. Newman, D. Watts, Physical Review E, 1999.
  • See also the Oracle of Bacon web site.


• Social Networks: Scale Free Networks
  Basic concepts of scale-free networks. The power law. The Barabasi-Albert model of preferential attachment. Properties of scale-free networks. Implications for models ICT/service sytems.
  Further readings:
  • "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks", A. Barabasi, R. Albert, Science, 1999.
  • "Attack and Error Tolerance of Complex Networks", A. Barabasi, H. Jeong, R. Albert, Nature, 2000.


• Software Agents
  From Objects and Services to Software Agents. The concept of agency. Basic agent architectures. Applications of software agents.
  Further readings:
  • "An Introduction to Software Agents", J. Bradshaw, AAAI Press, 1998.
  • "Objects and Agents Compared", J. Odell, Journal of Object Technology, 2002.


• Multiagent Systems
  From service-oriented systems to multiagent systems. Social interactions in multiagent systems. Negotiation mechanisms. Applications of multiagent systems. Middleware for multiagent systems.
  Further readings:
  • "An Agent-based Approach for Building Complex Software Systems", N. Jennings, Communications of the ACM, 2001.
  • "Automated Negotiation: Prospects, Methods, and Challenges", N. Jennings, International Journal of Group Decision Making, 2001.


• Agent-oriented Software Engineering
  Key characteristics of agent software. From service ensembles to agent organizations. The GAIA methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. Key forces driving the choice of a multiagent organization.
  Further readings:
  • "Developing Multiagent Systems: the GAIA Methodology", F. Zambonelli, N. Jennings, M. Wooldridge, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 2003.
  • "Challenges and Research Directions in Agent-oriented Software Engineering", F. Zambonelli, A. Omicini, Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2004.


• Collective (Swarm) Intelligence
  Basic concepts of collective intelligence. Examples of collective intelligence in nature: synchronization, aggregation, sorting, foraging. Applications of collective intelligence. Implications for modern ICT/Service systems.
  Further readings:
  • "Go To the Ants: Engineering Principles from Natural Agent Systems", V. Parunak, Annals of Operations Research, 1997.
  • "Case Studies for Self-organization in ComputerScience", M. Mamei, R. Menezes, R. Tolksdorf, F. Zambonelli, Journal of Systems Architecture, 2006.
  • "Slides on Field-based Coordination Models", by M. Mamei and F. Zambonelli, 2010.
  • "Programming Pervasive and Mobile Computing Applications with the TOTA Middleware", M. Mamei, F. Zambonelli, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 2009.
  • See also all the NetLogo "biology" models of the NetLogo Models Library.


• Autonomic Computing, Pervasive Service Ecosystems, and Engineering Issues
  The Autonomic Computing initiative. Autonomic communications. Cyber-physical ecosystems. Towards adaptive pervasive service ecosystems. The Key Engineering Issues for the Engineering of Complex, Autonomic and Self-organizoing, Service Systems.
  Further readings:
  • "The Vision of Autonomic Computing", D. Chess, J. Kephart, IEEE Computer, 2003.
  • "Towards a Paradigm Change in Computer Science and Software Engineering", F. Zambonelli, V. Parunak, The Knowledge Engineering Review, 2004.