Component Identification in Software Configuration Management Applied to the Development of Framework Traceability
Abstract
Traceability in the agricultural production chain enables us to identify the origin and the process by which a product was subjected to its availability to the end consumer. To develop a framework for traceability of the productive grain process, specification and implementation was performed by following the Software Engineering standards, with the management of Software Configuration. This article presents the first phase of this administration, component identification, applied to the development of this framework, as a team, with limited human and financial resources. As a result, the approach has allowed greater control of software components, the assimilation of the importance of team work and greater independence between members of the project. To reduce the development time of new projects, one solution is to establish greater granularity of components to be managed and define a part of the team responsible for the Software Configuration Management
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Introduction
Traceability in the agricultural production chain enables us to identify the origin and the process by which a product was subjected to its availability to the end consumer. The traceability techniques are applied for quality control and to preserve the identity of a product, with monitoring and management of the productive process phases. The impact caused by problems in the production process can be minimized with an effective traceability process, since it reduces the time between the occurrence of the problem and identifies the source, prevents the recurrence, decline in production, lack of quality and, consequently, increased costs.
The requirements required by the regulations and quality standards for meeting the criteria of food security, microbiological analyzes of foods, good agricultural practices and tracing to identify the origin of the product, it becomes necessary for accredited laboratories, sanitary inspection system and quality certifications. In this process, the certification aims to provide the buyer or user of the product a guarantee compliance to standards or technical specifications established (CONCEPTION, 2005). When a company certifies its product, it assumes that the information you are providing is important to consumers and that they will respond by changing their consumption decisions.
According to Eckschmidt et al. (2009), some participants are critical for a company to evolve in a tracking process, other than agents of the productive chain and consumers. They are: (i) Regulatory Agents - components that define the rules, standards and laws to be followed; (ii) Facilitator Agents - companies that provide services and offer products to support the process of tracking, as defined by regulatory agents; (iii) Certifying Agents - components that evaluate and certify that the producer is fulfilling the established traceability requirements.
In Vaz (2014) the RastroGrão Framework was specified, with the aim of customization of the production chain for any type of grain, aiming to meet the demands for traceability of the production process, according to each agent in the chain. This framework was developed with guidelines outlined in the Software Engineering (WAZLAWICK, 2013; Pressman, 2011; DUNCAN, 1996), where Project Management, Time Management, Software Configuration Management, Quality Management, Document Management, Content Management and Knowledge Management were implemented in the search.
Conclusion
The Component Identification stage was possible and effective to maintain control over the software, other than giving greater independence to the members of the project and emphasizing the importance of team work.
In spite of the study, addressing the first step, all the steps of managing software configuration were developed, allowing us to infer that the Component Identification may not be efficient for applications in companies with limited human resources. This statement is due to the expenditures to maintain the document management. The system had a total of 197 hours for its development, with the initial specification of 110 hours. To alleviate the problem, a solution for new projects is revising the granularity of Configuration Items and the definition of a team member responsible for the management of Software Configuration.
Difficulties in relation to team communication have occurred since the beginning of the project. In future developments it is recommended to define an official communication channels as an item of software configuration, as well as a document specifying the functions of each member.
The configuration item "Project Manager" was not effective due to operational failure, being replaced by the configuration items "RastroGrão Report Schedule " and "RastroGrão Report Schedule- Meetings". The first specifies the development of codification modules and the second addresses the completion date and duration of meetings. For the meeting document, a suggested improvement is entering the data of tasks to be delivered. This information is currently in the records, which complicates access and use of the data.
As prospects for future work it is suggested to approach the other steps in the Software Configuration Management process and the reapplication of implementation with the improvements suggested, in order to overcome the difficulties of the time required to perform the management.