Early Identification of Implicit Requirements with the COTIR Approach using Common Sense, Ontology and Text Mining

The ability of a system to meet its requirements is a strong determinant of success. Thus effective Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is crucial. Explicit Requirements are well-defined needs for a system to execute. IMplicit Requirements (IMRs) are assumed needs that a system is expected to fulfill though not elicited during requirements gathering. Studies have shown that a major factor in the failure of software systems is the presence of unhandled IMRs. Since relevance of IMRs is important for efficient system functionality, there are methods developed to aid the identification and management of IMRs. In this research, we emphasize that commonsense knowledge, in the field of Knowledge Representation in AI, would be useful to automatically identify and manage IMRs. This research is aimed at identifying the sources of IMRs and also proposing an automated support tool for managing IMRs within an organizational context. Since this is found to be a present gap in practice, our work makes a contribution here. We propose a novel approach called COTIR (Commonsense, Ontology and Text mining for Implicit Requirements) to identify and manage IMRs. As the name implies, COTIR is based on an integrated framework of three core technologies: commonsense knowledge (CSK), text mining and ontology. We claim that discovery and handling of unknown and non-elicited requirements would reduce risks and costs in software development

Designing Digital Work

Combining theory, methodology and tools, this open access book illustrates how to guide innovation in today’s digitized business environment. Highlighting the importance of human knowledge and experience in implementing business processes, the authors take a conceptual perspective to explore the challenges and issues currently facing organizations. Subsequent chapters put these concepts into practice, discussing instruments that can be used to support the articulation and alignment of knowledge within work processes. A timely and comprehensive set of tools and case studies, this book is essential reading for those researching innovation and digitization, organization and business strategy

Characterizing Uncertainty for Regional Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Decisions

This white paper describes the results of new research to develop an uncertainty characterization process to help address the challenges of regional climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions

Downside risk in reservoir management

Downside risk, which refers to deviations below a threshold, is often important in water management decisions, especially in areas with large and skewed variations in precipitation patterns. In this paper, we present a model for a reservoir manager who is downside risk averse and who performs a dynamic allocation of irrigation water, taking into account the negative effects of droughts on farm profits and different environmental constraints. We analyse the water stock, flows and agricultural profits for alternative environmental restrictions and thresholds for irrigation levels and find that stricter environmental constraints increase total water supply and carryover stock, while higher penalty thresholds lead to their overall decrease. Furthermore, increasing penalty thresholds leads to a higher emphasis on avoiding shortages, at the expense of lower average profits.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Technical Debt in Software Development : Examining Premises and Overcoming Implementation for Efficient Management

