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Quality Requirements Elicitation based on Inquiry of Quality-Impact Relationships
No full textQuality requirements, an important class of non functional requirements, are
inherently difficult to elicit. Particularly challenging is the definition of
good-enough quality. The problem cannot be avoided though, because hitting the
right quality level is critical. Too little quality leads to churn for the
software product. Excessive quality generates unnecessary cost and drains the
resources of the operating platform. To address this problem, we propose to
elicit the specific relationships between software quality levels and their
impacts for given quality attributes and stakeholders. An understanding of each
such relationship can then be used to specify the right level of quality by
deciding about acceptable impacts. The quality-impact relationships can be used
to design and dimension a software system appropriately and, in a second step,
to develop service level agreements that allow re-use of the obtained knowledge
of good-enough quality. This paper describes an approach to elicit such
quality-impact relationships and to use them for specifying quality
requirements. The approach has been applied with user representatives in
requirements workshops and used for determining Quality of Service (QoS)
requirements based the involved users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). The paper
describes the approach in detail and reports early experiences from applying
the approach.
Index Terms-Requirement elicitation, quality attributes, non-functional
requirements, quality of experience (QoE), quality of service (QoS)
When society speaks back. Relevance issues for research in cluster contexts in low income countries
No full textUniversities are relatively neutral bodies/platforms in political contexts that
can differ profoundly. Please note relatively. The universities have to
manoeuvre strategically, though, in order to be durable. In low income
countries with more or less stable political systems the university is a vital
asset for social, cultural and economic sustainability and development. The
universities in these countries face challenging demands to have their outcomes
used in society for economic growth, challenging of more reasons than e.g. in
Europe. This means that the “voice of society” in science argues for use of the
very limited public resources in ways benefitting the people as soon as
possible, if not immediately. Society speaks back in demand for relevant
knowledges for survival and better living conditions. This is a strong
incentive to find other ways than a dominant linear way of disseminating R&D
results, which often takes too long time and is not always efficient or context
relevant. In this chapter I will give some aspects on why and how initiatives
from universities for trying other models like inclusive innovation and cluster
development are relevant, important and have a proved success record
Becoming An Innovative Company: Assessing An Organization’s Innovation Capability From The Perspective Of A Team
No full textLiterature points out the need for companies to innovate continuously. Such
need requires that companies develop capacities to exploit and improve current
work as well as to develop and explore more radical opportunities. This paper
is a case study that investigates the innovation capabilities of a
multinational manufacturing company by interviewing a group that is mandate to
support the development of those capabilities. The data was collected by
semi-structured interviews, which were based on the categories of a framework
previously developed. The findings speak about the importance of setting clear
processes for continuation and implementation of ideas, adequate allocation of
resources and management support. The discussion and conclusion are about the
importance of the integration of efforts in different organizational levels and
some of the future challenges integrating the innovation efforts into a natural
way of working
The friction and wear properties of Polypropylene composite filled with carbon fiber and Polyamide 6
No full textCarbon fiber composites were prepared in order to study the influence of
fillers (polyamide 6; PA6) on the tensile and tribological properties of
polypropylene (PP) composites. Tensile fracture mechanism was discussed based
on the tensile testresults. Tribological tests were conducted on a Mobile
Remote Handler-3 (MRH-3) friction and wear tester using a block-on-ring
arrangement. It was observed that the
carbon fiber (CF) played a main role in the tensile-resistant and
wear-resistant properties of the CF/PP composites. The tensile properties were
ruled by the fiber–matrix adhesion. Moreover, the excellent tribological
performance of the CF/PA6/PP composite is consistent with the worn surface
morphology shown
Mapping customer needs to engineering characteristics: an aerospace perspective for conceptual design
No full textDesigning complex engineering systems, such as an aircraft or an aero-engine,
is immensely challenging. Formal systems engineering practices are widely used
in the aerospace industry throughout the overall design process to minimise the
overall design effort, corrective re-work, and ultimately overall development
and manufacturing costs. Incorporating the needs and requirements from
customers and other stakeholders
into the conceptual and early design process is vital for the success and
viability of any development programme. This paper presents a formal
methodology, the value-driven design (VDD) methodology that has been developed
for collaborative and iterative use in the extended enterprise (EE) within the
aerospace
industry, and that has been applied using the concept design analysis (CODA)
method to map captured customer needs into engineering characteristics and to
model an overall ‘design merit’ metric to be used in design assessments,
sensitivity analyses, and engineering design optimisation studies. Two
different case studies with increasing complexity are presented to elucidate
the application areas of the CODA method in the context of the VDD methodology
for the EE within the aerospace sector
Utvecklingsinriktat lärande inom ESF-projektet Klara Livet. Följeutvärderingsrapport
No full textProjekt Klara Livet riktar sig till individer med en svag ställning på
arbetsmarknaden. Dessa väljs ut genom ett öppet ansökningsförfarande.
