Browsing by Author "Wickramaarachchi, D.N."

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An analysis of software development process models and their applications in software industry
(Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Wijesekara, G.L.A.; Wickramaarachchi, D.N.
The development of software takes into account a lot of different tasks until the software is released. The order in which these tasks are done is called the software development life cycle. When software development projects become larger and much complicated, it becomes more difficult to manage the software development process and issues such as updating software features and fixing errors came to attention. Thus methodologies named software process models which consist of set of specific activities have been developed. These software process models were introduced to address issues with changing clients’ requirements, product quality, cost, time etc. When the software process model is not properly suitable for developing software, ultimately the end software product will be affected. On the other hand, each of these model’s effectiveness varies with project circumstances. It is widely acknowledged that no single model is effective in all situations. At present, the most of software development companies have their own process models and standards in developing software due to increasing complexity of software projects and high demand for the software project success. They have been adding customization to theoretical process models according to projects’ characteristics and improving software development process to deliver better software products. However, there is lack of studies about real world, currently implementing software process models in software industry and about the changes/improvements in those process models according to projects characteristics thus creating a knowledge gap about what are the new changes/improvements in process models in current industry. In this research, we focus on this gap and a survey is conducted on 25 software projects from various software development companies. Through the survey it is found out about currently implementing software process models in different types of software projects and what are the new customizations done to those software process models according to the project characteristics. Finally we come up with suggestions to tailor software process models according to software projects and discover new trends in software process models.
Cultural comparison in Asian countries: An Application of Greet Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
(Department of Commerce and Financial Management, Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Dissanayake, D.M.S.B.; Niroshan, W.W.A.E.; Nisansala, M.H.; Rangani, M.L.D.; Samarathunga, S.K.R.A.; Subasinghe, S.E.I.; Wickramaarachchi, D.N.; Nirasha, K.; Wickramasinghe, D.N.; Wickramasinghe, W.W.M.E.G.P.M.B.
Countries differ from one country to another country by their identical characteristics which are coming under their own national culture. People behaviors are respectively linked to cultural values of the country and this association is based on the framework of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The study indicates the cultural differences of the countries among the world according to a four dimension which are Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Individualism vs. collectivism and Masculinity vs. femininity. Power distance means the extent to the nations which accept the power in organization or anywhere is distributed unequally without further justifications. The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these is reflected by the Uncertainty avoidance. The third dimension is Individualism vs. collectivism which reflect the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members, and the fourth dimension, Masculinity vs. femininity indicates that the society will be driven by competition, achievement and success, with success being defined by the winner / best in field – a value system that starts in school and continues throughout organizational behavior. The purpose of this study is comparing the national culture in Asian countries and identifies what factors affect to association with the Hofstede’s cultural dimension studies. In this study we identify the how above four dimensions index behave on Asia. The power index of almost all the countries in Asia take high value that means all the nations in Asia has been tend to accept the power coming from top without further justifications. Uncertainty avoidance index of the Asia is scored low amount excepting few countries indicating the lot of nations in Asia who not comfortable with an ambiguity situations. Masculinity vs. femininity index of the every Asian countries score a small amount excepting Japan, Iraq reflecting the nation who work in order to live rather than live in order to work. Individualism vs. Collectivism index shows small value in countries below 50 in almost every country in Asia reflecting nations who highly desire for collectivism than individually survive.
Literature Review on Usability of Mobile Application.
(19th Conference on Postgraduate Research, International Postgraduate Research Conference 2018, Faculty of Graduate Studies,University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Weerasinghe, W.P.G.M.; Wickramaarachchi, D.N.
