Authors Comments on Paper Review and Assessment - Assignment Example

6109CIT Information Systems in the Future -- Paper Review Paper Title: Managing volatile requirements in software development ______________________________________________________________ Assigned Reviewer’s Name (your name): ______________________________________________________________ Originality: 1.- Strong reject. 2.- Reject (I will argue against this paper). 3.- Weak reject (vote reject, but won't object). 4.- Neutral (not impressed, won't object). 5.- Weak accept (vote accept, but won't object). 6.- Accept (I will argue for this paper). 7.- Strong Accept (award quality). Significance of topic: 1.- Strong reject. 2.- Reject (I will argue against this paper). 3.- Weak reject (vote reject, but won't object). 4.- Neutral (not impressed, won't object). 5.- Weak accept (vote accept, but won't object). 6.- Accept (I will argue for this paper). 7.- Strong Accept (award quality). Technical quality: 1.- Strong reject. 2.- Reject (I will argue against this paper). 3.- Weak reject (vote reject, but won't object). 4.- Neutral (not impressed, won't object). 5.- Weak accept (vote accept, but won't object). 6.- Accept (I will argue for this paper). 7.- Strong Accept (award quality). Relevance to the designated Conference: 1.- Strong reject. 2.- Reject (I will argue against this paper). 3.- Weak reject (vote reject, but won't object). 4.- Neutral (not impressed, won't object). 5.- Weak accept (vote accept, but won't object). 6.- Accept (I will argue for this paper). 7.- Strong Accept (award quality). Presentation: 1.- Strong reject. 2.- Reject (I will argue against this paper). 3.- Weak reject (vote reject, but won't object). 4.- Neutral (not impressed, won't object). 5.- Weak accept (vote accept, but won't object). 6.- Accept (I will argue for this paper). 7.- Strong Accept (award quality). Overall rating: 1.- Strong reject. 2.- Reject (I will argue against this paper). 3.- Weak reject (vote reject, but won't object). 4.- Neutral (not impressed, won't object). 5.- Weak accept (vote accept, but won't object). 6.- Accept (I will argue for this paper). 7.- Strong Accept (award quality). Referee's expertise on the topic (that’s your expertise): Low Medium High Amount of rewriting required: Low Medium High Comments to the Author (mandatory) [Write clearly] Main Contributions of Paper: Volatility measures the amount of rate of churn as a process moves from one step to another. Predicted volatility is expected to quantify the amount of gross churn, which is likely to take place as a task is accomplished. Volatility is an important concept from the management point of view, intended to correlate parameters as project planning exercises with that of "budgeted versus actual." It is already understood that an understanding exists in management with respect to predicted versus actual volatility, as it is able to assess variance from a particular plan so as to enable us to take control as and when we find out that a project heading out of control. An important topics, managing volatile requirements in software development, tends to gain the reputation of a governance issue, which means that managers need to assess compliance with standards -- the predicted project volatility curve -- to equip themselves to handle situations in the team so as to achieve the desired project outcome. In the management circles it is believed that if you want to attain the desired predictable, standardized processes, you will need to concentrate on managing the volatility of those processes on which you are working. This statement holds greatly true for software industry (probably more than any other) since this industry follows certain given set of patterns more readily than newer developments. This paper enumerates the management of volatility at length, but still seems to be lopsided in its approach. At times it seems it more descriptive yet narrowly centred on the topic, instead of being practical-oriented. The paper is smartly replete with examples of the problems, but not as many solutions to the problems. For any paper to be good enough, it is imperative to understand and go deeper into why investigating the factors supposed to drive requirements change is of a paramount prerequisite for following and understanding the nature of requirements volatility. This is likely to increase the understanding on how improvement can be brought about in the process of requirements change management. It has generally been seen under such scenarios change analysis is being focussed on to identify and characterize the causes of requirements volatility, along with a “connecting” analysis employed on method on change request data so as to create a taxonomy of change. This enables to pinpoint and trace the reasons, problems, and sources of changes. On the other hand when an industrial case study approach is adopted, the findings are altogether different, which reveal that the foremost causes of requirements volatility were surprisingly changes in customer needs (which can be dubbed as market demands too), changes in the organization policy and developers' increased understanding of the products. This paper, even though being on managing volatile requirements in software development, has relied more on examples from sectors as housing, which do not have too much of relevance to the domain. Agile Development and Prototyping, considered as potential approaches of future have been dealt with, whereas those that are contemporary have been left out. Consequently too much of help has been sought from literature review as compared to original ideas that could have been used to creatively craft an opinion around the topic. Positive Aspects: The author has sought thorough help from literature review and that is good. It is also good to incorporate examples from wide field of study, but under a specific limit. This is a very valid point since there must be some requirement management system in place, along with a requirement management tool support. Negative Aspects: As mentioned above, the paper describes the topic from a literature point of view. It doesn’t offer more in terms of detailing novel ways to better manage change during software development. The paper could have identified 5 key processes required for improvement practices: These, for example, could have been with regard to the following: 1. Change improvement framework adoption. 2. Concentrating on organisation-wide change process. 3. Change classification. 4. Estimation of change. 5. Change improvement measurement. 6. A change maturity so as to access an individual’s capability at managing change. 7. Furthermore, each practice could have been described in detail. Requested Changes: This topic is important and that makes writing this paper important too. This paper needs to be correctly documented since a lot of aid is being pumped into volatile requirements within the software industry. Under such a scenario anything that is being filed can become a benchmark specification or statement. This paper could have taken enough of clue from Software Assurance Technology Center (SATC), which has developed a tool to help author development important documents related to volatile requirements. This paper could have taken help from seven measures as developed by SATC and which include: Lines of Text, Imperatives, Continuances, Directives, Weak Phrases, Incomplete, and Options. Furthermore, the paper lacks proper Harvard style and nowhere in the paper is in-text referencing being seen. From this analysis, several things can be suggested to the author. Even though the paper shows some strength, there appears to be a lot of superfluous text, which needs to be taken out and replaced with more concise and relevant text. The paper, at times, seems to drift from the main topic, which obscure the requirements and prevent them from being clear and concise. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Reviewer’s mark / 10 Comments from Dr Rowlands Paper needs more focus, correct referencing. Rewrite recommended. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Confidential comments for Dr Rowlands’ use only: _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Read More