Agile software development has become very popular around the world in recent years, with methods such as Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP). Literature suggests that functionality is the primary focus in Agile processes while non-functional requirements (NFR) are either ignored or ill-defined. However, for software to be of good quality both functional requirements (FR) and NFR need to be taken into consideration; lack of attention to NFR has been documented to be the cause of failure for many software projects. Hence special attention needs to be focused on NFR in Agile software development. By its very nature Agile processes require frequent changes but these changes are often not well documented. This is especially true of NFR in Agile processes. While functional requirements are carefully identified, NFR are often not properly elicited. Once NFR are identified they become the basis for reasoning and facilitation of design and development decisions. NFR also need to be validated through proper testing to ensure their quality attributes have been met in the final software product. This dissertation aimed at developing a methodology for addressing NFR in Agile processes. As such, the "NERV Methodology: Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation, Reasoning, and Validation in Agile Processes" was proposed. Several artifacts were created as part of this methodology and included: the NFR Elicitation Taxonomy, the NFR Reasoning Taxonomy, the NFR Quantification Taxonomy, and the Non-Functional Requirements User Story Companion (NFRusCOM) Card. Additionally the NERV Agility Index (NAI) was developed using the Agile Manifesto and its twelve principles. The NERV Methodology was validated using the 26 requirements of the European Union (EU) eProcurement Online System. Additionally the results obtained by the NORMAP Methodology in previous research, were used as baseline. Results show that the NERV Methodology was successful in identifying NFR, for 55 out of 57 requirements sentences that contained implicit NFR, compared to 50 for the baseline. This represented a 96.49% success rate compared to 87.71% for the baseline; an improvement of 8.78%. Furthermore the NERV Methodology was successful in eliciting 82 out of 88 NFR compared to 75 for the baseline. The elicitation success rate was 93.18% compared to 85.24% for the baseline; an improvement of 7.94%. Agility was validated using the same data set as above. Two experiments investigated project durations measured in 2-week sprint iterations, commonly used in Scrum. Results show that the first experiment, using the "FR and NFR Simultaneous Scheme" completed all FR and NFR scope in 24 sprints. The second experiment, using the "FR First Then NFR Scheme" consumed 26 sprints. The first agile scheduling scheme delivered all scope two sprints earlier than the second scheme; representing a saving of almost one month. Validation results showed that the NERV Methodology and its artifacts can potentially be beneficial for software development organizations for eliciting, reasoning about, and validating NFR in Agile processes.

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Context. Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are important aspects which directly or indirectly determine whether a product is a success or a failure. It becomes essential to incorporate and understand them, before the software product enters the development phase. Despite the increasing emphasis put into NFR studies (namely; models and frameworks etc.) over the past few years, most industries prefer not use these techniques or to deal with NFRs later, in simpler manners. This could limit the efficiency of the development process. Integration of the existing NFR models/frameworks into the earlier phases of the product life cycle can provide a systematic approach to plan and anticipate NFRs for any software product. Objectives. This study aims to provide a generic meta model which acts as a compilation of the best NFR models/frameworks integrated into the early phases of the software product life cycle. This study also provides a real-world example which applies the conceptual meta model. Lastly, the meta model undergoes some limited validation to determine its relevance to what is being used and the extent of its practical use. Methods. Initially, a systematic literature review (snowballing) was conducted, to identify the different types of NFR models/frameworks. A comparative pro-con analysis was performed on the results of the SLR, which was the basis of the inclusion criteria for the meta model. The conceptual meta model was developed based on the International Software Product Management Association’s (ISPMA) definition of a product life cycle. Each phase of this meta model was imbedded with an NFR model/framework associated to the purpose of that phase and the results from the SLR. The application of the meta model was then demonstrated using a mobile phone example. Finally, the meta model was validated limitedly via an exploratory survey and the results were analyzed. Results. The meta model introduced can be used for the constructive inclusion of NFRs from product inception to product development. All phases required for the fulfillment of an NFR, are included. The overall positive feedback of the meta model is at 67%. Validations and assessments by practitioners helped determine to some extent that some industries are open to using the approach. Keeping in mind most of the available models on NFRs have not been validated, the NFR works used in this research have gone through some preliminary validation in this study. Conclusions. The study promotes the use of NFR models in the early phases of the software product life cycle. Some of the best modeling techniques were included based on results of literature analysis and their capability to fit into each phase. This study also analyzed the various insights of practitioners and researchers, justifying the significance of modeling, and the proposed technique. Possible extensions to this research were also mentioned.

