Requirements engineering for computer integrated environments in construction

A Computer Integrated Environment (CIE) is the type of innovative integrated information system that helps to reduce fragmentation and enables the stakeholders to collaborate together in business. Researchers have observed that the concept of CIE has been the subject of research for many years but the uptake of this technology has been very limited because of the development of the technology and its effective implementation. Although CIE is very much valued by both industrialists and academics, the answers to the question of how to develop and how to implement it are still not clear. The industrialists and researchers conveyed that networking, collaboration, information sharing and communication will become popular and critical issues in the future, which can be managed through CIE systems. In order for successful development of the technology, successful delivery, and effective implementation of user and industry-oriented CIE systems, requirements engineering seems a key parameter. Therefore, through experiences and lessons learnt in various case studies of CIE systems developments, this book explains the development of a requirements engineering framework specific to the CIE system. The requirements engineering process that has been developed in the research is targeted at computer integrated environments with a particular interest in the construction industry as the implementation field. The key features of the requirements engineering framework are the following: (1) ready-to-use, (2) simple, (3) domain specific, (4) adaptable and (5) systematic, (6) integrated with the legacy systems. The method has three key constructs: i) techniques for requirements development, which includes the requirement elicitation, requirements analysis/modelling and requirements validation, ii) requirements documentation and iii) facilitating the requirements management. It focuses on system development methodologies for the human driven ICT solutions that provide communication, collaboration, information sharing and exchange through computer integrated environments for professionals situated in discrete locations but working in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary environment. The overview for each chapter of the book is as follows; Chapter 1 provides an overview by setting the scene and presents the issues involved in requirements engineering and CIE (Computer Integrated Environments). Furthermore, it makes an introduction to the necessity for requirements engineering for CIE system development, experiences and lessons learnt cumulatively from CIE systems developments that the authors have been involved in, and the process of the development of an ideal requirements engineering framework for CIE systems development, based on the experiences and lessons learnt from the multi-case studies. Chapter 2 aims at building up contextual knowledge to acquire a deeper understanding of the topic area. This includes a detailed definition of the requirements engineering discipline and the importance and principles of requirements engineering and its process. In addition, state of the art techniques and approaches, including contextual design approach, the use case modelling, and the agile requirements engineering processes, are explained to provide contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering to the readers. After building contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering in chapter 2, chapter 3 attempts to identify a scope and contextual knowledge and understanding about computer integrated environments and Building Information Modelling (BIM). In doing so, previous experiences of the authors about systems developments for computer integrated environments are explained in detail as the CIE/BIM case studies. In the light of contextual knowledge gained about requirements engineering in chapter 2, in order to realize the critical necessity of requirements engineering to combine technology, process and people issues in the right balance, chapter 4 will critically evaluate the requirements engineering activities of CIE systems developments that are explained in chapter 3. Furthermore, to support the necessity of requirements engineering for human centred CIE systems development, the findings from semi-structured interviews are shown in a concept map that is also explained in this chapter. In chapter 5, requirements engineering is investigated from different angles to pick up the key issues from discrete research studies and practice such as traceability through process and product modelling, goal-oriented requirements engineering, the essential and incidental complexities in requirements models, the measurability of quality requirements, the fundamentals of requirements engineering, identifying and involving the stakeholders, reconciling software requirements and system architectures and barriers to the industrial uptake of requirements engineering. In addition, a comprehensive research study measuring the success of requirements engineering processes through a set of evaluation criteria is introduced. Finally, the key issues and the criteria are comparatively analyzed and evaluated in order to match each other and confirm the validity of the criteria for the evaluation and assessment of the requirements engineering implementation in the CIE case study projects in chapter 7 and the key issues will be used in chapter 9 to support the CMM (Capability Maturity Model) for acceptance and wider implications of the requirements engineering framework to be proposed in chapter 8. Chapter 6 explains and particularly focuses on how the requirements engineering activities in the case study projects were handled by highlighting strengths and weaknesses. This will also include the experiences and lessons learnt from these system development practices. The findings from these developments will also be utilized to support the justification of the necessity of a requirements engineering framework for the CIE systems developments. In particular, the following are addressed. • common and shared understanding in requirements engineering efforts, • continuous improvement, • outputs of requirement engineering • reflections and the critical analysis of the requirements engineering approaches in these practices. The premise of chapter 7 is to evaluate and assess the requirements engineering approaches in the CIE case study developments from multiple viewpoints in order to find out the strengths and the weaknesses in these requirements engineering processes. This evaluation will be mainly based on the set of criteria developed by the researchers and developers in the requirements engineering community in order to measure the success rate of the requirements engineering techniques after their implementation in the various system development projects. This set of criteria has already been introduced in chapter 5. This critical assessment includes conducting a questionnaire based survey and descriptive statistical analysis. In chapter 8, the requirements engineering techniques tested in the CIE case study developments are composed and compiled into a requirements engineering process in the light of the strengths and the weaknesses identified in the previous chapter through benchmarking with a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to ensure that it has the required level of maturity for implementation in the CIE systems developments. As a result of this chapter, a framework for a generic requirements engineering process for CIE systems development will be proposed. In chapter 9, the authors will discuss the acceptance and the wider implications of the proposed framework of requirements engineering process using the CMM from chapter 8 and the key issues from chapter 5. Chapter 10 is the concluding chapter and it summarizes the findings and brings the book to a close with recommendations for the implementation of the Proposed RE framework and also prescribes a guideline as a way forward for better implementation of requirements engineering for successful developments of the CIE systems in the future

