The impacts of non-functional requirements in web system projects

In web system development, the Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are typically considered only briefly during the requirements elicitation stage and not rigorously articulated by either web developers or the client. This paper reports on an investigation into this issue involving interviews with web developers who were engaged in commercial web development projects. The results from this qualitative research highlight that web developers commonly do not pay sufficient attention to NFRs. This arises due to uncertainty, lack of time, lack of knowledge in the importance of NFRs and partly because NFRs are not readily available and documented from previous similar projects. Web developers also do not elicit NFR at the same time and at the same level of details as Functional Requirements (FRs). This study highlights that exploring the domain at an early stage of development will help developers to better understand NFR. A lack of rigour in articulating NFRs may significantly impact on the development effectiveness and the quality of the resulting web system. An evaluation of NFRs may also lead to discovering new FRs. © Copyright 2008, Inderscience Publishers

Faktor cabaran dan batasan dalam amalan fleksibiliti pembekalan sistem binaan berindustri (IBS)

Flexibility ensures effective implementation of the Industrialised Building System (IBS) supply chain with the demand and changing markets. The main purpose of this research is to identify and also analyze the challenging factors and constraints upon the flexible practises of the IBS supply chain. Thus, this research measures the importance of connection and coordination among the related parties in the supply chain cycle. Besides, the factors on misconception and also lack of awareness about the supply chain practises are also being studied along with the analysis of the affecting challenging factors and constraints upon the flexible implementation of IBS supply chain. Furthermore, thorough analysis is made regarding the challenging factors and other supply chain flexibility that prevent the continuity and development of the Industrialised Building System (IBS) in Malaysia. Issues and problems in IBS supply chain flexibility arise due to the flaws in the facility management (that are capital funding and transportation), information problems, resource and inventory, and also communication and integration within the building team itself. It creates future problems such as repetitive works, work delays, costs increment, poor communications, standardizations and wastage. The research uses both empirical analyses of quantitative and qualitative orientations. About 70 developers and contractors are taken as respondents for this research. A few statistical techniques are used in the data analysis, which are reliability test, descriptive,frequency, and also several other techniques. The capability of organization is a significant factor to ensure the effectiveness of the implementation of IBS practises. Independent variable holds influence (27.7%) on the IBS system. However, the capability of the organization is the most significant factor on the IBS system with b=0.054, t=0.331, p<0.01. Based on the analysis outcomes, the developers only choose IBS after they realize and understand the benefits and effectiveness of IBS practises. A model of IBS supply chain is also developed. Any IBS related problems can be solved through the establishment of impeccable and efficient flexibility supply chain. This research is hoped to be the precursor to further work in enhancing performances of industrial development of IBS Malaysia towards a better and outstanding leve

Abstraction and flow analysis for model checking open asynchronous systems

Formal methods, especially model checking, are an indispensable part of the software engineering process. With large software systems currently beyond the range of fully automatic verification, however, a combination of decomposition and abstraction techniques is needed. To model check components of a system, a standard approach is to close the component with an abstraction of its environment. To make it useful in practice, the closing of the component should be automatic, both for data and for control abstraction. Specifically for model checking asynchronous open systems, external input queues should be removed, as they are a potential source of a combinatorial state explosion. In this paper, we close a component synchronously by embedding the external environment directly into the system to avoid the external queues, while for the data, we use a two-valued abstraction, namely data influenced from the outside or not. This gives a more precise analysis than the one investigated in [7]. To further combat the state explosion problem, we combine this data abstraction with a static analysis to remove superfluous code fragments. The static analysis we use is reminiscent to the one presented in [7], but we use a combination of a may and a must-analysis instead of a may-analysis

Analysis on the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of occupational safety and health among healthcare employees in Kanowit Hospital