In the domain of computer vision, registration is the process of calculating the transformation between a known object, called a marker, and a camera which is viewing it. Registration is the foundation for a number of applications across a range of disciplines such as augmented reality, medical imaging and robotic navigation. In the set of two dimensional planar markers, there are two classes: (1) fiducial, which are designed to be easily recognisable by computers but have little to no semantic meaning to people, and (2) natural features, which have meaning to people, but can still be registered by a computer. As computers become more powerful, natural feature markers are increasingly the more popular choice; however there are still a number of inherent problems with this class of markers. This thesis examines the most common shortcomings of natural feature markers, and proposes and evaluates solutions to these weaknesses. The work starts with a review of the existing planar registration approaches, both fiducial and natural features, with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each. From this review, the theory behind planar registration is discussed, from the different coordinate systems and transformations, to the computation of the registration transformation. With a foundation of planar registration, natural feature registration is decomposed into its main stages, and each stage is described in detail. This leads into a discussion of the complete natural feature registration pipeline, highlighting common issues encountered at each step, and discussing the possible solutions for each issue. A new implementation of natural feature registration called the Optical-flow Perspective Invariant Registration Augmentation (OPIRA) is proposed, which provides vast improvements in robustness to perspective, rotation and changes in scale to popular registration algorithms such as SIFT, SURF, and the Ferns classifier. OPIRA is shown to improve perspective invariance on average by 15% for SIFT, 25% for SURF and 20% for the Ferns Classifier, as well as provide complete rotation invariance for the rotation dependent implementations of these algorithms. From the investigation into problems and potential resolutions at each stage during registration, each proposed solution is evaluated empirically against an external ground truth. The results are discussed and a conclusion on the improvements gained by each proposed solution and the feasibility of use in a real natural feature registration application is drawn. Finally, some applications which use the research contained within this thesis are described, as well as some future directions for the research.

Submitted by Isaac Francisco de Souza Dias (isaac.souzadias@ufpe.br) on 2015-05-15T18:23:09Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) MASTER THESIS VERSAO BIBLIOTECA.pdf: 2607756 bytes, checksum: f3fc68e302dd5e0adcd2e9c5c95d61fe (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-15T18:23:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) MASTER THESIS VERSAO BIBLIOTECA.pdf: 2607756 bytes, checksum: f3fc68e302dd5e0adcd2e9c5c95d61fe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-02 / A Engenharia de requisitos tem sido amplamente reconhecida como um fator crítico de sucesso de projetos de Software. Se não forem devidamente elicitados, os requisitos podem levar o projeto ao fracasso. A elicitação equivocada dos requisitos pode estar relacionada com a falta de compreensão do negócio pelo analista de sistemas, a falta entendimento dos objetivos do sistema, bem como a falta de comunicação entre analistas de negócio e analistas de sistema. A existência de uma lacuna entre os domínios do negócio e da computação podem causar desequilíbrios entre o que os usuários finais precisam e o que os analistas de sistema desenvolvem. Uma das razões para o problema de comunicação é que os modelos de requisitos utilizados para interagir com os usuários finais podem ser difíceis de serem compreendidos e validados em função da alta complexidade das notações. Além disso, os erros provocados por não lidar com requisitos, especialmente os não-funcionais, convenientemente são apontados como os mais caros e difíceis de corrigir. O problema tratado nesta dissertação é a integração dos requisitos não-funcionais aos modelos de processos de negócio, através de notações intuitivas para todos os usuários envolvidos no processo. Para isso, uma pesquisa baseada em análise de requisitos não-funcionais e modelagem de processos de negócio é apresentada. Portanto, propomos uma abordagem para inserir os requisitos não-funcionais na notação Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). A abordagem utiliza catálogos para requisitos não-funcionais, descritos na notação Non-Functional Requirement (NFR), que orientam a descoberta das suas operacionalizações. Esta abordagem é validada com um estudo de caso real.

