Changes In Requirements Research Articles

Supporting Emotional Intelligence, Productivity and Team Goals while Handling Software Requirements Changes

Background: Research shows that emotional intelligence (EI) should be used alongside cognitive intelligence during requirements change (RC) handling in Software Engineering (SE), especially in agile settings. Objective: We wanted to study the role of EI in-depth during RC handling. Method: We conducted a mixed-methods study (an interview study followed by a survey study) with 124 software practitioners. Findings: We found the causal condition, intervening condition and causes lead to key direct consequences of regulating own emotions, managing relationships, and extended consequences of sustaining productivity, setting and sustaining team goals. We found several strategies of supporting EI during RC handling. Further, we found strong correlations between six strategies and one being aware of own emotions, regulating own emotions, sustaining team productivity, and setting and sustaining team goals. Conclusion: Empathising with others and tracking commitments and decisions as a team are key strategies that have strong correlations between managing emotions, between sustaining team productivity, and between setting and sustaining team goals. To the best of our knowledge, the framework we present in this paper is the first theoretical framework on EI in SE research. We provide recommendations for software practitioners to consider during RC handling.

Expanding Demand for Master’s Degree Programs in Interdisciplinary Studies in Education in Mongolia

The fourth revolution of industrialization has enormously influenced the education sector and needs to be dynamic and sensible in light of the changeable requirements of employers. Specifically, higher education institutions (HEIs) must focus on the global labor market to offer an innovative curriculum and attract prospective students. One of the current trends in the higher education sector is to design interdisciplinary degree programs. The interdisciplinary master's degree program is relatively new in Mongolian tertiary education. Therefore, we aimed to identify the need for a master’s degree program in interdisciplinary studies in education from the perspective of prospective students and also determine the areas of studies that have been preferred in the field of education. In this study, two online surveys and a focused-group interview were conducted. Three hundred ten educators were involved in the online surveys and focused-group interviews. The research questions were created on Google form, data was collected electronically, and focused group interviews were conducted simultaneously. The findings indicated that 52% of the prospective students preferred a master’s degree program in interdisciplinary studies in education, and a diverse combination of areas has been demanded, in particular, education and modern teaching methodology (26.4%); teaching and linguistics (25.5%); education and international studies (23%) and, teaching and psychology (19.4%). The other important finding was that interdisciplinary studies would be able to provide the necessary knowledge and skills that make graduates competitive in the labor market.

A Framework for Emotion-Oriented Requirements Change Handling in Agile Software Engineering

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</b> Requirements Changes (RCs) – the additions/modifications/deletions of functional/non-functional requirements in software products – are challenging for software practitioners to handle. Handling some changes may significantly impact the emotions of the practitioners. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Objective:</b> We wanted to know the key challenges that make RC handling difficult, how these impact the emotions of software practitioners, what influences their RC handling, and how RC handling can be made less emotionally challenging. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Method:</b> We followed a mixed-methods approach. We conducted two survey studies, with 40 participants and 201 participants respectively. The presentation of key quantitative data was followed by descriptive statistical analysis, and the qualitative data was analysed using Strauss–Corbinian Grounded Theory, and Socio–Technical Grounded Theory analysis techniques. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Findings:</b> We found (1) several key factors that make RC handling an emotional challenge, (2) varying emotions that practitioners feel when it is challenging to handle RCs, (3) how stakeholders, including practitioners themselves, peers, managers and customers, influence the RC handling and how practitioners feel due to the stakeholder influence, and (4) practices that can be used to better handle RCs. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusion:</b> Some challenges are technical and some are social which also belong to aspects of agile practice, emotional intelligence, and likely belong to cognitive intelligence. Therefore, to better handle RCs with positive emotions in socio–technical environments, agility, emotional intelligence, and cognitive intelligence need to work in synergy with each other.

