Requirements Definition Phase Research Articles

Proposal for a Participatory Methodology for the Creation of Serious Games

We are facing a new generation of students, who are not only looking for theoretical knowledge, but also want learning to be practical, interesting, and fun. They request didactic techniques that allow them to have a more prominent role in their learning, models that are not focused on teaching, but on learning. They are students with different characteristics because they were born in the digital age. Technology has changed the way they relate to the world. They are not comfortable with respect to traditional models and try to incorporate new technologies into all aspects of their lives. Within the educational field, new technologies are seen as a tool that facilitates learning and develops skills in students. From this perspective, the development of simulators and serious games are now used as a strategy to facilitate learning. The advantages of using a serious game seem evident, they help develop critical thinking, encourage creativity, increase problem-solving skills, increase retention, among other benefits. However, when games are not well designed, they lose both their appeal and their playful essence. One reason for these problems is the absence of the application of any design methodology, and that many of these problems come from the requirements definition phase. Specifically, most of the problems occur in the game design phase, where there is a deficiency in the writing of the requirements requested by the teachers. When the requirements are vague, or ambiguous, experts in the development area are unable to interpret the interaction design, the game mechanics, or the way in which users will interact with the software. This article aims to discuss the specifications and requirements that instructional designers and developers should address before migrating to project development, implementation, or evaluation. This article is important because it analyzes the need to establish clear requirements and objectives that will facilitate the creation of serious games in education.

Systems engineering procedure for requirements management of divertor system of tokamak reactors

Systems Engineering allows to address the design of complex systems from the early stage until the end of its lifetime with the aim to realize successful systems. The intrinsic complexity of tokamak design requires to adopt Systems Engineering guidelines to write correctly and efficiently a large set of system requirements. Well-formed requirements would make efficient and consistent the downstream design, integration, and verification of a system. The process of requirements definition, conformed to Guide to System Requirements Definition recommended in fusion field, is far from simple and fast. The requirements definition phase encourages the early identification of issues that can be acted in the life cycle. This paper firstly highlights a new procedure to include requirements of a tokamak component in the requirement management tool of the whole system. This work identifies engineering requirements and constraints and describes their impact on the selection of the design principles of the EU-DEMO divertor system. The new identified procedure is developed using a participative approach involving experts belonging to different working groups.

Simulation‐Driven Design of an Additively Manufactured Reactor for Exothermic Liquid‐Liquid Reactions

AbstractAdditive manufacturing opens new possibilities in the design of customized process units, creating new synergies with computer aided engineering methods. This work showcases a design process of an additively manufactured reactor for an exothermic liquid‐liquid reaction using a simulation‐driven design approach using up‐scale office‐standard computational resources. The ability to evaluate design changes quickly and cost‐effectively allows the engineering team to move from the requirements definition phase to a working reactor concept and printed prototype in less than three months.

Integrating machine learning with QFD for selecting functional requirements in construction automation

An important aspect of the conceptual design is at the customer requirement definition stage, where an optimal number of functional requirements are specified with the application of quality function deployment. To facilitate a systematic specification of functional requirements, state-of-the-art unsupervised machine learning techniques will be introduced in the feature selection of functional requirements. However, the scarcity of references on unsupervised feature selection in the literature reflects the difficulty associated with this topic. At the customer requirement definition phase, three techniques will be proposed for selecting functional requirements, namely: (a) principal component analysis, (b) forward orthogonal search, and (c) Kohonen self-organizing map neural network. These machine learning feature selection techniques address the limitations of current approaches in systematically determining the minimum functional requirements from the mapping of customer requirements in quality function deployment. When applied to the conceptual design of the transportable automated wood wall framing machine that is under development at the University of Alberta, the proposed feature selection techniques have been observed to be: (i) fast, (ii) amenable to small quality function deployment dataset, and (iii) adequate in realizing design objectives. The results presented in this paper can be easily extended to online determination of customer requirements and functional requirements, project management, contract management, and marketing.

