=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3867/paper6
|storemode=property
|title=Exploration of Wide-spectrum Resource-Awareness: a Preliminary Local Study
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3867/paper6.pdf
|volume=Vol-3867
|authors=Davorka Radaković,Nataša Sukur,Doni Pracner,Gordana Rakić,Zoran Budimac
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/raw2/RadakovicSPRB24
}}
==Exploration of Wide-spectrum Resource-Awareness: a Preliminary Local Study==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3867/paper6.pdf
Exploration of Wide-spectrum Resource-Awareness: a
Preliminary Local Study⋆
Davorka Radaković1,* , Nataša Sukur1 , Doni Pracner1 , Gordana Rakić1 and Zoran Budimac1,†
1
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Division of Informatics, SQLab: Software Quality Laboratory, Trg
Dositeja Obradovica 4, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Abstract
Software and systems have become common actors in every economy and society, as well as in everyday life all around the world.
Accordingly, they became the main resource consumers. In a conventional sense, one can observe resource (e.g. processor or memory)
utilization while they are executed and used. However, many kinds of emerging resources and their utilization may be observed all
around the software and system life cycle, not only used by them but by subjects included in the related processes such as education
and training, research, administration, policy-making, etc. Awareness of this wide range of resources by various stakeholders across
sectors is currently questionable, especially in regions with young, but fast-growing, system and software industries. One such region
is the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (APV), north of Serbia. In this study, we examined the use of wide-spectrum resources as
a potential for collaboration between sectors, primarily between academia and (software) industry. We conducted a survey-based
investigation localized in APV, with a future goal of adapting the survey based on the lessons learned and repeating the study across a
wider geographical region. The final goal is to identify the open space for advanced resource optimization towards sustainability with
additional awareness of not-so-obvious but still significant resources. The preliminary study concluded that: (1) awareness of basic
resources is not much higher than the other ones; (2) the most used additional resources are Network bandwidth, safety, security, time
limits, and quality and quantity of data; (3) there are interests and ideas concerning collaboration between sectors. Finally, we have
found a connection between higher resource awareness and existing dedicated departments and training in the organization.
Keywords
Academia-industry collaborations, resource-awareness, preliminary study
1. Introduction domain, it is becoming interesting to investigate resource
awareness within the interconnected regions and broader.
The software industry has become an indispensable compo- The future overall observation will be devoted to discov-
nent of every modern economy, and software systems are ering subject-related similarities and differences between
fully integrated into everyday life, connecting, and main- geographical regions, disciplines, domains, and sectors, to
taining the continuity of all social and business processes. identify strengths and weaknesses concerning resource uti-
Another component of all processes is resources, among lization and to enable learning among each other towards
which energy, people and data stand out - which are always balanced resource usage.
the focus of stakeholders (e.g., for management). Other re- The final goal is to extend the research across Europe,
sources such as infrastructure, space, time, effort, or skills and broader, towards better coordination and consolidation
are often neglected and cause unexpected costs, as well as of teaching, training, research, and innovations for meeting
damage to the natural and social environment. the UN Sustainable Development Goals [2].
Collaborations between the private and public sectors Having described short- and long-term goals in mind, this
form a broad spectrum of objectives, where the objectives paper focuses only on APV and local resource awareness as
of the respective participants are based on differing drives a possible space for collaboration between sectors, primarily
to collaborate [1]. The type of collaboration is usually cho- academia and industry, as preliminary research.
sen in accordance with the purpose and extent of the com- Observed locally in APV and currently, there is insuffi-
plementary information or resources that are needed to cient awareness of all the possible capacities that actors from
accomplish the purpose of cooperation. the academic community and (software) industry can offer
The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (APV), north each other to improve cooperation in general, and hence
of Serbia, is a specific region with rapid development of in the field of resource utilization, as well. The aim of this
IT (Information Technology) and accompanying sectors. preliminary research is to determine the level of awareness
As a result of such fast development and rapid processes, about resources and their adequate use in APV. Based on
resource awareness might be lowered, which may have sig- the results as our future goal, a platform will be created for a
nificant consequences in the future. Here, it is interesting to stronger connection of subjects between and within the two
observe resource awareness as an open space for strengthen- sectors. We tend to identify which principles for resource
ing cross-sectorial collaboration towards higher sustainabil- identification are stated and supported by a sophisticated
ity. However, APV is not an isolated region. Having many checklist that will identify opportunities for cooperation and
international companies present there, especially in the IT compatible subjects for cooperation based on the identified
3rd workshop on Resource AWareness of Systems and Society (RAW 2024) resources.
