vol 1 issue 2 june 2015

D u r r e e s a m i n J o u r n a l ( I S S N : 2 2 0 4 - 9 8 2 7 )

J u n e V o l 1 I s s u e 2 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5

Implementing Software Engineering in Campus: Student

Experience

Azlina binti Zainuddin

(Faculty of Computer System and Software Engineering (FSKKP)

University Malaysia Pahang, [email protected])

Tan Hooi Fong


University Malaysia Pahang, [email protected])

Tay Chze Huat


[email protected])

ABSTRACT: Focused on the final year project for IT student, most of the projects are developing an application. When

developing the application, within the given timeframe, not every process of software engineering is able to apply. This

paper is presenting one of final year project student experienced in applying steps in software development life cycle, starts

from planning the project at first semester of final year project, analysis, design, coding and testing. Follow the guidance

from IEEE Standard, and RAD methodology framework, the project is able to complete and implement with certain

achievement. From this experienced, this paper is discussing the do and don’t to the student for preparing themselves before

taking final year project with application development area.

Key words: RAD methodology, Software development, UML

1. Introduction

In software engineering understanding, besides the

application development, documentation has become the

third largest activities after communications. As in

software development lifecycle undergo nowadays, the

software system project undergo the software

development life cycle (SDLC) phases which consists of

planning, analyzing, designing, implementing, and

testing. Software documentations play an important role

in software engineering approach. However, the process

did not consist of proper software engineering approach

which is the software engineering documentation. This

make the software system project cannot complete

perfectly. This is because providing the documentation

can help in structuring the information such as user

requirement, system requirement that being used and

generate as to provide an extensive and easy to use as a

manual for the system.

Software documentation pervades the software life cycle.

It is the visible part of the software process. Without it,

software cannot be maintained. Without it, users cannot

train and they virtually cannot use the software. Without

it new developers would have to re-invent the wheel in

software development. Software documentation is the

most important manifestation of software. It is the guide

through the software maze.

Each of documentation in software engineering approach

is related to each other. For example, after Software

Development Plan (SDP) have being created, the

requirements in SDP will transfer to Software

Requirement Specification (SRS) for further detail

describe which consists of step by step guidance in the

system and using Sequence Diagram in Unified

Modeling Language (UML) diagram in terms of design

view. After system being testing and success deploy, the

important key of maintenance are the process that being

documented in the software engineering documentations.

Each of the modules, functions and operations are clearly

defined and described in the documentations that help

during maintenance. If didn’t having proper software

engineering approach, this make the maintenance

consume a lot of time and undocumented after this.

In conclusion, this can shows that software engineering

approach must be applied during campus life for those

that planning software system project. Software

engineering approach can make all the process

documented, and this can virtualized the software system

view without executing the software system.

2. Categorizes of Software Engineering

Documentation

2.1 Good Documentation

Architecture and other abstract documentation

information are often valid or at least provide historical

guidance that can be useful for maintainers. Inline

comments are often good enough to greatly assist

detailed maintenance work.

2.2 Bad documentation

Documentation of all types is frequently out of date.

- Systems often have too much documentation.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



- Documentation is often poorly written.

- Finding useful content in documentation can be so

challenging that people might not try to do so.

- Much mandated documentation is so time consuming to

create that its cost can outweigh its benefit.

2.3 Ugly documentation A consideration fraction of documentation is

untrustworthy [1].

3.0 Software Engineering Phases

There are four fundamental phases in most, if not all,

software engineering methodologies. These phases are

analysis, design, implementation, and testing. Theses

phases address what is to be built, how it will be built,

building it, and making it high quality.

3.1 Analysis Phase

The analysis phase defines the requirements of the

system, independent of how these requirements will be

accomplished. This phase defines the problem that the

customer is trying to solve. The deliverable result at the

end of this phase is a requirement document. Ideally, this

document states in a clear and precise fashion what is to

be built. This analysis represents the ``what'' phase. The

requirement document tries to capture the requirements

from the customer's perspective by defining goals and

interactions at a level removed from the implementation

details. The requirement document may be expressed in a

formal language based on mathematical logic.

Traditionally, the requirement document is written in

English or another written language. The requirement

document does not specify the architectural or

implementation details, but specifies information at the

higher level of description. The problem statement, the

customer's expectations, and the criteria for success are

examples of high-level descriptions.