Critical Success Factors of System Requirements Definition in IT System Development: An Industrial Case Study

The success of IT system development is largely dependent on the System Requirements Definition (SRD) phase. Researches on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in the SRD phase are beneficial to the success of IT system development. However, reports that consider the situation in the system requirements definition phase is lacking and these studies try to develop universal truths for CSFs without lessons learnt from empirical evidence need to be characterized. This study is a step towards bridging this gap in characterized evidence to discover “difficult items” in the SRD phase. Moreover, we conducted a case study to justify the importance of CSFs that could be 1) Customer/User Involvement, 2) Clear project goals, and 3) Technical skills of the project team in the SRD phase. The results of the characterization indicated that those major CSFs are consistent. Another issue can also be mitigated by examining Agile method.

Critical Success Factors of System Requirements Definition in IT System Development: An Industrial Case Study.

The success of IT system development is largely dependent on the System Requirements Definition (SRD) phase. Researches on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in the SRD phase are beneficial to the success of IT system development. However, reports that consider the situation in the system requirements definition phase is lacking and these studies try to develop universal truths for CSFs without lessons learnt from empirical evidence need to be characterized. This study is a step towards bridging this gap in characterized evidence to discover “difficult items” in the SRD phase. Moreover, we conducted a case study to justify the importance of CSFs that could be 1) Customer/User Involvement, 2) Clear project goals, and 3) Technical skills of the project team in the SRD phase. The results of the characterization indicated that those major CSFs are consistent. Another issue can also be mitigated by examining Agile method.

3-12 要件定義局面におけるプロジェクト管理の運営について : NOTES DBの利用事例

3-12 要件定義局面におけるプロジェクト管理の運営について : NOTES DBの利用事例

1202 要件定義～基本設計工程における変更管理の考察(一般セッション)

1202 要件定義～基本設計工程における変更管理の考察(一般セッション)

Study on Critical Success Factors Estimation in IT System Development

The success of IT system development largely depends on the System Requirements Definition (SRD) phase. Researches on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in the SRD phase are very few. This paper aims to make clear the CSFs in the SRD phase of IT system development. To achieve this, first, interviews to discover “difficult items” in the SRD phase were executed to participants who were engaged in three highly advanced IT system developments. Second, major difficult items were extracted from the interview results. Third, CSFs estimation was executed from the extracted major difficult items. Then, the estimated CSFs were compared to those obtained from the interviews. As a result, CSFs were found to be almost the same between those estimated and interviewed. Through this research, it can be concluded that 1) Customer/User Involvement, 2) Clear project goals, and 3) Technical skills of the project team are the major CSFs in the SRD phase

A model based system engineering approach to design Avionics systems: Present and Future prospect

AbstractSystem complexity in Defense and Aerospace Industry is increasing day by day. Conventional System Engineering is document centric. Text based documents describe system specification, store the records, describe concept of operations and interfaces etc. There are numerous design challenges faced by system engineer while working on text based requirements. Programs are prone to errors during Requirements Definition phase. Also as designs grow and change, maintaining documents becomes an uphill task. Model based approach in System Engineering has ability to detect defect at much more early stage than conventional text based method. Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) uses various block diagrams, state machines, mathematical equations, functional flow diagrams, object‐oriented models which help to understand the Data flow between various subsystems. This paper explains the advantages of model based system engineering over conventional text based approach, a seamless transition strategy from Document‐based to model‐based approach and its various applications in defense and Aerospace domain with future prospect.

A Smart Wearable Sensor System for Counter-Fighting Overweight in Teenagers.

PEGASO is a FP7-funded project whose goal is to develop an ICT and mobile-based platform together with an appropriate strategy to tackle the diffusion of obesity and other lifestyle-related illnesses among teenagers. Indeed, the design of an engaging strategy, leveraging a complementary set of technologies, is the approach proposed by the project to promote the adoption of healthy habits such as active lifestyle and balanced nutrition and to effectively counter-fight the emergence of overweight and obesity in the younger population. A technological key element of such a strategy sees the adoption of wearable sensors to monitor teenagers’ activities, which is at the basis of developing awareness about the current lifestyle. This paper describes the experience carried out in the framework of the PEGASO project in developing and evaluating wearable monitoring systems addressed to adolescents. The paper describes the methodological approach based on the co-designing of such a wearable system and the main results that, in the first phase, involved a total of 407 adolescents across Europe in a series of focus groups conducted in three countries for the requirements definition phase. Moreover, it describes an evaluation process of signal reliability during the usage of the wearable system. The main results described here are: (a) a prototype of the standardized experimental protocol that has been developed and applied to test signal reliability in smart garments; (b) the requirements definition methodology through a co-design activity and approach to address user requirements and preferences and not only technological specifications. Such co-design approach is able to support a higher system acceptance and usability together with a sustained adoption of the solution with respect to the traditional technology push system development strategy.