*
Corresponding author. We start from an initial list of characteristic resources
†
Zoran Budimac, IN MEMORIAM 1960-2023 used in the (software) industry, and then divide them into
$ davorkar@dmi.uns.ac.rs (D. Radaković); two general groups:
natasa.sukur@dmi.uns.ac.rs (N. Sukur); doni.pracner@dmi.uns.ac.rs
(D. Pracner); goca@dmi.uns.ac.rs (G. Rakić) • basic resources commonly involved in every busi-
https://perun.pmf.uns.ac.rs/pracner/ (D. Pracner) ness process: classical, proven and well explored
0000-0001-8480-3211 (D. Radaković); 0000-0003-4701-9289
such as personnel,
(N. Sukur); 0000-0002-3428-3470 (D. Pracner); 0000-0001-7366-5159
(G. Rakić); 0000-0001-5688-6320 (Z. Budimac) • additional resources commonly of interest of soft-
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribu-
tion 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
ware and system life cycles such as energy, time,
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
or data. Here, some emerging and not-so-obvious systems (with a special focus on privacy and security) [10].
resources may appear such as human effort or em- However, we have not identified any wide-range survey on
ployed tools. resource awareness across disciplines, domains, sectors, and
regions. This situation in the literature gives us a prelimi-
Following the goals of CERCIRAS Cost Action CA19135 [3], nary picture of selective resource-awareness depending on
dedicated to coordinating research efforts around resources domain and discipline
and raising awareness of their impact, the goal of this re- According to [11] an online survey collects information
search is to understand: from people who respond to a form or instrument that is
a) how industry and academia use resources, distributed through internet channels. Online surveys have
b) how are actors from different sectors and domains aware several advantages:
of various resources, and
• They are easy to conduct using free platforms such
c) whether there are needs and open space for cooperation
as Google Forms [12], SurveyMonkey [13], Jot-
towards their more efficient utilization.
form [14], Typeform [15], etc.
To carry out the research we used an online survey. The • They can be quickly created and distributed,
survey was first sent to a limited group of respondents (pilot • There are free online survey solutions,
survey) for testing. Afterwards, it was improved based on • The analysis is generally easy to carry out on the
perceived deficiencies. same platform on which the survey was conducted.
Answers to these questions will be a key step towards
understanding the problem: “What resources (with an em- Finally, we are coming to collaboration across sectors,
phasis on the non-obvious ones) can be important for im- primarily having in mind industry-academia collaboration,
proving cooperation between (software) industry/business knowledge transfer and innovations.
and academia?” More precisely, through targeted and spe- In [16], authors synthesize up-to-date findings (from 239
cialized interviews and surveys, we should arrive at answers articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus databases),
with a focus on: outline the intellectual structure of Open Innovation within
the manufacturing research domain, and suggest a future re-
1) identification of characteristic categories of actors (e.g.,
search agenda. Another research on the impact of academia
companies, their products, related parties, and prod-
and industry is given by Perkmann and Walsh [17], where
ucts...) in the local software industry, the academic com-
they explore the diffusion and characteristics of collabora-
munity, and the wider environment,
tive relationships between universities and industry.
2) identification of resources of interest and associated One of the fundamental roles in the economic develop-
costs, ment of a country is cooperation in research, development
3) identification of the professional staff that comes into and innovation (RD&I) between universities or research in-
contact with the identified resources, their competence stitutes and industry. In [18], authors present a systematic
and their awareness of the resources and their roles, and review with the aim to identify the barriers and facilitators
4) identification of opportunities for connecting character- of university-industry collaboration and analyze them using
istic subjects from science and industry, as well as within bibliometric tools.
these two sectors, to improve the use of resources. Farah et al. [19] propose a model for the desired assimila-
tion of the industry and university, leading to more efficient
The main contributions of this study are lessons learned
working of the two.
about the survey structure and the abilities of respondents
to be clear when answering specific questions. Another
contribution is a better picture of resource awareness in a 3. Method
specific localized developing economy with the IT sector in
expansion. The research process usually begins with the need to under-
The following section reviews a brief state of the art and stand the subject ("phenomenon") being researched, which
the related work. Further, we present the methodology used. is the case in our research subject. Typically the best re-
Section 4 then presents the main results of the study. Lastly, search mechanism for learning about a phenomenon is a
Section 5 outlines the conclusion of the presented research survey (similar mechanisms intended to assess the current
and potential future directions. situation in the area under investigation). Modern online
tools make basic data analysis easy and fast.
