Implementation issues in product line scoping

Often product line engineering is treated similar to the waterfall model in traditional software engineering, i.e., the different phases (scoping, analysis, architecting, implementation) are treated as if they could be clearly separated and would follow each other in an ordered fashion. However, in practice strong interactions between the individual phases become apparent. In particular, how implementation is done has a strong impact on economic aspects of the project and thus how to adequately plan it. Hence, assessing these relationships adequately in the beginning has a strong impact on performing a product line project right. In this paper we present a framework that helps in exactly this task. It captures on an abstract level the relationships between scoping information and implementation aspects and thus allows to provide rough guidance on implementation aspects of the project. We will also discuss the application of our framework to a specific industrial project

Adaptive learning program for developing employability skills

The paper aims to demonstrate the benefits of adaptive learning technologies as a viable alternative to time consuming tutor led individual support. It proposes to reveal how adaptive learning interventions can be effective in enriching student learning while targeting precise areas of development. This review will compile evidence on the nature and extent of Adaptive Learning tools used to develop employability skills among Higher Education institutions. This will be specifically for students undergoing studies at the graduate level. Given the short time available, a scoping study framework will be used to examine the scope of carrying out a full systematic review or identifying gaps in existing literature (Arksey and O’Malley, 2005). This design follows the general principles of a systematic review by following pre‐specified methods to reduce the risk of bias by selecting favourable studies, and extracting and analysing data that backs a particular hypothesis. That is, the methods are determined a priori, and are transparent and replicable

Kenya: Data Strategy and Capacity Building

Kenya has undertaken much work to date on data and knowledge issues, and has advanced this through the Kenya Data Forum—a national initiative managed by the Deputy President's office that aims to develop and implement a long term sustainable local data strategy. Kenya, however, lacks an organized framework for collecting reliable and comparable data on philanthropy in the country; to help meet this need, the Philanthropy Sector in Kenya has come together over the decades through the creation of the East Africa Association of Grantmakers (EAAG) and more recently the Kenya Philanthropy Forum (KPF) and its Data Sub-group. In June 2015 the KPF organized a Philanthropy Data Management convening that brought together over 30 foundations and trusts to explore opportunities for strengthening data collection, management, and sharing data in the philanthropy forum for greater impact and influence on national development efforts in Kenya. As a result, certain outcomes and aspirations were agreed upon. They included:Establishing the principles for data management for philanthropy.Expanding the forum so that participation reflects the size and diversity of existing forms of philanthropy.Developing a standardized tool for data collection.Actively engaging in the existing philanthropy data initiative.Partnering with the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) to establish data sets that effectively capture the contribution of philanthropy in Kenya's development.The June 2015 meeting highlighted the urgent need for philanthropic data and that "Kenya lacks an organized framework for collecting reliable and comparable data on philanthropy in the country." To begin systematically addressing these recommendations, Foundation Center (a philanthropic support organisation based in New York) designed a multi-stage Data Strategy and Capacity Building Program, working in partnership with KPF, EAAG, Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF), and the Sustainable Development Goals Philanthropy Platform (SDGPP). This initiative was kicked off at a special "Data Scoping Meeting" of the KPF on 28 April 2016, attended by a total of 51 participants representing across section of Kenyan foundations, trusts, and support organisations. As reflected in the meeting agenda (see Appendix A), the objectives of the Data Scoping Meeting were as follows:1. Establish principles for collaborative data and knowledge management2. Understand the core data needs of philanthropy in Kenya3. Leverage available technologies for collecting and sharing data and knowledge4. Leverage global knowledge for local purposes5. Identify data challenges and set local goalsThis report summarizes the outcomes of the Data Scoping Meeting and outlines next steps in preparation for a follow-up meeting on Data Capacity Building in the coming months

