Usman Wajid: Service-based Application Development by Ordinary End Users and IT Professionals

Service-based Application Development by Ordinary End Users and IT Professionals Usman Wajid University of Manchester 13-15 December 2010 ServiceWave 2010

Authors
Abdallah Namoun, University of Manchester
Usman Wajid, University of Manchester
Nikolay Mehandjiev, University of Manchester
ServiceWave 2009 13-15 December 2010

Overview
Motivation
Focus groups
Procedure
Materials
Results
Risks and benefits
Problems of Service Composition
Guidelines to promote Service Composition
13-15 December 2010

Motivation
The need to create easy to develop or customise service based applications
A small number of software developers in comparison to the number of end users (consumers)
Current practices and tools to develop software services are complex
We need to enable end users (e.g. domain experts) to develop applications by providing user-friendly tools
We need to consider users expectations as regards the costs and benefits of developing applications
13-15 December 2010

Focus Groups
We aimed to:
capture and contrast mental models of both ordinary end users and IT professionals about service composition
understand likelihood of uptake of service-based application development
Target end users:
Ordinary end users (MBS Students)
IT Professionals (from industrial firms and IT companies)
Five focus group sessions in total
3 sessions with students (included 35 participants)
2 sessions with IT professionals (included 29 participants)
Each session lasted approximately 1 hour
Discussion groups contained at most 5 participants each
13-15 December 2010

Procedure of the Focus Groups
Define software services and fill in a participant background form
Attend a 20-minute presentation about software services and service composition; this was facilitated by examples and figures
Complete a subjective service composition questionnaire to capture initial opinions and rating of service composition aspects
Discuss potential risks and benefits of service composition by users
Discuss potential composition-related problems
Suggest potential solutions to overcome the identified problems
13-15 December 2010

Materials
Introductory presentation “The Internet of Services”
Explained the concept of service composition
Provided examples of software services and service composition
Presented the aim of the SOA4All project
Questionnaire focused on three aspects:
Users’ service composition experience
Users’ rating of various aspects of service composition
Users’ opinions on ways for supporting service composition
23-27 November 2009

Results – Users’ background
Ratings were performed on a 5-point Likert scale, where 1= disagree and 5= agree
IT professionals’ experience was significantly higher than end users’ in:
software development (f(1, 62)= 54.64, p<0.001),
web service development (f(1, 62))= 24.06, p<0.001),
with analysis and design notations (f(1, 62)= 14.32, p<0.001),
service composition (f(1, 61)= 9.15, p<0.01)
13-15 December 2010

Users’ Mental Models of Software Services 13-15 December 2010

Rating of Service Composition
Ratings revealed:
High interest in service composition
Agreement that service composition is useful
As apposed to end users, IT Professionals believed that service composition is more error-prone and disagreed that it is easy to achieve (Anova tests were significant)
13-15 December 2010

Ratings of Service Composition
Rating of ways of supporting and encouraging service composition
13-15 December 2010

Risks and Benefits of Service Composition
We used thematic analysis to create risk and benefit categories from the collected data
End users:
7.2% of the topics covered benefits of Service Composition
Usefulness of reusing composition knowledge
Efficiency of Service Composition (e.g. saves time)
Tailorability to one’s needs
25.5% of the topics covered risks of Service Composition
Privacy and security of personal information (46% of the risk responses)
Technical difficulty
IT Professionals
7.5% of the topics covered benefits of Service Composition
Efficiency of Service Composition
Income generation
37.7% of the topics covered risks of Service Composition
Data privacy (21% of the risk responses)
Security and trust issues (24% of the risk responses)
13-15 December 2010

Problems of Service Composition
Complexity of software services
Compatibility of software services and data resources
Composition/development steps
Composition for everyone
User-interface related issues
13-15 December 2010

Preliminary Model of Service Composition Uptake by End Users 13-15 December 2010

Recommendations for Service Composition
Guideline 1 : Promote service composition awareness
Guideline 2 : Simplify service composition
Guideline 3 : Guide service composition
Guideline 4 : Specialize service composition platforms
Guideline 5 : Secure services and service composition
13-15 December 2010

Thank you for your attention 13-15 December 2010

ICSOC-ServiceWave 2009

Usman Wajid: Service-based Application Development by Ordinary End Users and IT Professionals

by ServiceWave 2010 on Dec 30, 2010

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Usman Wajid: Service-based Application Development by Ordinary End Users and IT Professionals — Presentation Transcript