A Goal-based Framework for Contextual Requirements Modeling and Analysis

Requirements Engineering (RE) research often ignores, or presumes a uniform nature of the context in which the system operates. This assumption is no longer valid in emerging computing paradigms, such as ambient, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, where it is essential to monitor and adapt to an inherently varying context. Besides influencing the software, context may influence stakeholders' goals and their choices to meet them. In this paper, we propose a goal-oriented RE modeling and reasoning framework for systems operating in varying contexts. We introduce contextual goal models to relate goals and contexts; context analysis to refine contexts and identify ways to verify them; reasoning techniques to derive requirements reflecting the context and users priorities at runtime; and finally, design time reasoning techniques to derive requirements for a system to be developed at minimum cost and valid in all considered contexts. We illustrate and evaluate our approach through a case study about a museum-guide mobile information system

A QFD framework for quality, innovation and high-tech product development dynamics

The customer mostly chooses a product on the base of its quality, which therefore arises as the main cause of its commercial success. In a nearly axiomatic drawing, it follows that the effect of innovation is the improvement of quality, which itself becomes the aim of innovation. Even though the previous statement relates quality and innovation, it still does not explain their dynamics. To stress them, the ‘quality' concept must be analyzed in more detail. In fact, in addition to the ‘perceived quality', the quality ensured through `design, manufacturing and marketing' combined domains should be dealt with. This paper enhances this issue taking advantage of principles and models made available by control theory schemes coupled with quality function development (QFD) and best practice software modeling based on unified modeling language (UML

Quality measures for ETL processes: from goals to implementation

Extraction transformation loading (ETL) processes play an increasingly important role for the support of modern business operations. These business processes are centred around artifacts with high variability and diverse lifecycles, which correspond to key business entities. The apparent complexity of these activities has been examined through the prism of business process management, mainly focusing on functional requirements and performance optimization. However, the quality dimension has not yet been thoroughly investigated, and there is a need for a more human-centric approach to bring them closer to business-users requirements. In this paper, we take a first step towards this direction by defining a sound model for ETL process quality characteristics and quantitative measures for each characteristic, based on existing literature. Our model shows dependencies among quality characteristics and can provide the basis for subsequent analysis using goal modeling techniques. We showcase the use of goal modeling for ETL process design through a use case, where we employ the use of a goal model that includes quantitative components (i.e., indicators) for evaluation and analysis of alternative design decisions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Mining app reviews to support software engineering

The thesis studies how mining app reviews can support software engineering. App reviews —short user reviews of an app in app stores— provide a potentially rich source of information to help software development teams maintain and evolve their products. Exploiting this information is however difficult due to the large number of reviews and the difficulty in extracting useful actionable information from short informal texts. A variety of app review mining techniques have been proposed to classify reviews and to extract information such as feature requests, bug descriptions, and user sentiments but the usefulness of these techniques in practice is still unknown. Research in this area has grown rapidly, resulting in a large number of scientific publications (at least 182 between 2010 and 2020) but nearly no independent evaluation and description of how diverse techniques fit together to support specific software engineering tasks have been performed so far. The thesis presents a series of contributions to address these limitations. We first report the findings of a systematic literature review in app review mining exposing the breadth and limitations of research in this area. Using findings from the literature review, we then present a reference model that relates features of app review mining tools to specific software engineering tasks supporting requirements engineering, software maintenance and evolution. We then present two additional contributions extending previous evaluations of app review mining techniques. We present a novel independent evaluation of opinion mining techniques using an annotated dataset created for our experiment. Our evaluation finds lower effectiveness than initially reported by the techniques authors. A final part of the thesis, evaluates approaches in searching for app reviews pertinent to a particular feature. The findings show a general purpose search technique is more effective than the state-of-the-art purpose-built app review mining techniques; and suggest their usefulness for requirements elicitation. Overall, the thesis contributes to improving the empirical evaluation of app review mining techniques and their application in software engineering practice. Researchers and developers of future app mining tools will benefit from the novel reference model, detailed experiments designs, and publicly available datasets presented in the thesis

IMPLEMENTING PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT MODEL TO SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED PROJECTS IN A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY – A DYNAMIC APPROACH

