Automated Software Tool Support for Checking the Inconsistency of Requirements

Handling inconsistency in software requirements is a complicated task which has attracted the interest of many groups of researchers. Formal and semi-formal specifications often have inconsistencies in the depicted requirements that need to be managed and resolved. This is particularly challenging when refining informal to formalized requirements. We propose an automated tool with traceability and consistency checking techniques to support analysis of requirements and traceability between different representations: textual, visual, informal and formal

THE NEEDS OF CLINICAL DOMAIN LIBRARY FOR ELICITING ACCURATE CLINICAL REQUIREMENTS

Issues in misinterpretation of terms and miscommunication with stakeholders still persist although there are various approaches and tools available to elicit and capture accurate requirements. Specifically in healthcare domain, these issues need serious attention considering that there are myriad complex medical terminologies, unfamiliar to most requirements engineers. Further, accurate terms and words need to be captured as misinterpretations in eliciting requirements may lead to harmful consequences to human’s lives and well-being. This paper presents two preliminary studies that compare the difficulties in eliciting clinical and business requirements. Based on a survey conducted with 20 respondents, it was found that eliciting clinical functional requirements is more difficult than the business requirements. Similar findings were also drawn from interviews conducted with 5 experienced requirements engineers. They also claimed that a clinical domain library could help them to elicit accurate functional requirements. The domain library should also have e several functions that can be used to facilitate the elicitation of accurate functional requirements

Automatic Acceptance Test Case Generation From Essential Use Cases

Requirements validation is a crucial process to determine whether client-stakeholders’ needs and expectations of a product are sufficiently correct and complete. Various requirements validation techniques have been used to evaluate the correctness and quality of requirements, but most of these techniques are tedious, expensive and time consuming. Accordingly, most project members are reluctant to invest their time and efforts in the requirements validation process.Moreover, automated tool supports that promote effective collaboration between the client-stakeholders and the engineers are still lacking. In this paper, we describe a novel approach that combines prototyping and test-based requirements techniques to improve the requirements validation process and promote better communication and collaboration between requirements engineers and clientstakeholders. To justify the potential of this prototype tool, we also present three types of evaluation conducted on the prototpye tool, which are the usability survey, 3-tool comparison analysis and expert reviews

A Pair-oriented Requirements Engineering Approach for Analysing Multi-lingual Requirements

Requirements written in multiple languages can lead to errorproneness,inconsistency and incorrectness. In a Malaysian setting, software engineers are exposed to both Malay and English requirements. This can be a challenging task for them especially when capturing and analyzing requirements. Further, they face difficulties to model requirements using semi-formal or formal models. This paper introduces a new approach, Pair-Oriented Requirements Engineering (PORE) that uses an Essential Use Case (EUC) model to capture and analyze multi-lingual requirements. This approach is intended to assist practitioners in developing correct and consistent requirements as well as developing teamwork skills. Two quasi-experiment studies involving 80 participants in the first study and 38 participants in a subsequent study were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach with respect to correctness and time spent in capturing multi-lingual requirements. It was found that PORE improves accuracy and hence helps users perform better in developing high quality requirements models

VALIDATION OF SECURITY REQUIREMENTS FOR MOBILE APPLICATION: A STUDY

The increased usage of 3G and 4G networks in smartphones has resulted in the need for validating security requirement to ensure safe and secure mobile application experience to users. However, improper validation of security requirements can lead to poor quality of software development. This is also commonly happened while developing software application for mobile. Thus, this paper discusses the gaps found from the existing work on validating the security requirements of mobile application and analyses a few security requirement engineering tools for mobile application that exist in the market for commercial or research purposes. We report our findings from review and analysis of different studies on security requirement engineering for mobile application. The strengths and weaknesses of the features and utility are also presented to provide further understanding of the gaps and weaknesses of each tool. We conclude that these tools are still immature and need further improvements

A Preliminary Study: Challenges in Capturing Security Requirements and Consistency Checking by Requirement Engineers

There has been a growing concern on the importance of security with the rise of phenomena, such as ecommerce and nomadic and geographically distributed work. Realizing the security early, especially in the requirement analysis phase, is important so that security problems can be tackled early enough before going further in the development process and avoid re-work. Ensuring the consistency of elicited functional security requirement of requirements specification is also crucial as the requirements should be well understood and agreed upon by all the stakeholders and end-users. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to further discuss on the challenges faced by Requirement Engineers (REs) in: (1) capturing Security Requirement and (2) Consistency Checking in Requirement Engineering. Motivated from the need to ensure consistency in functional security requirement for developing secure software and the gaps found in the existing works, a survey has been conducted involving 38 experts in software engineering in the industry. The survey aims to identify the current problems faced by them during the elicitation process, security standards used as the reference, elicitation and validation method, and the important properties considered while developing secure software. Results of the survey show that REs face difficulties to understand the security needs and the existing standards are difficult to understand. Therefore, it is proposed that an automated tool to elicit security requirements should be developed

The mold cost estimation calculator for plastic injection mold manufacturing

This paper presents a research about the software system to calculate cost estimation in plastic injection mould manufacturing which is named as mold cost estimation calculator (MCEC). The objectives for MCEC is to optimize the cost estimation problems in plastic injection mould, assists industrial practitioner in estimating budget for manufacturing and assists for teaching purposes. There are three target users for this project that is industrial practitioner, lecturers and students. MCEC is developed using JavaScript programming language which each embedding of JavaScript within a particular environment provides the means to interact with that environment. All users may use this software easily even those who are not expert in injection molding because this software are user friendly

Eliciting Functional Requirements In Clinical Domain: A Review

Requirements elicitation is the most crucial and complex tasks in requirement engineering as it determines the quality of requirements in software development. Further, considering that clinical requirements are more complex in comparison to other requirements, requirements engineers have to give more attention when eliciting requirements for clinical software as any errors may lead to disastrous effects in healthcare. In this case, requirement engineers need to be cognizant of the accuracy and completeness of requirements to ensure the development of a full-function software. Although various methods, approaches and tools have been developed to assist requirements engineers to elicit accurate requirements, there have been very limited work involved in the clinical domain. This paper aims to present a comparison analysis of the existing methods, approaches and tools that help requirements to elicit requirements. The analysis of tools can be used a guidance to identify the existing work related to requirements elicitation

THE MANIFESTATION OF VARIETIES OF BLENDED LEARNING PEDAGOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Despite the increased recognition on the use of online technologies for the delivery of flexible and student-centered learning environments, there are numerous critiques that its usage does not transform academic’s pedagogy: the uses of online technology for teaching and learning have been restrictive, mainly for dissemination or display of knowledge. This paper draws on the findings from three case studies that explore the manifestation of blended learning pedagogies in higher education. Six academics teaching at three different higher education contexts at two different countries, namely Australia and Malaysia were interviewed in order to understand the ways in which online technology is utilized for teaching and learning and the tensions arising from the usage. Guided by the perceptions that BLP is a socially situated practice, the study aims to interrogate the different manifestations of BLP at different contexts of higher education, highlighting the complex interplay between the users (academics), online technology and other significant elements within specific socio-cultural contexts. Focusing on the academic pedagogical practices that are shaped and reshaped within its specific socio-cultural context, this study demonstrates the complexity and fluidity of the different varieties of blended learning pedagogy that are manifested in different conditions and contexts.  It contributes to further understanding of the ways in which online technologies are used in higher education pedagogy within the context of global knowledge economy that emphasizes flexible and student-centered pedagogy. Keywords: Blended Learning Pedagogy (BLP), higher education, online technolog