Experiences in Using Practitioner’s Checklists to Evaluate the Relevance of Experiments Reported in Requirements Engineering

Background: Requirements Engineering (RE) researchers recognize that for RE methods to be adopted in industry, practitioners should be able to evaluate the relevance of a study to their practice. Kitchenham et al proposed a set of perspective-based checklists, which demonstrated to be a useful instrument for this purpose. Specifically, the checklist from the practitioner’s perspective seems to be a good candidate for evaluating the relevance of RE studies to RE practice. However, little is known about the applicability of the checklist to the area of RE. Moreover, this checklist also requires a greater analysis about its reliability.\ud \ud Aim: The aim of this report is to propose a perspective-based checklist to the RE community that allows evaluating the relevance of experimental studies in RE from the practitioner’s/consultant’s viewpoint. \ud \ud Method: Our research followed an iterative design-science based approach in which we first analyzed the problems with a previously published checklist and developed an operationalized proposal for a new checklist to counter these problems. We performed a reliability evaluation of this new checklist. The research was performed with two practitioners and 24 papers that report experimental results on comprehensibility of software requirements specifications. \ud \ud Results: This report gives first-hand experiences of practitioners in evaluating the relevance of primary studies in RE, by using a perspective-based checklist. With respect to the reliability of the adjusted checklist, 9 of out 19 questions show an acceptable proportion of agreement (between two practitioners). \ud \ud Conclusions: Based on our experience, the contextualization and operationalization of a perspective-based checklist helps to make it more useful for the practitioners. However, to increase the reliability of the checklist, more reviewers are required and more discussion cycles are necessary. Our plan is to involve at least two more practitioners in order to improve the reliability of the practitioner checklist proposed

An evaluation on the comprehensibility of UML activity and state chart diagrams with regard to manual test generation

The activity and state chart diagrams are the most frequently used UML diagrams for testing a system based on its specification. One of the key important qualities of the UML diagrams is their comprehensibility. The content analysis of previous studies highlighted the lack of experts’ evaluation of the comprehensibility of activity and state chart diagrams with regard to test case generation. Thus, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the comprehensibility of the UML activity and state chart diagrams for test case generation. First, a content analysis was performed to identify the comprehensibility criteria. The criteria are perceived difficulty and subjective confidence. Next, a set of evaluation questions was designed based on the content analysis. Then, test cases were generated from activity and state chart diagrams manually of an adapted case study. An interview was conducted with five experts to validate the evaluation questions. The experts evaluated the comprehensibility of the activity and state chart diagrams by using the evaluation questions. The result of the study provided specific details of the different characteristics of activity and state chart diagrams. Further, it suggested that the activity diagram is more comprehensible than the state chart diagram in the aspect of test case generation. The finding of this study could assist software testers in choosing the appropriate UML diagrams for software testing

Patent Clutter

Patent claims are supposed to clearly and succinctly describe the patented invention, and only the patented invention. This Article hypothesizes that a substantial amount of language in patent claims is in fact not about the core invention, which may contribute to well-documented problems with patent claims. I analyze the claims of 40,000 patents and applications, and document the proliferation of “clutter”—language in patent claims that is not about the invention. Although claims are supposed to be exclusively about the invention, clutter appears across industries and makes up approximately 25% of claim language. Patent clutter may contribute several major problems in patent law. Extensive clutter makes patent claims harder to search. Excessive language in patent claims may be the result of over-claiming—when patentees describe potential corollaries they do not possess—thereby making the patent so broad in scope as to be invalid. More generally, it strains the comprehensibility of patents and burdens the resources of patent examiners. After arguing that patent clutter may contribute to these various problems, this Article turns to reforms. Rejections based on prolix, lack of enablement, and lack of written description can be crafted to dispose of the worst offenders, and better algorithms and different litigation rules can allow the patent system to adapt (and even benefit from) the remaining uses of excess language. The Article additionally generates important theoretical insights. Claims are often thought of as entirely synonymous with the invention and all elements of the claim are thought to relate equally strongly to the invention. This Article suggests empirically that these assumptions do not hold in practice, and offers a framework for restructuring conceptions of the relationship between claims and the invention

Conceptual Modeling in Law: An Interdisciplinary Research Agenda

The article describes how different approaches from the IS field of conceptual modeling should be transferred to the legal domain to enhance comprehensibility of legal regulations and contracts. It is further described how this in turn would benefit the IS discipline. The findings emphasize the importance of further interdisciplinary research on that topic. A research agenda that synthesizes the presented ideas is proposed based on a framework that structures the research field. Researchers from both disciplines, IS and Law, that are interested in this field should use the research agenda to position their research and to derive new and innovative research questions

Hazard Communication: A Review of the Science Underpinning the Art of Communication for Health and Safety

This report was commissioned by the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration to review the state of scientific inquiry supporting our knowledge regarding key elements of chemical hazard communication programs: labeling, warnings, material safety data sheets, and worker training. This endeavor supports the international effort to harmonize laws, regulations, and consensus standards affecting the ways in which information about hazardous chemicals is communicated. The international effort can be divided into three major functions: classifying health and environmental hazards, classifying physical hazards; and communicating hazard information. This last component involves the determination of what information will be communicated to users regarding the hazards and appropriate protective measures, as well as the way in which it will be transmitted, i.e. through symbols, labels, standard phrases, and training

