Ricardo Colomo-Palacios

• Oruma, Samson Ogheneovo; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Gkioulos, Vasileios (2026). From Framework to Reliable Practice: End-User Perspectives on Social Robots in Public Spaces. Systems. 14(2). doi: https:/www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/14/2/137. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  As social robots increasingly enter public environments, their acceptance depends not only on technical robustness but also on ethical integrity, accessibility, transparency, and consistent system behaviour across diverse users. This paper reports an in situ pilot deployment of an ARI social robot functioning as a university receptionist, designed and implemented in alignment with the SecuRoPS framework for secure, ethical, and reliable social robot deployment. Thirty-five students and staff interacted with the robot in a real public setting and provided structured feedback on safety, privacy, usability, accessibility, ethical transparency, and perceived reliability. The results indicate strong user confidence in physical safety, data protection, and regulatory compliance while revealing persistent challenges related to accessibility and interaction dynamics. These findings show that reliability in public-facing robotic systems extends beyond fault-free operation to include equitable and consistent user experience across contexts. Beyond reporting empirical outcomes, the study contributes in three key ways. First, it demonstrates a reproducible method for operationalising lifecycle governance frameworks in real-world deployments. Second, it provides new empirical insights into how trust, accessibility, and transparency are experienced by end users in public spaces. Third, it delivers a publicly available, open-source GitHubrepository containing reusable templates for ARI robot applications developed using the PAL Robotics ARI SDK (v23.12), lowering technical entry barriers and supporting reproducibility. By integrating empirical evaluation with practical system artefacts, this work advances research on reliable intelligent environments and provides actionable guidance for the responsible deployment of social robots in public spaces.

• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Gordon, Alex Sanchez & Hubin, Aliaksandr (2026). The role of voice and silence behaviors in software development: a structural equation modeling analysis. Information and Software Technology. ISSN 0950-5849. 190. doi: 10.1016/j.infsof.2025.107972. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Context Most software companies strive to have high-performing teams and mitigate withdrawal behaviors like being present but unproductive. In this context, psychological safety and developers’ perceived impact are suggested as potential drivers of voice and silence behaviors. However, understanding these social aspects of software development entails the incorporation of social science theories. Objective This study aims to empirically explore the relationships among software professionals’ perceived impact, psychological safety, voice and silence behaviors, burnout particularly withdrawal and performance using a theoretical model. Method A survey questionnaire was conducted, resulting in 158 valid responses from software development teams. Then, we analyzed the responses using structural equation modeling (SEM) and a novel semi-confirmatory SEM. All variables were measured using pre-validated instruments. Results The findings supported the theoretical model, showing that psychological safety was more related to silence than voice, whereas perceived impact showed a stronger relationship with voice than with silence. Furthermore, silence contributed to higher burnout, whereas voice alleviated it. In contrast, silence showed a negative association with performance, whereas voice was positively associated with it. Conclusions This study examines the direct effects of perceived impact and psychological safety on voice and silence behaviors. Additionally, it examines the direct effects of these behaviors on burnout and task performance among software professionals. Consequently, the findings offer both theoretical and practical insights.

• Ramaj, Xhesika; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Gkioulos, Vasileios & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2024). On DevSecOps and Risk Management in Critical Infrastructures: Practitioners' Insights on Needs and Goals. In Esnoul, Coralie; Jee, Eunkyoung; Le, Triet Huynh Minh; Babar, Ali N.; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Rashid, Awais (Ed.), 2024 ACM/IEEE 4th International Workshop on Engineering and Cybersecurity of Critical Systems (EnCyCriS) and 2024 IEEE/ACM Second International Workshop on Software Vulnerability (EnCyCriS/SVM '24). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9798400705656. p. 45–52. doi: 10.1145/3643662.3643954. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Risk management is essential for ensuring the sustained viability of organizations over the long term. It plays a pivotal role in business by helping identify potential threats and vulnerabilities, enabling well-informed decision-making. Within the context of critical infrastructures (CIs), it takes on even greater significance. DevSecOps is an innovative approach to bolstering security of software applications. This approach is being heralded as a transformative solution that encourages the adoption of robust security practices, reduces risk, and ensures uninterrupted business continuity. This qualitative study explores the needs and goals of implementing DevSecOps in CIs from the perspective of DevOps, developers, and security experts. Findings show that the relevance of DevSecOps in CIs emerges from the need for proactive work, increased efficiency, automation, monitoring mechanisms, security, and outstanding products and services. Findings also identify the goals for establishing a stronger market presence, increasing revenues, and maintaining a leading position in the market. The study provides valuable insights on DevSevOps in risk management, that can potentially encourage the adoption of DevSecOps and guide practitioners interested in leveraging the inherent benefits of this approach in the context of CIs.

• Khakpour, Alireza; Vazquez-Ingelmo, Andrea; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Garcia-Penalvo, Francisco J. & Martini, Antonio (2024). ModelViz: A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for Visual Analytics System Design. IEEE Access. 12, p. 42667–42682. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3379268. Full text in Research Archive
• Lampropoulos, Georgios; Larrucea, Xabier & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2024). Digital Twins in Critical Infrastructure. Information. 15(8). doi: 10.3390/info15080454. Full text in Research Archive
• Khakpour, Alireza; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Martini, Antonio & Sánchez-Gordón, Mary (2023). The Use of Domain-Specific Languages for Visual Analytics: A Systematic Literature Review. Technologies. 11(2). doi: 10.3390/technologies11020037. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Visual Analytics (VA) is a multidisciplinary field that requires various skills including but not limited to data analytics, visualizations, and the corresponding domain knowledge. Recently, many studies proposed creating and using Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) for VA in order to abstract complexities and assist designers in developing better VAs for different data domains. However, development methods and types of DSLs vary for different applications and objectives. In this study, we conducted a systematic literature review to overview DSL methods and their intended applications for VA systems. Moreover, the review outlines the benefits and limitations of each of these methods. The aim is to provide decision support for both the research and development communities to choose the most compatible approach for their application. We think the communication of this research delivers a broad figure of previous relevant research and assists with the transfer and adaptation of the results to other domains.

• Mikkelsplass, Stine Aurora; Simensen, John Eidar & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2023). Software and Systems Engineers in ICS Security: Graduate-Level Curricula and Industry Needs. International Journal of Human Capital and Information Technology Professionals. ISSN 1947-3478. 14(1), p. 1–17. doi: 10.4018/IJHCITP.333857. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The introduction of Industry 4.0 and IIoT has enabled the interconnection of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) and exposed industrial control systems to cyber threats. Industrial cybersecurity requires knowledge, skill, and collaboration between IT and OT. A comparison of graduate curricula of software engineering and systems engineering identifies competencies related to industrial control systems cybersecurity. Industry experts are interviewed to identify needs for cybersecurity skills and competencies. Results from the mapping are discussed in the context of software and systems engineering challenges in ICS cybersecurity and leveraged against industry experiences and needs expressed through interviews with three OT and IT industry professionals. The curricula mapping reveals variations in both how they are organised and expressed to the extent that subjective interpretation is required for evaluation and comparison. The interviews with the industry experts indicate a gap between graduate competence from the curricula and industry needs.

• Rathi, Sonika Chandrakant; Misra, Sanjay; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Adarsh, R.; Neti, Lalita Bhanu Murthy & Kumar, Lov (2023). Empirical evaluation of the performance of data sampling and feature selection techniques for software fault prediction. Expert Systems With Applications. ISSN 0957-4174. 223. doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2023.119806. Full text in Research Archive
• Esnoul, Coralie; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Jee, Eunkyoung; Chockalingam, Sabarathinam; Simensen, John Eidar & Bae, Doo-Hwan (2023). Report on the 3rd International Workshop on Engineering and Cybersecurity of Critical Systems (EnCyCriS - 2022). Software engineering notes. ISSN 0163-5948. 48(1), p. 81–84. doi: 10.1145/3573074.3573095. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Critical Infrastructures (CIs) are vital for modern societies, covering different sectors like banking, emergency services, energy, healthcare, oil and gas, transportation, and water distribution. Over the years, CIs rely on technology for their seamless operations. Their reliable and secure operation is of supreme importance to societal welfare and a nation's economy. This paper reports on the presentation and discussions held during the 3rd International Workshop on Engineering and Cybersecurity of Critical Systems (EnCyCriS - 2022). The main aim of this EnCyCriS workshop is to gather contributions from researchers and practitioners working on challenges and solutions for engineering and cybersecurity of critical systems in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This year´s edition has accepted and presented seven papers in addition to a keynote speech from a Principal Analyst in Information Security for Equinor ASA, Norway. This workshop was co-located with the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE - 2022), which took place on 16th May 2022.

