The present study provides a systematic overview of the most important software requirement prioritization techniques. Software requirement prioritization is a process in software engineering that precludes the actual development of software application programs and deals with assigning priorities to single requirements to define the order of their implementation. The study aims to help researchers and practitioners in deciding about the right technique since each has its advantages and limitations. Compared to the existing reviews, the current one not only captures the most promising techniques but the more general trends behind them. The study utilizes the review protocol method that aims to answer four research questions about the most popular techniques, their taxonomy, their limitations, and involved processes. The empirical data was collected from six databases for scientific manuscripts and put under scrutiny to identify the most relevant and elaborated papers. The results from 53 selected manuscripts and 106 discovered techniques demonstrate that there is evidence of a gradual shift from purely manual elicitation methods to computed-assisted and/or algorithmic ones.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / The growing resistance of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to currently prescribed drugs has resulted in the failure of prevention and treatment of different infections caused by the superbug. Therefore, to keep pace with the resistance, there is a pressing need for novel antimicrobial agents, especially from non-conventional sources. Several natural products (NPs) have displayed varying in vitro activities against the pathogen but few of these natural compounds have been studied for their prospects to be potential antimicrobial drug candidates. This may be due to the high cost, tedious, and time-consuming process of conducting the important preclinical tests on these compounds. Hence, there is a need for cost-effective strategies for mining the available data on these natural compounds. This would help to get the knowledge that may guide rational prioritization of “likely to succeed” natural compounds to be developed into potential antimicrobial drug candidates. Cheminformatic approaches in drug discovery enable chemical data mining, in conjunction with unsupervised and supervised learning from available bioactivity data that may unlock the full potential of NPs in antimicrobial drug discovery. Therefore, taking advantage of the available NPs with their known in vitro activity against MRSA, this study conducted cheminformatic and data mining analysis towards hit profiling, hit-prioritization, hit-optimization, and target prediction of anti-MRSA NPs. Cheminformatic profiling was conducted on the 111 anti-MRSA NPs (AMNPs) retrieved from literature. About 20 current drugs for MRSA (CDs) were used as a reference to identify AMNPs with promising prospects to become drug candidates.

Stakeholder salience has emerged from the ambiguity of stakeholder theory and is intended to better describe the aspects of identification and prioritization of stakeholders. Despite the fact that 95% of businesses worldwide are SMEs and comprise 99.8% of all European enterprises, the stakeholder salience aspects of identification and prioritization, in relation to SMEs, are empirically underdeveloped and mainly focused on the owner/manager perspective. Therefore, this qualitative single-case study has explored the stakeholder salience aspects of identification and prioritization in order to better understand the intraorganizational perceptions of stakeholders, processes, and motivations, within a European SME. The findings revealed that intraorganizational perceptions focused on a narrow view of stakeholder identification, which contradicts the broad view advocated by researchers in relation to stakeholders and sustainable development. Furthermore, there is a need to develop broader intraorganizational understanding of stakeholders in terms of claims and processes if businesses are going to be able to create holistic strategies with a sustainable development focus.

Floods are among some of the most damaging natural disasters. They can cause major interruptions to buildings and infrastructure and can have lasting impacts. In the case of flood damage estimation to buildings, structural and non-structural damages are of interest to most flood risk research. Very few studies, conversely analyze the impact of the recovery timeline on losses. There is a challenge to clearly understand the cause of failures within an interconnected system such as a building, and the requirements for accelerating restoration to overcome the adverse results of flood in the most convenient way possible. This work seeks to map the various components involved in functional failures of flood damaged buildings to understand their recovery. A novel model of a residential building is constructed using the Graph Model for Operational Resilience (GMOR) to model the complex interaction among dependencies in building systems to understand the cascade of failure of restoration. A case study is performed to generate recovery model to simulate the restoration of a single residential building in a flood prone neighborhood of Surrey, BC, Canada. The depth-damage functions, along with construction and repair guides, are used to identify restoration dependencies and to formulate a unique sequence of flood recovery steps for several possible flood depths. This study demonstrates how restoration can be delayed and probable solutions to improve the resilience of the city through recovery planning of flooded buildings. The results provide insights that should be useful to help emergency managers and other decision makers to develop and implement resilience thinking while revealing the economic benefits associated with increased flood risk management. In future, the custom flood model can be adapted to other locations. / Graduate / 2020-12-04

