An improved requirement change management model for agile software development

Business requirements for software development projects are volatile and continuously need improvement. Hence, popularity of Agile methodology increases as it welcomes requirement changes during the Agile Software Development (ASD). However, existing models merely focus on change of functional requirements that are not adequate to achieve software sustainability and support change requirement processes. Therefore, this study proposes an improved Agile Requirement Change Management (ARCM) Model which provides a better support of non-functional requirement changes in ASD for achieving software sustainability. This study was carried out in four phases. Phase one is a theoretical study that examined the important issues and practices of requirement change in ASD. Then, in phase two, an exploratory study was conducted to investigate current practices of requirement changes in ASD. The study involved 137 software practitioners from Pakistan. While in phase three, the findings from the previous phases were used to construct the ARCM model. The model was constructed by adapting Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) method which consists of four 4 stages. Every stage provides well-defined aims, processes, activities, and practices. Finally, the model was evaluated by using expert review and case study approaches. There were six experts involved to verify the model and two case studies which involved two software companies from Pakistan were carried out to validate the applicability of the proposed model. The study proposes the ARCM model that consists of three main components: sustainability characteristics for handling non-functional requirements, sustainability analysis method for performing impact and risk analysis and assessment mechanism of ARCM using Goal Question Metrics (GQM) method. The evaluation result shown that the ARCM Model gained software practitioners’ satisfaction and able to be executed in a real environment. From the theoretical perspective, this study introduces the ARCM Model that contributed to the field of Agile Requirement Management, as well as the empirical findings that focused on the current issues, challenges and practices of RCM. Moreover, the ARCM model provides a solution for handling the nonfunctional requirements changes in ASD. Consequently, these findings are beneficial to Agile software practitioners and researchers to ensure the software sustainability are fulfilled hence empowers the companies to improve their value delivery

Computer Vision Approach for Liver Tumor Classification Using CT Dataset

The liver tumor is one of the most foremost critical causes of death in the world. Nowadays, Medical Imaging (MI) is one of the prominent Computer Vision fields (CV), which helps physicians and radiologists to detect and diagnose liver tumors at an early stage. Radiologists and physicians use manual or semi-automated systems to read hundreds of images, such as Computed Tomography (CT) for the diagnosis. Therefore, there is a need for a fully-automated method to diagnose and detect the tumor early using the most popular and widely used imaging modality, CT images. The proposed work focuses on the Machine Learning (ML) methods: Random Forest (RF), J48, Logistic Model Tree (LMT), and Random Tree (RT) with multiple automated Region of Interest (ROI) for multiclass liver tumor classification. The dataset comprises four tumor classes: hemangioma, cyst, hepatocellular carcinoma, and metastasis. Converted the images into gray-scale, and the contrast of images was improved by applying histogram equalization. The noise was reduced using the Gabor filter, and image quality was improved by applying an image sharpening algorithm. Furthermore, 55 features were acquired for each ROI of different pixel dimensions using texture, binary, histogram and rotational, scalability, and translational (RST) techniques. The correlation-based feature selection (CFS) technique was deployed to obtain 20 optimized features from these 55 features for classification. The results showed that RF and RT performed better than J48 and LMT, with an accuracy of 97.48% and 97.08%, respectively. The proposed novel framework will help radiologists and physicians better diagnose liver tumors

A Review of Requirement Prioritization Techniques in Agile Software Development

Prioritization is a crucial process in Requirement Change Management (RCM), as erroneous requirements prioritisation may increase the cost of development and lead to project failures. In Agile Software Development (ASD), requirement prioritization (RP) is difficult to maintain and requires more formal process.Changes in the priority list leads towards rework. Moreover, requirement prioritization in Agile is a difficult task due to its volatile nature. Ignorance of critical requirements during prioritization will result in numerous problems like poor quality of product and unsatisfied client. This paper presents a comprehensive review of RP by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of existing RP techniques.This paper also provides information related to the current state-of-the-art on techniques and practices of RP and the research gaps in related works. These findings will contribute as inputs to construct a framework for selecting suitable RP techniques in ASD which can help software practitioners in choosing suitable prioritization techniques for handling continuous requirement change in ASD

Requirement change taxonomy and categorization in agile software development

Due to the rapid growth in software engineering technology and with advancements of agile methodology, software requirement change management is essentially concerned. Requirements are continuously changed in Agile Software Development (ASD) and need a careful change management method. Continuously change and poorly defined requirements may result in a requirement to become harmful that are both extremely risky and damaging, for the software project in ASD. In order to understand the issue, this paper reviewed several published research papers and identify the requirement change taxonomy. The main objective of this paper is to create requirement change taxonomy and further categorize the requirement change element on the basis of reason and origin of change, for a better understanding of change request. Change categorization will be referred to propose a model of requirement change management in ASD. Moreover, managing change request during requirement change management improves the chance of developing ASD project successfully by minimizing the risks associated with it