• Khakpour, Alireza; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Martini, Antonio (2023). Towards a framework for developing visual analytics in supply chain environments. International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management. ISSN 2182-7796. 11(1), p. 52–71. doi: 10.12821/ijispm110103. Full text in Research Archive
• Ramaj, Xhesika; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Gordon, Mary Luz Sanchez & Gkioulos, Vasileios (2023). Towards a DevSecOps-Enabled Framework for Risk Management of Critical Infrastructures. In Yilmaz, Murat; Clarke, Paul; Riel, Andreas & Messnarz, Richard (Ed.), Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement: 30th European Conference, EuroSPI 2023, Grenoble, France, August 30 – September 1, 2023, Proceedings, Part I. Springer Publishing Company. ISSN 9783031423062. p. 47–58. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-42307-9_4. Full text in Research Archive
• Islam, Mohammed Nurul; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Chockalingam, Sabarathinam (2022). Secure Access Service Edge: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Gervasi, Osvaldo; Murgante, Beniamino & Misra, Sanjay (Ed.), 2021 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISSN 9781665458443. p. 188–194. doi: 10.1109/ICCSA54496.2021.00034. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Over the last decade, corporate networks have undergone significant changes and have been increasingly reliant on cloud-based services to run their businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited this pattern. In this scenario, there is a need to provide security to infrastructures in an advanced and integrated way. Gartner invented the term “Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)” to meet the above-mentioned goal. SASE is a single framework cloud-native architecture that integrates various network and security functions. SASE is seen as a new cybersecurity solution that impacted established vendors but has received little academic attention. Therefore, in this paper, we present a Multivocal Literature Review (MVLR) aiming to gather an illustration of SASE, including definition, key characteristics, reported benefits and challenges and, finally, critiques of this new term. SASE is adopting the benefits of cloud approaches adding security to the service, however, challenges remain in several setups, including legacy systems.

• Rijal, Laxmi; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Sánchez-Gordón, Mary (2022). AIOps: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Misra, Sanjay; Tyagi, Amit Kumar; Piuri, Vincenzo & Garg, Lalit (Ed.), Artificial Intelligence for Cloud and Edge Computing. Springer. ISSN 9783030808204. p. 31–50. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-80821-1_2. Full text in Research Archive
• Jasarevic, Adis & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Lean Robotics: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Gervasi, Osvaldo; Murgante, Beniamino; Misra, Sanjay; Rocha, Ana Maria A.C. & Garau, Chiara (Ed.), Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2022 Workshops, Part V. Springer Nature. ISSN 9783031105487. p. 436–446. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-10548-7_32. Full text in Research Archive
• Demi, Selina; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Velasco, Carlos & Cano, Ramón (2022). A Neural Blockchain for Requirements Traceability: BC4RT Prototype. In Yilmaz, Murat; Clarke, Paul; Messnarz, Richard & Wöran, Bruno (Ed.), Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement: 29th European Conference, EuroSPI 2022, Proceedings. Springer. ISSN 9783031155598. p. 45–59. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-15559-8_4. Full text in Research Archive
• García-Díaz, J.A.; Jiménez-Zafra, S.M.; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Valencia-Garcia, Rafael (2022). UMUTeam at EXIST 2022: Knowledge Integration and Ensemble Learning for Multilingual Sexism Identification and Categorization using Linguistic Features and Transformers. In Montes-y-Gómez, M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Iberian Languages Evaluation Forum (IberLEF 2022). CEUR. ISSN 9788486702373. Full text in Research Archive
• Vázquez-Ingelmo, A.; García-Holgado, A.; García-Peñalvo, Francisco José; Therón, Roberto & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Content-validation questionnaire of a meta-model to ease the learning of data visualization concepts. In Vázquez-Ingelmo, A.; Dimitriadis, Yannis; Monés, A. Martínez & García-Peñalvo, Francisco José (Ed.), Learning Analytics Summer Institute Spain 2022. CEUR. ISSN 9783030883577. p. 6–11. Full text in Research Archive
• Herbold, Steffen; Trautsch, Alexander; Ledel, Benjamin; Aghamohammadi, Alireza; Ghaleb, Taher A. & Chahal, Kuljit Kaur [Show all 48 contributors for this article] (2022). A fine-grained data set and analysis of tangling in bug fixing commits. Empirical Software Engineering. ISSN 1382-3256. 27. doi: 10.1007/s10664-021-10083-5. Full text in Research Archive
• Ramaj, Xhesika; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Chockalingam, Sabarathinam & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Unveiling the Safety Aspects of DevSecOps: Evolution, Gaps and Trends. Recent Advances in Computer Science and Communications. ISSN 2666-2558. doi: 10.2174/2666255816666220804143918. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Background: The popularity of DevSecOps is on the rise because it promises to integrate a greater degree of security into software delivery pipelines. However, there is also an unacceptable risk related to safety that cannot be overlooked, given the importance of this aspect in many industries. Objective: The objective of this study is to provide an overview of the safety aspects reported in the literature on DevSecOps. This study also characterizes such aspects and identifies the gaps that may lead to future research work. Method: A systematic literature review was conducted using five well-known academic databases. The search was executed in September 2021 and March 2022 to identify relevant studies. Results: The search returned 114 academic studies. After the screening process, five primary studies published between 2019 and 2021 were selected. These studies were analyzed thoroughly to identify the safety aspects. Then, we categorized them into three main groups: (i) risk-related safety aspects, (ii) human-related aspects, and (iii) management aspects. Conclusion: Safety is an important characteristic that is becoming more critical as the number of critical systems grows. This review reveals that only a scarce number of studies are focusing on safety in DevSecOps. However, those studies gave us some insights into this topic. Therefore, our main observation is that this topic has not yet been completely explored in the academic literature. This review can encourage reflection and discussion between the safety and security communities.

• García-Díaz, José Antonio; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Valencia-Garcia, Rafael (2022). Psychographic Traits Identification based on political ideology: An author analysis study on Spanish politicians' tweets posted in 2020. Future Generation Computer Systems. ISSN 0167-739X. 130, p. 59–74. doi: 10.1016/j.future.2021.12.011. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In general, people are usually more reluctant to follow advice and directions from politicians who do not have their ideology. In extreme cases, people can be heavily biased in favour of a political party at the same time that they are in sharp disagreement with others, which may lead to irrational decision making and can put people’s lives at risk by ignoring certain recommendations from the authorities. Therefore, considering political ideology as a psychographic trait can improve political micro-targeting by helping public authorities and local governments to adopt better communication policies during crises. In this work, we explore the reliability of determining psychographic traits concerning political ideology. Our contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we release the PoliCorpus-2020, a dataset composed by Spanish politicians’ tweets posted in 2020. On the other hand, we conduct two authorship analysis tasks with the aforementioned dataset: an author profiling task to extract demographic and psychographic traits, and an authorship attribution task to determine the author of an anonymous text in the political domain. Both experiments are evaluated with several neural network architectures grounded on explainable linguistic features, statistical features, and state-of-the-art transformers. In addition, we test whether the neural network models can be transferred to detect the political ideology of citizens. Our results indicate that the linguistic features are good indicators for identifying finegrained political affiliation, they boost the performance of neural network models when combined with embedding-based features, and they preserve relevant information when the models are tested with ordinary citizens. Besides, we found that lexical and morphosyntactic features are more effective on author profiling, whereas stylometric features are more effective in authorship attribution.

• Sandeep, R.C.; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Kristiansen, Monica Lind (2022). Effort Estimation in Agile Software Development: A Exploratory Study of Practitioners’ Perspective. In Przybyłek, Adam; Jarzębowicz, Aleksander; Luković, IVan & Ng, Yen Ying (Ed.), Lean and Agile Software Development: 6th international conference, LASD 2022, virtual event, January 22, 2022, proceedings. Springer. ISSN 9783030942373. p. 136–149. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-94238-0_8. Full text in Research Archive
• Saheed, Yakub Kayode; Abiodun, Aremu Idris; Misra, Sanjay; Kristiansen, Monica Lind & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). A machine learning-based intrusion detection for detecting internet of things network attacks. Alexandria Engineering Journal. ISSN 1110-0168. 61(12), p. 9395–9409. doi: 10.1016/j.aej.2022.02.063. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the collection of all those devices that could connect to the Internet to collect and share data. The introduction of varied devices continues to grow tremendously, posing new privacy and security risks—the proliferation of Internet connections and the advent of new technologies such as the IoT. Various and sophisticated intrusions are driving the IoT paradigm into computer networks. Companies are increasing their investment in research to improve the detection of these attacks. By comparing the highest rates of accuracy, institutions are picking intelligent procedures for testing and verification. The adoption of IoT in the different sectors, including health, has also continued to increase in recent times. Where the IoT applications became well known for technology researchers and developers. Unfortunately, the striking challenge of IoT is the privacy and security issues resulting from the energy limitations and scalability of IoT devices. Therefore, how to improve the security and privacy challenges of IoT remains an important problem in the computer security field. This paper proposes a machine learning-based intrusion detection system (ML-IDS) for detecting IoT network attacks. The primary objective of this research focuses on applying ML-supervised algorithm-based IDS for IoT. In the first stage of this research methodology, feature scaling was done using the Minimum-maximum (min–max) concept of normalization on the UNSW-NB15 dataset to limit information leakage on the test data. This dataset is a mixture of contemporary attacks and normal activities of network traffic grouped into nine different attack types. In the next stage, dimensionality reduction was performed with Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Lastly, six proposed machine learning models were used for the analysis. The experimental results of our findings were evaluated in terms of validation dataset, accuracy, the area under the curve, recall, F1, precision, kappa, and Mathew correlation coefficient (MCC). The findings were also benchmarked with the existing works, and our results were competitive with an accuracy of 99.9% and MCC of 99.97%.