There is a fuzzy line between high-level descriptions and

low-level details. Sometimes, if an exact engineering

detail needs to be specified, this detail will also appear in

the requirement document. This is the exception and

should not be the rule. These exceptions occur for many

reasons including maintaining the consistency with other

established systems, availability of particular options,

customer's demands, and to establish, at the requirement

level, a particular architecture vision. An example of a

low-level detail that might appear in the requirement

document is the usage of a particular vendor's product

line, or the usage of some accepted computer industry

standard, or a constraint on the image size of the

application.

There is a fundamental conflict between high levels and

low levels of detail. The requirement document states

what the system should accomplish, independent of

many of the details[4]. The discovery process used in

establishing the requirements during the analysis phase is

best described as a refinement process than as a levels-

of-detail process. Traditionally, the requirement

document describes the things in the system and the

actions that can be done on these things. Things might be

expressed as objects in an object-based technology where

data and algorithms are hidden behind hierarchical-

polymorphic methods. Alternatively, things might be

expressed as services accessing databases in a functional

approach where data is a fundamentally different concept

than functions. In general, the description of things in the

system can be much more general and not confined to a

particular technology. In a more general sense, this

document describes the ontology that is the noun phrases

and the verb phrases that will become the guidelines for

defining the application specific protocol.

The requirement descriptions of the things in

the system and their actions does not imply an

architecture design rather a description of the artifacts of

the system and how they behave, from the customer's

perspective. Later, in the design phase, these requirement

descriptions are mapped into computer science based

primitives, such as lists, stacks, trees, graphs, algorithms,

and data structures.

The description of the abstraction of the noun

phrases and the verb phrases are not bound to the use of a

written human language. Most written human languages

are too vague to capture the precision necessary to build

a system. Alternative descriptive mechanisms based on

mathematical logic are sometimes more suitable but

much more difficult to accomplish. Mathematical logic

provides a scientific foundation for precisely expressing

information. However, frequently in the real world, a

precise description is not attainable. Again the

requirement document should state in a clear and precise

fashion what is to be built[5][6]. The definitive

mechanism to author such a document, either formally or

informally, has yet to be developed, although reasonable

success has been achieved with existing methods

including CASE tools and tools based on mathematical

logic Later, in the design phase, the very important

decomposition of the problem leads to the development

of data structures and algorithms. A functional

decomposition for a distributed environment leads to a

natural split of the data structures and algorithms.

Examples include distributed client-server systems,

where a database holds the data in a server while the

algorithms manipulating the data reside on the client. An

object-based decomposition leads to a natural joining of

data structures and algorithms forming objects with

methods[7]. The requirement documents should be

independent of the decomposition technique. The

analysis team develops the requirement document, which

talks about things and actions on things. This document

should also include states, events, typical scenarios of

usage, and typical scenarios of usage

3.2 Design Phase

In the design phase the architecture is established. This

phase starts with the requirement document delivered by

the requirement phase and maps the requirements into

architecture. The architecture defines the components,

their interfaces and behaviors. The deliverable design

document is the architecture[8]. The design document

describes a plan to implement the requirements. This

phase represents the ``how'' phase. Details on computer

programming languages and environments, machines,

packages, application architecture, distributed

architecture layering, memory size, platform, algorithms,

data structures, global type definitions, interfaces, and



many other engineering details are established. The

design may include the usage of existing components.

The architectural team can now expand upon

the information established in the requirement document.

Using the typical and a typical scenarios provided from

the requirement document, performance trade-offs can be

accomplished as well as complexity of implementation

trade-offs. Obviously, if an action is done many times, it

needs to be done correctly and efficiently. A seldom used

action needs to be implemented correctly, but it is not

obvious what level of performance is required [9] [10].

The requirement document must guide this decision

process. An example of a seldom used action which must

be done with high performance is the emergency

shutdown of a nuclear reactor. Analyzing the trade-offs

of necessary complexity allows for many things to

remain simple which, in turn, will eventually lead to a

higher quality product. The architecture team also

converts the typical scenarios into a test plan.

In our approach, the team, given a complete requirement

document, must also indicate critical priorities for the

implementation team. A critical implementation priority

leads to a task that has to be done right. If it fails, the

product fails. If it succeeds, the product might succeed.

At the very least, the confidence level of the team

producing a successful product will increase. This will

keep the implementation team focused. Exactly how this

information is conveyed is a skill based on experience

more than a science based on fundamental foundations

3.2 Implementation Phase

In the implementation phase, the team builds the

components either from scratch or by composition.

