NOISE DETECTION IN SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION DOCUMENT USING SPECTRAL CLUSTERING

Requirements engineering phase in software development resulting in a SRS (Software Requirements Specification) document. The use of natural language approach in generating such document has some drawbacks that caused 7 common mistakes among the engineer which had been formulated by Meyer as "The 7 sins of specifier". One of the 7 common mistakes is noise. This study attempted to detect noise in software requirements with spectral clustering. The clustering algorithm working on fewer dimensions compared to others. The resulting kappa coefficient is 0.4426. The result showed that the consistency between noise prediction and noise assessment made by three annotators is still low

‘Computing’ Requirements in Open Source Software Projects

Due to high dissimilarity with traditional software development, Requirements Engineering (RE) in Open Source Software (OSS) remains poorly understood, despite the visible success of many OSS projects. In this study, we approach OSS RE as a sociotechnical and distributed cognitive activity where multiple actors deploy heterogeneous artifacts to ‘compute’ requirements as to reach a collectively-held understanding of what the software is going to do. We conduct a case study of a popular OSS project, Rubinius (a Ruby programming language runtime environment). Specifically, we investigate the ways in which this project exhibits distribution of cognitive efforts along social, structural, and temporal dimensions and how its requirements computation takes place accordingly. In particular, we seek to generalize to a theoretical framework that explains how three temporally-ordered processes of distributed cognition in OSS projects, denoted excavation, instantiation, and testing-in-the-wild, tie together to form a powerful distributed computational structure to manage requirements

Global Engineering Competency in Context: Situations and Behaviors

Engineering graduates encounter worlds of professional practice that are increasingly global in character. This new reality poses challenges for engineering educators and employers, who are faced with the formidable task of preparing engineers to be more effective in diverse national and cultural contexts. In response, many commentators have proposed lists of attributes or competencies deemed important or even essential for global engineering work. However, such lists have tended to lack explicit grounding in empirical studies of engineering practice, including typical kinds of work situations and related behavioral requirements. As a step toward establishing a more robust definition and developmental theory of global engineering competency, this paper reports results from a wide-ranging literature review on engineering practice in global context. The findings are organized around three main contextual dimensions of global engineering competency: technical coordination; engineering cultures; and ethics, standards, and regulations. Particular efforts are made to relate our findings to prior discussions of what it means to be a globally competent engineer, while further illustrating each dimension by giving examples drawn from interviews with practicing engineers. The paper concludes with a review of ongoing and future work, including how our findings are inspiring creation of situational prompts and activities for both assessment and instructional uses

Education in 'life cycle sustainability assessment': caring for all 3 P's in one

Starting from the observation that externalities, reflecting societal concerns, emerge from costs and benefits which are not reflected in the market price, the authors of the paper emphasize the importance in education of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) as a triple-bottom line tool to assess the three dimensions of sustainable development (environment, social and economy) – often referred to as the inclusive 3 P’s-approach (planet, people and profit) – of products, from cradle to grave. Especially the social LCA, as part of the overarching LCSA, has been developed to identify and to assess the social conditions throughout the life cycle of a product in order to improve human well-being. The concept of ‘social justice’ and its operationalization form the background for the development of different stakeholder categories, subcategories and indicators to undertake the social and socio-economic assessment. Two international publications (Benoît and Mazijn, 2009; Valdivia et al., 2011) are used during teaching and training session to give an overview of the social LCA and the LCSA. These guidance for the assessment of products resulted from inter- and multidisciplinary work. It was developed with the support of the authors, who have all an engineering background, but who worked for ten years now together, inter alia, with experts from social sciences. Different training sessions have been set up and LCSA (incl. social LCA) has been part of courses at universities, all with multiple objectives of a learning curve for engineering education within the context of sustainable development. Based on that experience in different countries, the authors are formulating recommendations for future educational material. Looking back at the Declaration of Barcelona (EESD 2004) and comparing with the objectives of the formal and non-formal education on LCSA, the authors claim that LCSA (and the on-going research) provides an excellent opportunity to fulfil the requirements of Engineering Education for Sustainable Development. Answering the question ‘What is a sustainable product?’ by using LCSA is learning to deal with complexity and uncertainty across the boundaries of a diversity of disciplines

Towards Modeling of DataWeb Applications - A Requirement\u27s Perspective

The web is more and more used as a platform for fullfledged, increasingly complex information systems, where a huge amount of change-intensive data is managed by underlying database systems. From a software engineering point of view, the development of such so called DataWeb applications requires proper modeling methods in order to ensure architectural soundness and maintainability. The goal of this paper is twofold. First, a framework of requirements, covering the design space of DataWeb modeling methods in terms of three orthogonal dimensions is suggested. Second, on the basis of this framework, eight representative modeling methods for DataWeb applications are surveyed and general shortcomings are identified pointing the way to nextgeneration modeling methods