시스템엔지니어링 강화를 위한 임무보증 Framework 연구

1) Korea Aerospace Research InstituteAbstract : In recent years, the United States have been several major failures of launch. As a result of these failures, activity of mission assurance valued. Mission assurance is defined as the application of systems engineering process towards the goal of achieving mission success. Therefore, mission assurance perform independent technical assessments throughout the concept and requirements definition, design, development, production, test, deployment, and operations phases. Space system program was emphasized the importance of the system engineering for that required huge cost and long term development. For this reason, independent review and verification of mission assurance is essential. Mission assurance gives us confidence to proceed with launch and best opportunity for mission success. In this study, framework of mission assurance is proposed by foreign case analysis. Key Words : System Engineering, Mission Assurance, Core Process(CP), Support Process(SP), Aerospace, Framework, KSLV-II                       !    # $% &       ' '    '   ! &   

Managing Risks in the System Analysis and Requirements Definition Phase

System analysis and requirements definition is a risky phase. It is susceptible to different types of risk factors from the initial preliminary investigation till the final delivery of the requirements document. Risks reside in this phase are considered the ones with the highest severity among other phases. Being the first phase in the development process, the occurrence of risks in this phase negatively influences subsequent phases, affects project progress, and has a negative impact on the project outcomes. Thus, managing probable risks in this phase deadly helps project managers control the majority of risks that might arise later in the subsequent phase. In order to manage risks properly, probable risks need to be identified early, then, risk management strategies have to be proposed and followed in order to avoid and mitigate their occurrence. In this paper, a total number of 28 risk factors have been introduced. For each risk factor, a set of management strategies is proposed. The identified factors and strategies were the harvest of brainstorming sessions with senior software practitioners, comprehensive literature survey, plus ready-made checklist and taxonomies. In order to validate our results, correlation analysis had been conducted through a web-based survey. The results confirmed our assumptions in that all of the identified risk factors have positive correlation with project failure.

Model-based early and rapid estimation of COSMIC functional size – An experimental evaluation

ContextFunctional size measurement methods are widely used but have two major shortcomings: they require a complete and detailed knowledge of user requirements, and they involve relatively expensive and lengthy processes. ObjectiveUML is routinely used in the software industry to effectively describe software requirements in an incremental way, so UML models grow in detail and completeness through the requirements analysis phase. Here, we aim at defining the characteristics of increasingly more refined UML requirements models that support increasingly more sophisticated – hence presumably more accurate – size estimation processes. MethodWe consider the COSMIC method and three alternative processes (two of which are proposed in this paper) to estimate COSMIC size measures that can be applied to UML diagrams at progressive stages of the requirements definition phase. Then, we check the accuracy of the estimates by comparing the results obtained on a set of projects to the functional size values obtained with the standard COSMIC method. ResultsOur analysis shows that it is possible to write increasingly more detailed and complete UML models of user requirements that provide the data required by COSMIC size estimation methods, which in turn yield increasingly more accurate size measure estimates of the modeled software. Initial estimates are based on simple models and are obtained quickly and with little effort. The estimates increase their accuracy as models grow in completeness and detail, i.e., as the requirements definition phase progresses. ConclusionDevelopers that use UML for requirements modeling can obtain an early estimation of the application size at the beginning of the development process, when only a very simple UML model has been built for the application, and can obtain increasingly more accurate size estimates while the knowledge of the product increases and UML models are refined accordingly.

Neuro-Fuzzy Expert System for evaluating the performance of Distributed Software System Architecture

A Neuro-Fuzzy Performance Evaluation Model (NFPEM) proposed in Akinnuwesi, Uzoka, Olabiyisi, and Omidiora (2012) was reviewed in this work with the view of modifying it and thus making it flexible and scalable. The neuro-fuzzy expert system (NFES) reported in this paper is an enhancement to NFPEM with expert system components. NFES can be used to evaluate the performance of Distributed Software System Architecture (DSSA) with user-centric variables as parameters for performance measurement. The algorithm developed for NFES was implemented using Coldfusion programming language and MySQL relational database management system. The prototype of NFES was simulated using some life data and the performance results obtained point to the DSSA responsiveness to the users' requirements that are defined at the requirements definition phase of the software development process. Thus the performance value is a qualitative value representing DSSA (i.e. system) responsiveness.