• Oruma, Samson Ogheneova; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Gkioulos, Vasileios & Hansen, Joakim Klevmo (2022). A Systematic Review on Social Robots in Public Spaces: Threat Landscape and Attack Surface. Computers. 11(12). doi: 10.3390/computers11120181. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  There is a growing interest in using social robots in public spaces for indoor and outdoor applications. The threat landscape is an important research area being investigated and debated by various stakeholders. Objectives: This study aims to identify and synthesize empirical research on the complete threat landscape of social robots in public spaces. Specifically, this paper identifies the potential threat actors, their motives for attacks, vulnerabilities, attack vectors, potential impacts of attacks, possible attack scenarios, and mitigations to these threats. Methods: This systematic literature review follows the guidelines by Kitchenham and Charters. The search was conducted in five digital databases, and 1469 studies were retrieved. This study analyzed 21 studies that satisfied the selection criteria. Results: Main findings reveal four threat categories: cybersecurity, social, physical, and public space. Conclusion: This study completely grasped the complexity of the transdisciplinary problem of social robot security and privacy while accommodating the diversity of stakeholders’ perspectives. Findings give researchers and other stakeholders a comprehensive view by highlighting current developments and new research directions in this field. This study also proposed a taxonomy for threat actors and the threat landscape of social robots in public spaces.

• Stefanac, Tommy & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). NoOps – A Multivocal literature review. Procedia Computer Science. 196, p. 167–174. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2021.12.002. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Traditionally, an organization had to have in-house servers and hardware to build a web application. This evolved into Cloud computing where the possibility for cost reduction and scalable data storage became a reality. With the introduction of cloud computing came a concept known as NoOps, or No Operations. This paper aims to take a closer look into what NoOps is and the benefits and challenges of NoOps. The authors identified three RQs that could help to give more insight into NoOps. Further we discussed the findings and RQs and lay out the way forward for future studies into NoOps. We also looked at artificial intelligence (AI) and how AI seems to be heavily linked with a true NoOps environment. With the lack of scientific studies into NoOps, a Multivocal literature review was selected as the method used to investigate the concept and its implications. We try to show voices both for and against NoOps. Further, we try to look at a misconception of what NoOps really is, what true NoOps could be. Finally we look at what requirements there are for companies wanting to go NoOps, and discuss the possibility that many companies unknowingly are moving towards a NoOps environment.

• Ramaj, Xhesika; Gordon, Mary Luz Sanchez; Gkioulos, Vasileios; Chockalingam, Sabarathinam & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Holding on to Compliance While Adopting DevSecOps: An SLR. Electronics (Basel). 11(22), p. 1–19. doi: 10.3390/electronics11223707. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The software industry has witnessed a growing interest in DevSecOps due to the premises of integrating security in the software development lifecycle. However, security compliance cannot be disregarded, given the importance of adherence to regulations, laws, industry standards, and frameworks. This study aims to provide an overview of compliance aspects in the context of DevSecOps and explore how compliance is ensured. Furthermore, this study reveals the trends of compliance according to the extant literature and identifies potential directions for further research in this context. Therefore, we carried out a systematic literature review on the integration of compliance aspects in DevSecOps, which rigorously followed the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and Charters. We found 934 articles related to the topic by searching five bibliographic databases (163) and Google Scholar (771). Through a rigorous selection process, we selected 15 papers as primary studies. Then, we identified the compliance aspects of DevSecOps and grouped them into three main categories: compliance initiation, compliance management, and compliance technicalities. We observed a low number of studies; therefore, we encourage further efforts into the exploration of compliance aspects, their automated integration, and the development of metrics to evaluate such a process in the context of DevSecOps.

• Kvalvik, Petter; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Beyond technology in smart cities: a multivocal literature review on data governance. Aslib Journal of Information Management. ISSN 2050-3806. doi: 10.1108/AJIM-04-2022-0196. Full text in Research Archive
• Sadaqat, Mubashra; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Benchmarking Serverless Computing: Performance and Usability. Journal of Information Technology Research. ISSN 1938-7857. 15(1). doi: 10.4018/JITR.299374. Full text in Research Archive
• Rafi, Saima; Akbar, Muhammad Azeem; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). DevOps Practitioners’ Perceptions of the Low-code Trend. In Madeiral, Fernanda; Lassenius, Casper; Conte, Tayana & Männistö, Tomi (Ed.), Proceedings of the 16th ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9781450394277. p. 301–306. doi: 10.1145/3544902.3546635. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Background: DevOps is currently one of the main trends in software development. Low-Code is also an emerging tendency that, combined with DevOps, may offer significant value to software businesses by improving the process. However, how DevOps practices and low-code are combined is little known. Aim: This study aims to understand the practitioner's perspectives on low-code trends. Method: Twelve interviews with IT professionals who deal with low-code in the context of DevOps were conducted. Then, a grounded theory approach was used to theme the interview quotes into emergent categories. Results: The main result of this exploratory study reveals that such an approach is the most common response to the skill shortages of software professionals. Conclusion: This study suggests the emergence of DevOps and low-code could significantly contribute to the development of quality products with low-cost and time.

• Khakpour, Alireza; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Martini, Antonio (2021). Visual Analytics for Decision Support: A Supply Chain Perspective. IEEE Access. 9, p. 81326–81344. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3085496. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Supply chain (SC) activities generate huge amount of data that can be used in decision making processes. However, proper data analytics techniques are required to combine, organize, and analyze data from different sources and produce required insights available for decision makers. These techniques promote analytical reasoning of the events and patterns hidden in the data using visualizations, so-called Visual Analytics (VA). Although there is a large number of VA systems to facilitate the process of analysis and decision making, there is a lack of an adequate overview of what already exists in this area for SC management. To address that need, we conducted a systematic literature review to analyze the state of the art in SC VA systems. Particularly, we focus on use cases, the type of the decisions that a VA system intended to support, the type of visualizations employed, the type of analytics used, and the data that has been used for analysis. The goal of this study is to provide SC and VA researchers with an overview of the works carried out in the field of SC VA, helping them to observe latest trends and to recognize existing gaps that need further investigation. Consequently, a mapping between decisions of various SC business processes and their reciprocal visualization techniques and tactics have been provided. Adding to that, VA applications and use cases in SC are identified based on the SC Operation Reference (SCOR) model and underlying decision areas are recognized.

• Mas, Antonia; Mesquida, Antoni-Lluís & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). Enhancing the student perception on Software Project Management in Computer Science. IEEE Transactions on Education. ISSN 0018-9359. 64(1), p. 1–11. doi: 10.1109/TE.2020.2998429. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). Boosting ICT Entrepreneurship by Means of Cooperation. In Visvizi, Anna; Lytras, Miltiadis D. & Aljohani, Naif R. (Ed.), Research and Innovation Forum 2020: Disruptive Technologies in Times of Change. Springer. ISSN 9783030620653. p. 437–444. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-62066-0_33. Full text in Research Archive
• García-Díaz, José Antonio; Cánovas-García, Mar; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Valencia-García, Rafael (2021). Detecting Misogyny in Spanish Tweets. An approach based on Linguistics Features and Word embeddings. Future Generation Computer Systems. ISSN 0167-739X. 114, p. 506–518. doi: 10.1016/j.future.2020.08.032. Full text in Research Archive
• Shourmasti, Elaheh Shahmir; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Holone, Harald & Demi, Selina (2021). User experience in social robots. Sensors. 21(15). doi: 10.3390/s21155052. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Social robots are increasingly penetrating our daily lives. They are used in various domains, such as healthcare, education, business, industry, and culture. However, introducing this technology for use in conventional environments is not trivial. For users to accept social robots, a positive user experience is vital, and it should be considered as a critical part of the robots’ development process. This may potentially lead to excessive use of social robots and strengthen their diffusion in society. The goal of this study is to summarize the extant literature that is focused on user experience in social robots, and to identify the challenges and benefits of UX evaluation in social robots. To achieve this goal, the authors carried out a systematic literature review that relies on PRISMA guidelines. Our findings revealed that the most common methods to evaluate UX in social robots are questionnaires and interviews. UX evaluations were found out to be beneficial in providing early feedback and consequently in handling errors at an early stage. However, despite the importance of UX in social robots, robot developers often neglect to set UX goals due to lack of knowledge or lack of time. This study emphasizes the need for robot developers to acquire the required theoretical and practical knowledge on how to perform a successful UX evaluation.

• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). Managing software development risk: Risks of introducing the role of agile coach – a multivocal literature review. In Engemann, Kurt J. & O'Connor, Rory V. (Ed.), Project Risk Management: Managing Software Development Risk. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783110648232. p. 25–47. doi: 10.1515/9783110652321-003. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Managing risk is essential for every organization. However, significant opportunities may be lost by concentrating on the negative aspects of risk without bearing in mind the positive attributes. The objective of Project Risk Management: Managing Software Development Risk is to provide a distinct approach to a broad range of risks and rewards associated with the design, development, implementation and deployment of software systems. The traditional perspective of software development risk is to view risk as a negative characteristic associated with the impact of potential threats. The perspective of this book is to explore a more discerning view of software development risks, including the positive aspects of risk associated with potential beneficial opportunities. A balanced approach requires that software project managers approach negative risks with a view to reduce the likelihood and impact on a software project, and approach positive risks with a view to increase the likelihood of exploiting opportunities. Project Risk Management: Managing Software Development Risk explores software development risk both from a technological and business perspective. Issues regarding strategies for software development are discussed and topics including risks related to technical performance, outsourcing, cybersecurity, scheduling, quality, costs, opportunities and competition are presented. Bringing together concepts across the broad spectrum of software engineering with a project management perspective, this volume represents both a professional and scholarly perspective on the topic. Separates risk into two viewpoints: Positive Risk - an opportunity to the project – and Negative Risk - a threat to the project, which is a unique approach.

• Njanka, Samgwa Quintine; Sandula, Godavari & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). IT-Business Alignment: A Systematic Literature Review. Procedia Computer Science. 181, p. 333–340. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2021.01.154. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  IT-business alignment has been the focus for top managers in the last two decades. Literature reported IT-business alignment as one of the key enablers for the success of IT in an organization. Given its importance, this study aimed at exploring the reported benefits of IT-business alignment, the proposed methodologies and the challenges in implementing these models. To do so, a systematic literature review was conducted to find answers to these questions. This study reveals that applying IT in an appropriate and timely way, in harmony with business strategies, goals and needs can result in plenty of benefits for an organization. These benefits include enhanced cooperation among members, competitive advantage, performance enhancement, high return on investment, facilitation of processes and growth among others. In fact, IT today is not only a tool but has become a business enabler delivering values for organization and this implies that huge investment on IT must be well managed and controlled in order to align IT with business. Also, the study reviewed some proposed methodologies or models that have contributed in achieving sustained alignment between business and IT. Lastly, the study reveals that, despite the inevitable benefits, there are still some difficulties or challenges organizations faced in establishing an atmosphere of honesty and humility between IT and business. These challenges are lack of effective communication, low return on IT investments, lack of the necessary skills to adapt to changes in technology or conflicting priorities.

• Demi, Selina; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). What have we learnt from the challenges of (semi-) automated requirements traceability? A discussion on blockchain applicability. IET Software. ISSN 1751-8806. 15(6), p. 391–411. doi: 10.1049/sfw2.12035. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Over the last 3 decades, researchers have attempted to shed light into the requirements traceability problem by introducing tracing tools, techniques, and methods with the vision of achieving ubiquitous traceability. Despite the technological advances, requirements traceability remains problematic for researchers and practitioners. This study aims to identify and investigate the main challenges in implementing (semi-)automated requirements traceability, as reported in the recent literature. A systematic literature review was carried out based on the guidelines for systematic literature reviews in software engineering, proposed by Kitchenham. We retrieved 4530 studies by searching five major bibliographic databases and selected 70 primary studies. These studies were analysed and classified according to the challenges they present and/or address. Twenty-one challenges were identified and were classified into five categories. Findings reveal that the most frequent challenges are technological challenges, in particular, low accuracy of traceability recovery methods. Findings also suggest that future research efforts should be devoted to the human facet of tracing, to explore traceability practices in organisational settings, and to develop traceability approaches that support agile and DevOps practices. Finally, it is recommended that researchers leverage blockchain technology as a suitable technical solution to ensure the trustworthiness of traceability information in interorganisational software projects.

• Yahia, Nesrine Ben; Hlel, Jihen & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). From Big Data to Deep Data to support people analytics for employee attrition prediction. IEEE Access. 9, p. 60447–60458. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3074559. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the era of data science and big data analytics, people analytics help organizations and their human resources (HR) managers to reduce attrition by changing the way of attracting and retaining talent. In this context, employee attrition presents a critical problem and a big risk for organizations as it affects not only their productivity but also their planning continuity. In this context, the salient contributions of this research are as follows. Firstly, we propose a people analytics approach to predict employee attrition that shifts from a big data to a deep data context by focusing on data quality instead of its quantity. In fact, this deep data-driven approach is based on a mixed method to construct a relevant employee attrition model in order to identify key employee features influencing his/her attrition. In this method, we started thinking ‘big’ by collecting most of the common features from the literature (an exploratory research) then we tried thinking ‘deep’ by filtering and selecting the most important features using survey and feature selection algorithms (a quantitative method). Secondly, this attrition prediction approach is based on machine, deep and ensemble learning models and is experimented on a large-sized and a medium-sized simulated human resources datasets and then a real small-sized dataset from a total of 450 responses. Our approach achieves higher accuracy (0.96, 0.98 and 0.99 respectively) for the three datasets when compared previous solutions. Finally, while rewards and payments are generally considered as the most important keys to retention, our findings indicate that ‘business travel’, which is less common in the literature, is the leading motivator for employees and must be considered within HR policies to retention.

• Rivadeneira, Jorge Eduardo; Silva, Jorge Sá; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Rodrigues, André; Fernandes, José Marcelo & Boavida, Fernando (2021). A Privacy-Aware Framework integration into a Human-in-the-Loop IoT System. In Chen, Wei; Pappas, Nikolaos & Yang, Dejun (Ed.), IEEE INFOCOM 2021 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISSN 9781665404433. doi: 10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS51825.2021.9484634. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The progressive incorporation of humans as active players within the Internet of Things domain, has positioned the smartphone as one of the main elements of this environment. The multiple functionalities that this device offers, along with its rapid evolution, have benefited usability, thus improving user experience, making this appliance a versatile pocket assistant. Nowadays, these devices comprise a large number of special-purpose sensors capable of collecting a variety of information, that along with the data from other mobile applications such as online social networks, is the fuel for new IoT systems. Much of this data is used to offer innovative services in several areas, making the smartphone an ideal medium for acquiring information. Unfortunately, the control of data flows between smartphones and new IoT systems is scarce, triggering concerns around users' privacy. Also, we could add to the list the limited privacy preservation mechanisms in current mobile operating systems. It is for this reason that this article aims to propose a privacy-preserving framework that can be integrated into people-centric IoT systems. Besides introducing the architecture of our PACHA framework, the manuscript will present the new vision of our ISABELA platform derived from the integration with the privacy-preserving model.

• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Mendoza-González, Ricardo (2021). Design Thinking in Practice. IT Professional Magazine. ISSN 1520-9202. 23(4), p. 95–100. doi: 10.1109/MITP.2020.2993113. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Technology companies are under enormous pressure to remain competitive. In this situation, the time it takes to reach the market for an innovative idea about a product or service is crucial. Large corporations in the IT industry, such as SAP, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and startups acknowledge that Design Thinking (DT)-along with other approaches-is one promising avenue to become more innovative and helps to accelerate the process. This article presents a brief overview of DT as well as what, in practice, technology companies are actually implementing under the rubric of “Design Thinking” and the challenges reported on a survey conducted among professionals in this field.