Investigation of Internal Erosion Susceptibility of Core Soil from Three Dams

Laboratory tests on internal erosion of cohesionless soils are often performed on cells submitted to a controlled seepage. The cell dimension depends on the grain size of tested soil and must meet the geometric and hydraulic scale requirements as regards to the modeled process. Three specimens collected from different zoned dams in Morocco were characterized for their geotechnical properties and dispersion sensitivity, and then submitted in two different cells to internal erosion (Hole Erosion Test) under controlled seepage. The erosion kinetics was measured, and soil classification was assessed as regards to the useful engineering guidelines. The results showed that specimen dimensions can affect the erosion parameters which are quite different from a cell to another. Even though the derived erosion coefficient values are different from the two testing cells, the classification of the three soils regarding the susceptibility to erosion, using engineering guidelines, indicated that the tested soils fall overall in neighboring erosion classifications. However, the soil involving the lower clay content provided the greatest resistance against internal erosion

Leveraging Professional Intellect in the Virtual Age

The paper explores the nature of professional intellect and the requirements for managing it, an area acknowledged as being under-researched. Five case studies in the professional accounting services sector were conducted and the findings were used to identify the structure and evolution towards a knowledge-based accounting practice using Venkatraman’s (1995) model of the virtual organisation. The majority of firms, with one exception, were in the first stage of evolution (extension of Business Process Re-engineering) for all three virtual dimensions, competence leverage, work configuration and market experience. The issues confronting professional accounting practices in moving to the stages of recreating the organisation and recreating value were identified as the need to maximise creative forms of professional intellect, making knowledge management a professional discipline and changing current organisational culture

An investigation into the notion of non-functional requirements

Although Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are recognized as very important contributors to the success of software projects, studies to date indicate that there is still no general consensus in the software engineering community regarding the notion of NFRs. This paper presents the result of an extensive and systematic analysis of the extant literature over three NFRs dimensions: (1) definition and terminology; (2) types; and (3) relevant NFRs in various types of systems and application domains. Two different perspectives to consider NFRs are described. A comprehensive catalogue of NFRs types as well as the top five NFRs that are frequently considered are presented. This paper also offers a novel classification of NFRs based on types of systems and application domains. This classification could assist software developers in identifying which NFRs are important in a particular application domain and for specific systems. © 2010 ACM

MAN AND SUSTAINABLE LOW INCOME HOUSING

The importance of concern for the human dimension in sustainable design and engineering solutions for housing is the issue discussed in paper. It is based on literature studies. Sustainable housing encompasses the provision of residential buildings in a simultaneous pursuit to well-balance three dimensions: (1) economic dimension; (2) ecological dimension; (3) social or human dimension. This implies the promotion of capabilities by which individuals can fulfill their needs in ways that best suit them; consistent with their socio-cultural values and affordability whilst not exhausting the natural environment. The housing backlog and the need for adequate housing especially for low income households is still high in many countries. To cope with housing problems, Low Income Housing projects were carried out throughout the world. The literature studies showed that the majority of research on functionality and adaptability of the houses to meet the requirements of individual households has taken place in advanced countries. Most studies tended to focus on technological issues being divorced from user demands, lifestyle and domestic activities. Further research onto the human dimension in design and engineering solutions for sustainable low income housing in DCs is evident

NRJ RC Baja Vehicle Project - Transmission, Suspension, and Body Systems

Students of Central Washington University’s Mechanical Engineering technology program were tasked with designing, manufacturing, and testing a remote-controlled scale vehicle for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Radio-Controlled (RC) Baja Car Contest sanctioned by Remotely Operated Auto Racers (ROAR). A team of three students was assembled and responsibility over the sections of the RC vehicle were divided amongst the three students. This report focuses on the design, manufacture, testing, and evaluation of the suspension and transmission systems of the RC vehicle. A suspension tower component and transmission housing assembly were conceived to satisfy the RC suspension and transmission systems. Engineering analyses were conducted on various aspects of the then to-be-manufactured parts to achieve optimal dimensions. The parts were 3D-modeled using SolidWorks software, and were manufactured using 3D printing methods and machining methods. The various parts were then tested and evaluated to ensure they satisfied their basic requirements and met the criteria of the ASME Contest. The suspension towers and transmission covers conceived in this project are easily manufactured, interchangeable, require less than three tools to disassemble, and are able to be assembled and disassembled in less than five minutes. The transmission covers and suspension towers successfully completed a one-hour continuous operation test without any disassembly or reduction in function. The covers also successfully withstood the required exterior forces specified in the report. Both components resisted a drop from two feet, along with the entire RC vehicle