Design of Intrusion Detection System using Ensemble Learning Technique in Cloud Computing Environment

The key advantage of the cloud is that it fluidly propagates to fulfil changeable requirements and provides an environment that is repeatable and can be scaled down instantly when needed. Therefore, it is necessary to protect this cloud environment from malicious attacks such as spamming, keylogging, Denial of Service (DoS), and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Among these kinds of attacks, DDoS has the capability to establish a high flood of malicious attacks on the cloud environment or Software Defined Networking (SDN) based cloud environment. Hence in this work, an ensemble based deep learning technique is proposed to detect attacks in cloud and SDN based cloud environments. Here, the ensemble model is formed by combining K-means with deep learning classifiers such as Long Short term Memory (LSTM) network, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) and Deep Neural Network (DNN). Initially, preprocessing with data cleaning and standardization is applied to the input data. Meanwhile, a random forest is implemented for extracting the minimum significant features. After that, the proposed ensemble based approach is utilized for detecting the intrusion. This approach is used to enhance the performance of the deep learning classifiers without much computational complexity. This model is trained and evaluated using two datasets as CICIDS 2018 and SDN based DDOS attack datasets. The proposed approach provides better intrusion detection performance in terms of F1 measure, precision, accuracy, and recall. By using the proposed approach, the accuracy and precision value attained is 99.685 and 0.992, respectively.

Technostress Creators and Outcomes Among Egyptian Medical Staff and Students: A Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study of Remote Working Environment During COVID-19 Pandemic.

ObjectivesThis study aimed to investigate the technostress creators and outcomes among University medical and nursing faculties and students as direct effects of the remote working environment during the COVID-19 pandemic.BackgroundDue to the current COVID-19 pandemic, shifting to virtual learning that implies utilizing the information and communication technologies (ICTs) is urgent. Technostress is a problem commonly arising in the virtual working environments and it occurs due to misfitting and maladaptation between the individual and the changeable requirements of ICTs.MethodsA multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in medicine and nursing colleges of 5 Egyptian universities and included both staff members and students. The data were collected through personal interviews, from January to May 2021. All the participants took a four-part questionnaire that asked about personal and demographic data, technostress creators, job or study, and technical characteristics and technostress outcomes (burnout, strain, and work engagement). Furthermore, participants' blood cortisol and co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10) levels were tested in a random sample of the students and medical staff.ResultsA total of 3,582 respondents participated in the study, 1,056 staff members and 2,526 students where 33.3% of the staff members and 7.6% of students reported high technostress. Among staff members, total technostress score significantly predicted Cortisol level (β = 2.98, CI 95%: 0.13-5.83), CoQ10(β = −6.54, CI 95%: [(−8.52)–(−4.56), strain (β = 1.20, CI 95%: 0.93–1.47), burnout (β = 0.73, CI 95%: 0.48–0.97) and engagement (β = −0.44, CI 95%: [(−0.77)–(−0.11)]) whereas among students, total technostress score significantly predicted cortisol level (β = 6.64, CI 95%: 2.78–10.49), strain (β = 1.25, CI 95%: 0.72–1.77), and burnout (β = 0.70, CI 95%: 0.37–1.04). Among staff members and students, technology characteristics were significantly positive predictors to technostress while job characteristics were significantly negative predictors to technostress.ConclusionThe Egyptian medical staff members and students reported moderate-to-high technostress which was associated with high burnout, strain, and cortisol level; moreover, high technostress was associated with low-work engagement and low CoQ10 enzyme. This study highlighted the need to establish psychological support programs for staff members and students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

An intelligent dynamic analysis system for oil and gas reservoirs based on custom components

This paper introduces an intelligent dynamic analysis system of reservoir with components. The system has 6 modules: production early warning, report analysis, single well dynamic analysis, injection-production well group dynamic analysis, reservoir dynamic analysis, and intelligent knowledge base. The system data comes from the production data lake, monitors the production status of the reservoir in real time, and USES the conventional production warning and big data analysis warning to report the warning to users. Researchers can use the system’s three-stage dynamic analysis module to process and resolve the corresponding warning information to maintain the normal production of the field. The system adopts component development, divides the commonly used algorithms and drawings for reservoir dynamic analysis into three categories of components. Each component can be independently applied to a specific scenario by connecting to the database. Through the configuration of free page XML, each component can quickly form different analysis scenarios in an adaptive way, so as to meet the complex and changeable requirements of reservoir geology and production, and better help oil field enterprises to reduce cost and increase efficiency.

