Method for managing requirements in healthcare projects using building information modelling

PurposeThis paper proposes a method for managing client requirements with the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM). The development of healthcare projects demands a large amount of requirements information, in order to deal with a diversity of clients and frequents changes in healthcare services. The proposed method supports healthcare design by adopting a process-based approach for client requirements management, with the aim of improving value generation.Design/methodology/approachDesign Science Research was the methodological approach adopted in this investigation. The main outcome of this study emerged from an empirical study carried out in a healthcare project in Brazil.FindingsThe proposed method involves three stages: (1) capturing and processing requirements; (2) product and requirements modelling, which involves the connection between requirements and the BIM 3-D model and (3) supporting design solution refinement, through the communication of requirements and the assessment of design in relation to updated client requirements information.Originality/valueThis study explores client requirements management from a process perspective, proposing activities and their interdependences and possible sources of data, including healthcare services information. The main theoretical contributions are related to the understanding of the nature and complexity of the information involved in client requirements management, and how this can be modelled.

Development Of A Boarding House Search Information System Using The Waterfall Model

Internet technology can balance entrepreneurs in their efforts to develop their business ventures. Boarding house business. In Indonesia, especially in Madura, educational centers are mushrooming, especially private colleges and universities. This is followed by an increase in the number of houses or special buildings that offer boarding services for students who need them. The purpose of this research is to make a prototype application for finding and ordering boarding houses in Telang to make it easier for boarding house seekers to find information related to boarding houses that match what they want without having to go to the place one by one. As for the boarding house owners help recommend their boarding house. The stages in this study adopt the Waterfall system development method which consists of literature study, problem analysis, requirements modelling, business process modelling, system design and the results of each stage in building a boarding house search system. The results of this study indicate that the test is valid, that is, the compatibility test found minor issues on the IE, Firefox and Safari web browsers, but in this test sampled the opera, chrome and Firefox web browsers, this test is considered valid.

Supporting Creation of New iStar Extensions through a Process

iStar is a goal-oriented requirements modelling language which has been used by industrial and academic projects of different domains. Modelling languages are commonly extended to add new constructs giving more expressiveness. iStar is often extended to incorporate new constructs. A study performed on iStar extensions identified 96 extensions and the occurrence of problems related to their quality. It was pointed out by experts in iStar extensions the need to propose a way to support the proposal of iStar extensions systematically to prevent the problem occurrence, increase the quality of extensions, and make extension creation a less challenging task. This work investigates how iStar extensions have been created and proposes a systematic way to guide the creation of quality extensions. A process to support the creation of new iStar extensions was proposed. The process was used to propose a new iStar extension and was analysed by experts. The results point to the usefulness of the process to propose new iStar extensions.

CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR (SEMI-) AUTOMATED DERIVATION OF EVALUATION CRITERIA IN REQUIREMENTS MODELLING

Requirements act as a limitation of the solution space, which represents the stakeholders’ needs and guides the whole product development process. Therefore, forgotten requirements can lead to wrong decisions when using them as a basis for decision-making. This contribution introduces a novel approach to link the requirement and evaluation criteria models to address this problem. For setting up those criteria consistently, the requirements are classified using natural language processing and derived by a ruleset based on a developed mapping between requirement classes and criteria types.

Using Building Information Modelling to Manage Client Requirements in Social Housing Projects

This paper proposes a set of guidelines for using Building Information Modelling (BIM) to manage client requirements in the context of social housing projects. A process model representing main activities involved in requirements management has been devised, as well as nine constructs that can be used for assessing the effectiveness of using BIM for client requirements management. The process of managing and modelling clients’ requirements is important to improve value generation, considering the limited resources usually available for social housing projects, as well as the need to deal with the diversity of user profiles. The use of BIM-based tools to support this process can potentially improve the performance of those projects in terms of environmental and social sustainability. Design Science Research was the methodological approach adopted in this investigation. The main outcome of this study, the set of guidelines, emerged from an empirical study carried out in a social housing project from Brazil. This study explores the managerial perspective of client requirements modelling, proposing practical contributions, such as understanding the challenges of managing requirements in social housing projects, and theoretical contributions, such as descriptions of the activities involved in client requirements management and their interactions, and constructs for assessing BIM-based solutions for that problem.

Integrating Context to Preferences and Goals for Goal-oriented Adaptability of Software Systems

Modern software systems are continuously seeking for adaptability realizations, to generate better fit behaviours in response to domain changes. Requirements variability motivates adaptability; hence, understanding the influence of the domain changes, i.e. context variability, to requirements variability is necessary. In this paper, we propose an approach for context-based requirements variability analysis in the goal-oriented requirements modelling. We define contextual goals and contextual preferences to specify the relationships of contexts with requirements and preferences, respectively. Given a requirements problem represented through a goal model, we use the contextual goals to derive applicable solutions at a given situation. Then, from those applicable solutions, we use the contextual preferences as criteria for evaluating and selecting the ones that would best satisfy stakeholder priorities. To support our variability analysis, we develop a tool to automate the derivation and evaluation of the solutions. We further demonstrate the use of our approach in detecting modelling errors and validating the impact of prioritizations, leading to improvements in the requirements specifications. Our approach broadens the scope of requirements variability by weaving context variability with both stakeholder goals and preferences, in order to sufficiently represent the adaptability needs of software systems where contextual changes are commonplace.