• Karlsen, Ida Christine; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Holone, Harald (2021). The Medical Use of Smartwatches: A Tertiary Study Comparing Northern and Southern European Nursing homes. In Alier, Marc & Fonseca, David (Ed.), TEEM'21 : Ninth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality : Proceedings. ACM Publications. ISSN 9781450390668. p. 330–334. doi: 10.1145/3486011.3486470. Full text in Research Archive
• Demi, Selina; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Sánchez-Gordón, Mary (2021). Software Engineering Applications enabled by Blockchain Technology: A Systematic Mapping Study. Applied Sciences. 11(7). doi: 10.3390/app11072960. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The novel, yet disruptive blockchain technology has witnessed growing attention, due to its intrinsic potential. Besides the conventional domains that benefit from such potential, such as finance, supply chain and healthcare, blockchain use cases in software engineering have emerged recently. In this study, we aim to contribute to the body of knowledge of blockchain-oriented software engineering by providing an adequate overview of the software engineering applications enabled by blockchain technology. To do so, we carried out a systematic mapping study and identified 22 primary studies. Then, we extracted data within the research type, research topic and contribution type facets. Findings suggest an increasing trend of studies since 2018. Additionally, findings reveal the potential of using blockchain technologies as an alternative to centralized systems, such as GitHub, Travis CI, and cloud-based package managers, and also to establish trust between parties in collaborative software development. We also found out that smart contracts can enable the automation of a variety of software engineering activities that usually require human reasoning, such as the acceptance phase, payments to software engineers, and compliance adherence. In spite of the fact that the field is not yet mature, we believe that this systematic mapping study provides a holistic overview that may benefit researchers interested in bringing blockchain to the software industry, and practitioners willing to understand how blockchain can transform the software development industry.

• Umar, Muhammad & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). DevOps Job Roles: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Gervasi, Osvaldo; Murgante, Beniamino & Misra, Sanjay (Ed.), Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2021: 21st International Conference: Proceedings, Part IX. Springer. ISSN 9783030870133. p. 247–256. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-87013-3_19. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  DevOps bridges the gap between software development and operations to provide rapid deliveries and integrated collaboration. However, DevOps entails lots of factors and challenges involved in its implementation including technical, organizational and personnel aspects. Focusing on the last set of aspects, this paper identifies current DevOps job roles, an aspect that is crucial to implement and to support DevOps practices in organizations. It also highlights collaboration between different actors under different automation levels in DevOps to deliver software at high speed.

• Ahmed, Waqar & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). Team Topologies in Software Teams: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Gervasi, Osvaldo; Murgante, Beniamino & Misra, Sanjay (Ed.), Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2021: 21st International Conference: Proceedings, Part IX. Springer. ISSN 9783030870133. p. 272–282. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-87013-3_21. Full text in Research Archive
• Demi, Selina; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). A Blockchain-enabled Framework for Requirements Traceability. In Yilmaz, Murat; Clarke, Paul & Messnarz, Richard (Ed.), Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement: 28th European Conference, EuroSPI 2021, Proceedings. Springer. ISSN 9783030855208. p. 3–13. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-85521-5_1. Full text in Research Archive
• García-Díaz, José Antonio; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Valencia-Garcia, Rafael (2021). UMUTeam at EmoEvalEs 2021: Emosjon Analysis for Spanish based on Explainable Linguistic Features and Transformers. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 2943, p. 59–71. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Emotion Analysis extends the idea of Sentiment Analysis by shifting from plain positive or negative sentiments to a rich variety of emotions to get better understanding of the users’ thoughts and appraisals. The move from Sentiment Analysis to Emotion Analysis requires, however, better feature engineering techniques when it comes to capturing complex language phenomena, which have to do with figurative language and the way of expressing oneself. In this manuscript we detail the participation of the UMUTeam in EmoEvalEs’2021 shared task from IberLEF, concerning the identification of emotions in Spanish. Our proposal is grounded on the combination of explainable linguistic features and state-of-the-art transformers based on the Spanish version of BERT. We achieved the 6th position in the official leader board with an accuracy of 68.5990%, only 4.1667% below the best result. In addition, we apply model agnostic techniques for explainable artificial intelligence to achieve insights from the linguistic features. We observed a correlation between psycho-linguistic processes and perceptual feel with the emotions evaluated and, pecifically, with documents labelled as sadness.

• García-Díaz, José Antonio; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Valencia-García, Rafael (2021). UMUTeam at EXIST 2021: Sexist Language Identification based on Linguistic Features and Transformers in Spanish and English. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 2943, p. 512–521. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Sexism is harmful behaviour that can make women feel worthless promoting self-censorship and gender inequality. In the digital era, misogynists have found in social networks a place in which they can spread their oppressive discourse towards women. Although this particular form of oppressive speech is banned and punished on most social networks, its identification is quite challenging due to the large number of messages posted everyday. Moreover, sexist comments can be unnoticed as condescends or friendly statements which hinders its identification even for humans. With the aim of improving automatic sexist identification on social networks, we participate in EXIST-2021. This shared task involves the identification and categorisation of sexism language on Spanish and English documents compiled from micro-blogging platforms. Specifically, two tasks were proposed, one concerning a binary classification of sexism utterances and another regarding multi-class identification of sexist traits. Our proposal for solving both tasks is grounded on the combination of linguistic features and state-of-the-art transformers by means of ensembles and multi-input neural networks. To address the multi-language problem, we tackle the problem independently by language to put the results together at the end. Our best result was achieved in task 1 with an accuracy of 75.14% and 61.70% for task 2.

• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). A Framework for Intersectional Perspectives in Software Engineering. In Hoda, Rashina & Fagerholm, Fabian (Ed.), 2021 IEEE/ACM 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering: CHASE 2021: [Proceedings]. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISSN 9781665414098. p. 121–122. doi: 10.1109/CHASE52884.2021.00025. Full text in Research Archive
• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Security as Culture: A Systematic Literature Review of DevSecOps. In Rothermel, Gregg & Bae, Doo-Hwan (Ed.), ICSEW'20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops. ACM Publications. ISSN 9781450379632. p. 266–269. doi: 10.1145/3387940.3392233. Full text in Research Archive
• Pokhrel, Abhishek; Katta, Vikash & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Digital Twin for Cybersecurity Incident Prediction: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Rothermel, Gregg & Bae, Doo-Hwan (Ed.), ICSEW'20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops. ACM Publications. ISSN 9781450379632. p. 671–678. doi: 10.1145/3387940.3392199. Full text in Research Archive
• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Rijal, Laxmi & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Beyond Technical Skills in Software Testing: Automated versus Manual Testing. In Rothermel, Gregg & Bae, Doo-Hwan (Ed.), ICSEW'20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops. ACM Publications. ISSN 9781450379632. p. 161–164. doi: 10.1145/3387940.3392238. Full text in Research Archive
• Demi, Selina; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Johansen, Stig Henning & Sánchez-Gordón, Mary (2020). Mapping human values and scrum roles: a study on students' preferences. In Rothermel, Gregg & Bae, Doo-Hwan (Ed.), ICSEW'20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops. ACM Publications. ISSN 9781450379632. p. 570–576. doi: 10.1145/3387940.3391467. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Despite the long tradition on the study of human values, the impact of this field in the software engineering domain is rarely studied. To these regards, this study focuses on applying human values to agile software development process, more specifically to scrum roles. Thus, the goal of the study is to explore possible associations between human values and scrum roles preferences among students. Questionnaires are designed by employing the Short Schwartz's Value Survey and are distributed among 57 students. The results of the quantitative analysis process consisting of descriptive statistics, linear regression models and Pearson correlation coefficients, revealed that values such as power and self-direction influence the preference for the product owner role, the value of hedonism influences the preference for scrum masters and self-direction is associated with team members' preference.

• Juiz, Carlos & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Extending Software Development Governance to meet IT Governance. In Rothermel, Gregg & Bae, Doo-Hwan (Ed.), ICSEW'20: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops. ACM Publications. ISSN 9781450379632. p. 295–298. doi: 10.1145/3387940.3392211. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Yahia, Nesrine Ben; Larrucea, Xabier & Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina (2020). Is the Gender Gap Narrowing in Higher Education Computing Studies? The Case of Norway, Spain, and Tunisia. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologías del Aprendizaje (IEEE-RITA). 15(4), p. 336–343. doi: 10.1109/RITA.2020.3033211. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Traditionally, women have been underrepresented in Computing studies. The discipline is male-dominated in spite of the efforts promoting the participation of women in the field, both in the student base and in the professional arena. Literature underlined that student attraction and professional retention are aspects to analyse in a sound way in order to build strong and grounded theories for this complex misbalance phenomenon. In this scenario, authors study the gender gap in computing education by collecting data such as female students enrolled in one of the mandatory courses and female members of faculty. In addition to this data, socio-economic factors such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and unemployment rate of the countries under study were considered. Results show that the gender gap in computing studies is not narrowing significantly despite the measures that were undertaken. In an attempt to explain the gender gap by considering macroeconomic variables, authors highlight the complexness of the phenomenon. Authors believe that there is not a single answer or explanation to this imbalance and a variety of aspects from values to culture and from economy to expectations need to be analysed in order to bring answers and possible solutions to this tangible problem.

• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina; Álvarez-Rodríguez, Jose María & Yilmaz, Murat (2020). Coding Vs. Presenting: a multicultural study on emotions. Information Technology and People. ISSN 0959-3845. 33(6), p. 1575–1599. doi: 10.1108/ITP-12-2019-0633. Full text in Research Archive
• Aarlien, David & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Lean UX: A Systematic Literature Review. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). ISSN 0302-9743. 12254, p. 500–510. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-58817-5_37. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Arias-Aranda, Daniel (2020). A critical review on Blockchain assessment initiatives: a technology evolution viewpoint. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (JSEP). ISSN 2047-7473. 32(11). doi: 10.1002/smr.2272. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Blockchain is considered as a major emerging technology that is having an everincreasing spread both in industrial and academic contexts. As the usage of blockchain keeps increasing, a fourth generation of blockchain platforms is being proposed. Thus, applications of blockchain have evolved towards wider scopes than cryptocurrency and asset management. In this context, it is important for practitioners to have deep understanding of various blockchain assessment initiatives. Therefore, this work discusses blockchain assessment initiatives from a technology evolution viewpoint. Furthermore, a mapping was conducted to identify factors that impact blockchain initiatives, synthesize available evidence, and identify gaps between relevant approaches available in the literature. As a result, nine selected works were analyzed based on applicability, research approach, assessment process, blockchain adoption process, and blockchain waves. The findings can help practitioners to understand the main assessment factors that undermine blockchain implementations.

• Velasco, Carlos; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Cano, Ramón (2020). Neural Distributed Ledger. IEEE Software. ISSN 0740-7459. 37(5), p. 43–48. doi: 10.1109/MS.2020.2993370. Full text in Research Archive
• Lohrasbinasab, Iraj; Acharya, Prameet Bhakta & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). BizDevOps: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Gervasi, Osvaldo (Eds.), Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2020. Springer. ISSN 9783030588168. p. 698–713. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-58817-5_50. Full text in Research Archive
• Khakpour, Alireza; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). What We Know About the Greenability of Reality Technologies: A Systematic Literature Review. In Vanessa, Ratten (Eds.), Entrepreneurship and Organizational Change. Springer Nature. ISSN 9783030354145. p. 89–113. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-35415-2_5. Full text in Research Archive
• Khakpour, Alireza & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Convergence of Gamification and Machine Learning: A Systematic Literature Review. Technology, Knowledge and Learning. ISSN 2211-1662. 26, p. 597–636. doi: 10.1007/s10758-020-09456-4. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Recent developments in human–computer interaction technologies raised the attention towards gamification techniques, that can be defined as using game elements in a non-gaming context. Furthermore, advancement in machine learning (ML) methods and its potential to enhance other technologies, resulted in the inception of a new era where ML and gamification are combined. This new direction thrilled us to conduct a systematic literature review in order to investigate the current literature in the field, to explore the convergence of these two technologies, highlighting their influence on one another, and the reported benefits and challenges. The results of the study reflect the various usage of this confluence, mainly in, learning and educational activities, personalizing gamification to the users, behavioral change efforts, adapting the gamification context and optimizing the gamification tasks. Adding to that, data collection for machine learning by gamification technology and teaching machine learning with the help of gamification were identified. Finally, we point out their benefits and challenges towards streamlining future research endeavors.

• Mece, Elinda Kajo; Sheme, Enida; Trandafili, Evis; Juiz, Carlos; Gómez, Beatriz & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Governing IT in HEIs: Systematic Mapping Review. Business Systems Research Journal. ISSN 1847-8344. 11(3), p. 93–109. doi: 10.2478/bsrj-2020-0029. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Background: Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are aware of the immense importance of achieving their strategic objectives to increase their impact on the society and to be competitive. As a board responsibility, information technology governance (ITG) plays an important role in the overall HEIs performance. Numerous HEIs are making great efforts to properly govern information technology (IT) by using ITG frameworks. Objectives: This study investigates the overall adoption of ITG frameworks in different HEIs through a systematic mapping review. Method: We analyzed forty relevant papers, filtered from 6 selected online libraries, and answered six research questions on ITG implementations at universities worldwide. Results: The results show an increasing number of publications on ITG usage in HEIs in the last decade. The largest number of applications is described in Asian countries, while the most popular used frameworks are COBIT, ISO versions, and in-house developed frameworks. Finally, we describe the top challenges and benefits of ITG implementation mentioned in research papers. Conclusion: This paper provides a deep insight into the level of integration of ITG in universities worldwide. The results will be presented to the involved stakeholders at our university to increase the awareness of ITG in HEIs and help its implementation process.

• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Sanchez, Alex & Sanchez-Gordon, Sandra (2020). Integrating Approaches in Software Development: A Case Analysis in a Small Software Company. In Yilmaz, Murat; Niemann, J.; Clarke, Paul & Messnarz, Richard (Ed.), Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement. Springer. ISSN 9783030564407. p. 95–106. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-56441-4_7. Full text in Research Archive
• Garcia-Sanchez, Francisco; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Valencia-Garcia, Rafael (2020). A social-semantic recommender system for advertisements. Information Processing & Management. ISSN 0306-4573. 57(2). doi: 10.1016/j.ipm.2019.102153. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Social applications foster the involvement of end users in Web content creation, as a result ofwhich a new source of vast amounts of data about users and their likes and dislikes has becomeavailable. Having access to users’ contributions to social sites and gaining insights into theconsumers’ needs is of the utmost importance for marketing decision making in general, and toadvertisement recommendation in particular. By analyzing this information, advertisement re-commendation systems can attain a better understanding of the users’ interests and preferences,thus allowing these solutions to provide more precise ad suggestions. However, in addition to thealready complex challenges that hamper the performance of recommender systems (i.e., datasparsity, cold-start, diversity, accuracy and scalability), new issues that should be consideredhave also emerged from the need to deal with heterogeneous data gathered from disparatesources. The technologies surrounding Linked Data and the Semantic Web have proved effectivefor knowledge management and data integration. In this work, an ontology-based advertisementrecommendation system that leverages the data produced by users in social networking sites isproposed, and this approach is substantiated by a shared ontology model with which to representboth users’ profiles and the content of advertisements. Both users and advertisement are re-presented by means of vectors generated using natural language processing techniques, whichcollect ontological entities from textual content. The ad recommender framework has been ex-tensively validated in a simulated environment, obtaining an aggregated f-measure of 79.2% anda Mean Average Precision at 3 (MAP@3) of 85.6%.

• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Cross Fertilization in Software Engineering. In Yilmaz, Murat; Niemann, J.; Clarke, Paul & Messnarz, Richard (Ed.), Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement. Springer. ISSN 9783030564407. p. 3–13. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-56441-4_1. Full text in Research Archive
• Lunde, Bjørn Arild & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Continuous practices and technical debt: a systematic literature review. In Misra, Sanjay; Gervasi, Osvaldo & Murgante, Beniamino (Ed.), 2020 - International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISSN 9781728192604. p. 40–44. doi: 10.1109/ICCSA50381.2020.00018. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  echnical debt in software development is a common problem that is overlooked by many development teams. This debt can be generated from a variety of reasons, including time pressure and complexity in software. Technical debt in simple terms is when a simple and less optimized solution is carried out in order to gain short term benefits, which leads to refactoring and reworking code later on, costing both time and money. The issue is present in both big, established companies and small startups, and is the reason why many of these small startups never get enough economic grip before debt catch up and they go bankrupt. This paper aims to address this problem by exploring how continuous practices including DevOps could help resolve this issue by adopting the right approaches into the software development cycle and workflow. So as to collect information about these topics, a systematic literature review has been conducted, covering both positive and negative impacts these practices can have on technical debt. The findings will present the current practices used to manage and reduce the accumulation of technical debt, if and how these approaches can be used to reduce already existing technical debt and which of these practices that have the biggest impact on technical debt. The paper concludes that there's potential for continuous practices including DevOps to possibly reduce technical debt if applied appropriately.

• Baldominos, Alejandro; Ogul, Hasan; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Sanz-Moreno, José & Gómez-Pulido, José Manuel (2020). Infection Prediction using Physiological and Social Data in Social Environments. Information Processing & Management. ISSN 0306-4573. 57(3). doi: 10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102213. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The ability of detecting infections at an early stage in clinical environments is an important clinical problem. When an infection is not diagnosed on time, it may not only affect the health of the infected patient, but also spread and infect other people. In this paper, we propose the development of a clinical decision support system (CDSS) for diagnosing infections using clinical signals from patients. This system is designed to be able to cope with small amounts of data (a single record per day and patient), making it convenient for environments under strict constraints (such as low resources or bad connectivity). Additionally, we have incorporated data from external sources, in order to enrich the quality of the models. In particular, we have considered social data arising from web searches, retrieved from Google Trends, as well as weather data.

