Takanori Ugai

Design and Evaluation a Knowledge Management System by Using Mathematical Model of Knowledge Transfer

Based on our experiences, we have proposed a mathematical model for knowledge transfer in order to make knowledge management mechanism or system take root in the organization and to obtain guidelines to make it work. We are developing a know-how sharing system designed based on the insight obtained from the proposed model. We derived and applied the two ideas as design guidelines based on the analysis using the proposed model: one is mutual reviewing to increase the sense of participation, and another is establishment of the criteria to evaluate the background information about the knowledge to be shared. In this paper, we explain the proposed mathematical model and the system design based on the model. And we describe the evaluation on the prototype system. It shows that the mathematical model could derive guidelines to make the KM system work well.

Extraction of viewpoints for eliciting customer's requirements based on analysis of specification change records

Eliciting customers requirements is the most important issue for a system integration project. Failure to elicit the customers requirements can cause an enormous correction cost. However there are only a few practical, concrete guidelines to do. In this paper, we describe a method to extract viewpoints and checklists for eliciting customers requirements more effectively based on analyzing specification change records. The flow of the method is 1) representing the records in an easy-readable format, 2) identifying the causes and the phases, 3) categorizing them, 4) putting a name to a category, namely a viewpoint and 5) deriving check-items for each viewpoint. We applied the method to 135 records from 4 system development cases, and we derived 39 check-items in total. We found 78% of the specification change cases could have been prevented by only 10 check-items of requirements elicitation process. This result shows that the proposed method works effectively to extract the viewpoints for eliciting customers requirements.

Reflective specification: applying a reflective language to formal specification

This paper reports on a technique for specifying concurrent systems by using a formal specification language with reflective computation mechanism. We call the specifications written by a reflective language reflective specifications. Our reflective language is an enhanced version of LOTOS (Language of Temporal Ordering Specification). We embedded reflection or reflective computation facilities to behaviour specification part of LOTOS in order to define complex behaviour in a simple and natural way. Reflection in a program is a mechanism to access and modify its execution states which its executor has. Our enhanced version of LOTOS is called RLOTOS, and has two level architecture - object level and meta level. The processes in the meta level, called meta processes, have the computational information and interpret the behaviour expressions of their object level processes. We can define meta processes in the same manner as LOTOS processes to control the behaviour of the object level processes. In this paper, we present a case study of specifying an operating system by using RLOTOS. Furthermore we discuss the method to construct comprehensive formal specifications by using reflective languages and explore the applicability of the reflective language to formal specification. The essential point of comprehensiveness is that the meta properties of the system such as control characteristics can be specified separately from the object level properties.<<ETX>>

Domain Knowledge Wiki for Eliciting Requirements

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Visualizing stakeholder concerns with anchored map

Software development is a cooperative work by stakeholders. It is important for project managers and analysts to understand stakeholder concerns and to identify potential problems such as imbalance of stakeholders or lack of stakeholders.