In software development, customer trust hinges on a product performing as expectedand ensuring appropriate steps are taken to prevent incidents due to faulty systems. Oneway of achieving this lies within in requirement validation – the process of validatingthe requirements set on the software. However, the complexity of the requirementvalidation domain can be challenging for companies and organizations seeking toimprove their validation processes. This research investigates this area, pinpointingpotential failure factors that may hinder effective requirement validation. The study wasconducted using a multi-case research design, involving individual interviews with fourdistinct divisions at SAAB: hardware, software, systems, and test equipment.This study built upon Niazi’s & Shastry's previous research where findings of failurefactors in requirement engineering are brought forward. What this research has done istaking the failure factors and applying them to requirement validation, which is asubcategory to requirement engineering. The failure factors taken into consideration inthis research are therefore the following: • Vague requirements• Undefined requirements process• Lack of stakeholder involvement• Business needs are not considered• Lack of requirement management• The requirements do not reflect the real needs of the customer• The requirements are inconsistent and/or incomplete• It is expensive to make changes to requirements after they have been agreed• Requirements growth• Stakeholders’ communication problems During the research, focus was placed on noting how often the interviewees mentionedeach failure factor. This helped in understanding which issues were most often seen asproblems in the requirement validation process.Particularly, stakeholder issues and the tendency towards vague requirement definitionsemerged as prevalent problems. The findings of this research do not only concernsafety-critical software companies but can additionally prove beneficial to any industrydealing with stakeholders and product/service requirements. The research providesiiipotential pitfalls in requirement validation, aiding organizations in refining theirapproach for better software product reliability and customer trust.

I detta examensarbete utreddes huruvida elektriska tester av styrenheter för tunga fordon kan automatiseras på befintliga testmiljöer. Arbetet utfördes på uppdrag av Scania CV AB för arbetsgruppen Electronic Hardware som utför tester vid utveckling och verifiering av krav på styrenheter. Genom en automatiserad testprocess kan testarbetet effektiviseras och kvaliteten höjas. Testarbetet sker på testriggar som innehåller fullskalig hårdvara från lastbilar för att kunna emulera styrenhetens autentiska arbetsmiljö. För att komma fram till ett testsystem som kunde leva upp till de krav och behov som formulerats inom kravprocessen i arbetet användes utvecklingsmodeller. Utvärderingsmatriser användes för att välja den mjuk- och hårdvara som skulle vara mest lämplig för det automatiserade testsystemet utifrån kraven. Resultatet visade att testsystemet skulle bestå av en testprogramvara som körs på en vanlig persondator och ett inbyggt system med elektroniska komponenter för att kunna utföra de elektriska testerna. För att demonstrera testsystemets möjligheter i ett helhetstest konstruerades en prototyp som har funktionalitet att utföra ett testfall som kan dra stor nytta av att automatiseras, nämligen att testa omslagsnivåer för en digital ingång. Prototypen baserades på ett mikrokontrollerkort från Arduino och ett kretskort konstruerades till detta för att kunna utföra elektriska tester med högre spänningsnivåer som krävs för styrenheter på Scaniafordon. För att utforma testfall och hantera testprocessen valdes LabVIEW, en programvara där tester designas med ett grafiskt programmeringsspråk. Testresultaten för prototyptestsystemet visade att verifieringen av kraven för omslagsnivåer förenklas radikalt vid ett automatiserat förfarande, eftersom testtiden kunde minskas drastiskt, i synnerhet vid ett repetitivt förfarande. / This thesis work intends to study the possibilities to automate electrical testing of electronic control units in an existing test environment. The work was executed on behalf of Scania CV AB for the department Electronic Hardware, who run tests in development and verification of requirements for electronic control units. By using an automated testing system, the testing process could be made more effective and raise the quality. The testing work is done on test rigs which are equipped with full-scale hardware from real trucks to emulate the working environment the electronic control unit operates into. Development models were used to be able to create a testing system which could meet the requirements that were defined during the requirement engineering process. Evaluation matrices were used to choose the soft- and hardware that could be considered the most appropriate for the automated testing system according to the requirements. The result shown that the testing system should consist of a testing software that runs on an ordinary computer and an embedded system equipped with electronic components to enable the testing system for electrical tests. To demonstrate the possibilities of the whole testing system a prototype was manufactured which was designed to execute a test case that could greatly benefit from the advantages that comes with automation. It was a test case set out to measure voltage levels when switching in a digital input. The prototype was based on a microcontroller card from Arduino and was joined by a printed circuit board to be able to run electrical tests with the higher voltage levels that were demanded by electronic control units. To design test cases and manage the test process, LabVIEW was chosen, a software in which tests are designed in a graphical programming language. Test results for the prototype test system showed that verification of the requirements for voltage levels when switching was radically simplified by an automated procedure, as the test time could be drastically reduced, particularly in a repetitive procedure.

