Not Just for Teams Anymore
Russell Thackston, David A. Umphress · 2012
The sphere of malware attacks is expanding to engulf the compact world of smartphones. This paper sheds light on exploitation tactics used by malware writers in designing iPhone applications that exploit the integrity of the victim's phone. Our interest is in the harder problem of malware on iPhones that are not jailbroken. Rise of the One-person Team Abstract. Truly viable software—mobile device apps, services, components—are being written by one-person teams, thus demonstrating the need for engineering discipline at the individual level. This article examines effort estimation for individuals and proposes a lightweight approach based on a synthesis of a number of concepts derived from existing team estimation practices. Software engineering is usually portrayed as a team activity, one where a myriad of technical players are choreographed to build a software solution to a complex problem. With such a per- spective, estimating the effort required to write software involves a top-down view of development projects. Effort is forecasted based on a characterization of previous projects that is intended to represent teams performing to the statistical norm. While large projects are predominant—especially in the DoD environ- ment—the fact remains that teams are made of unique individu- als, each of whom write software at a different tempo and with different properties. At some point in a project, the top-down prediction of required effort must be tempered with a bottom-up frame of reference in which the team fades from being a group of generic members to being a collection of distinct persons. Historically, estimation methods have focused on effort at the team level. Recent agile software development practices have shed light on taking individuals—who are acting as part of a team—into consideration. Emerging trends in software develop- ment for mobile devices suggest effort estimation methods can be employed for one-person endeavors and those methods can benefit teams, but those methods are still very much in their infancy. This paper examines effort estimation from the one-person team perspective and describes a lightweight effort estimation technique in that light.