Over the past few decades, mobile device penetration showed a significant growth. With the dawn of digitalization, the need to rely on mobile devices is becoming an essential component of modern-day community to improve their quality of life. This growth has motivated the development of millions of mobile software applications. In the mobile app market, there are numerous mobile applications featuring same functionalities. Therefore, to retain healthy in the mobile application market, it is essential to design mobile applications with enhanced usability and user experience. Catering specific user requirements and designing user friendly mobile applications while overcoming limitations of mobile devices are major challenges of mobile application development. There are only limited standards for mobile User Interface (UI) design patterns. Most of these designs are based on the desktop paradigms such as WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface style. But mobile interface paradigm is based around widgets, touch, physical motion, and keyboards (physical and virtual). There are limited studies available in the literature which analyze mobile UI design patterns. Nonetheless, when it comes to UI components such as buttons and icons, considerable work isavailable. Moreover, recently researchers have begun to focus on software engineering issues for mobile apps. Some of the key findings indicates that further research are required for cross-platform development, identification of issues related to code reuse in mobile apps and testing mobile apps etc. Even though, a number of recent studies focused on the security of mobile apps, there are limited studies available focusing on aligning security and mobile usability. Since the screen sizes of mobile devices are limited, information has to be effectively organized in order to increase the user experience in navigating, searching and browsing. Moreover, our literature review indicates that limited attention has been given for future workforce (such as generation Z) who are born with the technology and how their user experience may differ in use of mobile applications. Therefore, studying generation Z characteristics and identifying usability challenges in mobile app development is an area which need further research. Information loading issues in different network types, how to deal with frequent interruption of network connections in mobile environment for the apps which need continuous connection to provide required information are some areas which need to be improved. For ease of the development and with the time constrains, developers use a single code base to develop mobile applications for different devices (smartphone, tablets etc.) and for different versions (such as android versions Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat etc.) Therefore, developers cannot gain the full use of different features and functionalities of each devices and versions. Therefore, studying the mobile platform and applying findings to the mobile application industry is also another research area. To sum up, our literature review identifies knowledge contributed in related to different usability aspects in mobile application. Further, collected information were analyzed and knowledge gaps were identified. These findings of the literature review can be used by researchers to continue their work to improve usability of mobile applications
Prediction of the incubation period of COVID-19 patients using machine learning techniques
(Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2020) Rathnayake, P.P.P.M.T.D.; Wickramaarachchi, D.N.; Senanayake, J.M.D.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory infection caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. As of September 2020, within about eight months of this infectious disease being identified, more than thirty million cases and 950,000 deaths have been reported within two hundred countries and territories. The incubation period of COVID -19, is the time range between exposure to symptom onset. During this period, affected persons may not show symptoms of being infected but are still capable of transmitting the virus to others. It is very important to identify the incubation period accurately to decide quarantine periods and to develop policies. Based on the current findings, the incubation period ranges between 2 to 14 days. Since there is a range to the incubation period, almost all the suspected cases should undergo a quarantine period of 14 days, which sometimes leads to inefficient allocation of resources in some cases. Although there are many studies on assessing the incubation period, studies regarding the factors affecting the incubation period are limited. This study is primarily aimed at identifying the factors affecting the incubation period and to develop a model to classify the incubation period of suspected cases, using machine learning techniques. Publicly available patient records within different countries were used for the study. The gathered dataset consist of 500 patients records with the age ranging from 5 to 80 years. Out of those records, 285 were male and 215 were female. The dataset includes 205 patients from China, 51 patients from Japan, 36 patients from Malaysia, 24 patients from the United States, 41 patients from South Korea, 31 patients from France, 24 patients from Taiwan, 46 patients from Singapore, and 42 patients from other countries. The results indicate that factors such as patients' age, gender, geographic location, immunocompetent/immunocompromised state, direct/indirect contact with the affected patients, cause deviations to the incubation period. Chisquare test of independence and correlation analysis were used to identify the relationship among variables and to identify the factors which have the strongest relationship with the incubation period. Supervised learning classification algorithms such as Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, and Random Forest were compared in this study. Overall model performance was evaluated using the weighted average of the incubation classes. Random forest was selected as the best algorithm to classify the incubation period since it performed better than other algorithms achieving a 0.78 precision score, 0.84 recall score, and 0.80 F1 score. As the final step, AdaBoost algorithm was used to improve the performance of the Random Forest algorithm.
Software usability improvements for Generation Z oriented software application
(IEEE International Research Conference on Smart computing & Systems Engineering (SCSE) 2019, Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Pathirana, W.P.N.H.; Wickramaarachchi, D.N.
User Experience (UX) which focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, their abilities, and their limitations is one of the most important consideration when developing software applications today. Developing sustainable software application is the aim of any software company. To achieve this, software usability should be improved in the software as one of the main nonfunctional requirements. Sustainability of software usability is determined by user experience. Main users of software applications are people who belong to the workforce since they are working in the complex nature of the businesses and with time limitations. Generation Z is the new addition to the workforce and it will be increasing in the future. Therefore, it is important to pay extra attention to increase usability of software for Generation Z who have been exposed to digital technology from an early age. Accordingly, a survey method was used to identify specific characteristics, behaviors of Generation Z when using software applications and significance of usability attributes of Generation X, Y and Z with the sample size of 77 and 25 respectively. This study found that Generation Z has special software usability requirements than Generation X and Y. Based on findings, features that need to be incorporated with Generation Z oriented software applications were proposed. Moreover, a prototype was developed to demonstrate the features identified. The proposed model together with the prototype was validated trough software engineers and UX engineers and validity of the model was assured by them. The model was recommended to use when developing software application for Generation Z.