Background: The Scaled Agile Framework®(SAFe) has been adopted by many automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for scaling their agile practices. It is one of the ways to improve and accelerate their in-house software development life cycle. Most OEMs have tailored the agile framework to fit their own needs. However, with the increasing complexity of vehicles, especially in terms of embedded software and hardware development, agile release trains (ARTs) face challenges in managing requirements throughout the vehicle development life cycle. Multiple teams working on requirements, consistency of requirements, collaboration, prioritization of requirements between teams, and changing requirements are some of the challenges faced by the SAFe practicing organizations. Objectives: This thesis examines how the requirements engineering within SAFe has been practiced inone of the automotive OEMs, and the challenges its agile release trains face. It addresses the real problems of practical interest and real-life context by interacting with the teams who have been closely working with the requirements daily. It also accumulates the impacts due to the identified challenges. Methods: This study utilizes a case study methodology, which is flexible in design, exploratory, andqualitative. This choice of research method is influenced by the scope of the study, research questions, and the degree of interaction required between us and the participants to collect the data. By conducting semi-structured interviews, a large quality of data isproduced by having a higher level of interaction with participants. The collected data is then probed for newer and unexpected responses using a thematic approach, which helps to identify patterns and themes using large and complex data. Results: This thesis summarizes the requirement engineering practices and challenges faced by theagile release trains in SAFe practicing automotive industry. We approached the agile teams directly and collected the organizational and stakeholder behavior while working with therequirements and the challenges faced. Using intrinsic data analysis, the gathered interview data is understood, and the implications are listed. This study reemphasizes that agile release trains were facing many challenges, especially in the requirements engineeringarea even though the Scaled Agile Framework is practiced. Knowledge gaps, incompleteand misunderstood customer requirements, ineffective communication, fragmented tooling, inadequate management support, and inconsistent requirement engineering practiceare some of the challenges highlighted by the agile release trains.