Pricing and Contract Design for Software Products in the Presence of Requirements Change

The presence of software requirements change (RC) during project development is a critical challenge for the developer to offer software contract designs. Because under the presence of RC, the decisions toward the contract offer will impact to project’s price spent by the developer. Managers of software companies must decide what contract designs to offer to clients in the development of software. ing from an example drawn from the software industry, we exhibit three designs of software contracts incorporating fixed price (FP) and time-and-materials (T&M) policies. Specifically, a software company offers a fixed-price and agree to RC with adjustment cost (SW contract), or initially provides a fixed price and then charges an additional fee based on the time-and-material in response to RC (MP contract). We examine the strategic choices of two contract designs in a two-stage game. We carry out a full analysis of distinct settings of monopoly model. We characterize the conditions under which the contracts can be the best decision for developers. As the result, we found that the MP contract performed better when accommodating the presence of RC instead of the SW contract.

An Optimal Composition Strategy for Knowledge Service Component Based on Flexible Tracking Particle Swarm Algorithm

It is urgent to combine knowledge resources with manufacturing business processes to form a knowledge service in the cloud mode, so as to provide intelligent support for business activities in product development process. The main challenge of knowledge resource service, however, is how to rapidly construct the complex resource service system and respond promptly to the changeable service requirements in the business process, which is similar to the software system modeling using a component in software engineering. This paper is concerned with an optimal composition framework (OCF) of knowledge resource service, including service decomposition, component encapsulation, and optimal composition. Firstly, the typical business processes are decomposed into the dynamic knowledge element (DKE), and all kinds of knowledge resources and service behaviors are encapsulated into the reusable resource service components (RSC). Then, a multicomponent optimal composition mathematical model is presented, which transforms the problem of component composition into a multiobjective optimization problem. On this basis, a heuristic algorithm with the adaptive mutation probability is introduced to composite the multigranularity service component dynamically and robustly. Finally, the case of component composition for maintenance resource service is studied and the simulation results are provided to verify the efficacy of the proposed model and algorithms.

A Bi-Objective Combination Optimization Model for Line-Seru Conversion Based on Queuing Theory

Although seru production system is one of responsive and flexible systems to cope with the uncertain demands or changes in the volatile market, seru design and worker assignment are still complex problems with the changeable environment and stochastic requirements. In this paper, based on queueing theory, seru production system is addressed to form suitable serus for maximising the utilisation of workers. In addition, faced to the stochastic orders, arranging different orders to corresponding serus is another optimal problem. In this case, a bi-objective combination optimisation model is proposed to confirm serus formation and arrange product orders among different serus. In order to solve this stochastic nonlinear model, an effective heuristic algorithm is designed. Finally, a numerical example is presented to validate the effectiveness of proposed model and algorithm. [Received 16 June 2016; Accepted 1 December 2016]

A VR-based Interactive System to Improve Users’ Involvement in OAP Development

Open-architecture products (OAPs) allow users to add personalized functional modules in an original product to meet changeable requirements for the product. The development of personalized products requires users’ involvement to meet the users’ needs effectively. The existing methods of Internet-based interactive platforms and direct market user surveys cannot provide users full experience of product features. This research proposes a virtual reality (VR)-based interactive system to improve users’ involvement in OAPs development. The system consists of a user interactive interface, a product model-processing module, a function execution module, a data recording and process analyzing module. Users operate the product model in the VR environment to experience the product. A soft-bag folding machine designed using the OAP concept is used in a case study to verify the proposed method.

Learning Integrated Product and Manufacturing Systems

The development of manufacturing systems that are adaptive to the frequent changes in products and market conditions is becoming important with the increase in product variants and decrease in production volume of each variant to meet customers’ demands while remaining profitable. Students mostly learn about various aspects of product design, different production technologies and production planning techniques separately. It is important to provide students with hands-on experience in the whole integrated cycle of product and manufacturing systems development in a realistic environment.This paper discusses the essential knowledge elements spanning the integrated product/system life cycle and the effects of changes in products and their order mix on the manufacturing system synthesis, design, control and operation. Particular emphasis will be placed on adaptable and changeable manufacturing systems which can respond quickly and efficiently to variations in products, product mix and production volume.There are many types of learning environments and factories that can lend themselves to systems-oriented training. They vary greatly in type, scope, function, size, and location but can offer a rewarding experience when coupled with appropriate learning modules and education pedagogy. A truly reconfigurable and changeable manufacturing assembly system, the iFactory, and an iDesign studio as well as the iPlan modulesare used to demonstrate how students can gain valuable learning experience in interactive custom order placement using an iOrder tool which allows product customization and personalization, product design and rapid prototyping, order processing and scheduling, products assembly and inspection, as well as manufacturing systems design and synthesis for changeable requirements. This Learning Factory environment is the first of its kind which integrates products and systems development, operation and control. It offers a unique learning environment for senior undergraduate and graduate students as well as industrial trainees.

