ELECTRONIC REQUIREMENTS NEGOTIATION – A LITERATURE SURVEY ON THE STATE-OF-THE-ART (23)

In the software development process, requirements negotiation is an essential part in which stakeholders jointly have to come to an agreement. Such a negotiation process is often conducted using information systems, which makes it an electronic requirements negotiation process. The aim of the current paper is to present the state-of-the-art in electronic requirements negotiations. We elicit the state-of-the-art by analysing relevant literature, extracting areas of current research, and describing the status quo of each area. The identified areas of research are foundations of electronic requirements negotiation, electronic requirements negotiation methodology, automation of electronic requirements negotiation, computer- mediated communication, and social communication

An Empirical Framework Design to Examine the Improvement in Software Requirements through Negotiation

Negotiation is one promising effort during requirements elicitation process to improve the quality of software requirements. When negotiation is claimed beneficial theoretically, it is important that the deployment of negotiation is examined and the effectiveness of negotiation is evaluated through empirical study. This paper aims at providing an empirical framework design to examine the improvement in software requirements through negotiation. Besides, it elaborates the relevance of negotiation in requirements elicitation process and its effectiveness. An empirical study method is imposed to design the framework. The design is carefully established based the selection of population and participants, the experimental protocol, threats to validity and justification of measures

Techno-economic analysis and decision making for PHEV benefits to society, consumers, policymakers and automakers

2012 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are an emerging automotive technology that has the capability to reduce transportation environmental impacts, but at an increased production cost. PHEVs can draw and store energy from an electric grid and consequently show reductions in petroleum consumption, air emissions, ownership costs, and regulation compliance costs, and various other externalities. Decision makers in the policy, consumer, and industry spheres would like to understand the impact of HEV and PHEV technologies on the U.S. vehicle fleets, but to date, only the disciplinary characteristics of PHEVs been considered. The multidisciplinary tradeoffs between vehicle energy sources, policy requirements, market conditions, consumer preferences and technology improvements are not well understood. For example, the results of recent studies have posited the importance of PHEVs to the future US vehicle fleet. No studies have considered the value of PHEVs to automakers and policy makers as a tool for achieving US corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards which are planned to double by 2030. Previous studies have demonstrated the cost and benefit of PHEVs but there is no study that comprehensively accounts for the cost and benefits of PHEV to consumers. The diffusion rate of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and PHEV technology into the marketplace has been estimated by existing studies using various tools and scenarios, but results show wide variations between studies. There is no comprehensive modeling study that combines policy, consumers, society and automakers in the U.S. new vehicle sales cost and benefits analysis. The aim of this research is to build a potential framework that can simulate and optimize the benefits of PHEVs for a multiplicity of stakeholders. This dissertation describes the results of modeling that integrates the effects of PHEV market penetration on policy, consumer and economic spheres. A model of fleet fuel economy and CAFE compliance for a large US automaker will be developed. A comprehensive total cost of ownership model will be constructed to calculate and compare the cost and benefits of PHEVs, conventional vehicles (CVs) and HEVs. Then a comprehensive literature review of PHEVs penetration rate studies will be developed to review and analyze the primary purposes, methods, and results of studies of PHEV market penetration. Finally a multi-criteria modeling system will incorporate results of the support model results. In this project, the models, analysis and results will provide a broader understanding of the benefits and costs of PHEV technology and the parties to whom those benefits accrue. The findings will provide important information for consumers, automakers and policy makers to understand and define HEVs and PHEVs costs, benefits, expected penetration rate and the preferred vehicle design and technology scenario to meet the requirements of policy, society, industry and consumers

Configuration of service oriented architectures with semantic technologies based on non-functional requirements