The purpose of this study was to examine and explore the meanings, and essence of the lived experience of Nigerian women whose male siblings had been prioritized in the family. The goal of the was to use the detailed description given by the research participants to understand the impact of male sibling prioritization, and thereby advance gender equality in Nigeria. The fundamental importance of obtaining a better understanding of the impact of male sibling prioritization on women and gender equality influenced the researcher to commit herself to this study. A qualitative phenomenological research method was employed to conduct this study. Sources of data for this research study were observations, semi-structured one-on-one interviews, and transcripts from the research participants. The twelve research participants for the study were Nigerian women, homogenous by the criteria that they were all born and raised to adulthood in Nigeria. In addition, the research participants lived in South Florida, could read and write English and had one or more male siblings. Initial analysis of the data led to the unfolding of themes connected to male sibling prioritization and gender equality. Twenty symbolic themes surfaced from the research. These themes helped to show how Nigerian women were affected by male sibling prioritization, and how understanding these disadvantages could be used to promote gender equality. It is anticipated that the results from this research study will inform scholars, researchers, therapists, government officials, families, and conflict practitioners on ways to provide social, economic, educational, and political conditions favorable to Nigerian women seeking gender equality, and empowerment.

Software development companies strive to produce high-quality software. In commercial software development environments, due to resource and time constraints, software is often developed hastily which gives rise to technical debt. Technical debt refers to the consequences of taking shortcuts when developing software. These consequences include making the system difficult to maintain and defect prone. Technical debt can have financial consequences and impede feature enhancements. Identifying technical debt and deciding which debt to address is challenging given resource constraints. Project managers must decide which debt has the highest priority and is most critical to the project. This decision-making process is not standardized and sometimes differs from project to project. My research goal is to develop a framework that project managers can use in their decision-making process to prioritize technical debt based on its potential impact. To achieve this goal, we survey software practitioners, conduct literature reviews, and mine software repositories for historical data to build a framework to model the technical debt decision-making process and inform practitioners of the most critical debt items.

Improperly designed road-stream crossings can fragment stream networks by restricting or preventing aquatic organism passage. These crossings may also be more vulnerable to high flow events, putting critical human infrastructure at risk. Climate change, which will require access to suitable habitat for species persistence, and is also predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme floods, underscores the importance of maintaining stream connectivity and resilient infrastructure. Given the large number of road-stream crossings and the expense of replacement, it is increasingly important to prioritize removals and account for the multiple benefits of these management actions. I developed an aquatic barrier prioritization scheme that combines potential habitat gain, stream thermal resilience, aquatic organism passage, and culvert risk of failure. To assess relative thermal resilience, I deployed paired air-water thermographs in several New England watersheds and analyzed relative thermal sensitivity (relationship of water to air temperature) and exposure (duration, frequency, and magnitude of warm stream temperature episodes) among streams. These were combined into a single metric of thermal resilience corresponding with the distance of that stream’s sensitivity and exposure from the watershed median. To test the relationship between risk of failure, culvert dimensions, and stream connectivity, I developed a logistic regression to predict risk of failure using data from two watersheds that experienced extreme flooding from Hurricane Irene (2011). Finally, I applied the resultant prioritization scheme to 66 road-stream crossings in the Westfield River watershed (MA). Thermal habitat quality varied considerably within and among watersheds. Stream sensitivity was generally lower than the widely accepted 0.8 ̊C increase in stream temperature for every 1 ̊C increase in air temperature (Westfield median sensitivity = 0.44), with substantial differences among streams. Exposure also varied widely among streams, indicating that some headwater streams in New England are more thermally resilient than previously thought. Risk of infrastructure failure was predicted with a logistic regression using culvert constriction ratio and predicted aquatic organism passage as predictors (Likelihood ratio test, X2=59.1, df=3, p- value=9.2e-13), indicating that underdesigned culverts were more likely to be barriers to passage and more likely to fail in extreme flow events. To prioritize culverts, this study ultimately used a piecewise approach that identified culverts opening the longest reaches of thermally resilient habitat, and then ranked those culverts by infrastructure replacement need. In the Westfield River, the prioritization clearly identified crossing replacements most likely to yield multiple benefits. The scheme I developed can accommodate changes in the relative weights of the different criteria, which will reflect differences in management and conservation concerns in the confidence of inputs. In conclusion, increasing connectivity by removing barriers may be one of the most effective ways to mitigate the effects of climate change on aquatic systems, but it is important to remove the right barriers.