Design and Development of an Omni-Directional Mobile Robot for Logistics

In view of the common oriented logistics robot is difficult to adapt to the complex and changeable requirements of modern logistics environment, a highly mobile logistics robot is developed based on the omni-directional mobile mechanism. In the course of the study, the mechanical body of omni-directional mobile logistics robot is designed by the three Swedish wheels structure, then the forward and inverse kinematic is analyzed s, and the result is simulated numerically for validating, finally a set of physical prototype is developed. The development of logistics robot with omni-directional mobile capability can improve the flexibility of logistics transmission equipment, increase the operational efficiency of logistics system and intelligent degree. It has a certain value for the related research for the application field of the robot and logistics equipment field.

Optimal adaptable design for creating the changeable product based on changeable requirements considering the whole product life-cycle

Compared with the traditional design to create multiple products for satisfying different requirements in different life-cycle time periods, adaptable design aims at creating a single product to satisfy these different requirements through adaptation of this product in its different life-cycle time periods. In this research, a method to identify the optimal adaptable product based on changeable requirements is introduced. The changeable requirements are described as functions of the life-cycle time parameter. The adaptable product, modeled by its configurations and parameters, is changed in different life-cycle time periods to satisfy the changeable requirements. An adaptable product is evaluated considering different time periods in its whole life-cycle. Among all possible design candidates, the optimal design is identified through optimization. A case study is conducted to show the effectiveness of the introduced method.

Cooperative and competitive concurrency in scientific computing. A full open-source upgrade of the program for dynamical calculations of RHEED intensity oscillations

Cooperative and competitive concurrency in scientific computing. A full open-source upgrade of the program for dynamical calculations of RHEED intensity oscillations

2405 顧客を起点としたサービスの改善設計の支援手法の提案と実事例への適用(OS9-4 ライフサイクル設計とサービス工学IV,OS9 ライフサイクル設計とサービス工学)

Offering customized solutions is one of the important characteristics of the integrated provision of a product and a service. Generally, customer requirements for a service might change depending on the environments which customers are facing. In order to meet such changeable requirements and realize a long-term relationship, the key is continual customer-oriented service improvement. This paper proposes an engineering method to support the planning of such customer-oriented service improvement. To be more precise, an optimum resource allocation method using a Genetic Algorithm is adopted to prioritize problems to be solved for the purpose of maximizing the degree of customer satisfaction.

Shaped Solid Contour Beam Reflector Antennas That Adjust to Varying Operating Conditions With Just a Few Mechanical Actuators

The aim of this work is to design a shaped solid reflector mechanically reconfigurable and capable to comply changeable coverage requirements using few actuators. The method directly optimizes the actuators with a heuristic technique based in ant colony algorithm, where both mechanical and electromagnetic models are integrated in the same cost function in a simple and effective way using the mechanical concept of stiffness matrix. To illustrate this technique, we present an example of a reconfigurable reflector antenna that covers South America with a minimum directivity and, for some reduction of this minimum directivity, is able to increase the directivity in selected regions to respond to rain and other changing conditions in a few seconds.

Design and implementation of enterprise service bus

The existing Enterprise Service Bus(ESB)products can hardly fulfill enterprises' changeable requirements of business processes due to their absence or inadequacy of manageability,flexibility and openness.Importing work flow technology,an innovative ESB design scheme was proposed with component model as its basis,service chain as the design,deployment and management unit of ESB applications,and event-driven asynchronous messaging as the communication mechanism.Our work has been applied in the NPUESB system.Results prove that the design can not only effectively realize enterprise application integration,but also efficiently implement and manage ESB applications and deal with changeable enterprise business processes,meanwhile possessing good openness and scalability properties.