Ова дисертација је фокусирана на примену семантичких технологија за решавање проблема оптималне конфигурације сервисно-оријентисаних архитектура (енгл. Service Oriented Architecture – SOA) на основу нефункционалних захтева корисника. Решење је базирано на проширењу АHP алгоритма за рад са различитим врстама захтева и развоју хеуристичког приступа заснованог на генетичким алгоритмима за решавање проблема оптималне конфигурације. Постојећа решења у овој области су показала изузетно мали ниво персонализације, тј корисницима није дозвољено дефинисање разних софистициранијих врста захтева који осликавају њихове жеље, очекивања и строге захтеве за које захтевају потпуно испуњење. Такође, постојећа решења су била перманентно фокусирана на испуњење захтева функционалности, након чега се врши одабир конфигурације сходно захтевима о смањењу вредности карактеристика које имају тенденцију раста (нпр., цена и време извршавања), односно повећању вредности карактеристика које имају тенденцију опадања (нпр., поузданост и доступност). Међутим, када се посматрају целе фамилије SOA, од посебног значаја постаје проблем конструкције конфигурације при истовременом задовољењу функционалних и нефункционалних захтева. Предложено интегрално решење под називом OptConfSOAFобезбеђује представљање различитих врста захтева (безусловни, условни, захтеви о лексикографском поретку) о нефункционалним карактеристикама и оптималну конфигурацију фамилија SOA на основу дефинисаних захтева. Приступ који се предлаже обезбеђује истовремено задовољење захтева који се тичу функционалности система као и нефункционалних захтева који могу бити различитог нивоа приоритета, односити се на поједине делове или сервисно- оријентисану архитектуру у целости. Предложено решење је опште и није ограничено само на веб сервисе, иако се појам семантичких технологија обично везује за дати домен примене. Решење се може применити у било ком домену у којем се SOA парадигма може применити посматрањем сервиса као било које компоненте (необавезно софтверске) дате функционалности...This dissertation is focused on the application of semantic technologies for solving the problem of optimal configuration of service-oriented architectures (SOA) based on stakeholders’ non-functional requirements. The proposed solution is developed as an extension of the AHP algorithm to allow for processing of different kinds of requirements. To address the problem of optimal configuration of SOA, a heuristic approach based on genetic algorithms has also been proposed and validated. Existing approaches in this field have shown low level of personalization, i.e. stakeholders are neither enabled to define sophisticated requirements that reflect their own expectations and attitudes, nor they are able to indicate hard requirements that have to be fully satisfied. Furthermore, existing approaches were primarily addressing the problem of fulfilling functional requirements, while the selection of an appropriate configuration is driven by the goal of decreasing the values of monotonically decreasing features (e.g., price and execution time) and simultaneous increasing the values of monotonically increasing features (e.g., availability and reliability). By considering the whole SOA families, the problem of configuration based on both functional and nonfunctional requirements gets special importance for research and further applications. The proposed solution, titled OptConfSOAF provides a framework for specification and processing of different kinds of requirements (unconditional, conditional, and requirements about lexicographical order) over non-functional features, and further optimal configuration of SOA families. The proposed approach provides simultaneous fulfillment of functional requirements (i.e., requirements related to the system’s functionalities) and non-functional requirements, where the latter could be defined with different level of importance, for specific parts of a SOA-based system or the system in its entirety. The proposed solution is general and is not bound to web services, even though semantic technologies are often associated with that domain. Since the solution considers a service as a component (no mandatory to be software component) with the specified functionality, it is applicable and easily adaptable to any specific application domain where SOA paradigm may be applied..

Requirements Negotiation Using Multi-Criteria Preference Analysis

Many software projects have failed because their requirements were poorly negotiated among stakeholders. Reaching agreements of negotiated requirements among stakeholders who have different concerns, responsibilities, and priorities is quite challenging. Formal (fully-automated) approaches of requirements negotiation require significant efforts of knowledge representation and validation, whereas informal (manual) approaches do not provide systematic methods of requirements negotiation. This paper proposes a novel light-weighted, yet systematic requirements negotiation model, called "Multi-Criteria Preference Analysis Requirements Negotiation (MPARN) " to guide stakeholders to evaluate, negotiate, and agree upon alternatives among stakeholders using multi-criteria preference analysis theory. This eight-step MPARN model was applied to requirements gathered for an industrial-academic repository system. The result showed that the MPARN model assisted stakeholders to have unbiased aspects within a requirements negotiation in a light-weighted way and increase stakeholders ’ levels of cooperation and trust by measuring each stakeholder’s preference and value function explicitly through a step-by-step process