Denna studie utforskar det växande området för naturlig språkbehandling (NLP) och dess tillämpning inom kravhantering, ett kritiskt område i mjukvaruutveckling för att säkerställa att system uppfyller uppsatta standarder och användarförväntningar. Komplexiteten i moderna IT-projekt har ökat efterfrågan på effektiv kravhantering. Trots omfattande studier inom NLP finns det brist på fokuserad forskning om dess specifika möjligheter och utmaningar inom ett företags- och verksamhetsperspektiv för att förbättra processerna inom kravhantering. Studien utgår från en kvalitativ metod genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med respondenter inom kravhantering och AI för att få djupgående insikter i praktiska implikationer av NLP inom kravhantering. Genom en tematisk analys på den data som samlades in genom intervjuerna togs fem olika teman fram som var relevant för forskningsfrågorna. Tillsammans med detta genomförs även en litteratursökning som syftar att ge förståelse över insikter och kunskap utifrån relevant forskning. Resultatet som framförs utifrån intervjuerna jämfördes sedan med artiklarna i litteratursökningen. Resultatet visar att NLP har potentialen att effektivisera hanteringen av krav, men medför också betydande utmaningar och komplexitet. Teknikens förmåga att hantera stora datamängder och automatisera extraktion och tolkning av krav kan avsevärt påskynda projektets tidiga skeden. Tidig implementering låter organisationer att snabbt anpassa och identifiera krav baserat på föränderliga omständigheter och insikter. Specifikt så har generativa modeller, så som BERT, hög potential inom kravhanteringsfältet på grund av dess höga effektivitet jämfört med traditionella NLP-modeller. Dock är de största utmaningarna kopplade till risker inom säkerhet och sekretess då NLP-system ofta bearbetar stora mängder textdata som kan innehålla känslig eller konfidentiell information Tillförlitlighet är även en utmaning då systemen måste hantera språklig otydlighet och kontextberoendetolkningar utan att förlora noggrannhet. Kvalitén och mängden träningsdata är även en utmaning på grund av dess direkta påverkan på prestandan och effektiviteten av modellen. Utmaningarna och möjligheterna som denna studie presenterar kan hjälpa verksamheter och företag att implementera NLP-teknologier i kravhanteringsprocesser. / This thesis explores the evolving field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and its application in requirement management, a critical area in software development ensuring that systems meet set standards and user expectations. The complexity of modern IT projects has heightened the demand for effective requirements management. Despite extensive studies on NLP, there is a lack of focused research on its specific opportunities and challenges from a company and business perspective regarding requirement management processes.  This study adopts a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with respondents in the requirement management and AI field, to gain deep insights into the practical implications of NLP in requirements management. The study uses a thematic analysis to analyze the data gathered from the interviews and produce themes which are relevant to the research questions. The study also conducts a literature search to gain scientific insight, which will be used to compare the results from the interviews.  The findings reveal that NLP has promising potential to streamline information handling and requirement interpretation, but also introduces significant risks and complexities. The technology's ability to process large data volumes and automate requirement extraction and interpretation can significantly speed up project stages. Early implementation allows organizations to swiftly adjust, and pinpoint requirements based on changing circumstances and insights. There is also a lot of potential regarding generative models, such as BERT, in the requirement management field due to its extreme efficiency compared to traditional NLP-models. However, major challenges include risks regarding security and secrecy due to the sensitive and confidential information which the NLP-system handles. Additionally, reliability remains a challenge as these systems must handle linguistic ambiguities and context-dependent interpretations without losing accuracy. The quality and the amount of training data regarding the NLP-models also is a major challenge due to its direct impact of the model’s performance and efficiency. The challenges and opportunities in this study can help organizations and businesses in adapting NLP-technologies into their requirement management processes.

Este trabalho apresenta os métodos consensuais como uma proposta para reduzir as insatisfações das pessoas envolvidas no processo de levantamento de requisitos e respeitar as dimensões humanas e sociais já no inicio do ciclo de vida de um sistema sociotécnico, considerando a aderência desses métodos às demais fases do ciclo de vida. / This text proposes the use of consensual methods to reduce people dissatisfaction in take part of requirement elicitation process and indentify, and respect, the human and social dimensions since the beginning of a sociotechnical system life cycle, evaluating the adhesion of these methods to the other phases of the lifecycle.

A globalização força cada vez mais a união entre empresas através de acordos e parcerias, fazendo do desenvolvimento colaborativo de novos produtos um requisito básico para a competitividade e sobrevivência. A gestão de projetos (GP), essencial para o desenvolvimento de produtos (DP), é uma área complexa, e, portanto, é difícil estruturar todos os elementos necessários para garantir o sucesso de sua aplicação prática. Um dos fatores mais importantes para a boa gestão de projetos é a gestão da comunicação e do conhecimento gerado durante o projeto. Neste contexto, este trabalho visa o levantamento de requisitos de software para gestão de projetos, contendo métodos, práticas e ferramentas relevantes à indústria e focado no processo de desenvolvimento colaborativo de produtos. Estes requisitos devem apoiar conceitos de colaboração e gestão de conhecimento, baseando-se em conceitos retirados da literatura; resultados de trabalhos passados dentro do grupo de engenharia integrada do Núcleo de Manufatura Avançada (NUMA) e requisitos provenientes das análises de softwares livres para gestão de projetos, complementando assim o desenvolvimento científico do grupo de pesquisa e as melhores práticas encontradas na indústria em geral. Esta pesquisa tem caráter qualitativo e descritivo e, como métodos de procedimento de pesquisa, a pesquisa descritiva do tipo participante-observador, pesquisa bibliográfica e documental. / Everyday, the globalization forces even more the joining of companies through business agreements and partnerships, making of the collaborative product development of new products a basic requirement to the competitiveness or even survival. The project management, essential to product development, is a complex area of knowledge and, therefore difficult to structuralize all the elements needed to ensure the success of its practical application inside different industries. One of the most important factors necessary to a good project management is managing the communication and the knowledge created along the project. Within this context, this work aims the develop a list of requirements for a project management software focused at the product development process. These requirements must include concepts of geographically distributed collaboration and knowledge management. The main sources for this work are the general literature; work results from past projects inside the engineering integration group of the Nucleus of Advanced Manufacturing of the University of São Paulo and requirements from analysis of open-source project management softwares, adding up to the scientific development of the research group and best practices found in the industry in general. This research is qualitative and descriptive. It makes use of the research methods of participant-observer, bibliographical research and documental research.