A Framework to Reduce Road Congestion by means of Data Analytics

The density of vehicles on the road especially in urban areas keeps on increasing to large amount day by day. Especially during the peak hours of the day, large amount of people wastes much of their time in traffic signals. Not only they waste energy by burning excess fuel and releasing CO2 emissions in the environment as well as their time and money. An idea has been proposed to monitor the traffic congestion by means of data analytics on image data and solve the critical traffic congestion issue. The CCTV or surveillance cameras installed at the top points on the roads acts as a medium to provide image data as an input to analyze road traffic congestion by counting the number of vehicles under specified interval of time. Monitoring of traffic congestion using image processing techniques is very useful for the future urban road planning such as: 1) if there is a need to make the road wider, 2) if there is a need to add more lanes on the road, 3) if there is need to make flyover or a bridge to control the traffic on the roads. It will help municipalities to structure and expansion of the roads

Formal Specification and Design of E-Learning IMS

The purpose of this research study is to look at, how the utilization of planning techniques / strategies having the most important impacts on any project /organization’s success and imaginative problem?solving. In particular Project Planning Techniques, three most important arranging basic strategies including, Gantt graphs, case?based arranging and basic way investigation, were studied &analyzed. As this study is an empirical in nature which purposes to highlight the project standards used to examine the accomplishment of projects and the project planning techniques being practically applicable. It is quantitative research study and questionnaires were asked to access the variables and associate with the existing literature. Project Success criteria were graded which were found to be dissimilar in this field as compare to others. It also presented the knowledge and usage of project planning techniques for categorizing the room of improvement as for as the Project Success is concerned, where some professional trainings are required for the project team members. The role of Effective Project Governance is also very vital for project success as well. The main focus and targeted area is the construction industry of Pakistan

A Review on Transformation of Monolithic Applications towards Microservices Environment

The traditional monolithic approach is widely employed in centralized software development, deployment, and reusability, as the modules are tightly connected, causing several challenges in programming. The study utilized different techniques for the easy transformation of several running monolithic applications to micro services including, Angular 2, REST API, Web application and several other architectural approaches are discussed. This review paper highlights the significance of microservices and the transformation of monolithic applications towards microservices. As multiple software applications are an integral part of a traditional monolithic application, the modules cannot be extended separately, and different modules cannot use various technology stacks. So, monolithic source code must be migrated to the microservice platform in order to extend `the lifecycle of applications in today's environment. However, due to structural complexity, scattered application logic, and dependency upon external framework libraries, the transformation towards a microservices platform is quite challenging. A Microservice architecture is a container of loosely coupled independent services making a flexible system. In this study, potential areas for the transformation of monolithic application source code are highlighted. Furthermore, key challenges and open research issues in this area are highlighted, requiring the research community's attention. The study concludes that Microservices are not a one-size-fits-all solution for every challenging situation. Monolithic transformation requires significant amount of time and effort on the part of everyone in the business. Full Tex

A Review on Transformation of Monolithic Applications towards Microservices Environment

The traditional monolithic approach is widely employed in centralized software development, deployment, and reusability, as the modules are tightly connected, causing several challenges in programming. The study utilized different techniques for the easy transformation of several running monolithic applications to micro services including, Angular 2, REST API, Web application and several other architectural approaches are discussed. This review paper highlights the significance of microservices and the transformation of monolithic applications towards microservices. As multiple software applications are an integral part of a traditional monolithic application, the modules cannot be extended separately, and different modules cannot use various technology stacks. So, monolithic source code must be migrated to the microservice platform in order to extend `the lifecycle of applications in today's environment. However, due to structural complexity, scattered application logic, and dependency upon external framework libraries, the transformation towards a microservices platform is quite challenging. A Microservice architecture is a container of loosely coupled independent services making a flexible system. In this study, potential areas for the transformation of monolithic application source code are highlighted. Furthermore, key challenges and open research issues in this area are highlighted, requiring the research community's attention. The study concludes that Microservices are not a one-size-fits-all solution for every challenging situation. Monolithic transformation requires significant amount of time and effort on the part of everyone in the business. Full Tex

Improving Queuing System Throughput Using Distributed Mean Value Analysis to Control Network Congestion

In this paper, we have used the distributed mean value analysis (DMVA) technique with the help of random observe property (ROP) and palm probabilities to improve the network queuing system throughput. In such networks, where finding the complete communication path from source to destination, especially when these nodes are not in the same region while sending data between two nodes. So, an algorithm is developed for single and multi-server centers which give more in-teresting and successful results. The network is designed by a closed queuing network model and we will use mean value analysis to determine the network throughput (β) for its different values. For certain chosen values of parameters involved in this model, we found that the maximum net-work throughput for 0.7β ≥ remains consistent in a single server case, while in multi-server case for 0.5β ≥ throughput surpass the Marko chain queuing system