The requirements management practices: A study at UUM IT

Requirements engineering is a main process in software engineering that focusing on development and managing the user requirements. One of the requirements engineering activities is requirements management. It plays an important role when it comes to the support of product development teams. Despite this, there is a lack of practice in requirements management activity in the software project development. Malaysian software markets are still facing several problems in requirements management practices such as requirements quality, requirements inadequately, and identification of requirements; with limited studies that address it. In this study, UUM IT as computer services provider in a local universities in Malaysia is design as case study, to represent as one organization in Malaysia software markets. This study aims to investigate the current situation for the requirement management in UUM IT, and assess the relationship CMMI level 2 with the requirements management practices in UUM IT. This study adopted mixed method through used questionnaire with the UUM IT team, as well as, interviews with managers of UUM IT for more reliability. The outcome of study showed that the UUM IT are used requirements management activities but there is a need for more attention and improve. Moreover, the study proposes CMMI appraisal method to enhance the performance of software development tea

META-MODELING CONSTRUCTS FOR REQUIREMENTS REUSE (RR): SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS PATTERNS, VARIABILITY AND TRACEABILITY

Reuse is a fundamental activity, which increases quality and productivity of software products. Reuse of software artifacts, such as requirements, architectures, and codes can be employed at any developmental stage of software. However, reuse at a higher level of abstraction, for instance at requirements level, provides greater benefits in software development than when applied at lower level of abstraction for example at coding level. To achieve full benefits of reuse, a systematic approach and appropriate strategy need to be followed. Although several reuse approaches are reported in the literature, these approaches lack a key strategy to synergize some essential drivers of reuse, which include reusable structure, variability management (VM) and traceability of software artifacts. In line with this, we make our contribution in this paper by (1) presenting the concepts and importance of software requirements patterns (SRP) for reusable structure; (2) proposing a strategy, which combines three sub-disciplines of Software Engineering (SE) such as Requirements Engineering (RE), Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) and Model-driven Engineering (MDE); (3) proposing a meta-modeling constructs, which include SRP, VM and traceability and; (4) Relationship amongst the three sub-disciplines of the SE. This is a novel approach and we believe it can support and guide researchers and practitioners in SE community to have greater benefits of reuse during software developments

Adaptive development and maintenance of user-centric software systems

A software system cannot be developed without considering the various facets of its environment. Stakeholders – including the users that play a central role – have their needs, expectations, and perceptions of a system. Organisational and technical aspects of the environment are constantly changing. The ability to adapt a software system and its requirements to its environment throughout its full lifecycle is of paramount importance in a constantly changing environment. The continuous involvement of users is as important as the constant evaluation of the system and the observation of evolving environments. We present a methodology for adaptive software systems development and maintenance. We draw upon a diverse range of accepted methods including participatory design, software architecture, and evolutionary design. Our focus is on user-centred software systems

Outsourcing and acquisition models comparison related to IT supplier selection decision analysis

This paper presents a comparison of acquisition models related to decision analysis of IT supplier selection. The main standards are: Capability Maturity Model Integration for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ), ISO / IEC 12207 Information Technology / Software Life Cycle Processes, IEEE 1062 Recommended Practice for Software Acquisition, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) guide. The objective of this paper is to compare the previous models to find the advantages and disadvantages of them for the future development of a decision model for IT supplier selection

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

A Tissue Engineering product development pathway

Tissue engineering is a field of inquiry and research that uses engineering techniques and principles of biological sciences to develop functional substitutes for reconstruction of damaged organs. Commercial translation of tissue engineering products is currently in progress all over the world. Many companies are moving their interest towards this market segment that grows by 6% per year. Aim of this thesis is to probe the possibility of developing tissue engineering products in the most cost-effective way, minimizing the industrial risk and developing a specific fund raising model. Tissue engineering is based on three main features: cells, scaffolds and bioreactors. Cells are seeded on a scaffold and cultured in a bioreactor in order to obtain a tissue engineering product. Nevertheless, developing cell carrying products is hampered by certification claims ("advanced therapies" certification rules) that unbearably increase R&D and certification costs and can be faced by either big companies or start-ups of big companies and spin-offs of complex aggregates of research centers involved in advanced cell research. On the other hand, scaffolds (certification class IIb) and bioreactors for tissue engineering (certification class I) can be developed with a lower economic effort, being the competition based on innovation, since their market is in the "growth phase" for scaffolds and in the "introduction phase" for bioreactors in the Levitt's product life cycle theory. Purpose of this thesis is to basically study scaffold and bioreactor features, then to preliminarily design some models of bioreactors and, eventually, to set a business model, based on private and public fund raising, aimed to the development of scaffolds for dental implantology and of bioreactors for cardiovascular and bone tissue engineering. Finally, a business plan of a company being spin-off of Politecnico di Torino and industrial start-up has been elaborate

Modeling functional requirements using tacit knowledge: a design science research methodology informed approach

The research in this paper adds to the discussion linked to the challenge of capturing and modeling tacit knowledge throughout software development projects. The issue emerged when modeling functional requirements during a project for a client. However, using the design science research methodology at a particular point in the project helped to create an artifact, a functional requirements modeling technique, that resolved the issue with tacit knowledge. Accordingly, this paper includes research based upon the stages of the design science research methodology to design and test the artifact in an observable situation, empirically grounding the research undertaken. An integral component of the design science research methodology, the knowledge base, assimilated structuration and semiotic theories so that other researchers can test the validity of the artifact created. First, structuration theory helped to identify how tacit knowledge is communicated and can be understood when modeling functional requirements for new software. Second, structuration theory prescribed the application of semiotics which facilitated the development of the artifact. Additionally, following the stages of the design science research methodology and associated tasks allows the research to be reproduced in other software development contexts. As a positive outcome, using the functional requirements modeling technique created, specifically for obtaining tacit knowledge on the software development project, indicates that using such knowledge increases the likelihood of deploying software successfully

Search based software engineering: Trends, techniques and applications

© ACM, 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version is available from the link below.In the past five years there has been a dramatic increase in work on Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE), an approach to Software Engineering (SE) in which Search-Based Optimization (SBO) algorithms are used to address problems in SE. SBSE has been applied to problems throughout the SE lifecycle, from requirements and project planning to maintenance and reengineering. The approach is attractive because it offers a suite of adaptive automated and semiautomated solutions in situations typified by large complex problem spaces with multiple competing and conflicting objectives. This article provides a review and classification of literature on SBSE. The work identifies research trends and relationships between the techniques applied and the applications to which they have been applied and highlights gaps in the literature and avenues for further research.EPSRC and E