39,939 research outputs found
Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study
In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is
developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality
and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems
have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that
include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which
the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential
speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the
non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop
safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage.
In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this
paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method
approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product
development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a
systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development
through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution
candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced
Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi
Practice activity trends among oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Australia
© 2004 Brennan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to describe practice activity trends among oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Australia over time. METHODS: All registered oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Australia were surveyed in 1990 and 2000 using mailed self-complete questionnaires. RESULTS: Data were available from 79 surgeons from 1990 (response rate = 73.8%) and 116 surgeons from 2000 (response rate = 65.1%). The rate of provision of services per visit changed over time with increased rates observed overall (from 1.43 ± 0.05 services per visit in 1990 to 1.66 ± 0.06 services per visit in 2000), reflecting increases in pathology and reconstructive surgery. No change over time was observed in the provision of services per year (4,521 ± 286 services per year in 1990 and 4,503 ± 367 services per year in 2000). Time devoted to work showed no significant change over time (1,682 ± 75 hours per year in 1990 and 1,681 ± 94 hours per year in 2000), while the number of visits per week declined (70 ± 4 visits per week in 1990 to 58 ± 4 visits per week in 2000). CONCLUSIONS: The apparent stability in the volume of services provided per year reflected a counterbalancing of increased services provided per visit and a decrease in the number of visits supplied.David S Brennan, A John Spencer, Kiran A Singh, Dana N Teusner and Alastair N Gos
Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review
Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out.
We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED
Special Libraries, Winter 1986
Volume 77, Issue 1https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1986/1000/thumbnail.jp
Mission Control Concepts for Robotic Operations: Existing approaches and new Solutions
This paper gives a preliminary overview on activities
within the currently ongoing Mission Control Concepts
for Robotic Operations (MICCRO) study.
The aim of the MICCRO study is to reveal commonalities
in the operations of past, current and future robotic
space missions in order to find an abstract, representative
mission control concept applicable to multiple future
missions with robotic systems involved. The existing
operational concepts, responsibilities and information
flows during the different mission phases are taken into
account.
A particular emphasis is put on the possible interaction
between different autonomous components (on-board
and on-ground), their synchronisation and the possible
shift of autonomy borders during different mission
phases
Improving Optimization Bounds using Machine Learning: Decision Diagrams meet Deep Reinforcement Learning
Finding tight bounds on the optimal solution is a critical element of
practical solution methods for discrete optimization problems. In the last
decade, decision diagrams (DDs) have brought a new perspective on obtaining
upper and lower bounds that can be significantly better than classical bounding
mechanisms, such as linear relaxations. It is well known that the quality of
the bounds achieved through this flexible bounding method is highly reliant on
the ordering of variables chosen for building the diagram, and finding an
ordering that optimizes standard metrics is an NP-hard problem. In this paper,
we propose an innovative and generic approach based on deep reinforcement
learning for obtaining an ordering for tightening the bounds obtained with
relaxed and restricted DDs. We apply the approach to both the Maximum
Independent Set Problem and the Maximum Cut Problem. Experimental results on
synthetic instances show that the deep reinforcement learning approach, by
achieving tighter objective function bounds, generally outperforms ordering
methods commonly used in the literature when the distribution of instances is
known. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first paper to apply
machine learning to directly improve relaxation bounds obtained by
general-purpose bounding mechanisms for combinatorial optimization problems.Comment: Accepted and presented at AAAI'1
Information Outlook, August 2005
Volume 9, Issue 8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2005/1007/thumbnail.jp
Comment: The Need for Syncretism in Applied Statistics
Comment on "The Need for Syncretism in Applied Statistics" [arXiv:1012.1161]Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-STS308A the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Focal Spot, Fall/Winter 1996
https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/focal_spot_archives/1071/thumbnail.jp
Semantic Embedding of Petri Nets into Event-B
We present an embedding of Petri nets into B abstract systems. The embedding
is achieved by translating both the static structure (modelling aspect) and the
evolution semantics of Petri nets. The static structure of a Petri-net is
captured within a B abstract system through a graph structure. This abstract
system is then included in another abstract system which captures the evolution
semantics of Petri-nets. The evolution semantics results in some B events
depending on the chosen policies: basic nets or high level Petri nets. The
current embedding enables one to use conjointly Petri nets and Event-B in the
same system development, but at different steps and for various analysis.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure
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