Categorizing Non-Functional Requirements Using a Hierarchy in UML.

Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are a subset of requirements, the means by which software system developers and clients communicate about the functionality of the system to be built. This paper has three main parts: first, an overview of how non-functional requirements relate to software engineering is given, along with a survey of NFRs in the software engineering literature. Second, a collection of 161 NFRs is diagrammed using the Unified Modelling Language, forming a tool with which developers may more easily identify and write additional NFRs. Third, a lesson plan is presented, a learning module intended for an undergraduate software engineering curriculum. The results of presenting this learning module to a class in Spring, 2003 is presented

A DMAIC Framework for Improving Software Quality in Organizations: Case Study at RK Company

Managing quality is a vital aspect in software development world, especially in the current business competition for fast delivery of feature rich products with high quality. For an organization to meet its intended level of excellence in order to ensure its success, a culture of quality should be built where every individual is responsible of quality and not just the software testing team. However, delivering software products with very few bugs is a challenging constraint that is usually sacrificed in order for a company to meet other management constraints such as cost, scope and scheduling. The purpose of this thesis is to apply six sigma DMAIC framework on 'RK’ company (name anonymized) in order to help software organizations focus on improving the quality of their software products. Different phases of DMAIC methodology are applied to one of the largest software applications for ‘RK’ company where critical to quality aspects were identified, production bugs were classified and measured, the causes of the large number of production bugs were specified leading to different improvement suggestions. Several metrics were proposed to help ‘RK’ company control its software development process to ensure the success of the project under study

Software test and evaluation project, phases III and IV

Issued as Quarterly progress reports, nos. 1-8, Technical reports [nos. 1-8], Draft report and Interim report, Project no. G-36-611Final report submitted separately in series: GIT-ICS-85/2

Evolving practices of end user articulation in software co-design

The work is focused on new techniques and practices that support end user to get involved in software co-design. Social networks, variations of self-documentation and new interactive technologies enable new forms of user involvement in software development projects. The potential of new practices and also the issues that come with these methods will be reflected.Die Arbeit thematisiert neue Technologien und Praktiken zur Unterstützung der Nutzereinbindung im Software Co-Design. Soziale Netzwerke, Variationen der Selbstdokumentation und neue interaktive Technologien ermöglichen neue Formen der Beteiligung an Software Entwicklungsprojekten. Das Potential neuer Praktiken und auch die Herausforderungen bei der Anwendung solcher Methoden werden reflektiert

INVESTIGATING POSSIBILITIES AND PROBABILITIES OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS (BMI): BEYOND BIOLOGY AND INFORMATION

My work focuses on how medicalized minds and bodies are refashioned through the concepts and technologies of Biomedical Informatics (BMI). I attempt to make visible objects of informatics that mark the human as a digital machine operating among and within computerized agencies, artificial intelligence, and what has been termed Big Data correlation. Specifically, the anthropological puzzle that I investigate focuses on the BMI imagination and its implicit and implemented effects upon doctors as operators, patients as sites, and informaticians as technicians of “new” medicine in a world of expanding computerized data that shifts and refashions the human care encounter. I argue that the contemporary of BMI has a far wider organizing effect upon healthcare and medicalized bodies than previous aspirations based on computer technology as mere tools in medicine. Through a rapid development and deployment of intelligent databases and computerized networks, BMI is currently restructuring modes of clinical care. As a set of scientific practices, it is reconstituting earlier medical informatics of the 1970s, 1980’s, 1990’s and pushing these modes of care in different directions. Such restructurings come in contact with non-human operations of medico-scientific systems of knowledge and through programmable expressions that impinge upon doctors’ deliberations through everyday encounters with patients. I approach these puzzles and clinical experiences through the figure of an informatics body that frames emergent arrangements of computerized algorithms, organization, disease, genomics, and therapeutic order. As an informatics body, the human falls under questions embedded in this deeper convergence of medical digitalization. Complex computerizations and algorithmic forms that are designed to bring clinical improvement are giving rise to unanticipated effects that are refashioning the body of the patient and the mind of the physician in ways that have been under-examined. In futures of biomedicine that I investigate, an informatics-based medicine, the figure of the human in the continuum of care is constantly being reengineered and redeployed. Throughout my investigation I ask What acts, human and non-human, possess the possibility of therapeutic improvement and can bring other things to life that do not originate in current therapeutic order? I suggest that systems of machine agency that are targeting and monitoring for disease and health are reconstituting who and what has access to care, as well as access to decision agency among intelligent and computerized care data

A process for the application of modular architectural principles to system concept design.

A system architecture can be configured in ways that simplify both a system design and its development, by using established architectural principles such as independence and modularity. Despite systems design having been recognised as a discipline and a process as early as the mid-1900s, there are currently few methods available that address how these principles can be applied in practice. The literature search for this research has established a set of principles that can be used to develop a modular design, but has also shown that there are few formal methods available that will allow a system designer to apply such principles. This thesis examines what the key principles of modular architecture are and develops a process that enables the application of these principles to a system concept design. Key principles used are those of simplicity, independence, modularity and similarity. The concept of ‘context types’ is developed to allow the system designer to choose an architectural strategy that suits the system context. Another novel concept of ‘functional interaction types’ helps the system designer to identify critical interactions within the architecture that need to be addressed. Finally, the concept of functional interaction types is combined with existing measures of architectural ‘goodness’ to generate a method of evaluating the architecture that focusses on critical aspects. The process proposed is demonstrated by using a range of system examples and compared with the two of the most well-known methods currently available; Systematic Design and Axiomatic Design

A process for the application of modular architectural principles to system concept design.

A system architecture can be configured in ways that simplify both a system design and its development, by using established architectural principles such as independence and modularity. Despite systems design having been recognised as a discipline and a process as early as the mid-1900s, there are currently few methods available that address how these principles can be applied in practice. The literature search for this research has established a set of principles that can be used to develop a modular design, but has also shown that there are few formal methods available that will allow a system designer to apply such principles. This thesis examines what the key principles of modular architecture are and develops a process that enables the application of these principles to a system concept design. Key principles used are those of simplicity, independence, modularity and similarity. The concept of ‘context types’ is developed to allow the system designer to choose an architectural strategy that suits the system context. Another novel concept of ‘functional interaction types’ helps the system designer to identify critical interactions within the architecture that need to be addressed. Finally, the concept of functional interaction types is combined with existing measures of architectural ‘goodness’ to generate a method of evaluating the architecture that focusses on critical aspects. The process proposed is demonstrated by using a range of system examples and compared with the two of the most well-known methods currently available; Systematic Design and Axiomatic Design

Requirements for a personal decision support system: An investigation of the requirements for a personal decision support system for choosing among health care financing alternatives considered from a diffusion of innovations perspectives

Drawing from the Diffusion of Innovation research tradition, this study investigates the requirements for a Personal Decision Support System for selection among a set of health care financing or insurance options available to the individual. Using the health care insurance decision commonly required of many citizens of the U.S.A. as the focus of study, the study characterizes the requirements as generalized meta-requirements applicable to many systems and functional requirements applicable to a system of a particular type. The argument is also presented that Decision Support Systems used for personal decisions represent a rather specialised case of DSS. This specialised case is characterised as Personal Decision Support Systems or PDSS