Kärnverksamheten inom projektet är en intervention i form av en
utbildningsinsats, som övergripande syftar till att stärka individens
möjligheter och motivation att närma sig eller återgå till arbetet, fungera i
vardagen och därigenom få ett större inflytande på sin upplevda hälsa.
Projektets övergripande syfte är att genom otraditionellt samarbete mellan
olika samverkansaktörer utarbeta och prova en alternativ modell för aktiv
rehabilitering med arbetsförberedande insatser, som i förlängningen ska leda
till sysselsättning för människor som riskerar att hamna i utanförskap.
Ytterligare en målsättning är att individen ska närma sig arbetslivet och en
egen försörjning, antingen genom arbetsplatspraktik eller genom introduktion
till socialt eller kooperativt företagande.
Generellt för den lärande utvärderingen i projekt Klara Livet är att evaluera
projektets struktur, utfall och resultat av praktiskt arbete för att uppnå
förändring, implementeringsprocesser och måluppfyllelse. Med denna utgångspunkt
har en programlogisk teoribaserad utvärderingsmodell valts, som möjliggör en
beskrivning av relationen mellan mål, aktiviteter, processer och effekter.
Utvärderingsdesignen fokuserar på den lärande organisationen där gemensamt
lärande, reflektion och kunskapsspridning i projekt Klara livet står i centrum
och syftar till att skapa en utvecklad förståelse för användning och utveckling
av den kunskap som projektet genererat. Ytterligare en ansats är att
identifiera projektets programlogik och normativa teori med tonvikt på att
tydliggöra kausaliteten mellan mål och aktiviteter, projektets
framgångsfaktorer, nytänkande och innovativa idéer. En central fråga blir då om
mål, verktyg och utfall hänger samman i logisk struktur. Rapporten bygger på
cirka 200 sidor dokumentstudier, minnesanteckningar, processtöd till
projektledare, kvalitetsansvarig och kursledare, 9 individuella intervjuer, 2
lärandeseminarier/dialog¬seminarier, 4 intervjuer i fokusgrupper, 1 workshop, 2
SWOT-analyser, 8 projektlednings¬möten, 1 styrgruppsmöte samt deltagande
observationer i samband med möten och aktiviteter med kursledare och
kursdeltagare.
Resultatet visar att projektet följer de uppsatta direktiv från Europeiska
Socialfonden och i väsentliga delar uppfyller projekt- och effektmålen.
Projektets metodutveckling och de aktiviteter som genomförts inom projektet kan
ses som ett mervärde till den arbetsmarknadspolitik som bedrivs av
Arbetsförmedlingen och bör kunna medföra att den erfarenhet som finns inom
projektet sprids till en strukturell nivå och på sikt bidrar till såväl
systempåverkan, förändring och till offentlig debatt. Samtidigt finns en
farhåga att Klara Livet inte implementeras, bedrivs för långt ifrån den
reguljära verksamheten och därmed endast blir en tillfällig och tidsbegränsad
lösning för en liten grupp individer. Fokus ligger på såväl individ som på
samhällsnytta, sätter brukarperspektivet i centrum och har i princip nått ut
till det antal kursdeltagare som planerats. En av projektets viktigaste
framgångsfaktorer är den starka projektidén med utbildning och
arbetsplatspraktik/socialt företagande, en kombination som bör stärka
individens möjligheter att få ett arbete/närma sig arbetsmarknaden.
Kursledarnas kompetens och engagemang, där många olika professioner och
kompetenser samverkar, närhet till kursdeltagarna och individanpassning
sammantaget med den metodutveckling som ägt rum i utbildningen är ytterligare
framgångsfaktorer.
Resultat och utfall på individnivå är i nuläget endast begränsade.
Förbättringar i kategorierna allmän hälsa, psykisk hälsa, självkänsla,
självförtroende, sovvanor, matvanor och hantering av symptom har påvisats med
hjälp av Wilcoxon signed rank test. En svaghet är dock att mätningar vid
baseline inte gjorts, varför dessa resultat måste betraktas som preliminära.
Ytterligare en svaghet är att ingen forskning bedrivits inom projektet. Frågan
om utbildningskonceptet leder till att de individer som deltagit i den riktade
insatsen har närmat sig arbetslivet och fått större inflytande över sin
upplevda hälsa bör därför fördjupas under den förlängda projekttiden september
2013-augusti 2014.