Given the architecture document from the design phase

and the requirement document from the analysis phase,

the team should build exactly what has been requested,

though there is still room for innovation and flexibility.

For example, a component may be narrowly designed for

this particular system, or the component may be made

more general to satisfy a reusability guideline. The

architecture document should give guidance. Sometimes,

this guidance is found in the requirement document. The

implementation phase deals with issues of quality,

performance, baselines, libraries, and debugging. The

end deliverable is the product itself.

3.3 Testing Phase

Simply stated, quality is very important. Many

companies have not learned that quality is important and

deliver more claimed functionality but at a lower quality

level. It is much easier to explain to a customer why

there is a missing feature than to explain to a customer

why the product lacks quality. A customer satisfied with

the quality of a product will remain loyal and wait for

new functionality in the next version. Quality is a

distinguishing attribute of a system indicating the degree

of excellence .In many software engineering

methodologies, the testing phase is a separate phase

which is performed by a different team after the

implementation is completed. There is merit in this

approach; it is hard to see one's own mistakes, and a

fresh eye can discover obvious errors much faster than

the person who has read and re-read the material many

times. Unfortunately, delegating testing to another team

leads to a slack attitude regarding quality by the

implementation team. Alternatively, another approach is

to delegate testing to the whole organization. If the teams

are to be known as craftsmen, then the teams should be

responsible for establishing high quality across all

phases. Sometimes, an attitude change must take place to

guarantee quality [11]. The testing technique is from the

perspective of the system provider. Because it is nearly

impossible to duplicate every possible customer's

environment and because systems are released with yet-

to-be-discovered errors, the customer plays an important,

though reluctant, role in testing [2].

4.0 Evaluation of Change Implementation

This part is discussed about advantages and

disadvantages of software engineering documentation.

Advantages Documents written about the system often contain

conceptual information and present a glimpse or at least

one person understands of the software system. They can

also serve as an introduction to the software and the

team. Comments in the program code tend to provide

low-level information on algorithms and data. Using the

source code as source of data allows for an up-to-date

portrayal of the software system.

Disadvantages Studying the documentation can be time consuming and

it requires some knowledge of the source. Written

material and source comments may be inaccurate [3].

Conclusion In conclusion, we have discussed issues that software

engineering such as negative impact that may occur if

improper software engineering approach. Besides that,

this paper consists of the good practices for software

engineering, as well advantages and disadvantages of

using software engineering. By applied Software

Engineering approach, providing many benefits such as

reduce time consuming, visualize design view instead of

executing the system. This can help other project team

member have clear understanding about the software

architecture.

References

[1] Timonthy C. Lethbridge, University of Otawa, Janice

Singer, National Research Council, Andrew Forward,

Deloitte Consulting, 2003 How Software Engineers Use

Documentation : The State of the Practice

[2] Software Engineering Phases

http://www.techiwarehouse.com/engine/18a41ffa/Softwa

re-Engineering-Phases

[3] Timothy C. Lethbridge, Susan Elliott Sim, Janice

Singer, Empirical Software Engineering 10, 311-341,

2005. Studying Software Engineers : Data Collection

Techniques for Software Field Studies

[4] Henderson-Sellers, B., & Serour, M. K. (2005).

Creating a dual-agility method: The value of method

http://www.techiwarehouse.com/engine/18a41ffa/Software-Engineering-Phases

http://www.techiwarehouse.com/engine/18a41ffa/Software-Engineering-Phases



engineering. Journal of Database Management, 16(4), 1-

23.

[5] Butt, S. M., & Butt, S. M. USABILITY

EVALUATION METHOD FOR AGILE SOFTWARE

DEVELOPMENT

[6] Jaakkola, H., Heimbürger, A., & Linna, P. (2010).

Knowledge-oriented software engineering process in a

multi-cultural context.Software Quality Journal, 18(2),

299-319.

[7] Butt, Saad Masood, et al. "CASI METHOD FOR

IMPROVING THE USABILITY OF IDS."

[8] Larman, Craig; Basili, Victor R. (June 2003).

Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History.

Computer 36 (6): 47–56

[9] McAvoy, J., & Sammon, D. (2005). Agile

methodology adoption decisions: An innovative

approach to teaching and learning.Journal of Information

Systems Education, 16(4), 409-420.

[10] Maruping, L. M., Venkatesh, V., & Agarwal, R.

(2009). A control theory perspective on agile

methodology use and changing user

requirements. Information Systems Research, 20(3), 377-

399,478-480.