Esta tese tem o objetivo de definir um processo para análise de requisitos não-funcionais orientado a aspectos denominado PARNAFOA. Este processo utiliza, de maneira integrada, métodos de tratamento de requisitos não-funcionais, baseados no NFR Framework, e métodos orientados a aspectos. Como resultado principal obtém-se um modelo de casos de uso que incorpora novas funções relacionadas aos requisitos não-funcionais. A aplicação do PARNAFOA foi realizada em cinco sistemas de software, com domínios, características e complexidades diversos. A avaliação da aplicação deste processo mostrou que o tratamento dos requisitos não-funcionais, desde as fases iniciais do desenvolvimento dos sistemas de software, complementa o modelo de casos de uso com funções adicionais ou gera restrições de projeto. Se estes requisitos não forem considerados desde o início, a introdução posterior dessas funções pode causar alterações nos modelos consolidados ou as atividades de projeto podem ser realizadas sem considerar as restrições. As aplicações do PARNAFOA e sua conseqüente melhoria, incorporada após sua avaliação, permitiu torná-lo mais flexível do que sua versal inicial. Aplicações futuras, com outros tipos de requisitos não-funcionais, irão permitir o amadurecimento deste processo. / The aim of this thesis is to define an aspect-oriented non-functional requirements analysis process named PARNAFOA. This process applies nonfunctional requirements methods in an integrated manner, based on NFR Framework, and aspect-oriented methods. A use case model that embodies non-functional requirements as new functions is the main result obtained from this process. PARNAFOA application was performed in five software systems, with diverse features, domains and complexities. The evaluation of this process application showed that the treatment of these non-functional requirements, from the early phases of software systems development, complements the use case model with additional new functions or generates project restrictions. If these requirements are not considered from the very beginning, the introduction of these functions at a later phase can generate modifications in consolidated models or project activities, that do not consider these restrictions, can be performed. The PARNAFOA applications and consequent improvement, incorporated after the assessment, allowed it to become more flexible than the initial version. Future applications, with other non-functional requirements types, will provide this process maturity.