• Jovanović, Miloš; Mesquida, Antoni-Lluís; Mas, Antonia & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Agile Transition and Adoption Frameworks, Issues and Factors: A Systematic Mapping. IEEE Access. 8, p. 15711–15735. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2967839. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In order to adopt specific agile methods and to accommodate lean principles, many organizations need to tailor their processes. Different frameworks supporting and guiding the agile transition and adoption process exist in the literature. However, there is a demand for specific guidelines on the different circumstances influencing agile adoption. This paper provides a Systematic mapping of the available frameworks, issues and factors affecting a successful agile transition and adoption process. Twenty-eight primary studies have been considered. The results are presented according to the three research questions. Firstly, nine systematic approaches and frameworks for agile transition and adoption are analyzed. Secondly, different issues related to the agile transition and adoption process are gathered, compared and synthesized in the following five categories: pre-transformation activities, obstacles and results, stages and activities, agile practices and situational factors. Finally, a list of 154 situational factors affecting the agile transition and adoption process is proposed.

• Colombo-Mendoza, Luis Omar; Valencia-Garcia, Rafael; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Alor-Hernández, Giner (2020). A knowledge-based multi-criteria collaborative filtering approach for discovering services in mobile cloud computing platforms. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems. ISSN 0925-9902. 54(1), p. 179–203. doi: 10.1007/s10844-018-0527-2. Full text in Research Archive
• Baldominos, Alejandro; Puello, Adrián; Ogul, Hasan; Aşuroğlu, Tunç & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Predicting infections using computational intelligence – A systematic review. IEEE Access. 8, p. 31083–31102. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2973006. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Infections encompass a set of medical conditions of very diverse kinds that can pose a significant risk to health, and even death. As with many other diseases, early diagnosis can help to provide patients with proper care to minimize the damage produced by the disease, or to isolate them to avoid the risk of spread. In this context, computational intelligence can be useful to predict the risk of infection in patients, raising early alarms that can aid medical teams to respond as quick as possible. In this paper, we survey the state of the art on infection prediction using computer science by means of a systematic literature review. The objective is to find papers where computational intelligence is used to predict infections in patients using physiological data as features. We have posed one major research question along with nine specific subquestions. The whole review process is thoroughly described, and eight databases are considered which index most of the literature published in different scholarly formats. A total of 101 relevant documents have been found in the period comprised between 2003 and 2019, and a detailed study of these documents is carried out to classify the works and answer the research questions posed, resulting to our best knowledge in the most comprehensive study of its kind. We conclude that the most widely addressed infection is by far sepsis, followed by Clostridium difficile infection and surgical site infections. Most works use machine learning techniques, from which logistic regression, support vector machines, random forest and naive Bayes are the most common. Some machine learning works provide some ideas on the problems of small data and class imbalance, which can be of interest. The current systematic literature review shows that automatic diagnosis of infectious diseases using computational intelligence is well documented in the medical literature.

• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Samuelsen, Terje; Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina & Larrucea, Xabier (2020). Students’ Selection of Teamwork Tools in Software Engineering Education: Lessons Learned. International Journal of Engineering Education. ISSN 0949-149X. 36(1 B), p. 309–316. Full text in Research Archive
• Lie, Martin Forsberg; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). DevOps in an ISO 13485 regulated environment: A multivocal literature review. International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. ISSN 1949-3770. doi: 10.1145/3382494.3410679. Full text in Research Archive
• Lie, Martin Forsberg; Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). DevOps in an ISO 13485 Regulated Environment: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Baldassarre, Teresa & Lanubile, Filippo (Ed.), Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9781450375801. doi: 10.1145/3382494.3410679. Full text in Research Archive
• Tariq, Faizan & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Use of Blockchain Smart Contracts in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping. In Misra, Sanjay & Gervasi, Osvaldo (Ed.), Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2019. Springer. ISSN 9783030243104. p. 327–337. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-24308-1_27. Full text in Research Archive
• Larrucea, Xabier; Santamaría, Izaskun & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Assessing source code vulnerabilities in a cloud-based system for health systems: OpenNCP. IET Software. ISSN 1751-8806. 13(3), p. 195–202. doi: 10.1049/iet-sen.2018.5294. Full text in Research Archive
• Zaidi, Moayid Ali & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Code Smells Enabled by Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Mapping. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). ISSN 0302-9743. 11622 LNCS, p. 418–427. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-24305-0_31. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Code smells are an indicator of poor design in software systems. Artificial intelligence techniques have been applied in several ways to improve soft-ware quality in code smells detection i.e. (detection rules or standards using a combination of object-oriented metrics and Bayesian inference graphs). Literature in the field has identified artificial intelligence techniques and compare different artificial intelligence algorithms, which are used in the detection of code smells. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is not a systematic literature review devoted to study in deep the interaction of these fields. In this paper, authors conduct a systematic mapping to get to know how artificial intelligence inter-acts with code smells. Results show the deep connection of Artificial Intelligence with code smells in a solid way, as well as, providing potential challenges and opportunities for future research.

• Juiz, Carlos; Gómez, Beatriz & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). How to Improve Board Accountability in ISO/IEC 38500 Based on IT Governance Implementations: Cascading and Rolling up IT BSCs. International Journal of IT - Business Alignment and Governance (IJITBAG). ISSN 1947-9611. 10(1), p. 22–39. doi: 10.4018/IJITBAG.2019010102. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  With the standardization of Information Technology (IT) governance through ISO/IEC 38500 in the last decade, a good number of organizations have implemented IT governance (ITG) frameworks. Although it is not a fully extended practice. Given the fact that the use of balanced score cards (BSC) on ITG is not an unknown practice, the application of BSC in the implementation of ISO/IEC 38500 has been given less importance, since it normally appears as just examples of good practices. This work not only explains why the BSC's applicability to align IT with business in ISO/IEC 38500 implementations is not included in the standard, but also justifies the importance of BSC to report to the board or senior executive team in a clear way, without the details of the particular implementation framework of the standard. Thus, a framework that allows implementing IT BSCs within the context of IT governance is proposed, cascading objectives included in the strategic map through the tactical and operational level and backwards on the construction of the KPIs to better monitor IT.

• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Towards a Software Engineering Framework for the Design, Construction and Deployment of Machine Learning-Based Solutions in Digitalization Processes. In Visvizi, Anna & Lytras, Miltiadis D. (Ed.), Research & Innovation Forum 2019 : Technology, Innovation, Education, and their Social Impact. Springer. ISSN 9783030308087. p. 343–349. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-30809-4_31. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina (2019). National cultures and gender balance in ICT: a preliminary study. In Duchien, Laurence (Eds.), ECSA'19: Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Software Architecture - Volume 2. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISSN 9781450371421. p. 76–81. doi: 10.1145/3344948.3344965. Full text in Research Archive
• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Developing SPI culture in the SME arena: An exploratory study. In Walker, Alistair; O'Connor, Rory V. & Messnarz, Richard (Ed.), Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement. Springer. ISSN 9783030280048. p. 222–234. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-28005-5_17. Full text in Research Archive
• Bhandari, Rabin & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Holacracy In Software Development Teams: A Multivocal Literature Review. In Misra, Sanjay & Gervasi, Osvaldo (Ed.), 2019 19th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISSN 9781728128474. p. 140–145. doi: 10.1109/ICCSA.2019.00013. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Holacracy can be seen as a strategy for decentralized management and organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are delivered by means of autonomous and self-organizing groups or teams. Although the topic is not new, its application in software development has not a long history behind it. This study is meant to give an overview on holacracy for software development teams, its features, benefits gained, as well as its challenges. To do so, in this paper, authors present a multivocal literature review in which a panoply of sources including research and grey literature is reviewed. Our study shows that adapting holacracy towards self-organizing software development teams can result in increased product transparency, improved decision making, more efficient progress, and a higher sense of individual responsibility. However, there are reported challenges such as implementation difficulty and increase in employee outflows.

• Acharya, Bibek & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). A Systematic Literature Review on Autonomous Agile Teams. In Misra, Sanjay & Gervasi, Osvaldo (Ed.), 2019 19th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISSN 9781728128474. p. 146–151. doi: 10.1109/ICCSA.2019.00014. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Organizations are needed of flexible structures to achieve their aims. In the software arena, Self-organization is the one of the principles of the agile methodologies as defined in the agile manifesto. Autonomous agile teams are a way to conform self-organization. The main objective of this paper is to know about the how autonomous agile teams organize themselves and what are the benefits and the challenges faced by these teams. A systematic literature review was conducted to find answers to these questions. 23 relevant papers were identified as primary sources to define and study autonomous and self-organized agile team. From the review, it was found that there are many benefits and challenges of autonomous agile teams and the various strategies to overcome the challenges.

