Andrew McDonald's HomePage

Welcome to Andrew McDonald's homepage. I am a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Computing Science, at the University of Glasgow. My supervisor is Professor Ray Welland. My research interests include Web Engineering and Software Engineering.

Ph.D. Research

The multidisciplinary nature of Web development teams renders software engineering process approaches in their current form, unsuitable in their application to building large and complex Web-based systems. The software engineering processes, upon which many Web development efforts are based, are poorly suited for modelling domain, business and creative design aspects of Web and eBusiness initiatives. To be successful, Web engineering processes and methodologies must be developed to effectively manage the multidisciplinary interactions and viewpoints reflected between and within the software, business, domain and creative design models [1].

In response to the process challenges presented in Web Engineering [3, 5 & 6] I have created the Agile Web Engineering (AWE) process [2 & 4]. AWE is a lightweight process that has been developed to tackle the problems associated with the development of Web-based applications: short development life-cycle times; small multidisciplinary development teams; delivery of bespoke solutions integrating software and data. In addition AWE encourages: more focus on requirements analysis, including a clear analysis of business needs; better testing and evaluation of deliverables; and clear consideration of the issues associated with the evolution of Web-based applications.

From October 2001 until September 2002 I undertook a Ph.D. internship with a multinational financial services sector company working as an IT Architect in return for the opportunity to explore my research in commerce. I am currently writing up the results of my internship in addition to my Ph.D. thesis.

[1] McDonald A. and Welland R., 'Evaluation of Commercial Web Engineering Processes', Koch N., Fraternali P. & Wirsing M. (Eds.): Fourth International Conference on Web Engineering, ICWE 2004, LNCS 3140, Page(s): 166-170, July 2004. ISBN: 3-540-22511-0. Paper (PDF 41KB).

[2] McDonald A. and Welland R., 'Agile Web Engineering (AWE) Process: Multidisciplinary Stakeholders and Team Communication', J. M. Cueva Lovelle et al. (Eds.): Third International Conference on Web Engineering, ICWE 2003, LNCS 2722, Page(s): 515-518, July 2003. ISBN: 3-540-40522-4. Paper (PDF 32KB), Presentation (PowerPoint 124KB).

[3] McDonald A. and Welland R., 'Supporting Evolution in a Web Engineering Process', Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts (EVA) 2002 London, 26 July 2002. Paper (PDF 342KB).

[4] McDonald A. and Welland R., 'Agile Web Engineering (AWE) Process', Department of Computing Science Technical Report TR-2001-98, University of Glasgow, Scotland, 2 December 2001. Report (PDF 156KB).

[5] McDonald A. and Welland R., 'Web Engineering in Practice', Proceedings of the Fourth WWW10 Workshop on Web Engineering, Page(s): 21-30, 1 May 2001. Paper (PDF 104KB), Presentation (PowerPoint 140KB).

[6] McDonald A. and Welland R., 'A Survey of Web Engineering in Practice', Department of Computing Science Technical Report TR-2001-79, University of Glasgow, Scotland, 1 March 2001. Report (PDF 644KB).

[7] Devine J., McDonald A. and Welland R., 'Automated Techniques for Maintaining, Developing and Presenting a Large Cultural Heritage Web Presence', The Museum Computer Network Conference, 28 October 1999. Abstract (PDF 6KB), Presentation (PowerPoint 128KB).