Teaching small animal reproduction via virtual patients

Virtual patients have become an interesting alternative in medical education. Due to increasing demands regarding theoretical and clinical teaching and to improve an interdisciplinary approach, a new blended learning concept including virtual patients was developed and implemented in the veterinary curriculum of the Freie Universität Berlin. In the presented project, three virtual patients from the field of canine reproduction were developed. They focus on pregnancy diagnosis with suspected luteal insufficiency, pyometra and benign prostatic hyperplasia, respectively. The results of an evaluation by veterinary students of the 7th semester showed a high acceptance of virtual patients in a blended learning reproduction module in the interdisciplinary lectures. Students especially preferred videos, such as video lectures, hands‐on videos and animations as well as a glossary for background information, to successfully and autonomously work on a virtual case. The content covered by the new modules that were developed in the context of this project is part of a spiral curriculum; they will be revised and enhanced during the clinical year

Requirement Specification Stage of the Project Lifecycle of Computerized Systems & the Standards that Can Be Implemented

Understanding requirement specifications was an integral part of information systems design and was critical to the success of interactive systems. However, specifying these requirements was not simple to achieve. This research, including a literature review, describes general methods to support requirement specification analysis that can be adapted into a range of situations in accordance with relevant standards. The main techniques discussed were risk management, stage-based lifecycle models and frameworks. Additionally, as part of the methodology and project history, the methods for implementation, process improvements and schedule of the research was examined. A case study with statistical analysis was described to illustrate how these techniques, methods and standards have been applied in practice and the advantages and disadvantages experienced

A Framework for Seamless Variant Management and Incremental Migration to a Software Product-Line

Context: Software systems often need to exist in many variants in order to satisfy varying customer requirements and operate under varying software and hardware environments. These variant-rich systems are most commonly realized using cloning, a convenient approach to create new variants by reusing existing ones. Cloning is readily available, however, the non-systematic reuse leads to difficult maintenance. An alternative strategy is adopting platform-oriented development approaches, such as Software Product-Line Engineering (SPLE). SPLE offers systematic reuse, and provides centralized control, and thus, easier maintenance. However, adopting SPLE is a risky and expensive endeavor, often relying on significant developer intervention. Researchers have attempted to devise strategies to synchronize variants (change propagation) and migrate from clone&own to an SPL, however, they are limited in accuracy and applicability. Additionally, the process models for SPLE in literature, as we will discuss, are obsolete, and only partially reflect how adoption is approached in industry. Despite many agile practices prescribing feature-oriented software development, features are still rarely documented and incorporated during actual development, making SPL-migration risky and error-prone.Objective: The overarching goal of this PhD is to bridge the gap between clone&own and software product-line engineering in a risk-free, smooth, and accurate manner. Consequently, in the first part of the PhD, we focus on the conceptualization, formalization, and implementation of a framework for migrating from a lean architecture to a platform-based one.Method: Our objectives are met by means of (i) understanding the literature relevant to variant-management and product-line migration and determining the research gaps (ii) surveying the dominant process models for SPLE and comparing them against the contemporary industrial practices, (iii) devising a framework for incremental SPL adoption, and (iv) investigating the benefit of using features beyond PL migration; facilitating model comprehension.Results: Four main results emerge from this thesis. First, we present a qualitative analysis of the state-of-the-art frameworks for change propagation and product-line migration. Second, we compare the contemporary industrial practices with the ones prescribed in the process models for SPL adoption, and provide an updated process model that unifies the two to accurately reflect the real practices and guide future practitioners. Third, we devise a framework for incremental migration of variants into a fully integrated platform by exploiting explicitly recorded metadata pertaining to clone and feature-to-asset traceability. Last, we investigate the impact of using different variability mechanisms on the comprehensibility of various model-related tasks.Future work: As ongoing and future work, we aim to integrate our framework with existing IDEs and conduct a developer study to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of using our framework. We also aim to incorporate safe-evolution in our operators

Value-driven IT Project Portfolio Management: Process Model, Evaluation Framework, and Decision Support

Companies must optimize their information technology (IT) project portfolio to achieve goals. However, IT projects often exceed resources and do not create their promised value, for example, because of missing structured processes and evaluation methods. Continuous IT portfolio management is thus of importance and a critical business activity to reach value-driven goals. Guided by Design Science Research with literature reviews and expert interviews, we develop, evaluate, and adjust an IT project portfolio management process model, a holistic IT project evaluation framework, and implement a decision support system prototype. Our results and findings synthesize and extend previous research and expert opinions and guide decision-makers to make more informed and objective IT project portfolio management decisions aligned with optimal value creation. Furthermore, we deduce new research opportunities for IT project portfolio management process models, decision tools, and evaluation frameworks

Providing Authentic Long-term Archival Access to Complex Relational Data

We discuss long-term preservation of and access to relational databases. The focus is on national archives and science data archives which have to ingest and integrate data from a broad spectrum of vendor-specific relational database management systems (RDBMS). Furthermore, we present our solution SIARD which analyzes and extracts data and data logic from almost any RDBMS. It enables, to a reasonable level of authenticity, complete detachment of databases from their vendor-specific environment. The user can add archival descriptive metadata according to a customizable schema. A SIARD database archive integrates data, data logic, technical metadata, and archival descriptive information in one archival information package, independent of any specific software and hardware, based upon plain text files and the standardized languages SQL and XML. For usage purposes, a SIARD archive can be reloaded into any current or future RDBMS which supports standard SQL. In addition, SIARD contains a client that enables 'on demand' reload of archives into a target RDBMS, and multi-user remote access for querying and browsing the data together with its technical and descriptive metadata in one graphical user interface.Comment: 18 pages with 4 figures (color). Submitted to: European Space Agency Symposium "Ensuring Long-Term Preservation and Adding Value to Scientific and Technical Data", 5 - 7 October 2004, Frascati, Ital