The document describes the ALERT project which aims to improve coordination among software developers. It discusses challenges like lack of awareness of others' work and duplicate bug reports. The project will develop tools based on notifications, event processing and interactions to address these challenges. These include modeling coordination, managing awareness and expertise identification. The system is expected to benefit open source communities and software companies by better managing teams and issues. It will be sustained through an interested community and continued development.

1. BECAUSE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY!
ALERT consortium

2. Table of Contents
 Project context
 Project objectives
 Research challenges
 Project solution
 Target users
 Expected impact
 Project sustainability
 Project info

3. Project context
 Many developers working together on the
same code
 Using communication tools (mail, chat,
forums)
 Lack of awareness of others’ work
 No native English
 Diverse skills and expertise
 Many users using the code and reporting
bugs
 Frequent duplicated bug reports
 Bug not well explained
 Not properly assigned to the right developer

4. Project context
 As consequence: a bug that may require a simple
modification takes long time in resolution due to
the lack of coordination among developers
 Open Source communities experiment this
continuously
 The problem is extensive to any group of
developers working in a collaborative
development environment
ALERT will improve the coordination among developers in
Open Source communities by providing methods and tools
based on context-aware notification, event-driven processing
and real-time interactions

5. Project objectives
 O1: Efficient modeling of the more reactive coordination
R1.1: ALERT ontologies
R1.2: Conceptual model of an (re)active collaboration platform
 O2: Efficient management of the awareness of team members
R2.1: Model for declarative specification of alerts
R2.2: Intelligent, pattern-based engine
 O3: Efficient management of information
R3.1: Module for integration of information from structured sources
R3.2: Module for extracting knowledge from unstructured sources, semi-automatic
annotation and summarization
R3.3: Interaction highway set of services
 O4: Personalized and task-based access to information
R4.1: Module for capturing explicitly or implicitly the interest/expertise
R4.2: Module for capturing relevant information for the task at hand
 O5: Pilot, evaluate and impact the ALERT system in three
important open source communities ( OW2 (Petals), KDE and Morfeo)

6. Research challenges
Mike links to 253312
Bob notices the bug
Bob asks for explanation Bob asks about Nepomuk Dirk asks Andreas how to fix bug
John reports a bug John replies … Mike confirms Mike reports on forum Andreas suggests Mike’s fix
1st Aug 25th Aug 1st Sep 12th Sep 16th Sep 20th Sep 24th Sep 28th Sep 3rd Oct 7th Oct 22nd Oct
IRC Disc 1
253312
253320
Bob posts problem on mailing list
Alice also reports problems IRC IRC
Mike files bug
Bob asks to check … Disc 2
Alice posts …
- How to coordinate and maintain awareness of community activities?
Dirk files bug, posts details
The information and interactions relating to the bug were located in multiple artefacts with
Dirk asks on IRC
no links. Thus, a duplicate bug was filed. Lora discusses bug
Dirk asks for explanation
Dirk applies Mike’s fix
Dirk posts a fix
Andreas remarks …

7. Research challenges
Mike links to 253312
Bob notices the bug
Bob asks for explanation Bob asks about Nepomuk Dirk asks Andreas how to fix bug
John reports a bug John replies … Mike confirms Mike reports on forum Andreas suggests Mike’s fix
1st Aug 25th Aug 1st Sep 12th Sep 16th Sep 20th Sep 24th Sep 28th Sep 3rd Oct 7th Oct 22nd Oct
IRC Disc 1
253312
253320
Bob posts problem on mailing list
Alice also reports problems IRC IRC
Mike files bug
Bob asks to check … Disc 2
Alice posts …
- How to coordinate and maintain awareness of community activities?
Dirk files bug, posts details
The information and interactions relating to the bug were located in multiple artefacts with
Dirk asks on IRC
no links. Thus, a duplicate bug was filed. Lora discusses bug
Dirk asks for explanation
Dirk applies Mike’s fix
Dirk posts a fix
Andreas remarks …

8. Research challenges
Mike links to 253312
Bob notices the bug
Bob asks for explanation Bob asks about Nepomuk Dirk asks Andreas how to fix bug
John reports a bug John replies … Mike confirms Mike reports on forum Andreas suggests Mike’s fix
1st Aug 25th Aug 1st Sep 12th Sep 16th Sep 20th Sep 24th Sep 28th Sep 3rd Oct 7th Oct 22nd Oct
IRC Disc 1
253312
253320
Bob posts problem on mailing list
Alice also reports problems IRC IRC
Mike files bug
Bob asks to check … Disc 2
Alice posts …
Dirk files bug, posts details
- How to interpret (understand) communication? Dirk asks on IRC
Dirk asks for explanation
There is a lack of coherence that hinders developers in making sense of communications from
Dirk applies Mike’s fix
Lora discusses bug
Dirk posts a fix
others, or that produces unintended information filtering or misunderstandings. Andreas remarks …