Este trabalho apresenta os métodos consensuais como uma proposta para reduzir as insatisfações das pessoas envolvidas no processo de levantamento de requisitos e respeitar as dimensões humanas e sociais já no inicio do ciclo de vida de um sistema sociotécnico, considerando a aderência desses métodos às demais fases do ciclo de vida. / This text proposes the use of consensual methods to reduce people dissatisfaction in take part of requirement elicitation process and indentify, and respect, the human and social dimensions since the beginning of a sociotechnical system life cycle, evaluating the adhesion of these methods to the other phases of the lifecycle.

O avanço tecnológico recente tem atraído tanto a comunidade acadêmica quanto o mercado para a investigação de novos métodos, técnicas e linguagens formais para a área de Projeto de Engenharia. A principal motivação é o atendimento à demanda para desenvolver produtos e sistemas cada vez mais completos e que satisfaçam as necessidades do usuário final. Necessidades estas que podem estar ligadas, por exemplo, à análise e reconhecimento de objetos que compõe uma imagem pela sua textura, um processo essencial na automação de uma enorme gama de aplicações como: visão robótica, monitoração industrial, sensoriamento remoto, segurança e diagnóstico médico assistido. Em vista da relevância das inúmeras aplicações envolvidas e pelo fato do domínio de aplicação ser muito próximo do contexto do desenvolvedor, é apresentada uma proposta de um processo de design baseado no Projeto Axiomático como sendo o mais indicado para esta situação. Especificamente, se espera que no estudo de caso da análise de textura haja uma convergência mais rápida para a solução - se esta existir. No estudo de caso, se desenvolve uma nova concepção de arquitetura de rede neural artificial (RNA), auto-organizável, com a estrutura espacial bidimensional da imagem de entrada preservada, tendo a extração e reconhecimento/classificação de textura em uma única fase de aprendizado. Um novo conceito para o paradigma da competição entre os neurônios também é estabelecida. O processo é original por permitir que o desenvolvedor assuma concomitantemente o papel do cliente no projeto, e especificamente por estabelecer o processo de sistematização e estruturação do raciocínio lógico do projetista para a solução do problema a ser desenvolvido e implementado em RNA. / The recent technological advance has attracted the industry and the academic community to research and propose methods, seek for new techniques, and formal languages for engineering design in order to respond to the growing demand for sophisticated product and systems that fully satisfy customers needs. It can be associated, for instance, with an application of object recognition using texture features, essential to a variety of applications domains, such as robotic vision, industrial inspection, remote sensing, security and medical image diagnosis. Considering the importance of the large number of applications mentioned before, and due to their characteristic where both application and developer domain are very close to each other, this work aims to present a design process based on ideas extracted from axiomatic design to accelerate the development for the classical approach to texture analysis. Thus, a case study is accomplished where a new conception of neural network architecture is specially designed for the following proposal: preserving the two-dimensional spatial structure of the input image, and performing texture feature extraction and classification within the same architecture. As a result, a new mechanism for neuronal competition is also developed as specific knowledge for the domain. In fact, the process proposed has some originality because it does take into account that the developer assumes also the customers role on the project, and establishes the systematization process and structure of logical reasoning of the developer in order to develop and implement the solution in neural network domain.