ABSTRACT Hectic project environment encourages organizations to invest more in developing overall project management through portfolio management to improve resource allocation and project prioritization whilst maximizing portfolio value and customer satisfaction. Thus, this thesis is conceived to examine the implementation of a project portfolio management model to respond to the dynamic customer project needs in the departments of electrical and automation as well as technical documentation in Etteplan Finland Oy. There were five separate interviews conducted together with the essential managers accompanied with thorough research on the current methodologies. Exploiting the interview results, a comprehensive research on the feasible dynamic management methodologies was executed. Based on results from the mentioned research methods, there was a broad case study implemented to compare the current methodologies with the new proposals and evaluate their feasibility and business value for the departments. Additionally, a SVM implementation was performed to find new aspects to efficiently managing projects. The results of the thesis showed the positive impact of applying dynamic project management methods for improved efficiency and reduction in projects overall costs. This enabled better understanding of KPI’s as well as methods for transparent communication. From a profitability perspective, this thesis emphasizes the need of implementing the methods for the companies small and medium sized projects for continuous development.TIIVISTELMÄ Hektinen projektiympäristö kannustaa organisaatioita investoimaan projektien portfolion hallintaan ja täten parantamaan projektienhallintaa kokonaisuudessaan. Näin voidaan saavuttaa parempi resurssien hallinta, projektien priorisointi ja samanaikaisesti maksimoida portfolion arvoa sekä asiakastyytyväisyyttä. Täten työn tarkoituksena on tutkia projektisalkun käyttöönottoa Etteplan Finland Oy:n sähkö ja automaation, sekä teknisen dokumentoinnin yksiköissä, jotta voidaan vastata asiakasprojektien dynaamisiin vaatimuksiin. Tutkielmassa haastateltiin yksikköjen päälliköitä ja projektitoimiston henkilöstöä, sekä tutkittiin kattavasti yrityksen käyttämiä tämänhetkisiä työkaluja. Tutkimustulosten avulla selvitettiin toteuttamiskelpoisten dynaamisten projektinhallintatyökalujen käyttömahdollisuuksia yksiköissä. Tämän jälkeen toteutettiin laaja case-tutkimus ja vertailu nykyisten ja uusien toimintatapojen välillä, sekä arvioitiin toimintatapojen käyttökelpoisuutta ja liiketoiminnallista arvoa. Lisäksi, työssä otettiin käyttöön SVM-malli tuomaan uusia näkökulmia tehokkaaseen projektien johtamiseen. Työn tulokset todensivat dynaamisen projektijohtamisen vaikutukset projektin tehokkuuteen ja kokonaiskustannusten alentumiseen. Tämän lisäksi työ toi esille toimintatapoja läpinäkyvään kommunikointiin, sekä korosti suorituskykymittareiden tärkeyttä. Yrityksen jatkuvan kehityksen ja kannattavuuden näkökulmasta työssä painottuu työkalujen ja metodien käyttöönoton tärkeys pienissä ja keskisuurissa asiakasprojekteissa

Learning Task Priorities from Demonstrations

Bimanual operations in humanoids offer the possibility to carry out more than one manipulation task at the same time, which in turn introduces the problem of task prioritization. We address this problem from a learning from demonstration perspective, by extending the Task-Parameterized Gaussian Mixture Model (TP-GMM) to Jacobian and null space structures. The proposed approach is tested on bimanual skills but can be applied in any scenario where the prioritization between potentially conflicting tasks needs to be learned. We evaluate the proposed framework in: two different tasks with humanoids requiring the learning of priorities and a loco-manipulation scenario, showing that the approach can be exploited to learn the prioritization of multiple tasks in parallel.Comment: Accepted for publication at the IEEE Transactions on Robotic

A Robust and Optimal Multidisciplinary Approach For Space Systems Conceptual Design

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Continuous Management of Requirement Decisions Using the ConDec Tools

Context and motivation: While eliciting, prioritizing, and implementing requirements, requirements engineers and developers continuously make decisions. They establish important decision knowledge that needs to be documented and exploited, i.e., thoroughly managed, so that it contributes to the evolution and future changes of a software system. Question/problem: The management of decision knowledge is difficult for various reasons: 1) The documentation process is an additional effort, i.e., it is intrusive in the development process. 2) The documented knowledge can be of low quality in terms of completeness and consistency. 3) It might be distributed across many documentation locations, such as issue comments and commit messages, and thus difficult to access and use. Principal ideas/results: Continuous software engineering (CSE) emerged as a development process that involves frequent, incremental decision making, implementation, and validation of requirements. During CSE, requirements engineers and developers implicitly document decision knowledge during established practices, such as committing code, working with issues in an issue tracking system, or conducting meetings. That means that CSE offers opportunities for the non-intrusive capturing of decision knowledgein various documentation locations. Contribution: We develop the ConDec tools (https://se.ifi.uni-heidelberg.de/condec.html) that support requirements engineers and developers in documenting and exploiting decision knowledge directly within the tools they use, such as issue tracking and wiki systems, related to various software artifacts, such as requirements and code, and during change impact analysis