[11] Spector, B. (2013) Implementing Organizational

Change: Theory into Practice. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle

River, New Jersey: Pearson, p.2-49.



Methods Social and Healthcare policies affecting blood donation programs

Richelle A. Chiongson, RN (School of Nursing, Ateneo de davao University, Philippines

[email protected])

ABSTRACT: Nurses are governed by hospital rules and policies. It is one’s responsibility to know the existing policies on

blood transfusion specifically the procedure and to reiterate that nursing as a practice based profession focuses on

improving the standard of patient care with holistic perspective, improving communication skills and acknowledging the

importance of research in the practice of the profession of nursing. In this area of discussion, blood donation will be the

main focus in relation to the health care policies and social issues had is still revolving on the topic of discussion. This

paper will present the policies in regards to the practice of nursing, the professional knowledge of a nurse regarding blood

transfusion and other related studies deemed important for the discussion of blood donation program.

Key words: Healthcare, Blood Donation, Nursing

1. Introduction

What is Health? According to the World Health

Organization (WHO), it is defined as all activities

inclusive of promoting, restoring or maintaining health as

a primary purpose wherein it is under the government

with partial or complete control as the main funders in

health related issues in developing countries as Kruk and

Freedman (2008) state.

Considerably, a main topic of concern is

formal healthcare that deals with the work of patients,

doctors, nurses and druggist as seen in the journal of

Marmor and Wendt (2012) and the role of the hospitals

faced with real or feared illness. Many policies

regarding healthcare had been written by several authors

as evident in the articles Cochran (1999); Esain and

Williams (2011) and Marmor and Wendt (2012). But

policies had been affected by issues of social

development of Siddiqi, Masud, Nishtar, Peters, Sabri,

Bile and Jama (2009) indicating that to attain the

Millennium Development Goals in low and middle

income countries, governance is the main concern for the

indicators of economic growth, social development and

overall development and in addition, leadership and

governance has been reiterated by Smith, Anell, Busse,

Crivelli, Healy, Lindahl, Westert and Kene (2012).

Policies had been the basis of many hospitals

in rendering care to the patients by their evidence based

practices, knowledge of nurses and other healthcare team

in Malaysia emphasize by Lai, Teng and Lee (2010) but

still conflicts of different healthcare perspective had also

been issues according to Meth, Lawles and Hawryluck

(2009). Dramatic change is continuously occurring in

many counties brought about my major industries

bringing about assessment of different system

performance (Kruk and Freedman, 2008).

Because of what we call globalization, blood

donation is no exception for such policies. Issues of

blood donation had been in the articles of Pauwels, Buck,

Compernolle and Vandekerckhove (2013); Rock,

Bormanis and Neurath (2005); Thomas (2011); Zito,

Alfieri, Cremonesi, Marconi and Saturni (2012); and

Cruz (2012). One of the most important concerns of

blood safety is the risk of blood transfusion associated

infection that had been reduced due to the changes in the

collection process, processing, storage and transfusion

but can never be slowed down to a zero percentage

(Rock et al, 2005). In this area of discussion, blood

donation will be the main focus in relation to the health

care policies and social issues had is still revolving on

the topic of discussion. This paper will present the

policies in regards to the practice of nursing, the

professional knowledge of a nurse regarding blood

transfusion and other related studies deemed important

for the discussion of blood donation programmes.

2. A Breif Reflection

I had remembered an incident with my patient where I

am working as a Post-Anesthesia Care Unit Nurse in a

private institution. The incident cites the importance of

blood transfusion and the implication it has on the

nursing profession.

The patient was a status post Caesarean Section

Gravida 2 Para 2. She had delivered to a live baby girl

with Apgar Score of 8 and 9. The main reason for the

Caesarean Section was because of Abruptio Placenta

where the placenta detaches from the uterus prematurely.

There is postpartum haemorrhage but loss of blood has

been more than 500 ml and must be replaced.

The doctor ordered hooked for blood

transfusion stat. The patient had started to become pale

as evidenced by pale lips and decreased capillary refill.

She was cold and clammy. As our hospital rules on

blood transfusion I had to fill up two pieces of blood

request form where one is the original and another is the

carbon copied paper. One copy is for the chart and

another for the watcher to secure blood from the blood

bank. I browsed over the patient’s blood type and


J u n e V o l 1 I s s u e 2 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5 requested for whole blood,500ml in the form for it was

the easiest and fastest to secure in the blood bank. After

the doctor had signed the form, I instructed the watcher

on where to go and to secure a container for the blood to

keep it cold. Then I requested the laboratory department

for stat CBC to check the haemoglobin count of the

patient after I had secured the request from the doctor.

