Mapping General System Characteristics to Non- Functional Requirements

The Function point analysis (FPA) method is the preferred scheme of estimation for project managers to determine the size, effort, schedule, resource loading and other such parameters. The FPA method by International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG) has captured the critical implementation features of an application through fourteen general system characteristics. However, Non- functional requirements (NFRs) such as functionality, reliability, efficiency, usability, maintainability, portability, etc. have not been included in the FPA estimation method. This paper discusses some of the NFRs and tries to determine a degree of influence for each of them. An attempt to factor the NFRs into estimation has been made. This approach needs to be validated with data collection and analysis.Comment: 5 page

One-year follow-up of family versus child CBT for anxiety disorders: Exploring the roles of child age and parental intrusiveness.

ObjectiveTo compare the relative long-term benefit of family-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (FCBT) and child-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CCBT) for child anxiety disorders at a 1-year follow-up.MethodThirty-five children (6-13 years old) randomly assigned to 12-16 sessions of family-focused CBT (FCBT) or child-focused CBT (CCBT) participated in a 1-year follow-up assessment. Independent evaluators, parents, and children rated anxiety and parental intrusiveness. All were blind to treatment condition and study hypotheses.ResultsChildren assigned to FCBT had lower anxiety scores than children assigned to CCBT on follow-up diagnostician- and parent-report scores, but not child-report scores. Exploratory analyses suggested the advantage of FCBT over CCBT may have been evident more for early adolescents than for younger children and that reductions in parental intrusiveness may have mediated the treatment effect.ConclusionFCBT may yield a stronger treatment effect than CCBT that lasts for at least 1 year, although the lack of consistency across informants necessitates a circumspect view of the findings. The potential moderating and mediating effects considered in this study offer interesting avenues for further study

A systematic review on the relationship between user involvement and system success

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Context: For more than four decades it has been intuitively accepted that user involvement (UI) during system development lifecycle leads to system success. However when the researchers have evaluated the user involvement and system success (UI-SS) relationship empirically, the results were not always positive. Objective: Our objective was to explore the UI-SS relationship by synthesizing the results of all the studies that have empirically investigated this complex phenomenon. Method: We performed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following the steps provided in the guidelines of Evidence Based Software Engineering. From the resulting studies we extracted data to answer our 9 research questions related to the UI-SS relationship, identification of users, perspectives of UI, benefits, problems and challenges of UI, degree and level of UI, relevance of stages of software development lifecycle (SDLC) and the research method employed on the UI-SS relationship. Results: Our systematic review resulted in selecting 87 empirical studies published during the period 1980-2012. Among 87 studies reviewed, 52 reported that UI positively contributes to system success, 12 suggested a negative contribution and 23 were uncertain. The UI-SS relationship is neither direct nor binary, and there are various confounding factors that play their role. The identification of users, their degree/level of involvement, stage of SDLC for UI, and choice of research method have been claimed to have impact on the UI-SS relationship. However, there is not sufficient empirical evidence available to support these claims. Conclusion: Our results have revealed that UI does contribute positively to system success. But it is a double edged sword and if not managed carefully it may cause more problems than benefits. Based on the analysis of 87 studies, we were able to identify factors for effective management of UI alluding to the causes for inconsistency in the results of published literature

Secure Software Development: A Developer Level Analysis

Developing secure software is still an important issue in the computing world. Big software firms spend huge sums of money to offer secure software and systems. However, security incidents due to insecure software results in loss of revenue and reputational damages to user firms. Incorporating security requirements early in the development process is the most effective and cheapest method to build secure software. We chose a behavioral lens in order to understand antecedents to secure software development. We explicate the effects of personality, training, education and organizational culture on the development of secure software

Swarm intelligence-based model for improving prediction performance of low-expectation teams in educational software engineering projects

Software engineering is one of the most significant areas, which extensively used in educational and industrial fields. Software engineering education plays an essential role in keeping students up to date with software technologies, products, and processes that are commonly applied in the software industry. The software development project is one of the most important parts of the software engineering course, because it covers the practical side of the course. This type of project helps strengthening students' skills to collaborate in a team spirit to work on software projects. Software project involves the composition of software product and process parts. Software product part represents software deliverables at each phase of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) while software process part captures team activities and behaviors during SDLC. The low-expectation teams face challenges during different stages of software project. Consequently, predicting performance of such teams is one of the most important tasks for learning process in software engineering education. The early prediction of performance for low-expectation teams would help instructors to address difficulties and challenges related to such teams at earliest possible phases of software project to avoid project failure. Several studies attempted to early predict the performance for low-expectation teams at different phases of SDLC. This study introduces swarm intelligence -based model which essentially aims to improve the prediction performance for low-expectation teams at earliest possible phases of SDLC by implementing Particle Swarm Optimization-K Nearest Neighbours (PSO-KNN), and it attempts to reduce the number of selected software product and process features to reach higher accuracy with identifying less than 40 relevant features. Experiments were conducted on the Software Engineering Team Assessment and Prediction (SETAP) project dataset. The proposed model was compared with the related studies and the state-of-the-art Machine Learning (ML) classifiers: Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO), Simple Linear Regression (SLR), Naïve Bayes (NB), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), standard KNN, and J48. The proposed model provides superior results compared to the traditional ML classifiers and state-of-the-art studies in the investigated phases of software product and process development

Implementation plan of health and safety processes

An auditor was asked to review an organisation’s Health and Safety procedures to assess compliance with the new legislation imposed by The Health and Safety Act 2015. Then the organisation approached an internal source to conduct a strategic plan in order to target issues of health and safety risk. An implementation plan will be designed to achieve the auditors recommendations and improve the organisation’s Health and Safety practices. Research and audit of the current policies and procedures used at the organisation must be conducted in order to gain a better understanding of the current issues and from there develop action plans and a strategy on how to reach those action plans. Current documentation of policies and an interview with management will be analysed to detail the potential action plans.Once the research has been conducted, results will be used to determine conclusions