<p>Kunskapsöverföring är en nödvändig förutsättning för att säkerställa organisationers existens och framåtskridande. Utgångspunkt för denna uppsats är förstudiens roll i mjukvaruprojekt och dess betydelse för den fortsatta systemutvecklingsprocessen. Fokus liggerpå kunskap som genereras under förstudien, samt hur och i vilken omfattning kunskapen förs vidare till analysfasen i systemutvecklingsprocessen. </p><p>Resultatet visar att förstudien utgör ett viktigt beslutsunderlag och är en nödvändig förutsättning för att gå vidare i systemutvecklingsprocessen. Kunskapsöverföring genom dokumentation och via muntliga föredragningar är otillräcklig, eftersom det finns ett ”filter” som innebär att erfarenhetsbaserad kunskap inte överförs mellan förstudie och analys via dokument eller via muntliga föredragningar. Därför måste personer som deltar i förstudien finnas med senare i utvecklingsprocessen, för att artikulera den ”tysta” erfarenhetsbaserade kunskapen till explicita former. </p><p>Vi drar slutsatserna att kunskapsöverföring via dokument är bra, men räcker inte enligt vår mening. Då det mesta av kunskapen är implicit, det vill säga tyst och/eller ordlös, kommer den inte med i en skriftlig rapport. Kompletteras rapporten med muntliga föredragningar, kommer man ytterligare ett steg närmare en optimal kunskapsöverföring, men det räcker fortfarande inte, då den tysta kunskapen alltjämt utgör ett hinder. Kunskapsöverföring måste ske genom personer, som finns med både i förstudie- och analysfasen, men det måste tillskapas arenor för kunskapsomvandling och kommunikation. Genom en arena för kunskapsomvandling kan den tysta kunskapen göras kommunicerbar. En arena för kommunikation utgör sen den sista byggstenen på väg mot en effektiv kunskapsöverföring. Kunskapsöverföring måste "organiseras". Vi lämnar därför ett förslag till en kunskapsöverföringsmodell. </p> / <p>Knowledge transfer is necessary condition to guarantee the existence and progress of organisations. The starting-point for this paper is the role of the feasibility study in a software project and it’s significance for the subsequent system development process. The focus is on knowledge, which is generated under the feasibility study, and how and in which dimension knowledge is bringing on to the analysis in the system development process. </p><p>The result shows that the feasibility study is an important base of decision and a necessary condition of the future system development process. Knowledge transfer by documentation and by oral presentation of reports is insufficient, because there is a"filter"which means that knowledge of experience not will be transferred between feasibility study and analysis by documentation and by oral presentation. Furthermore must persons who are involved in the feasibility study occur even later in the development process, to articulate the "silence" knowledge of experience into explicit forms. </p><p>We draw the conclusions that knowledge transfer by documents is good, but not enough in our opinion. Because most of the knowledge is implicit, which means silent and/or without words, it will not been in the report. If the report will be completed with oral presentations, you will came further one step near an optimal knowledge transfer, but it’s still not enough, because the silent knowledge still is an obstruction. Knowledge transfer must be done by persons, who’s in both the feasibility study and analysis, but there must be an arena for knowledge transformation and communication. Through an arena for knowledge transformation the silent knowledge can be communicative. An arena for communication is then the last stone of building an effective knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer must be "organised". We therefore present a proposal to a model of knowledge transfer.</p>

Compared to traditional business services, IT-enabled services provide more value to customers and providers by enabling traditional business services with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and delivering them via e-channels (i.e., Internet, Mobile networks). Although IT-enabled service systems help in co-creating value through collaboration with customers during service design and delivery, they raise challenges when we attempt to understand, design and produce innovative and intelligent IT-enabled services from a multi-disciplinary perspective by including businesses, technology and people for value addition and increasing benefits. Due to their social-technical nature and characteristics (i.e., Intangibility, Inseparability, Perishability, Simultaneity), IT-enabled services also lack common methods to systemize services driven by customer requirements and their satisfactions and co-produce them through ad-hoc collaboration. In this thesis, we propose a middle-out methodology to model, design and systemize advanced IT-enabled service driven by customer requirements and collaboration among all actors to jointly co-create service systems. From a multi-disciplinary perspective, the methodology relies on a multi-view models including a service system reference model, a requirement model and a collaboration model to ensure system flexibility and adaptability to requirement changes and take into account joint efforts and collaboration of all service actors. The reference model aims at a multi-disciplinary description of services (ontological, systematical and characteristic-based descriptions), and formalizing business knowledge related to different domains. As for the requirement model, customer needs are specified in common expressiveness language understandable by all service actors and made possible its top-down propagation throughout service lifecycle and among actors. The collaboration model advocates a data-driven approach, which increases busi-ness, technical and semantic interoperability and exhibits stability in comparison to business processes centric approaches. Finally, the collaboration hinges on de-livery channels expressed as data flows and encapsulating business artifacts as per which business rules are generated to invoke underlying software components.