Maps of Lessons Learnt in Requirements Engineering

Both researchers and practitioners have emphasized the importance of learning from past experiences and its consequential impact on project time, cost, and quality. However, from the survey we conducted of requirements engineering (RE) practitioners, over 70\% of the respondents stated that they seldom use RE lessons in the RE process, though 85\% of these would use such lessons if readily available. Our observation, however, is that RE lessons are scattered, mainly implicitly, in the literature and practice, which obviously, does not help the situation. We, therefore, present ``maps” of RE lessons which would highlight weak (dark) and strong (bright) areas of RE (and hence RE theories). Such maps would thus be: (a) a driver for research to ``light up” the darker areas of RE and (b) a guide for practice to benefit from the brighter areas. To achieve this goal, we populated the maps with over 200 RE lessons elicited from literature and practice using a systematic literature review and survey. The results show that approximately 80\% of the elicited lessons are implicit and that approximately 70\% of the lessons deal with the elicitation, analysis, and specification RE phases only. The RE Lesson Maps, elicited lessons, and the results from populating the maps provide novel scientific groundings for lessons learnt in RE as this topic has not yet been systematically studied in the field

A Requirements Measurement Program for Systems Engineering Projects: Metrics, Indicators, Models, and Tools for Internal Stakeholders

Software engineering (SE) measurement has shown to lead to improved quality and productivity in software and systems projects and, thus, has received significant attention in the literature, particularly for the design and development stages. In requirements engineering (RE), research and practice has recognized the importance of requirements measurement (RM) for tracking progress, identifying gaps in downstream deliverables related to requirements, managing requirements-related risks, reducing requirements errors and defects, and project management and decision making. However, despite the recognized benefits of RM, research indicates that only 5\% of the literature on SE measurement addresses requirements. This small percentage is reflected in the lack of well-defined and ready to use requirements metrics, approaches, tools, and frameworks that would enable the effective implementation and management of a RM program. Such a program would, in turn, provide the various internal stakeholders with various quantitative requirements-driven information (e.g., measures, indicators, and analytics, etc.) in order for them to better manage, control, and track their respective process activities. This shortage makes the process of RM, at best, complicated and, at worst, non-existent in most projects. The RM process is further complicated in large systems engineering projects due to large project sizes, numerous internal stakeholders, time pressure, large numbers of requirements, other software artifacts, to name a few. This integrated-article thesis aims to address the aforementioned problem through the following main contributions that have been researched and validated within the context of a large systems engineering project in the rail-automation domain: (i) an empirically derived and validated structured requirements metric suite; (ii) an approach for deriving and organizing requirements metrics and related information; (iii) a requirements-centric, measurement-based health assessment framework; (iv) a meta-model for managing requirements -driven information for internal stakeholders; (v) a prototype requirements dashboard that builds upon and automates the concepts in i, ii, iii, and iv. These contributions have implications for research on RM through extending the body of work on RM and promulgating further research. For practice, the results of this thesis are anticipated to facilitate the implementation and management of RM programs in real-world projects

ʿAbdulḥalīm Abū Shuqqa’s The Liberation of Women in the Age of Revelation: A Translation and Critical Commentary

One of Muslim scholars’ modern endeavors is to identify Islam’s egalitarian and liberating views on women as espoused by its earliest sources— the Qur’an and hadith. ʿAbdulḥalīm Abū Shuqqa makes such an attempt in his six-volume, Arabic book titled “The Liberation of Women in the Age of Revelation” (Taḥrīr al-Mar’a fī ‘Aṣr al-Risāla) published in 1995. He shows evidence from the Qur’an and authentic hadith reports for women’s autonomy, involvement in communal worship, public life, politics, battlefields, and professional work, among other activities. In an attempt to analyze and bring what was considered a ‘breakthrough’ in the Islamic discourse on women to a wider audience, this thesis provides an annotated translation of four chapters from the book’s first volume that addresses Muslim women’s character in the Qur’an and hadith, supported by a critical introduction that discusses the reception of the book and situates it within contemporary Islamic discourses on women

Reasoning with God: Reclaimin Shari'ah in the Modern Age, by Khaled Abou El Fadl

Reviewed by Ibtehal Noorwal