In this section, we present the methodology used in our
2. Field Overview and Related Work research. First, we discuss, what are the resources, that we
have observed in our study. Next, we present our survey
This section outlines available studies and conclusions re-
and its dissemination.
lated to the three main points of this study: (1) reviews and
surveys on wide-range resource awareness (2) choice of
research method design and the data collection approach, 3.1. Resources
and (3) academia-industry collaboration and impact.
We discussed the initial list of characteristic resources used
Based on the preliminary investigation, many (systematic)
in the software industry and broader with the youth en-
literature reviews (SLR) and surveys have been conducted
gineers and several managers, and came to the following
related to resources, their usage and its optimisation. How-
division:
ever, all of these are focused on specific categories of systems
such as cloud computing [4, 5], edge-/fog-computing [6, 7], • Basic resources:
or high-performance computing [8, 9]. Alternatively, they
– personnel,
are conducted in a scope of a specific domain such as medical
– education/expertise, Table 1
– specialized expertise, Type of organization
– narrowly specialized resources, Type of organization Number of responses
– physical space,
Academy and other
– various other types of infrastructure. educational institutions
21
• Additional resources: Industry 21
Public administration
– energy and efficiency of its use, 1
/administration
– energy autonomy,
– local and global data bandwidth,
– capacities for security and safety of software, The chart in Figure 1 illustrates distribution across fields
– quantity and quality of data, within these sectors. Only 7 organizations deal with two or
– time and time limits, more fields, while 36 are specialized in only one. Education,
– more specialized software tools, which most often appears as the field that the respondents
– tools that allow download of ready-made so- deal with, represents 1/3 of all potential fields. We believe
lutions in source code. that the listed fields represent a good sample of potential
fields of interest having in mind the structure of organiza-
tions from APV, so we consider their answers representative.
3.2. Survey Design
The relation that the organizations have with various
The pilot process was used to identify any confusing or lead- kinds of software is given in Table 2. 22 organizations are
ing questions [20]. Participants in the pilot also helped us software users, 14 develop/maintain software for others,
populate survey items where we asked survey participants 14 for themselves, and only one organization is involved
to choose between multiple options. The last version of the in all these relations. One respondent has not specified it,
survey was conducted through Google Forms [12]. however.
Following this piloting process, the questionnaire was
structured into the following sections: Table 2
Activities that the organization is engaged in
• Information about the organization
• Information about the respondent Activities that the
Number of responses
• Awareness of the resources we have identified organization is engaged in
• Awareness of the other resources They use third
22
• Possibilities for awareness improvements through party software
collaboration within the organization among teams They develop/maintain
14
the system for others
and organization units
They develop/maintain
• Possibilities for awareness improvements through their system
14
collaboration with external subject All of the above 1
Unknown 1
The questionnaire is available as a Google Form in Ser-
bian [21]. The next version, for the global study, will be
shared in English.
4.2. Importance of resources in the opinion
3.3. Dissemination of respondents
We did not use any other recruitment channel, like social Here we show how the respondents evaluated the signif-
media or recruiting platforms, but sent emails to former stu- icance of the resources in both categories, basic and addi-
dents and other contacts who work in industry. 43 people tional ones, as described in Section 3.1.
responded to the survey. In addition, in private communica- Most organizations (their representative respondents)
tion, 15 persons, representatives of organizations, replied consider that, for their business and activities, the most
that they do not deal with the issues from the survey at all. important (ratings from 3 to 5), basic resources are: Educa-
tion/expertise, Personnel, and then Infrastructure (40, 36,
36 answers). If we observe only the highest rating 5, then
4. Results the most important for 25 organizations is Education/ex-
In this section, we are going to summarize the collected pertise, followed by Personnel in 20 organizations. On the
results by survey sections as described in Section 3.2. opposite side, physical space is the most important basic
resource only for 8 organizations, observing only the rating
5, and observing ratings 3,4, and 5 it is still in last place (26
4.1. Profiles of respondents and answers). All results are shown in Table ?? and illustrated
organisations by the chart in Figure 2.
Figure 3 shows that most of the organizations/respon-
The distribution among sectors that the organization is en-
dents believe that, out of additional resources, Security and
gaged in is given in Table 1. Our sample equally covers
Integrity, Network Bandwidth and Specialized Tools are of
the educational/academic and industrial organizations, 21
the greatest importance to them (importance grades 3 to 5 in
organizations from each sector and only one from public
38, 37, 37 answers respectively) and least of them consider
administration.