After an hour, the Laboratory department

called for the nurse to get the blood from the Laboratory.

I then went down to the laboratory to check the

compatibility of the blood by the patient’s blood type,

check the appearance of the blood and the serial number.

The laboratory personnel informed me that the

compatibility test is in three phases and the first phase is

finished and compatible. The other two phases will still

be continuously processed. I had then placed the blood

in the container and need to thaw it before hooking it to

the patient. Included in the container was the blood

transfusion reaction form where I had to observe the

patient for 30 minutes after hooking the blood, then an

hour and 2 hours after. Reactions such as rashes,

redness, chills, fever and difficulty in breathing must be

reported to the physician with my first nursing

intervention to first stop the blood transfusion. I then

hooked the whole blood to the patient and made the

necessary observation. The vital signs were recorded in

the blood transfusion reaction sheet with the specified

time. Recalling this situation, as a nurse, I followed

hospital policies and protocol in securing blood and

transfusion of the blood to deliver safe and effective

patient care. I then realized that hospital rules are very

important to serve as guidelines to a healthcare provider.

Policies had been adopted to the changing society to deal

with providing the best available healthcare to a patient.

3. Review of Literature

At present various software projects are being developed

and still developing using different software models.

Health Expenditure Growth and the long term

sustainability had been two major concerns leading the

development of health expenditure models in many

countries with the considerations on the issues of fiscal

sustainability, increasing health prices, production of the

health sector and the financial strains on the part of the

patient and family wherein the government is making a

step to understand the scope of the problem and setting

up a policy reform for such issues of Astolfi, Lorenzoni

and Oderkirk (2012). Taking into consideration is the

overlap that occurs between social issues and the wider

literature as Biron, Rumbold and Faden (2012) states and

the additional issues with regard to philosophy and

bioethcis. So, how are social issues important in the

framework is due to the presentation that it plays as a

central role in heath priority setting and these are societal

values that must be given focus not only in the scientific

and medical data (Biron, et al, 2012). Disparities has

been occurring in the discussions of Blacksher (2008), on

the two implications for reform effort: the first is on

policy that is structural as well as clinical in relation to

health and healthcare delivery and the second is about the

Socioeconomic status (SES) as part of the

Comprehensive reform agenda.

Policies are made to focus on the common good and is

one of the most distinctive ideas of Catholic theory on

social issues posting a great challenge wherein healthcare

is a means to render service to vulnerable groups such as

the very young, severely disabled, aged and the dying

(Cochran, 1999). Theory and practice has been growing

fast in the issue of leadership since being a leader deals

with principles, motivating employees and

communicating future goals and visions and Crevani,

Lindgen and Packendorff (2009) states that a leader has a

special, significant and positive contribution in an

organization with regards to action process and the

academic field. Because of this Esain, Williams, Gakhal,

Caley and Cooke (2011), explores quality improvement

in a healthcare setting, the identifiable issues around the

skills in defining a problem and the gap closure on

quality improvement on capacity and delivery. Again,

Kruk and Freedman (2008), emphasize on the definition

of a health system by the World Health Organization as

the sum of the activities with the primary purpose of

health promotion, restoration and maintenance.

Furthermore, the conceptual frameworks of Marmor and

Wendt (2012) considers evidences on heath policy

change, the people involved in a healthcare setting and

the characteristics of a healthcare setting. In addition

Siddiqi et al (2009) presents governance equivalent to

stewardship which deals with health policy formulation,

influential exertion and the collection and usage of

intelligence and Smith et al (2012) states the same issue.

Issues on governance of Siddqi et al, 2008 is

presenting a presenting the health system governance on

actions in conformity to the society to promote and

protect the health of the population. So, Fleming and

Soborg (2002) show the Malaysian government focuses

on moving Malaysia to a “knowledge economy” and

“information society” by the development of the

healthcare system by the aim of the making of a global

centre of tele-health but changes in work organisation

and labour had been questions in the development of the

human resource policy to bring about changes that are

critical and self-reflective.