Tanzania: Data Strategy And Capacity Building

Tanzania has seen significant improvements to its national development data infrastructure in recent years. In February 2016 the country adopted an Open Data Policy aimed at increasing access to government data and promoting increased transparency and partnerships for social and economic development. Key government data has been made available for use by civil society organizations (CSOs) and the media through an open data portal. Additionally, the 2016-2021 National Development Plan includes among its key objectives the need to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets into its Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.However, existing data initiatives are largely government driven and do not take into account data from or about civil society actors. In particular, Tanzania lacks a dedicated platform and framework for collecting, sharing and analyzing data on philanthropy. In September 2015, inspired by similar initiatives in other East African Countries, the Foundation for Civil Society partnered with the East Africa Association of Grantmakers (EAAG) to form the Tanzania National Philanthropy Forum (TPF). The launch of the TPF marks an opportunity for the philanthropy community in Tanzania to come together and strengthen its voice and influence in national development processes

Semantic Transformation of Web Services

Web services have become the predominant paradigm for the development of distributed software systems. Web services provide the means to modularize software in a way that functionality can be described, discovered and deployed in a platform independent manner over a network (e.g., intranets, extranets and the Internet). The representation of web services by current industrial practice is predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinnings required to fulfill the goals of the emerging Semantic Web. This paper proposes a framework aimed at (1) modeling the semantics of syntactically defined web services through a process of interpretation, (2) scop-ing the derived concepts within domain ontologies, and (3) harmonizing the semantic web services with the domain ontologies. The framework was vali-dated through its application to web services developed for a large financial system. The worked example presented in this paper is extracted from the se-mantic modeling of these financial web services

Uganda: Data Strategy and Capacity Building

As part of Uganda's commitment to the Sustainable Development Agenda, the country has made substantial progress toward improved national development data—including the launch of a Development Data Hub supported by Development Initiatives and a review of open data readiness jointly undertaken by the government and the World Bank. Uganda however, lacks an organized framework for collecting and sharing reliable and comparable data on philanthropy. As such, the newly established Uganda National Philanthropy Forum (UPF) represents a key mechanism for the sector to consolidate its e orts and hone its contributions to national development. The forum was established in October 2015, facilitated by the East Africa Association of Grantmakers (EAAG), in partnership with Independent Development Fund (IDF), Development Network of Indigenous Voluntary Associations (DENIVA) and GoBig Hub. Its objective is to explore strategies for consolidating and organizing the philanthropy sector in Uganda.As a follow up to the UPF agenda on advancing philanthropy data in Uganda, EAAG and the Foundation Center in partnership with IDF and DENIVA hosted a Data Scoping Meeting on October 25th 2016. The objective of the meeting was to explore opportunities to strengthen data sharing and management to enhance the sector's coordination and in uence on national development policy. The meeting brought together 35 foundations, trusts and other local philanthropy organizations

Alexandria: Extensible Framework for Rapid Exploration of Social Media

The Alexandria system under development at IBM Research provides an extensible framework and platform for supporting a variety of big-data analytics and visualizations. The system is currently focused on enabling rapid exploration of text-based social media data. The system provides tools to help with constructing "domain models" (i.e., families of keywords and extractors to enable focus on tweets and other social media documents relevant to a project), to rapidly extract and segment the relevant social media and its authors, to apply further analytics (such as finding trends and anomalous terms), and visualizing the results. The system architecture is centered around a variety of REST-based service APIs to enable flexible orchestration of the system capabilities; these are especially useful to support knowledge-worker driven iterative exploration of social phenomena. The architecture also enables rapid integration of Alexandria capabilities with other social media analytics system, as has been demonstrated through an integration with IBM Research's SystemG. This paper describes a prototypical usage scenario for Alexandria, along with the architecture and key underlying analytics.Comment: 8 page

Scoping study of the feasibility of developing a software tool to assist designers of pedestrian crossing places

This report is the outcome of a scoping study of how guidance can be provided for practising highway engineers in designing informal pedestrian crossing facilities. The main component of this report is an analysis by an IT consultant of a range of mechanisms for delivery of this. The study was informed by the opinions of a group of practitioners who have a direct interest in the provision of pedestrian facilities. These results are placed in context and their consequences are explored in the first part of the report