Evaluating cross-organizational ERP requirements engineering practices: a focus group study

This focus group study presents our first validation of practices for engineering the coordination requirements in cross-organizational Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects. The study evaluates 13 practices addressing a variety of coordination aspects crucial to ERP projects. These practices are results in previously published research publications by the first author. The practices are formulated in response to practitioners' needs at ERP adopting organizations. The proposed practices have now reached the stage where we need some independent feedback as to the extent to which they fit the realities of practitioners. We perform this validation by means of a qualitative research approach, namely the focus group method. Current software engineering literature provides few examples of using focus groups in the evaluation of good software development practices. Because of this, providing reflections on our focus-group-based validation experiences will be of value to both the research community and practitioners

Addressing Challenges of Ultra Large Scale System on Requirements Engineering

AbstractAccording to the growing evolution in complex systems and their integrations, Internet of things, communication, massive information flows and big data, a new type of systems has been raised to software engineers known as Ultra Large Scale (ULS) Systems. Hence, it requires dramatic change in all aspects of “Software Engineering” practices and their artifacts due to its unique characteristics.Attendance of all software development members is impossible to meet in regular way and face-to-face, especially stakeholders from different national and organizational cultures. In addition, huge amount of data stored, number of integrations among software components and number of hardware elements. Those obstacles constrict design, development, testing, evolution, assessment and implementation phases of current software development methods.In this respect, ULS system that's considered as a system of systems, has gained considerable reflections on system development activities, as the scale is incomparable to the traditional systems since there are thousands of different stakeholders are involved in developing software, were each of them has different interests, complex and changing needs beside there are already new services are being integrated simultaneously to the current running ULS systems.The scale of ULS systems makes a lot of challenges for Requirements Engineers (RE). As a result, the requirements engineering experts are working on some automatic tools to support requirement engineering activities to overcome many challenges.This paper points to the limitations of the current RE practices for the challenges forced by ULS nature, and focus on the contributions of several approaches to overcome these difficulties in order to tackle unsolved areas of these solutions.As a result, the current approaches for ULS miss some RE essential practices related to find vital dependent requirements, and are not capable to measure the changes impact on ULS systems or other integrated legacy systems, in addition the requirements validation are somehow depended on the user ratings without solid approval from the stakeholders

An analysis of the 4th year '' system management and integration'' course, using individual reflections on working in multidisciplinary groups

