Regulus: a tool supporting agile and non-agile processes based on meta-information

Giulio Concas, Sara Didaci, Dino Manca, Michele Marchesi, Marco Melis, Guido Porruvecchio

We present Regulus, a project management tool and software metrics suite able to support software development performed with agile and non-agile processes. Regulus has been developed starting from the research performed in the software engineering lab of our university, and has been engineered by a spinoff firm of the same lab. The unique characteristics of Regulus are its data model, taking advantage of a meta-model able to describe virtually any kind of software development process, the tight integration with advanced software metrics computation, able to give complete control on the quality of the software under development, and the possibility to define and manage significant events happening during software development. Presently, Regulus is being successfully used in pilot organizations, and will be available in the market at the end of the year.

Giulio Concas

Giulio Concas received the laurea degree in computer science from the University of Pisa in 1989. Since 1995, he has performed several advanced consultancy activities in Internet Service field. He is a member of the Local Linux User Group and an Open Source Supporter. Since 1999, he has been assistant professor at University of Cagliari. His research interests are in Internet technology, service oriented architectures, open source, agile methodologies, and software engineering.
He is the cofounder of FlossLab and ExperTeam s.r.l., the first academic spin-off companies of University of Cagliari, specialized in Agile Methodologies e Software Metrics.

Sara Didaci

Sara Didaci is a versatile project manager focused on agile methodologies, project tracking and quality assurance processes and metrics.
Currently employed in Flosslab, her main duties consist in business analysis and account management, new product introduction, product management and strategic positioning.
With a “laurea” degree (BSc) in Electronic Engineering, she has been working for more than 8 years in ITC companies as software developer, business analyst and project manager, bulding a strong experience on public administration and government-funded projects.

Dino Manca

Dino Manca received the laurea degree in electronic engineering at the University of Cagliari in 2003.
Since 2003 he has worked in some ITC companies as a software engineer and he is currently employed at FlossLab s.r.l.
His interests include open source software, agile methodologies, software metrics and team management.

Michele Marchesi

Michele Marchesi received the laurea degrees in electronic engineering and in mathematics from the University of Genoa in 1975 and 1980, respectively.
He is a professor of software engineering at the University of Cagliari. His research interests include software modeling using a complex system approach, agile methodologies, open source development and applications, and modeling and simulation of financial markets and economic systems using heterogeneous interacting agents. He has published more than 200 papers in international journals, books, and conferences. He has been the leader of several research projects amounting to several million euros and is a consultant for various companies and public bodies. He is a member of the IEEE.
He is the cofounder of FlossLab and ExperTeam s.r.l., the first academic spin-off companies of University of Cagliari, specialized in Agile Methodologies e Software Metrics.

Marco Melis

Marco Melis received the laurea degree in electronic engineering in 2002 and the Ph.D. in software engineer in 2005 at the University of Cagliari. During the Ph.D. he has been working in the field of software process modelling and simulation, studying the effectiveness of agile processes against more traditional ones.
After the PhD he has worked for 2 years in the quality assurance team of a Voip company and in 2008 joined Flosslab s.r.l., where he is responsible for the quality of the internal development processes.

Guido Porruvecchio

Guido Porruvecchio received the laurea degree in electronic engineering at the University of Cagliari in 2006, and he is currently a PhD student in software engineering and computer science at the same university. He is also a research fellow at the University of Genova from 2009. His research interests include open source software, agile methodologies, software metrics, structure and dynamics of complex networks, and social networks.