En av utvärderingens viktigaste konklusioner är att för många deltagare har
projektet varit en väg att komma vidare i en rehabiliteringsprocess med
slutmålet att komma in på arbetsmarknaden. Innovativt är även de nya
samarbetsformer som utvecklats under projekttiden. En utmaning inför den
förlängda projekttiden är att ytterligare stärka och sedimentera den samverkan
som byggts upp mellan myndigheter och andra aktörer, men även att pröva och ge
alternativ till ordinarie strukturer och regelverk
In Small Chunks or All at Once? User Preferences of Network Delays in Web Browsing Sessions
No full textThe time-critical tasks on the Internet are increasing. The delays in these
tasks can have severe implications on the Quality of Experience (QoE) of a
service. Therefore, networks require smart user-centric resource management
mechanisms to reduce the impact of these delays on QoE. For this, a better
understanding of the user preferences with regards to service performance is a
prerequisite. In this paper, we present user responses to the three different
distributions of delays, occurring during shopping sessions on the Web. By
keeping the overall waiting time of the sessions same, we show how the users
respond differently to the different set of delays. We analyzed the user
responses and found that, the users prefer small frequently occurring delays as
compared to the long rarely occurring delays within a task-based session
Popularity index through video semantic quality assessment
No full textPopularity of the streaming media content such as videos can be ascribed to the
perceptual quality, to some extent, of the content. The traditional methods of
audio/video quality assessment lack in provision of the input from higher
cognitive of the human perception. Some studies have revealed that liking or
disliking of a certain content can bias the human judgement towards video
quality. In this paper, we have examined the impact of the use of semantic
quality indicators namely audio content, audio quality, video content, and
video quality in the assessment of quality of a video. Further, we have
proposed a methodology to use these indicators for designing a prediction model
for the popularity of streaming videos
On Descriptive and Predictive Models for Serial Crime Analysis
No full textLaw enforcement agencies regularly collect crime scene information. There
exists, however, no detailed, systematic procedure for this. The data collected
is affected by the experience or current condition of law enforcement officers.
Consequently, the data collected might differ vastly between crime scenes. This
is especially problematic when investigating volume crimes.
Law enforcement officers regularly do manual comparison on crimes based on
the collected data. This is a time-consuming process; especially as the
collected crime scene information might not always be comparable. The
structuring of data and introduction of automatic comparison systems could
benefit the investigation process. This thesis
investigates descriptive and predictive models for automatic comparison of
crime scene data with the purpose of aiding law enforcement investigations.
The thesis first investigates predictive and descriptive methods, with a
focus on data structuring, comparison, and evaluation of methods. The knowledge
is then applied to the domain of crime scene analysis, with a focus on
detecting serial residential burglaries. This thesis introduces a procedure for
systematic collection of crime scene
information. The thesis also investigates impact and relationship between crime
scene characteristics and how to evaluate the descriptive model results.
The results suggest that the use of descriptive and predictive models can
provide feedback for crime scene analysis that allows a more effective use of
law enforcement resources. Using descriptive models based on crime
characteristics, including Modus Operandi, allows law
enforcement agents to filter cases intelligently. Further, by estimating the
link probability between cases, law enforcement agents can focus on cases with
higher link likelihood. This would allow a more effective use
of law enforcement resources, potentially allowing an increase in clear-up
rates
Finding relevant research solutions for practical problems: the serp taxonomy architecture
No full textBackground: Experience and research indicates that there exist a communication
gap between research and industry in software engineering.
Objective: We propose the Software Engineering Research and Practice (SERP)
taxonomy architecture to support communication between practitioners and
researchers. The taxonomy architecture provides a basis for classifying
research from a problem perspective which in turn supports the breaking down of
complex practical challenges to researchable units. Thus such taxonomy may
support the mapping of challenges in industry to research solutions in the
software engineering context.
Method: In this paper we present SERP and exemplifies its usage based on two
literature studies in the field of software engineering. Further, we discuss
how a taxonomy based on this architecture could have helped us in two past
research projects that were conducted in close collaboration with industry.
Finally we validate SERP by applying it to the area of software testing,
developing SERP-test, and interviewing two industry practitioners and two
researchers.
Results: The taxonomy architecture has been applied to two problems in software
testing, and has been assessed through interviews with practitioners and
researchers. The interviews provided suggestions of how to improve the taxonomy
architecture, which have been incorporated. With two examples, we demonstrated
how the taxonomy architecture could be used to find solutions for industrial
problems, and to find the problems addressed by a particular solution.
Conclusion: SERP may be useful in multiple ways: (1) Given that SERP taxonomies
are populated with industrial problems and scientific solutions, we could
rapidly identify candidate research solutions for industrial practice. (2)
Researchers could benefit from the taxonomy in the reporting of their research
to ease the mapping to industrial challenges