Software development is a unique field of engineering: all software constructs retain their modifiability — arguably, at least — until client release, no single project stakeholder has exhaustive knowledge about the project, and even this portion of the knowledge is generally acquired only at project completion. These characteristics imply that the field of software development is subject to design decisions that are known to be sub-optimal—either deliberately emphasizing interests of particular stakeholders or indeliberately harming the project due to lack of exhaustive knowledge. Technical debt is a concept that accounts for these decisions and their effects. The concept’s intention is to capture, track, and manage the decisions and their products: the affected software constructs. Reviewing the previous, it is vital for software development projects to acknowledge technical debt both as an enabler and as a hindrance. This thesis looks into facilitating efficient technical debt management for varying software development projects. In the thesis, examination of technical debt’s role in software development produces the premises on to which a management implementation approach is introduced. The thesis begins with a revision of motivations. Basing on prior research in the fields of technical debt management and software engineering in general, the five motivations establish the premises for technical debt in software development. These include notions of subjectivity in technical debt estimation, update frequency demands posed on technical debt information, and technical debt’s polymorphism. Three research questions are derived from the motivations. They ask for tooling support for technical debt management, capturing and modelling technical debt propagation, and characterizing software development environments and their technical debt instances. The questions imply consecutive completion as the first pursued tool would benefit from—possibly automatically assessable—propagation models, and finally the tool’s introduction to software development organizations could be assisted by tailoring it based on the software development environment and the technical debt instance characterizations. The thesis has seven included publications. In introducing them, the thesis maps their backgrounds to the motivations and their outcomes to the research questions. Amongst the outcomes are the DebtFlag tool for technical debt management, the procedures for retrospectively capturing technical debt from software repositories, a procedure for technical debt propagation model creation from these retrospectives, and a multi-national survey characterizing software development environments and their technical debt instances. The thesis concludes that the tooling support, the technical debt propagation modelling, and the software environment and technical debt instance characterization describe an implementation approach to further efficient technical debt management. Simultaneously, future work is implied as all previously described efforts need to be continued and extended. Challenges also remain in the introduced approach. An example of this is the combinatorial explosion of technology-development-context-combinations that technical debt propagation modelling needs to consider. All combinations have to be managed if exhaustive modelling is desired. There is, however, a great deal of motivation to pursue these efforts when one re-notes that technical debt is a permanent component of software development that, when correctly managed, is a development efficiency mechanism comparable to a financial loan investment.Ohjelmistokehitys on uniikki tekniikan ala: kaikki ohjelmistorakenteet säilyttävät muokattavuutensa — otaksuttavasti ainakin — asiakasjulkaisuun asti. Yhdenkään projektiosakkaan tietämys ei kata koko projektia ja merkittävä osa tästäkin tiedosta karttuu vasta projektin suorittamisen aikana. Nämä ominaisuudet antavat ymmärtää, että ohjelmistokehitysala on sellaisten suunnitelupäätösten kohde, joiden tiedetään olevan epätäydellisiä—joko tarkoituksella tiettyjen projektiosakkaiden intressejä painottavia tai tahattomasti projektia vahingoittavia puutteelliseen tietoon perustuvia. Tekninen velka on konsepti, joka huomioi nämä päätökset sekä niiden vaikutukset. Konseptin tarkoitus on havaita, seurata ja hallita näitä päätöksiä sekä tuloksena syntyviä teknisen velan vaikutuksen alla olevia ohjelmistorakenteita. Edellisen kuvauksen valossa ohjelmistokehitysprojekteille on erityisen tärkeää huomioida tekninen velka sekä mahdollistajana että hidasteena. Tämän vuoksi kyseinen väitöskirja perehtyy tehokkaan teknisen velan hallinnan fasilitointiin moninaisille ohjelmistokehitysprojekteille. Väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan teknisen velan roolia osana ohjelmistokehitystä. Tarkastelu tuottaa joukon premissejä, joihin perustuen esitellään lähestymistapa teknisen velan hallinnan toteuttamiselle. Viisi väitöskirjan alussa esitettyä motivaatiota kiinnittävät ne premissit,joille ratkaisu esitetään. Motivaatiot rakennetaan olemassa olevaan teknisen velan sekä ohjelmistotekniikan tutkimustietoon perustuen. Näihin lukeutuvat muun muassa subjektiivisuus teknisen velan estimoinnissa, teknisen velan informaatiolle nähdyt päivitystaajuusvaatimukset sekä teknisen velan polymorfismi. Havainnoista johdetaan kolme tutkimuskysymystä. Ne tavoittelevat työkalutukea teknisen velan hallinnalle, velan propagoitumisen havainnointia sekä mallinnusta kuin myös ohjelmistotuotantoympäristöjen ja niiden velka instanssien kuvaamista. Tutkimuskysymykset implikoivat peräkkäistä suoritusta: tavoiteltu työkalu hyötyy—mahdollisesti automaattisesti arvoitavista—teknisen velan propagaatiomalleista. Valmiin työkalun käyttöönottoa voidaan taas edistää jos kuvaukset kehitysympäristöistä sekä niiden velkainstansseista ovat käytettävissä työkalun räätälöintiin. Väitöskirjaaan sisältyy seitsemän julkaisua. Väitöskirja esittelee ne kiinnittämällä julkaisujen taustatyön aikaisemmin mainittuihin motivaatioihin sekä niiden tulokset edellisiin tutkimuskysymyksiin. Tuloksista huomioidaan esimerkiksi DebtFlag-työkalu teknisen velan hallintaan, retrospektiivinen prosessi teknisen velan kartoittamiselle versionhallintajärjestelmistä, prosessi teknisen velan mallien rakentamiselle näistä kartoituksista ja monikansallinen kyselytutkimus ohjelmistokehitysympäristöjen sekä näiden teknisen velan instanssien luonnehtimiseksi. Väitöskirjan yhteenvetona huomioidaan, että teknisen velan hallinnan työkalutuki, teknisen velan propagaatiomallinnus ja ohjelmistokehitysympäristöjen sekä niiden teknisen velan instanssien luonnehdinta muodostavat toteutustavan, jolla teknisen velan tehokasta hallintaa voidaan kehittää. Samalla implikoidaan jatkotoimia, sillä kaikkia edellä kuvattuja työn osia tulee jatkaa ja laajentaa. Toteutustavalle nähdään myös haasteita. Eräs näistä on kombinatorinen räjähdys teknologia- ja kehityskontekstikombinaatioille. Kaikki kombinaatiot tulee huomioida mikäli teknisen velan propagaatiomallinnuksesta halutaan kattavaa. Motivaatio väitöskirjassa esitetyn työn jatkamiselle on huomattavaa ja sitä kasvattaa entuudestaan edellä tehty huomio siitä, että tekninen velka on pysyvä komponentti ohjelmistokehityksessä, joka oikein hallittuna on kehitystehokkuutta edistävänä komponenttina verrattavissa finanssialan lainainvestointiin.Siirretty Doriast