Semua industri terutamanya sektor kerajaan, digesa mempraktikkan Akta Keselamatan dan Kesihatan Pekerjaan (OSHA) 1994. Mereka harus memenuhi tanggungjawab majikan demi memastikan keselamatan dan kesihatan pekerja di tempat kerja. Pelan Master Kesihatan dan Keselamatan Pekerjaan Kebangsaaan 2010- 2015 mensasarkan pengurangan daripada 12.4 kematian daripada 100,000 pekerja kepada 6.1 kematian daripada 100,000 pekerja dan Pelan Master Kesihatan dan Keselamatan Kebangsaan 2016- 2020 mensasarkan 4.36 kematian daripada 100,000 pekerja dan kecederaan berkurangan kepada 2.53 daripada 1,000 pekerja. Pada 2020 menurut Jabatan Kesihatan dan Keselamatan Pekerjaan melaporkan sebanyak 6793 kemalangan pekerjaan berlaku. Sektor awam dan badan berkanun mewakili 1.2% daripada keseluruhan kes. Pelan Master Kesihatan dan Keselamatan Pekerjaan 2020 menunjukkan peningkatan positif apabila 5960 kes penyakit pekerjaan dan keracunan berlaku pada 2015 dan 1785 kes pada 2019. Objektif kajian ini adalah untuk menganalisa pengetahuan, sikap dan praktis mengenai Kesihatan dan Keselamatan Pekerjaan (KKP) di kalangan pekerja kesihatan di Kanowit Hospital. Pembinaan kajian adalah mengenai Kelengkapan Perlindungan Diri, Tanggungjawab Majikan- Pekerja Keselamatan dan Kesihatan, Fungsi Jawatankuasa Keselamatan dan Kesihatan dan Pengetahuan Pekerja di dalam OSH. 162 responden terlibat. Analisa data menyimpulkan bahawa tahap pengetahuan, sikap dan praktis keselamatan dan kesihatan pekerjaan di kalangan pekerja kesihatan di Kanowit Hospital adalah tinggi. Kajian mendapati bahawa pengetahuan pekerja kesihatan dipengaruhi oleh tempoh mereka telah bekerja dan umur mereka.Penemuan yang ketara dalam kajian ini meningkatkan tahap pengetahuan, sikap dan praktis mengenai keselamatan dan kesihatan pekerjaan. (Abstract by author

Perception of safety, physical working conditions and stress between Malaysia and United Kingdom

21st century businesses operate faster and with more complexity and uncertainty than ever before, and therefore industrial accidents and diseases become more prolific, bringing a serious and costly burden to all countries. For the majority of the world’s workforce, a working environment does not meet the minimum standards and guiding principle predetermined by the international bureaus. This has called for occupational safety and health to be implemented and enforced. Different laws and regulations have been introduced by most of the developed countries meant for the prevention of industrial accidents and occupational diseases and the statistics of occupational accidents is being kept updated. Differences of behavioral patterns in organizations are attributed to beliefs, norms and values amongst employees from different parts of the world. Therefore, the health and safety of employees becomes a vital aspect of the work of human resource management teams. This study compared the perception of employees towards health and safety in workplaces in Malaysia and the United Kingdom (UK). Malaysia is a developing country whereas the UK is a developed country. Investigating their perceptions would provide insights for different points of view on occupational health and safety from a developing country and a developed country

A study of customer satisfaction and perceived value relationship in conquas and qlassic certified housing projects

Construction activities in Malaysia, as in many developing countries are growing tremendously which generate towards the nation Gross Domestic income. With the growing numbers of developments specifically build to cater for the growing demand for the residential, commercial houses, specific quality standards has to be developed in order to regulate the standard quality that the contractors will need to deliver. This is where the Construction Quality Assessment by Building Construction Authority (BCA Singapore) and Quality Assessment in Construction (QLASSIC) by CIDB Malaysia being developed to set certain benchmarking standard for the building quality. A lot of occurrences reported in the news where the purchasers of the houses were not satisfied with the quality level for the houses being delivered. This study is conducted to understand the customer satisfaction level for unit being handover to purchasers after being assessed through CONQUAS assessment and compare it against development being assessed through QLASSIC assessment. The methodology adopted is through the data comparison for the customer satisfaction level by the purchasers whom development is being assessed by CONQUAS and compared it against the customer satisfaction level by purchasers for development assessed by QLASSIC assessment. By applying the CONQUAS/QLASSIC assessment, it indirectly acts as marketing tool to set benchmark quality level for building and assured customer of minimal complaints related to residential defects upon handover of their keys. The objective of this study is to relate the CONQUAS/QLASSIC to customer satisfaction and establish relationship to customer perceived value of the residential housing. Very few academic research linking on the application of CONQUAS and QLASSIC standards to customer satisfaction can be found. Hopefully, this research will add value to the pool of academic research in understanding the benefit of implementing CONQUAS/QLASSIC standards towards increasing the market value of the property market