Formalized Entity Extraction Methodology for Changeable Business Requirements

Without a formal methodology extracting entities from business descriptions, a business requirement in the real world cannot be abstracted correctly into an entity-relationship schema. Once core entities are discovered, we can obtain an Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) by inserting relationships between/among the relevant entities and by aggregating some attributes into one of the entities or relationships. There have been so many studies on formal guidelines for extracting entities from business descriptions. Most of them adopt a knowledge-based approach which consults a knowledge base to recommend entity candidates. However, the knowledge-based approach usually fails to construct the most appropriate ERD for a given business domain. The approach performs the entity extraction on the stiff premise that an object would be classified as an entity if it happen to be classified as an entity once or more in past applications. The previous studies did not consider the flexibility in the object classification that even the same object could be regarded as either an entity or an attribute according to the various concerns of field workers. In this paper, we discuss some limitations of the previous researches on object classification and propose a new methodology for flexible entity extraction. To evaluate the practicality of the devised methodology, we developed a tool for the methodology and performed a case study on option trading applications with the tool.

Regeneration and Possibility for Genetic Transformation of Rose

ABSTRACTThe important stage of genetic transformation is development effective and successful system for plant regeneration. As a major cut flower crop, it have been focused the attention according to this problems of many research groups from all over the world during the last 10 years. The research investigation concerns a development of new varieties to satisfy the continuously changeable requirements of numerous clients and admirers of this flower crop, and varieties more resistant to biotic and abiotic stress. In our study were used leaf explants from Bulgarian novel selected c.v. Anny (Rosa hybrida L.), using two pathways for plant regeneration- somatic embryogenesis and adventituos organogenesis. Several variants were tested for somatic embryogenesis. Some of the best results were achieved in liquid induction medium B5IV (Denchev P. et al., 1991) for a period of 2 weeks, induced explants were replaced on solidified medium for development B53MT (basal B5 supplemented with TDZ-0.2 mg/l and 3 % maltose) for 5 days. The maturation of somatic embryos was carried out on B5reg (B5 basal medium with 0.5 mg/l BAP and 0.01 mg/l NAA) resulting with around 50 % regeneration. This study attempted to achieve regeneration via adventituos organogenesis from leaf explants. The best results were showed on solidified MSN nutrient medium (basal MS supplemented with BAP-5 mg/l, TDz-1mg/1 and NAA-1 mg/l), cultivated first two weeks on dark, after that in conditions of growth room for 30 days. These results were reliable to carry out experiments of direct gene transformation with leaf disks and emryogenic mass (c.v. Anny). As a plasmid DNA was used binary vector pBECKS BIN400, containing selective mark genes GUS (under promoter 35S) and NPT II gene with promoter NOS for kanamycin resistance. Transient transformation was confirmed by glucuronidase activity of plant tissue using a fluorometric analysis of Jefferson et al., (1987) and putative stable-transformed rose embryogenic mass has been isolated. Several factors that have a significant affect on transformation efficiency were examined in an effort to optimize the biolistic process for gene transfer in roses. Some of the best results were achieved with leaf disks experiments.

STUDIES ON RESPONDING UNDER FIXED‐INTERVAL SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT: THE EFFECTS ON THE PATTERN OF RESPONDING OF CHANGES IN REQUIREMENTS AT REINFORCEMENT1

In pigeons responding under a 180-sec fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement, the frequency distribution of the duration of the final interresponse time before the reinforcer was compared with the distribution of the preceding two interresponse times. The results confirmed qualitatively and quantitatively the expected preferential reinforcement of longer interreinforcement times under fixed-interval reinforcement. Requirements at reinforcement were then changed to eliminate the preferential reinforcement of longer interresponse times. Local patterns and mean rate of responding could change, without the characteristic fixed-interval pattern of increasing responding through the interval (scalloping) being much affected. It is concluded that this characteristic pattern of fixed-interval responding does not depend crucially on effects of the reinforcer at the moment of reinforcement, but rather to effects extending over much longer periods of time than just the last interresponse time.