Dynamic Network Notation: A Graphical Modeling Language to Support the Visualization and Management of Network Effects in Service Platforms

Service platforms have moved into the center of interest in both academic research and the IT industry due to their economic and technical impact. These multitenant platforms provide own or third party software as metered, on-demand services. Corresponding service offers exhibit network effects. The present work introduces a graphical modeling language to support service platform design with focus on the exploitation of these network effects

Narrative Imaginaries: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Mapping Sustainable Futures for the Cantareira System

abstract: Tucked peacefully into mountains just north of the City of São Paulo, the largest metropolitan area in South America, sits the Cantareira Reservoir System. This massive water catchment network received worldwide coverage in 2014 and 2015 as one of the worst droughts in a century hit the region, threatening to collapse the system. In the years since the peak of the drought, the media has changed its focus, the reservoirs have begun a slow recovery, but the people of the region have had to live with the consequences of this difficult period. Faced with an uncertain future, the people continue to grapple with the historic struggles of rural life, while being faced by new threats to the social, environmental, and technological order that has for a long time stabilized the region. My thesis explores the narrative imaginaries that individuals have pertaining to their personal future and that of the region. It delves into the identity of the Rural Producer, the battle to conserve and preserve native forest, issues surrounding the governance of common resources, and what actors perceive to be the biggest advantages and threats to the sustainable future of the region. Utilizing a set of twenty expert elicitation interviews, data was collected from a variety of actors representing a number of roles and positions within the system. My analysis connects disparate individual narratives, illuminating how they connect together with the narratives of other respondents, creating a regional narrative that illustrates a set of desired outcomes for the region. This paper does not attempt to operationalize solutions for the issues that face the region, it does however serve to provide a context for the historical and contemporary issues that exist, a means by which to consider how they may be approached, and ultimately as a tool for policy makers to make more informed decisions going forward.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Global Technology and Development 201

ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES, STATED PREFERENCES, AND HYPOTHETICAL BIAS

Contingent Valuation (CV) methods are a primary tool in environmental economics to ascertain non-use or other values not observable through existing market mechanisms. Because common CV approaches typically rely on hypothetical answers from surveys in order to generate welfare estimates, these are often labelled stated preferences. Results from stated preference methods often diverge from those obtained when actual preference or behavior are involved. This divergence is commonly known as Hypothetical Bias (HB). This dissertation addresses HB as it applies to environmental applications. To begin, a meta-analysis using a sample of studies many times larger than previous works was performed. Its results identify which study protocols exacerbate HB, and which may mitigate it. Furthermore, the meta-analysis establishes the efficacy of some popular techniques to mitigate HB. The second essay focuses on understanding and addressing two important topics to environmental economics, distance decay and charismatic species conservation. These effects have not been investigated with respect to HB. We implement a field survey of monarch and viceroy butterfly conservation, creating survey treatment conditions involving both real payment and hypothetical scenarios in order to establish the extent of HB. The key finding is that while HB is present for both butterflies, HB in distance decay exists for monarchs. There is also additional HB for monarchs compared to viceroys, which we attribute to the former’s charisma. The final endeavor studies the usefulness of consequentiality, a relatively new tactic to reduce HB. Consequentiality is the degree to which respondents believe their answers may affect policy outcomes. Relying on the monarch field survey, we find that using a technique known as ex ante consequentiality may exacerbate HB. Another approach known as ex post consequentiality is more effective at reducing the extent of HB in the data. Lastly, some elements of the studies’ results showcase that HB is not always present and can also explain some of the mixed results found on the efficacy of HB mitigating methods reported in previous studies

Contingent Valuation of Environmental Goods: A Comprehensive Critique

Contingent valuation is a survey-based procedure that attempts to estimate how much households are willing to pay for specific programs that improve the environment or prevent environmental degradation. For decades, the method has been the center of debate regarding its reliability: does it really measure the value that people place on environmental changes? Bringing together leading voices in the field, this timely book tells a unified story about the interrelated features of contingent valuation and how those features affect its reliability. Through empirical analysis and review of past studies, the authors identify important deficiencies in the procedure, raising questions about the technique’s continued use