Some Findings Concerning Requirements in Agile Methodologies

gile methods have appeared as an attractive alternative to conventional methodologies. These methods try to reduce the time to market and, indirectly, the cost of the product through flexible development and deep customer involvement. The processes related to requirements have been extensively studied in literature, in most cases in the frame of conventional methods. However, conclusions of conventional methodologies could not be necessarily valid for Agile; in some issues, conventional and Agile processes are radically different. As recent surveys report, inadequate project requirements is one of the most conflictive issues in agile approaches and better understanding about this is needed. This paper describes some findings concerning requirements activities in a project developed under an agile methodology. The project intended to evolve an existing product and, therefore, some background information was available. The major difficulties encountered were related to non-functional needs and management of requirements dependencies

Silicon oxycarbonitride ceramic containing nickel nanoparticles from design to catalytic application

Nickel containing silicon oxycarbonitride ceramic nanocomposites are synthesized from hydrous nickel acetate and poly vinyl silazane Durazane 1800 or perhydropolysilazane NN120 20 A PHPS . A room temperature chemical reaction results in Ni containing polysilazane precursors which are transformed into ceramic nanocomposites with nickel nanoparticles 2 4 nm upon pyrolysis at elevated temperatures 700 1100 C under an argon atmosphere. The ceramic nanocomposites derived from the Durazane 1800 Ni precursor by the thermolysis process at 700 and 900 C manifest a microporous structure with a BET specific surface area of amp; 8764;361 and amp; 8764;232 m2 g amp; 8722;1, respectively. In contrast, all pyrolyzed samples derived from the PHPS Ni precursor exhibit a nonporous structure. The Ni SiOCN ceramic nanocomposites tested in a plug flow fixed bed reactor display significant catalytic activity in dry methane reforming to syngas. The highest CH4 reaction rate of 0.18 mol min amp; 8722;1 gNi amp; 8722;1 is observed at 800 C for the sample derived from the PHPS Ni precursor by pyrolysis at 900 C. All these make the materials developed in this work, i.e. nickel nanoparticles in situ formed in the SiOCN ceramic matrix, as promising candidates for heterogeneous catalysi

Towards requirements engineering with immersive augmented reality

Often, requirements engineering (RE) activities demand project stakeholders to communicate and collaborate with each other towards building a common software product vision. We conjecture that augmented reality (AR) can be a good fit to support such communication and collaboration. In this vision paper, we report on state-of-the-art research at the intersection of AR and RE. We found that requirements elicitation and analysis have been supported by the ability of AR to provision on-the-fly information such as augmented prototypes. We discuss and map the existing challenges in RE to the aspects of AR that can boost the productivity and user experience of existing RE techniques. Finally, we elaborate on various envisioned usage scenarios in which we highlight concrete benefits and challenges of adopting immersive AR to assist project stakeholders in RE activities

A 0.13um CMOS technology for low-voltage analogue applications

Recent demand for battery-operated high-performance electronic products has stimulated a considerable effort towards the development of ultra low-voltage CMOS. We present here a novel approach based on an advanced lateral profiling technique coupled to gate work/unction engineering and show that this technology can rival the best SOI-based devices in speed (a record ring oscillator delay of 55ps at 0.45V supply voltage is measured). The performance of these devices for analogue applications is evaluated in detail to illustrate that the technology satisfy the analogue circuitry requirements, especially with the use of asymmetric source/drain configuration