Analysis of Existing Approaches to Constructing Component-based Systems Directly from Natural Language Requirements

System development generally starts with Requirements Engineering (RE) process. Based on requirements, system analysts produce the requirements documents and analyze them in order to produce design documents. These artefacts will be inputs to the later stages in the system development. It is argued that during the transition between these stages, considering many other various factors, information might be missed out or misinterpreted along the way. Hence, a better transition in the development cycle is required. This paper outlines and provides an analysis of the existing approaches in the literature on constructing systems from natural language requirements (NLR) as to provide the motivation of a new approach to constructing component-based system from NLR

Analysis of expert’s opinion on requirements patterns for software product families framework using GQM method

Software product line engineering (SPLE), provides an opportunity to improve reuse of software artifacts through domain engineering and application engineering processes. During the domain engineering process, reuse activities of the product line are well-planned and subsequently executed in the application engineering process. This paper presents an analysis of interview result with experts in requirements engineering (RE) and software development for validating requirements pattern for software product families (RP-SPF) framework. The interview was conducted using goal questions metrics (GQM) method to define a goal and formulate research questions for conducting the interview. During the interview, 6 experts compared RP-SPF approach (systematic) with ad hoc (conventional) approach of reuse and documentation of requirements in terms of suitability, efficiency, and effectiveness in SPLE. The experts also gave their feedback on the perception of the use of RP-SPF tool. The analysis of the interview result shows that RP-SPF approach is suitable in SPLE and more efficient and effective than ad hoc approach of reuse and documentation of requirements

How personality traits are interrelated with team climate and team performance in software engineering?: a preliminary study

Personality and its impacts on team processes in the domain of software engineering have been an area of investigation for many researchers since the last many years. However, personality traits and its effects on team climate and team performance were not being focused as area of research. In our previous research, we had performed a systematic literature review on team climate and team productivity. In progression of our earlier work in this paper, we have extended the work and take personality traits as an independent variable over team climate and performance. This paper reports the results of preliminary data survey, which has been conducted to measure the effects of personality on team climate and team performance. Results show the strong and positive correlation among personality factor Extraversion, team climate and team performance variables

Requirements engineering (RE) process for the adaptation of hospital information system (HIS)

Requirements Engineering (RE) process is an initial stage for any software development process. In this research, we adopted the RE process into a system adaptation software project for a Hospital Information System (HIS). Instead of developing from scratch, the adaptation of an existing system enables a working system to be configured into use in a similar situation in another organization, or use it in a different organization in a different geographical area. Nonetheless. the approach of systems adaptation has its own issues and challenges. This research considers investigating culture-specific behaviour when adapting a system to another environment. The research is motivated by the challenges faced by real-life cases of implementation of a HIS developed in South Korea at one of Saudi Arabian hospital. The outcome of the research is validated through evaluation of academic experts and feedback from a request tracking system. The contribution of the research outcome provides an insight to facilitate the HIS adaptation into Saudi Arabia HIS, and could also be used as a reference for any adaptation process to suit the needs of the stakeholders in similar application domains

Requirements patterns structure for specifying and reusing software product line requirements

A well-defined structure is essential in all software development, thus providing an avenue for smooth execution of the processes involved during various software development phases. One of the potential benefits provided by a well-defined structure is systematic reuse of software artifacts. Requirements pattern approach provides guidelines and modality that enables a systematic way of specifying and documenting requirements, which in turn supports a systematic reuse. Although there is a great deal of research concerning requirements pattern in the literature, the research focuses are not on requirement engineering (RE) activities of SPLE. In this paper, we proposed a software requirement pattern (SRP) structure based on RePa Requirements Pattern Template, which was adapted to best suit RE activities in SPLE. With this requirement pattern structure, RE activities such as elicitation and identification of common and variable requirements as well as the specification, documentation, and reuse in SPLE could be substantially improved

Requirement patterns: an approach for streamlining requirements engineering in software product families

Reusable structure is essential in all reuse-based software development processes. This provides a solid foundation for seamless management of reusable artefacts especially in software product line engineering (SPLE). One of the potential benefits provided by a well-defined structure is systematic reuse of these artefacts. Requirements pattern approach provides guidelines for requirement engineers to reuse and specify requirements. Although a plethora of research on requirements pattern have been reported in the literature, no research available focuses on requirement engineering (RE) activities of SPLE. In this paper, we present an anatomy of software requirement pattern (SRP) for SPLE with a structured example from e-learning domain. To enable practitioners, understand the concept of requirement pattern more, we present a meta-model for the SRP concepts and their relationships. In addition, we describe how the requirement pattern approach, streamlines RE activities, design for and with reuse in both domain and application engineering processes of SPLE. The requirement pattern approach thus helps in achieving systematic requirements reuse (RR) and generation of structured software requirement specification (SRS) for individual applications

Work-related injuries among physiotherapists in public hospitals—a Southeast Asian picture

OBJECTIVES: A cross-sectional study was conducted to measure the prevalence of work-related injuries among physiotherapists in Malaysia and to explore the influence of factors such as gender, body mass index, years of work experience and clinical placement areas on the occurrence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. METHODS: Self-administered questionnaires adapted from the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire were sent to 105 physiotherapists at three main public hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The questionnaire had 12 items that covered demographic information, areas of musculoskeletal problems and physiotherapy techniques that could contribute to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The data obtained were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science version 14 software. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of work-related injuries during the past 12 months was 71.6%. Female therapists reported a significantly higher prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders than the male therapists (73.0%, p,0.001). Significant differences were observed between the proportion of therapists who had work-related musculoskeletal disorders and those who did not for the group with a body mass index (BMI) .25 (x ² = 9.0, p = 0.003) and the group with a BMI of 18-25 (x ² = 7.8, p = 0.006). Manual therapy (58.6%) and lifting/transfer tasks (41.3%) were the two physiotherapy techniques that most often contributed to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. CONCLUSION: Work-related injuries are significantly higher among the physiotherapists in Malaysia compared with many other countries. Female therapists reported a higher incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in this study, and work-related musculoskeletal disorders were more common among therapists working in the pediatric specialty. This study contributes to the understanding of work-related disorders among physiotherapists from a southeast Asian perspective where the profession is in its development stage

Improving information quality requirements for online health information systems: a review on the previous frameworks

Access to online health information has increased tremendously as it gives patients competency to find answers related to their health. The value of online health information is strongly depends on the quality of the information provided to the users. However, there are evidences that some online health information portals provide poor quality of information, due to the exclusion of information quality requirements in the early stages of the system development process. The objective of this research is to review existing frameworks that capture information quality requirements and to select a framework that is appropriate for the research. A total of six frameworks were searched and analyzed from various sources. The findings show that most frameworks focus more on technical aspect when capturing information quality requirements rather than the human aspect, which is the actual use of the information by the users. This research provide some insights to the health practitioners and system developers about the importance of capturing information quality at the early stage of system development based on actual information use