9. Research challenges
Mike links to 253312
Bob notices the bug
Bob asks for explanation Bob asks about Nepomuk Dirk asks Andreas how to fix bug
John reports a bug John replies … Mike confirms Mike reports on forum Andreas suggests Mike’s fix
1st Aug 25th Aug 1st Sep 12th Sep 16th Sep 20th Sep 24th Sep 28th Sep 3rd Oct 7th Oct 22nd Oct
IRC Disc 1
253312
253320
Bob posts problem on mailing list
Alice also reports problems IRC IRC
Mike files bug
Bob asks to check … Disc 2
Alice posts …
Dirk files bug, posts details
- How to interpret (understand) communication? Dirk asks on IRC
Dirk asks for explanation
There is a lack of coherence that hinders developers in making sense of communications from
Dirk applies Mike’s fix
Lora discusses bug
Dirk posts a fix
others, or that produces unintended information filtering or misunderstandings. Andreas remarks …

10. Research challenges
Mike links to 253312
Bob notices the bug
Bob asks for explanation Bob asks about Nepomuk Dirk asks Andreas how to fix bug
John reports a bug John replies … Mike confirms Mike reports on forum Andreas suggests Mike’s fix
1st Aug 25th Aug 1st Sep 12th Sep 16th Sep 20th Sep 24th Sep 28th Sep 3rd Oct 7th Oct 22nd Oct
IRC Disc 1
253312
253320
Bob posts problem on mailing list
Alice also reports problems IRC IRC
Mike files bug
Bob asks to check … Disc 2
Alice posts …
Dirk files bug, posts details
-How to identify expertise? Dirk asks on IRC
Dirk asks for explanation
The bug was assigned to/noticed first by someone Lora discusses bug
Dirk posts a fix
Dirk applies Mike’s fix
Andreas remarks …
without expertise in the area of the bug

11. Research challenges
Mike links to 253312
Bob notices the bug
Bob asks for explanation Bob asks about Nepomuk Dirk asks Andreas how to fix bug
John reports a bug John replies … Mike confirms Mike reports on forum Andreas suggests Mike’s fix
1st Aug 25th Aug 1st Sep 12th Sep 16th Sep 20th Sep 24th Sep 28th Sep 3rd Oct 7th Oct 22nd Oct
IRC Disc 1
253312
253320
Bob posts problem on mailing list
Alice also reports problems IRC IRC
Mike files bug
Bob asks to check … Disc 2
Alice posts …
Dirk files bug, posts details
-How to identify expertise? Dirk asks on IRC
Dirk asks for explanation
The bug was assigned to/noticed first by someone Lora discusses bug
Dirk posts a fix
Dirk applies Mike’s fix
Andreas remarks …
without expertise in the area of the bug

12. How will the ALERT system address the
identified challenges?
Information source 1
Information source 2 I.s. 3
I.s. n
continuous push of
changes
INTERPRET
INTERPRETATION INTERACTION
HIGHWAY
CREATE
AWARENESS
AWARENESS AUTOMATIC
TASK ASSIGNMENT
ASSIGNMENT
complex preferred
subscriptions information Developer 2
Developer 1
Developer m

13. Project solution: conceptual
architecture

14. Project solution: conceptual
architecture
Knowledge Create, store and
extractor from manage the semantic
structured source ally-enriched info
Knowledge extractor
from unstructured
source
Suggest the best
developer for a bug
Discover interesting
situations
enable developers to Specify needs and identify developers
describe situations execute actions related and create/update
provide support
relevant for notification to the detected their profiles
situations

15. Target users
 Initially the project was conceived to improve the
bug resolution in Open Source communities
 The analysis of the potential markets has
provided a new target market: the software
industry
 Research community will also benefit from
project results (publications, documentation,
concepts, etc)

16. Expected impact (I)
 Open Source communities may benefit from
ALERT in:
 Obtaining a better integration of issue information
sources
 Obtaining an enhanced understanding of issues in the
software and the relationships between them
 Improving the coordination by correctly allocating
issues to teams and identifying developers with the
expertise to resolve them

17. Expected impact (II)
 Software industry may benefit from ALERT in:
 A better management of developers’ teams
 Alternative open source tools to traditional
proprietary software development management
tools
 Improve the maintenance of code in high
demanding software systems

18. Project sustainability
 Build a community of interest around the ALERT
portal
 Looking for contributors to evolve the software after
the end of the project
 Offering advance services over the delivered
components
 Keeping alive the publication of news, blogs about
project partners

19. Sustainability Plan
Community
building
Users Project Partners
 will have a place to obtain useful  will sponsor an specific site where
information, download the their own components are shown, a
components, find the right partner new marketing channel to
for support and maintenance… etc. announce their organization and
services, a new channel to obtain
new clients….

20. Project info
 Project contact: Stojanovic@fzi.de
 Project web site: www.alert-project.eu
 Twitter: @alertfp7
 Linkedin: ALERT-project
 Newsletter:
http://www.alert-project.eu/newsletter/subscriptions

21. www.alert-project.eu