• Yahia, Nesrine Ben; Eljaoued, Wissem; Saoud, Narjes Bellamine Ben & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2019). Towards sustainable collaborative networks for smart cities co-governance. International Journal of Information Management. ISSN 0268-4012. 56. doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.11.005. Full text in Research Archive

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• Esnoul, Coralie; Jee, Eunkyoung; Le, Triet Huynh Minh; Babar, Ali N.; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Rashid, Awais (2024). 2024 ACM/IEEE 4th International Workshop on Engineering and Cybersecurity of Critical Systems (EnCyCriS) and 2024 IEEE/ACM Second International Workshop on Software Vulnerability (EnCyCriS/SVM '24). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ISBN 9798400705656. Full text in Research Archive
• Moræus, Jonas Aamodt & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). 2022 International Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence (ICAPAI). IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISBN 9781665467827. doi: 10.1109/ICAPAI55158.2022. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Ripon, Kazi Shah Nawaz (2021). Proceedings of the International Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence (ICAPAI) 2021. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). ISBN 9781728159348. 120 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2022). Challenges in Recruiting Andean Indigenous Participants for Software Engineering Research. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper reports on the recruiting challenges we faced in our study on the factors influencing software engineering career choice of Andean indigenous. It also emphasizes that Indigenous people are hard-to-reach, hidden, and vulnerable samples.

• Biró, Miklós; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Messnarz, Richard (2022). Model-based process improvement recommendation approaches. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (JSEP). ISSN 2047-7473. doi: 10.1002/smr.2442. Full text in Research Archive
• Messnarz, Richard; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Macher, Georg; Riel, Andreas & Biró, Miklós (2021). Recent advances in cybersecurity and safety architectures in automotive, IT, and connected services: J.UCS special issue. Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS). ISSN 0948-695X. 27(8), p. 793–795. doi: 10.3897/JUCS.72072. Full text in Research Archive
• Carver, Jeff; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Larrucea, Xabier & Staron, Miroslaw (2021). Automatic Program Repair. IEEE Software. ISSN 0740-7459. 38(4), p. 122–124. doi: 10.1109/MS.2021.3071567. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). WP2. Robots, Security and Interfaces. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2021). WP3 Status: SecuRoPS framework: user-centred security for social robot. Full text in Research Archive
• Sánchez-Gordón, Mary & Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo (2020). Factors influencing software engineering career choice of andean indigenous. Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering. ISSN 0270-5257. p. 264–265. doi: 10.1145/3377812.3390899. Full text in Research Archive
• Biró, Miklós; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Messnarz, Richard (2020). Addressing evolving requirements faced by the software industry. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (JSEP). ISSN 2047-7473. 32(3). doi: 10.1002/smr.2237. Full text in Research Archive
• Biró, Miklós; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Messnarz, Richard (2020). Current perspectives on the software engineering process. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (JSEP). ISSN 2047-7473. 32(11). doi: 10.1002/smr.2313. Full text in Research Archive
• Carver, Jeffrey C.; Penzenstadler, Birgit; Minku, Leandro L.; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Larrucea, Xabier (2020). Conference Highlights: JIT Fault Prevention, Motivated Modeling, Security in Requirements, and Improving Team Performance. IEEE Software. ISSN 0740-7459. 37(4), p. 83–86. doi: 10.1109/MS.2020.2986840. Full text in Research Archive
• Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Gómez-Pulido, Juan A. & Pérez, Alfredo J. (2020). Intelligent health services based on biomedical smart sensors. Applied Sciences. 10(23), p. 1–4. doi: 10.3390/app10238497. Full text in Research Archive
• García-Peñalvo, Francisco José; Casado-Lumbreras, Cristina; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Yadav, Aman (2020). Smart learning. Applied Sciences. 10(19), p. 1–7. doi: 10.3390/app10196964. Full text in Research Archive
• Biró, Miklós; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo & Messnarz, Richard (2019). Advances in system, software and service process improvement and innovation. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (JSEP). ISSN 2047-7473. 31:e2146, p. 1–3. doi: 10.1002/smr.2146. Full text in Research Archive
• Oruma, Samson Ogheneovo; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Katsikas, Sokratis & Gkioulos, Vasileios (2025). A User-Centred Security Framework for Social Robots in Public Spaces. Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. ISSN 9788232692439. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The integration of social robots into public spaces introduces unique challenges related to safety, security, privacy, and public trust. These environments are inherently open, dynamic, and often lack clear boundaries between physical and digital domains. Despite increasing deployment of social robots in sectors such as transportation, education, and public administration, there is limited guidance on how to design and implement systems that are secure, ethical, and acceptable to users. This thesis addresses this gap by proposing a user-centred security framework (SecuRoPS) for the development and deployment of social robots in public environments. The research is grounded in a mixed-methods approach, drawing on Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. It systematically investigates the threat landscape and security challenges of social robots through literature reviews, mapping studies, and domain-specific surveys. Based on these insights, the thesis develops a reusable framework and associated guidelines that integrate usability, privacy, risk assessment, and compliance considerations into the software development lifecycle. The framework was validated through two complementary studies. The first involved expert interviews with stakeholders from academia, public services, and industry to assess the framework’s relevance and completeness. The second was a real-world end-user study conducted at Østfold University College, where a social robot interacted with the public in a multilingual receptionist role. Feedback from users informed refinements to the framework’s accessibility and transparency dimensions. The robot’s interaction interface, developed using the PAL Robotics SDK 23.12, was released as an open-source toolkit to support reuse and knowledge transfer. The thesis contributes a novel security framework tailored for public-facing robots, a taxonomy of relevant threats, practical architectural views, and a validated implementation pathway. It addresses key societal and technical concerns and lays the foundation for future standardization, regulation, and wider adoption of socially embedded, secure robotic systems.

• Ramaj, Xhesika; Colomo-Palacios, Ricardo; Katsikas, Sokratis & Gkioulos, Vasileios (2025). A DevSecOps-enabled Framework for Risk Management of Critical Infrastructures. Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. ISSN 9788232692798. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Critical infrastructures represent complex physical and cyber-based systems that serve as the backbone of modern society. Their reliable and secure operation is of paramount importance for ensuring national security and sustaining economic prosperity. As a result, cybersecurity is fundamental to these critical infrastructures, playing a vital role in safeguarding public safety, economic welfare, and national security. In spite of its importance, literature is reporting a small set of efforts to guide the management of risks posed by the compromise of security and safety in critical infrastructures. On the other hand, continuous approaches have significantly transformed the computing landscape by heavily relying on automation. Automation is enabled by the use of several tools throughout the whole software development life cycle, including code collaboration tools, verification, version control system, deployment and release management etc. Given the critical role of software in supporting essential infrastructures, it is imperative to adopt continuous practices that embed security throughout the development and operational life cycle. DevSecOps focuses on the continuous collaboration of development, security, and operations teams. This approach incorporates security earlier in the application development lifecycle, helping to minimize vulnerabilities and align security with development and operations, all while working toward business objectives. Additionally, risk assessment methods are designed to identify and evaluate potential risks effectively. Assessing critical risks continuously within the development cycle enhances the software lifecycle and improves the overall quality of software artifacts, which are essential for complex critical infrastructures. Continuous risk assessment is a fundamental aspect of DevSecOps and is integral to risk management. The objective of this thesis is to provide a framework that enables the management of cybersecurity and safety risks of critical infrastructures through DevSecOps. Considering the known positive impacts of DevSecOps and continuous approaches in highly regulated environments, including systems of systems, this Ph.D. thesis is intended to develop a framework that can be used by organizations to adopt continuous risk assessment and DevSecOps in the management of critical infrastructures, from a cybersecurity perspective, including safety aspects. In the initial phase, the state-of-the-art of the topic has been explored. Safety and compliance aspects have been identified and put together to find a common denominator of both. The identified commonalities are used as the three building pillars of our framework. The research methodology adopted in this research work is design science research methodology (DSRM). Throughout the phases of the research, the academic and industrial perspectives were gathered to design, develop, demonstrate and evaluate the main artifact of this work, the framework. The work presented in this thesis led to the proposal of a DevSecOps-enabled framework, built upon three core pillars derived from the initial exploration of the findings reported in the literature. The framework was evaluated through the perspective of industry experts, focusing on the needs and goals of leveraging DevSecOps for risk management in critical infrastructures. Lastly, based on the emphasis placed by industry experts on the importance of security training and awareness as a key organizational need, a survey was conducted. The results highlight also the importance of organizational commitment to security training and awareness in the context of DevSecOps. This thesis provides a comprehensive contribution towards managing risk in critical infrastructures through DevSecOps. The findings, insights, methodologies, and recommendations presented in this thesis offer valuable resources for both researchers and industry professionals seeking to leverage the benefits of DevSecOps towards the management of risk. By adopting the continuous approach of DevSecOps, incorporating its tools, and embedding security into the organizational culture, these efforts can strengthen the overall risk management strategy.

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