A Case Study on Artefact-based RE Improvement in Practice

Most requirements engineering (RE) process improvement approaches are solution-driven and activity-based. They focus on the assessment of the RE of a company against an external norm of best practices. A consequence is that practitioners often have to rely on an improvement approach that skips a profound problem analysis and that results in an RE approach that might be alien to the organisational needs. In recent years, we have developed an RE improvement approach (called \emph{ArtREPI}) that guides a holistic RE improvement against individual goals of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the artefacts. In this paper, we aim at exploring ArtREPI's benefits and limitations. We contribute an industrial evaluation of ArtREPI by relying on a case study research. Our results suggest that ArtREPI is well-suited for the establishment of an RE that reflects a specific organisational culture but to some extent at the cost of efficiency resulting from intensive discussions on a terminology that suits all involved stakeholders. Our results reveal first benefits and limitations, but we can also conclude the need of longitudinal and independent investigations for which we herewith lay the foundation

Access to Early Warning for Climate Change-Related Hazards in Informal Settlements of Accra, Ghana

Climate change-related hazards will aggravate and impact differently on urban societies. Although early warning systems will be important for reducing the hazard risks in cities, the nature of early warning systems that are available to residents of informal settlements remains less understood. This paper aimed to assess the early warning systems through which informal dwellers reduce their hazard risks in an African city. Using Accra as the case, data were collected from 582 households using a structured questionnaire along with 25 institutional key informant interviews and 14 focus discussions with state and settlement actors in this study. Findings of the paper show that a mix of formal and informal early warning systems are utilized by residents of informal settlements, but the majority of them perceived state disaster management institutions as not performing optimally in their resident settlements. The nature of land ownership in the informal settlements influenced their political exclusion and state institutions’ decisions not to locate weather monitoring equipment in their settlements. Respondents without the security of land tenure perceived state disaster management institutions as not performing optimally, which negatively affects their capacity to respond to climate change-related hazards. The paper thus recommends the incorporation of informal early warning systems into city-wide hazard early warning systems through participatory planning in Accra and similar contexts. Future scholars may extend this discourse by examining the effect of the use of informal early warning systems on the uptake of formal hazard early warning sources in informal settlements

Local Perceptions and Scientific Knowledge of Climate Change: Perspectives of Informal Dwellers and Institutions in Accra, Ghana

The extant literature in urban climate studies suggests that the urban poor are the most vulnerable to climate change. Local perceptions and knowledge of climate change are also generally viewed as crucial for sustainable adaptation planning in developing countries. Yet the extent to which perceptions of climate change are influenced by the context of informal urbanisation in the Global South remains unexamined. This paper aimed to examine the extent to which the context of residents of informal settlements influences their perceptions and the congruence of these perceptions with scientific knowledge of climate change in an African city. Using Accra, Ghana as a case, 582 household surveys, 25 institutional key informant interviews and 14 focus group discussions were conducted and analysed. Results show two main findings: (1) respondents mainly perceived changes in climate change related-phenomena which were in synergy with scientific sources but their claims of increases in flooding were not supported by scientific data; and (2) while the literacy levels of the respondents were unrelated to their perception about climate change, heir perceptions were also discordant with city authorities’ perceptions on the causes of flooding as a hazard. The study suggests the integration of local perceptions and knowledge of climate change in adaptation planning in Accra and similar contexts

What influences the speed of prototyping? An empirical investigation of twenty software startups

It is essential for startups to quickly experiment business ideas by building tangible prototypes and collecting user feedback on them. As prototyping is an inevitable part of learning for early stage software startups, how fast startups can learn depends on how fast they can prototype. Despite of the importance, there is a lack of research about prototyping in software startups. In this study, we aimed at understanding what are factors influencing different types of prototyping activities. We conducted a multiple case study on twenty European software startups. The results are two folds, firstly we propose a prototype-centric learning model in early stage software startups. Secondly, we identify factors occur as barriers but also facilitators for prototyping in early stage software startups. The factors are grouped into (1) artifacts, (2) team competence, (3) collaboration, (4) customer and (5) process dimensions. To speed up a startups progress at the early stage, it is important to incorporate the learning objective into a well-defined collaborative approach of prototypingComment: This is the author's version of the work. Copyright owner's version can be accessed at doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57633-6_2, XP2017, Cologne, German

Demystifying Data Science Projects: A Look on the People and Process of Data Science Today

Peer reviewe

Refining Vision Videos

[Context and motivation] Complex software-based systems involve several stakeholders, their activities and interactions with the system. Vision videos are used during the early phases of a project to complement textual representations. They visualize previously abstract visions of the product and its use. By creating, elaborating, and discussing vision videos, stakeholders and developers gain an improved shared understanding of how those abstract visions could translate into concrete scenarios and requirements to which individuals can relate. [Question/problem] In this paper, we investigate two aspects of refining vision videos: (1) Refining the vision by providing alternative answers to previously open issues about the system to be built. (2) A refined understanding of the camera perspective in vision videos. The impact of using a subjective (or "ego") perspective is compared to the usual third-person perspective. [Methodology] We use shopping in rural areas as a real-world application domain for refining vision videos. Both aspects of refining vision videos were investigated in an experiment with 20 participants. [Contribution] Subjects made a significant number of additional contributions when they had received not only video or text but also both - even with very short text and short video clips. Subjective video elements were rated as positive. However, there was no significant preference for either subjective or non-subjective videos in general.Comment: 15 pages, 25th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality 201

An empirical cognitive model of the development of shared understanding of requirements

It is well documented that customers and software development teams need to share and refine understanding of the requirements throughout the software development lifecycle. The development of this shared understand- ing is complex and error-prone however. Techniques and tools to support the development of a shared understanding of requirements (SUR) should be based on a clear conceptualization of the phenomenon, with a basis on relevant theory and analysis of observed practice. This study contributes to this with a detailed conceptualization of SUR development as sequence of group-level state transi- tions based on specializing the Team Mental Model construct. Furthermore it proposes a novel group-level cognitive model as the main result of an analysis of data collected from the observation of an Agile software development team over a period of several months. The initial high-level application of the model shows it has promise for providing new insights into supporting SUR development

Influential factors of aligning Spotify squads in mission-critical and offshore projects – a longitudinal embedded case study

Changing the development process of an organization is one of the toughest and riskiest decisions. This is particularly true if the known experiences and practices of the new considered ways of working are relative and subject to contextual assumptions. Spotify engineering culture is deemed as a new agile software development method which increasingly attracts large-scale organizations. The method relies on several small cross-functional self-organized teams (i.e., squads). The squad autonomy is a key driver in Spotify method, where a squad decides what to do and how to do it. To enable effective squad autonomy, each squad shall be aligned with a mission, strategy, short-term goals and other squads. Since a little known about Spotify method, there is a need to answer the question of: How can organizations work out and maintain the alignment to enable loosely coupled and tightly aligned squads? In this paper, we identify factors to support the alignment that is actually performed in practice but have never been discussed before in terms of Spotify method. We also present Spotify Tailoring by highlighting the modified and newly introduced processes to the method. Our work is based on a longitudinal embedded case study which was conducted in a real-world large-scale offshore software intensive organization that maintains mission-critical systems. According to the confidentiality agreement by the organization in question, we are not allowed to reveal a detailed description of the features of the explored project