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science in Industrial Engineering to the Faculty of Science, School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2018It is a requirement of the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) that all tertiary education institutions ascertain whether their current courses meet the ECSA Exit Level Outcomes (ELO), as identified by the institution themselves. The course project for MECN4020 – Systems Engineering and Management – at the University of the Witwatersrand is required to meet the requirement of the ECSA ELO 8, as prescribed. Students are instructed to reflect on the experience. Qualitative research is used to both induct emergent themes from the student reflections, as well as deduct, whether the ECSA ELO 8 requirements are met by the project. Emergent themes from inductive analysis result in emergent themes, which are then compared to the pilot study conducted. Deductive analysis identifies the inference that may be placed on the student population, so that the ECSA ELO 8 requirements are identified as met or not met. ECSA ELO 8 requirements that are considered to be met by the group project for MECN4020 are “The Candidate Makes Individual Contributions”, “The Candidate Enhances the Work of Fellow Team Members”, “The Candidate Benefits from the Support of Team Members”, “The Candidate Communicates Effectively With Team Members”, “The Candidate Acquires a Working Knowledge of a Co-Workers Discipline”, “The Candidate Communicates Across a Disciplinary Boundary” and “The Candidate Uses a Systems Approach”. Emergent themes and extant literature as used to develop recommendations, so that the MECN4020 project may meet the ECSA ELO 8 requirement. Suggestions for improvement are given using a framework consistent with the design of multidisciplinary education design.MT 201

A Peaking and Tailing Approach to Education and Curriculum Renewal for Sustainable Development

Contextual factors for sustainable development such as population growth, energy, and resource availability and consumption levels, food production yield, and growth in pollution, provide numerous complex and rapidly changing education and training requirements for a variety of professions including engineering. Furthermore, these requirements may not be clearly understood or expressed by designers, governments, professional bodies or the industry. Within this context, this paper focuses on one priority area for greening the economy through sustainable development—improving energy efficiency—and discusses the complexity of capacity building needs for professionals. The paper begins by acknowledging the historical evolution of sustainability considerations, and the complexity embedded in built environment solutions. The authors propose a dual-track approach to building capacity building, with a short-term focus on improvement (i.e., making peaking challenges a priority for postgraduate education), and a long-term focus on transformational innovation (i.e., making tailing challenges a priority for undergraduate education). A case study is provided, of Australian experiences over the last decade with regard to the topic area of energy efficiency. The authors conclude with reflections on implications for the approach

Using reflections to explore student learning during the project component of an advanced laboratory course

We redesigned an advanced physics laboratory course to include a project component. The intention was to address learning outcomes such as modeling, design of experiments, teamwork, and developing technical skills in using apparatus and analyzing data. The course included experimental labs in preparation for a six-week team project in which students designed and implemented a research experiment. The final assignment given to students was a reflective essay, which asked students to discuss their learning and satisfaction in doing the project. Qualitative analysis of the students' reflections showed that the majority of the students reported satisfaction and achievement, functional team dynamics, learning outcomes unique to this experience, practicing modeling skills, and potential future improvements. We suggest that reflections are useful as support for student learning as well as in guiding curricular improvements. Our findings may be useful for other course redesign initiatives incorporating project-based learning and student reflections.Comment: This work was presented at the Physics Education Research Conference held in Washington DC. from August 1-2, 201

Lighting and display screens: Models for predicting luminance limits and disturbance

An investigation of the level of disturbance caused by reflections from a variety of display screens, including interactive whiteboards, has been carried out using three test methods: Luminance adjustment, category rating and reading. The results from the luminance adjustment test and the category rating test were consistent, both showing similar significant effects of lighting-display parameters on the disturbance caused by screen reflections. In contrast, the objective measure of task performance in the reading test was barely responsive to reflections on the screens. Two models have been developed, one to predict the luminaire luminance at which 95% of observers were not disturbed by the reflections and the other to predict the rating of disturbance caused by reflections from the screens. Both models are based on lighting-display parameters including the size and luminance of the reflected light source and the specular reflectance, the effect of haze reflection and the background luminance of the display screen. These models can be used generally, to guide lighting recommendations and, specifically, to identify suitable luminaires to be used with given set of display screens or suitable display screens to be used with a given lighting installation

A hybrid MLFMM-UTD method for the solution of very large 2-D electromagnetic problems

The multilevel fast multipole method (MLFMM) is combined with the uniform theory of diffraction (UTD) to model two-dimensional (2-D) scattering problems including very large scatterers. The discretization of the very large scatterers is avoided by using ray-based methods. Reflections are accounted for by image source theory, while for diffraction a new MLFMM translation matrix is introduced. The translation matrix elements are derived based on a technique that generalizes the use of UTD for arbitrary source configurations and that efficiently describes the field over extended regions of space. O(n) scaling of the computational time and memory requirements is achieved for relevant structures, such as large antenna arrays in the presence of a wedge. The theory is validated by means of several illustrative numerical examples and is shown to remain accurate for non-line-of-sight (NLoS) scattering problems