Energy autonomy as important (20).
Figure 1: Fields that the organization deals with.
Figure 2: Importance of basic resources in the opinion of respondents.
Observing only the grade 5, Capacities for security and missing training or courses on these topics (Figure 9).
safety of software and Time and time limits are the most About half of the respondents think that other sectors in
important to the highest number of respondents (20). the organization can help (Figure 10), and if they cannot,
We can notice that there is a high awareness of the impor- then it is because there is no available corresponding spe-
tance of additional resources among the respondents, only ciality or expertise, or all the activities are performed within
slightly less compared to the awareness of basic resources the same unit where software is developed or used.
(if we also included those mentioned 15 who refused the In two cases, there are more concrete ideas than no ideas
survey because they did not deal with additional resources, for cooperation (Figure 11 and Table 3):
the situation is worse).
Data Flow, Safety and Security, Time and Time Limits, and • with the industry (13 organizations from the indus-
Data Quantity and Quality (Figure 4) are used significantly try and 15 from academic/educational institutions
more than the others, followed by Specialized platforms/- have concrete ideas) and,
tools in almost all phases of software development. • with academia (11 organizations from business
Prior knowledge, where present, (Figure 5) was acquired and 16 from educational institutions have concrete
through appropriate studies (18 cases), work experience (12 ideas).
cases) and specialized courses (10 cases). The additional
In the other two cases (cooperation with the public ad-
resources mentioned in the previous question also have the
ministration and with other organizations), the majority do
most appearances here, with the exception being here now
not have a concrete idea.
appears and using tools to download ready-made solutions
in source code - but judging by the response to the pre-
vious question it is insufficient even though there is prior 5. Conclusion and future work
knowledge.
The use and efficiency of additional resources, when mea- To make resource-usage trade-offs at specification, design,
sured (Figure 6), is measured by specialized tools (13 cases), implementation, and run-time requires profound awareness
analysis (12 cases), testing (3) and specialized teams (3). of the local and global impacts. We conducted a survey to
For most of the resources, asking about the existence of learn about resource awareness in organizations in APV. The
the special department dedicated to additional resources, we study aimed to examine how the academy and the (software)
got a positive answer in around one-fourth and fewer cases industry use additional resources.
(Figure 7). Here, the situation is different for the Bandwidth Based on the results of the survey, the following can be
of local and global networks, Security and safety and Quan- concluded:
tity and quality of data, where the ratio is half-and-half.
a) Awareness of the importance of additional resources is
Organizations generally do not offer their own courses
only slightly lower than awareness of the importance of
(Figure 8), except (increasingly) for Bandwidth of local and
basic resources, which is positive,
global networks, Security and safety, and Quantity and qual-
b) There is significant interest in cooperation on specific
ity of data. However, we haven’t identify high awareness of
ideas in this area and the organizations have concrete
Figure 3: Importance of additional resources in the opinion of respondents.
Figure 4: Use of additional resources by stages of software development.
ideas and intentions to cooperate with industry and as the most used additional resources.
academia. Besides, we haven’t identified any significant
We identified a correlation between the expressed im-
correlation between other parameters (e.g. the field the
portance of the team resources, the existence of dedicated
organization deals with, its expertise concerning other
units for those resources, offering own courses, large prior
additional resources, the existence of a specialized sector
knowledge, and a small need for additional courses. Namely,
... concerning the desire for cooperation.)
the greater the importance expressed by an organization/re-
c) Network bandwidth, Safety and security, Time and time
spondent for some of these 4 resources, the greater the prob-
limits, and Quantity and quality of data clearly stand out
Figure 5: Prior knowledge of using additional resources.
Table 3
Existing ideas about specific cooperation with other organizations
Cooperation With industry With academia With public administration Security, safety
Yes 28: 27: 17: 15:
13 11 11 4
from industry from industry from industry from industry
15 16 8 11
from academy/ from academy/ from academy/ from academy/
education education education education
No 15 16 26 28
Figure 6: If the use of additional resources is measured.
Figure 7: Existence of a special department dedicated to additional resources.
ability that in the organization there exists a specialized for an Innovative Resource Aware Society funded by COST
department, that it offers its courses, and that there is one Association.
within the organization with appropriate prior knowledge.
From this point, there are several research directions
among which we highlight: (1) potential extension of the References
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