Bakgrund: Sveriges akutmottagningar tog emot 1,7 miljoner patienter under år 2021. Alla patienter som inkommer till akutmottagningen triageras. Triage är det första steget i omhändertagande av patienter och utgår från kontaktorsak, bedömning av symtom samt vitalparametrar. Metoden säkerställer att patienter ska få rätt hjälp i rätt tid. På akutmottagningar tar sjuksköterskor emot patienter och utför triagebedömning. Sjuksköterskors triagebeslutsförmåga utvecklas genom klinisk erfarenhet. Patricia Benners teori ”från novis till expert” användes som teoretisk referensram i litteraturöversikten. Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva sjuksköterskors erfarenheter av triage på akutmottagning. Metod: Litteraturöversikt med kvalitativ design och induktiv ansats, 12 vetenskapliga artiklar inkluderades och analyserades enligt Fribergs femstegsanalys. Resultat: Sjuksköterskor uppskattade att använda triagesystem och subjektiva observationer påverkade deras triagebedömning. Sjuksköterskornas färdigheter och kompetens var av betydelse i deras triagearbete. Det framkom att patientkontakten, akutmottagningens arbetsmiljö och samarbetet mellan andra professioner hade inverkan på deras triage. Slutsats: Triage på akutmottagningar är komplext trots att det utförs med hjälp av arbetsverktyget triagesystem. Sjuksköterskors arbetsbelastning utgjorde hinder för sjuksköterskors triage. Klinisk erfarenhet, kompetens, utbildning och praktisk övning ansågs värdefullt för att utföra korrekta triagebeslut. Sjuksköterskors färdigheter och förmågor att triagera utvecklas genom de olika stegen från novis till expert. / Background: Sweden's emergency departments received 1,7 million patients in the year 2021. All patients who enter emergency departments are triaged. Triage is the first step in the care of patients and is based on the cause of contact, assessment of symptoms and vital signs. The method ensures that patients get the right help at the right time. In emergency departments, nurses receive patients and perform triage assessment. Nurses' triage skills develop through clinical experience. Patricia Benner's theory "from novice to expert" was used as a theoretical frame of reference in the literature review. Aim: The aim of this study was to describe nurses' experiences of triage in emergency departments. Method: A literature review with qualitative design and inductive approach, 12 articles were included and was analyzed according to Friberg's five-step analysis. Results: Nurses appreciated using triage systems and subjective observations influenced their triage assessment. Nurses' skills and competence were important in their triage work. It emerged that patient contact, the working environment of the emergency department and the collaboration between other professions had an impact on their triage. Conclusion: Triage in the emergency department is complex, even though it is performed with the help of the triage system work tool. Nurses' workload was a barrier to their triage. Clinical experience, competence, education and practical training were considered valuable in making correct triage decisions. Nurses' skills and abilities to triage develop through the different stages from novice to expert.

Since today’s fast-paced landscapes evolves into digital environments, businesses are faced by the need of performing digital transformation, as it will support them in staying competitive. However, when executing digital transformation, it becomes important to prioritize the right initiatives to ensure efficient budget allocation, as well as to track progress and value realization to assess real impact and to secure efficient realization. Therefore, tracking value and realization of digital transformation is an essential process in the progress of digitalizing business processes and staying competitive, and thus, should be executed in a mature manner. Consequently, this study’s purpose includes the development of a framework, which can be used to evaluate the maturity of organizations when tracking the value and the realization of digital transformation. To fulfill this, a case study was conducted, whose results were based on qualitative data collected through observation, interviews, and internal documentation. It was found that three aspects are relevant to be assessed when evaluating processes of tracking digital transformation value and realization, namely, formalization, integration, and utilization of the tracking system. For these three aspects, different ambition levels are defined and seen as targets to be sought after by organizations. Furthermore, it is found to be relevant to track progress of digital transformation in terms of development, deployment, and adoption, as well as to assess associated risks, impact on the company’s financials, and objectives and key results. To develop a maturity framework, additionally, five distinct maturity levels were identified, based on challenges and a future ambition for a tracking system. These levels range from “not started” to an “ambition level”. As a result, the maturity assessment framework developed in this study is deemed relevant to be used in a descriptive manner, illustrating key aspects to be considered when tracking the value and realization of digital transformation, as well as when analyzing organizations’ performance in that respect. The study’s outcomes are thus expected to support transparency in organizations when managing digital transformation. / Då dagens snabba landskap utvecklas till alltmer digitala miljöer måste företagen genomföra digital transformation för att kunna behålla sin konkurrenskraft. När man genomför digital transformation blir det dock viktigt att prioritera rätt initiativ för att säkerställa effektiv budgettilldelning, samt att uppfölja framsteg och värdeförverkligande för att bedöma verklig påverkan och säkerställa effektiv realisering. Därför är uppföljning av värde och realisering av digital transformation en viktig process för att digitalisera affärsprocesser och för att förbli konkurrenskraftig, och bör därför genomföras på ett moget sätt. Följaktligen inkluderar denna studies syfte utvecklingen av ett ramverk, som kan användas för att utvärdera organisationers mognad när man uppföljer värdet och realiseringen av digital transformation. För att uppfylla detta genomfördes en fallstudie, vars resultat baserades på kvalitativ data som samlades in genom observation, intervjuer och intern dokumentation. Det visade sig att tre aspekter är relevanta att bedöma när man utvärderar processer för att uppfölja värde och realisering av digital transformation, nämligen formalisering, integration och användning av uppföljningssystemet. Olika ambitionsnivåer definieras för dessa tre aspekter och ses som mål som organisationer ska sträva efter. Vidare konstateras att det är relevant att uppfölja framstegen i digital transformation när det gäller utveckling, införande och användning, samt att bedöma tillhörande risker, inverkan på företagets ekonomi, mål och nyckelresultat. För att utveckla ett ramverk för mognadsbedömning identifierades dessutom fem olika mognadsgrader, baserade på utmaningar och en framtida ambition för ett uppföljningssystem. Dessa nivåer sträcker sig från "inte påbörjad" till "ambitionsnivå". Som ett resultat av detta anses det ramverk för mognadsbedömning som utvecklats i denna studie vara relevant att använda på ett beskrivande sätt och illustrera de viktigaste aspekterna som ska beaktas när man uppföljer värdet och realisering av digital transformation, samt när man analyserar organisationers prestationer i det avseendet. Studiens resultat förväntas således stödja transparens i organisationer när de hanterar digital transformation.