Communication-Centered Project Management for Requirements Definition Phase

Requirements definition, which determines a project baseline, has a strong impact on the success of a project. However, since in-depth requirements are gradually revealed through the requirements definition process, the requirements definition is not a straight forward process and often falls into disorder. Thus project management standpoints are critical for the success of the requirements definition. In this paper, we present a framework and mechanisms of communication-centered project management, which controls the requirements definition process based on the situation of communication-oriented activities among stakeholders. In addition, we present a communication-centered project plan with a planning method. The project plan, which represents a time schedule of requirements definition activities, is made by a simulation-optimization algorithm using a stakeholder matrix showing the relations of requirements domains and relevant stakeholders. The effectiveness and the significance of communication-centered project management at the requirements definition phase are demonstrated by numerical examples.

Public Sector ERP Implementation: Successfully Engaging Middle-Management

ERP implementation problems often occur due to cultural problems that lie deep within the organizational structure. Highly departmentalized (referred to as 'stove-piped') organizations are averse to the open flow of information and to process oriented management solutions. Nowhere are these problems more evident than in our public sector institutions. To increase the success of future public ERP initiatives, this paper focuses on the important role of middle management to proactively support and advocate an ERP project in the pre-planning and requirements definition phase of a project. The research identifies high value middle management attributes that need to be identified by ERP project managers to co-opt these individuals into the role of 'trusted intermediaries' to act as managerial bridges between traditional, and often adversarial organizational 'stovepipes'. Existing project work by the author and interviews with former public sector, project managers and implementation consultants show that the role of middle management is much more critical to the success of a public sector ERP implementation than in a corresponding private sector effort.

Public Sector ERP Implementation: Successfully Engaging Middle-Management !

ERP implementation problems often occur due to cultural problems that lie deep within the organizational structure. Highly departmentalized (referred to as “stove-piped”) organizations are averse to the open flow of information and to process oriented management solutions. Nowhere are these problems more evident than in our public sector institutions. To increase the success of future public ERP initiatives, this paper focuses on the important role of middle management to proactively support and advocate an ERP project in the pre-planning and requirements definition phase of a project. The research identifies high value middle management attributes that need to be identified by ERP project managers to co-opt these individuals into the role of “trusted intermediaries” to act as managerial bridges between traditional, and often adversarial organizational “stovepipes”. Existing project work by the author and interviews with former public sector, project managers and implementation consultants show that the role of middle management is much more critical to the success of a public sector ERP implementation than in a corresponding private sector effort.

Proposal for Requirement Validation Criteria and Method Based on Actor Interaction

We propose requirement validation criteria and a method based on the interaction between actors in an information system. We focus on the cyclical transitions of one actor's situation against another and clarify observable stimuli and responses based on these transitions. Both actors' situations can be listed in a state transition table, which describes the observable stimuli or responses they send or receive. Examination of the interaction between both actors in the state transition tables enables us to detect missing or defective observable stimuli or responses. Typically, this method can be applied to the examination of the interaction between a resource managed by the information system and its user. As a case study, we analyzed 332 requirement defect reports of an actual system development project in Japan. We found that there were a certain amount of defects regarding missing or defective stimuli and responses, which can be detected using our proposed method if this method is used in the requirement definition phase. This means that we can reach a more complete requirement definition with our proposed method.

2301 発明的問題解決手法と創発的計算手法の融合 : 事例による提案手法の評価(OS13-1 創発性と多様性の設計I,OS13 創発性と多様性の設計)

Attractive products are changed significantly by requirement definition and conceptual design phase. Quality of product concept, which is result of these phases, depends heavily on creativity of designer ore development team. Therefore, it is difficulty that computer-aided system supports a creative and inventive thinking process, to search a creative design solution. To overcome its difficulty, we developed the synthesis approach which combined the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and the Particles Method of Unified Structured Inventive Thinking (USIT) for supporting to top-down thinking in problem solving process, and confirmed the validity of this approach. In this paper, it applied to some problems using this technique, and this technique was evaluated. The knowledge about which it might argue based on the result is reported.