Esta tese tem o objetivo de definir um processo para análise de requisitos não-funcionais orientado a aspectos denominado PARNAFOA. Este processo utiliza, de maneira integrada, métodos de tratamento de requisitos não-funcionais, baseados no NFR Framework, e métodos orientados a aspectos. Como resultado principal obtém-se um modelo de casos de uso que incorpora novas funções relacionadas aos requisitos não-funcionais. A aplicação do PARNAFOA foi realizada em cinco sistemas de software, com domínios, características e complexidades diversos. A avaliação da aplicação deste processo mostrou que o tratamento dos requisitos não-funcionais, desde as fases iniciais do desenvolvimento dos sistemas de software, complementa o modelo de casos de uso com funções adicionais ou gera restrições de projeto. Se estes requisitos não forem considerados desde o início, a introdução posterior dessas funções pode causar alterações nos modelos consolidados ou as atividades de projeto podem ser realizadas sem considerar as restrições. As aplicações do PARNAFOA e sua conseqüente melhoria, incorporada após sua avaliação, permitiu torná-lo mais flexível do que sua versal inicial. Aplicações futuras, com outros tipos de requisitos não-funcionais, irão permitir o amadurecimento deste processo. / The aim of this thesis is to define an aspect-oriented non-functional requirements analysis process named PARNAFOA. This process applies nonfunctional requirements methods in an integrated manner, based on NFR Framework, and aspect-oriented methods. A use case model that embodies non-functional requirements as new functions is the main result obtained from this process. PARNAFOA application was performed in five software systems, with diverse features, domains and complexities. The evaluation of this process application showed that the treatment of these non-functional requirements, from the early phases of software systems development, complements the use case model with additional new functions or generates project restrictions. If these requirements are not considered from the very beginning, the introduction of these functions at a later phase can generate modifications in consolidated models or project activities, that do not consider these restrictions, can be performed. The PARNAFOA applications and consequent improvement, incorporated after the assessment, allowed it to become more flexible than the initial version. Future applications, with other non-functional requirements types, will provide this process maturity.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:48:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FabioAGS_DISSERT.pdf: 1631308 bytes, checksum: cb5c8aa720129c7e7b32a24acd2a4b2c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-07-30 / The importance of non-functional requirements for computer systems is increasing. Satisfying these requirements requires special attention to the software architecture, since an unsuitable architecture introduces greater complexity in addition to the intrinsic complexity of the system. Some studies have shown that, despite requirements engineering and software architecture activities act on different aspects of development, they must be performed iteratively and intertwined to produce satisfactory software systems. The STREAM process presents a systematic approach to reduce the gap between requirements and architecture development, emphasizing the functional requirements, but using the non-functional requirements in an ad hoc way. However, non-functional requirements typically influence the system as a whole. Thus, the STREAM uses Architectural Patterns to refine the software architecture. These patterns are chosen by using non-functional requirements in an ad hoc way. This master thesis presents a process to improve STREAM in making the choice of architectural patterns systematic by using non-functional requirements, in order to guide the refinement of a software architecture / Cada vez mais os sistemas computacionais precisam satisfazer requisitos n?ofuncionais. No entanto a satisfa??o destes requisitos exige uma aten??o especial j? que s?o requisitos que devem ser levados em considera??o pelas arquiteturas de software que representam esses sistemas. Uma arquitetura de software inadequada introduz uma complexidade maior, al?m da complexidade intr?nseca do sistema. Al?m disso, estudos mostram que apesar das atividades de engenharia de requisitos e de arquitetura de software atuarem em diferentes aspectos do desenvolvimento, ? preciso execut?- las de forma iterativa e entrela?ada para produzir sistemas computacionais satisfat?rios. Com o objetivo de diminuir a lacuna existente entre requisitos de software e o desenvolvimento de uma arquitetura de software que reflita esses requisitos, foi proposto o processo STREAM (Strategy for Transition between REquirements models and Architectural Models). O STREAM consiste de uma abordagem sistem?tica que enfatiza os requisitos funcionais, sendo os n?o-funcionais usados de forma ad hoc. Entretanto, os requisitos n?o-funcionais normalmente impactam o sistema como um todo. Assim, a maneira proposta pelo STREAM para fazer com que a arquitetura de software desenvolvida reflita os Requisitos N?o-Funcionais elicitados no modelo de requisitos ? atrav?s do refinamento da arquitetura usando padr?es arquiteturais escolhidos com base nos requisitos n?o-funcionais. No STREAM a escolha desses padr?es ? realizada de forma ad hoc. Com o objetivo de sistematizar a forma de escolha dos padr?es arquiteturais, esta disserta??o prop?e um processo para sistematizar a escolha desses padr?es, a partir de requisitos n?o-funcionais racionalizados, que ser?o usados para refinar arquitetura de software

Tidigare forskning indikerar att icke-funktionella krav är åsidosatta i agila utvecklingsprocesser. De involveras sent i projektet eller ad hoc. Detta är negativt då det kan leda till försenad leverans, ökade kostnader och produkter med bristande kvalitet. Inom konsumenthandeln är icke-funktionella domäner såsom användbarhet en tydlig konkurrensfördel. Syftet med denna litteraturgranskning är att undersöka hur icke- funktionella krav kan involveras i kravhanteringsprocessen för agila systemutvecklingsprojekt. Litteraturgranskningen ämnar även att kategorisera de identifierade metoderna. Via sökning i databaserna Web of Science och Scopus fann författarna 152 studier. Efter screening och kvalitetsgranskning inkluderades 19 studier i den slutgiltiga granskningen. Dessa analyserades och kategoriserades efter vilka steg i kravhanteringsprocessen de berörde. Resultatet visade att framför allt insamling av icke- funktionella krav var mer frekvent förekommande i materialet, 11 studier behandlade detta. Validering av krav var minst förekommande, enbart en studie redogjorde för denna del. Mer forskning behövs inom ämnet, framför allt kopplat till utvecklingsprojekt i praktiken.

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