This work introduces three new coverage criteria based on combinatorial-based event and element sequences that occur in the mobile environment. The novel combinatorial-based criteria are used to reduce, prioritize, and generate test suites for mobile applications. The combinatorial-based criteria include unique coverage of events and elements with different respects to ordering. For instance, consider the coverage of a pair of events, e1 and e2. The least strict criterion, Combinatorial Coverage (CCov), counts the combination of these two events in a test case without respect to the order in which the events occur. That is, the combination (e1, e2) is the same as (e2, e1). The second criterion, Sequence-Based Combinatorial Coverage (SCov), considers the order of occurrence within a test case. Sequences (e1, ..., e2) and (e2,..., e1) are different sequences. The third and strictest criterion is Consecutive-Sequence Combinatorial Coverage (CSCov), which counts adjacent sequences of consecutive pairs. The sequence (e1, e2) is only counted if e1 immediately occurs before e2. The first contribution uses the novel combinatorial-based criteria for the purpose of test suite reduction. Empirical studies reveal that the criteria, when used with event sequences and sequences of size t=2, reduce the test suites by 22.8%-61.3% while the reduced test suites provide 98.8% to 100% fault finding effectiveness. Empirical studies in Android also reveal that the event sequence criteria of size t=2 reduce the test suites by 24.67%-66% while losing at most 0.39% code coverage. When the criteria are used with element sequences and sequences of size t=2, the test suites are reduced by 40\% to 72.67%, losing less than 0.87% code coverage. The second contribution of this work applies the combinatorial-based criteria for test suite prioritization of mobile application test suites. The results of an empirical study show that the prioritization criteria that use element and event sequences cover the test suite's elements, events, and code faster than random orderings. On average the prioritized orderings cover all elements within 21.81% of the test suite, all events within 45.99% of the test suite, and all code within 51.21% of the test suite. Random orderings achieve full code coverage with 84.8% of the test suite on average. The third contribution uses the combinatorial-based criteria for test suite generation. This work modifies the random walk tool used from prior experiments to give weight (preference) to coverage of the combinatorial-based event and element criteria. The use of Element SCov and CSCov criteria result in test suites that increase code coverage for three of the four subject applications. Specifically, the code coverage increases by 0.29%-5.89% with SCov and 1.36%-6.79% with CSCov in comparison to the original random walk algorithm. The SCov criterion increases total sequence coverage by 5%-88% and the CSCov criterion increases sequence coverage by 13%-68%. One criteria, Element CCov, failed to increase code coverage for two of the four applications. The contributions of this dissertation show that the novel combinatorial-based criteria using sequences of events and elements offer improvements to different testing strategies for mobile applications, including test suite reduction, prioritization, and generation.