Reviews on current nursing practice of Sawyer,

Alexander, Gordon, Juszczak and Gilliss (2000) provides

that accessibility and provision of healthcare to

underserved population represents what nursing mission

is which is service to the needy, reflection of the ethics

and theories of nursing. Blood donations are also

governed by policies as Thomas (2011) states that

considerations of donor size about the height, weight and

the total blood volume is and deferrals is due to low

count of haemoglobin (Hb) of the donor. Blood

donations as Cruz (2012) presents additional

considerations such as proportions of blood donors,

deferred donors, transfusion transmissible infections

(TTI) and the proportion of a red blood cell, whole blood

or packed erythrocytes has been outdated.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has been

circulating in Malaysian blood but the knowledge

regarding such infection is little even if Malaysia is

considered an endemic country for HBV (Meldal, Bon,

Prati, Ayob & Allain, 2010). In addition, the article of


J u n e V o l 1 I s s u e 2 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5 Meldal, et al (2010) had stated that medium

seroprevalence for HBV surface antigen (HBSag) existed

in the Malaysian population and is lower in the repeat

blood donors. The main carriers are the Malaysian

women of child bearing age who had been infected

prenatally where the government had resorted to

vaccination programs for the infants and reducting the

prevalence in the blood donor population. Another

worldwide issues of blood donation of Pauwels et al

(2013) with regards to Haemochromatosis (HC) and

defined as a disorder of iron metabolism in relation to a

deficiency to a hormone that regulates iron which is

inherited in most cases but can be acquired also.

4. Critical Analysis

Blood donations have been based on health care policies

and issues on society as the ever changing need to adapt

to the needs of the patients and current trends in health

care. The issue on blood donation has been reflecting the

important facts on policies, the governing body and the

people who are donors and those patients who benefit

from the blood transfusion. Knowledge on the different

qualifications as Meldal, Bon, Prati, Ayob and Allain

(2010) pose a challenge to the Malaysian candidate for

blood donation. As nurses, globalization has been

brought about by worldwide policies on blood services

with regards to haemochromatois and blood donation

(Pauwels et al 2013) and the development of autologous

blood (ABD) programs that emphasize on one time

single donation red cell collection (Rock et al 2005).

The publication of Kruk and Freedman (2008) presents

that governments need tools to be guides for

measurement with regards to health system performance

in monitoring and evaluating the functions of the

healthcare system allowing decision on healthcare funds,

organisations and policies. In addition, Siddiqi et al

(2009), focus on governance as the means that a society

organize itself to protect and promote health in the

population with the development of a framework to

summarize contemporary issues of the health system of

the government, the frameworks used for assessment and

the principles of the government used. Although, issues

had been allotted on policies and society, Reeleder, Goel,

Singer and Martin (2005) the role of a leader is important

in a setting serving as a chief decision maker to look into

the priority setting practices on healthcare with regards to

economics and ethics approach.

Public and private Malaysian managers of private

institutions are aware for education shift and how an

institution is governed wherein Malaysia’s economy for

the last three decades had experienced a transitional shift

focusing to the main output of manufacturing and

services (Fleming and Soborg, 2002) and wherein the

Malaysian Vision 2020 focuses on the upgrading of skills

and development of competence through transforming

Malaysia into a country with higher value-added forms

of production as demonstrated in the aim to make the

country a global centre of tele-health.

5. Implication to the Nursing Practice

Birks, Chapman and Francis (2006) that nursing is

considered a practice based profession focusing on

improving the standard of patient care with holistic

perspective, improving communication skills and

acknowledging the importance of research in the practice

of the profession of nursing. Matsuda (2008) supports

that the continuous changes resulting to globalization in

many countries calls for changes in the economy cutting

the budget for health, education and social welfare;

furthermore, nursing care should be given importance by

establishing nursing as a means of social security in the

care process by the reduction of the individual family’s

burden and gaining access to public support universally.

Conclusion Meth et al (2009) explains that patients, families and the

public have experience knowledge deficit regarding life-

sustaining treatments due to lack of information and

patients are very ill and in time of crisis especially in the

Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Nurses are governed by hospital rules and policies. It is

one’s responsibility to know the existing policies on

blood transfusion specifically the procedure and to

reiterate that nursing as a practice based profession

focuses on improving the standard of patient care with

holistic perspective, improving communication skills and

acknowledging the importance of research in the practice

of the profession of nursing Birks et al (2006).

References

Astolfi, R., Lorenzoni, L., and Oderkirk, J. (2012)

'Informing policy makers about future health spending: A

comparative analysis of forecasting methods in OECD

countries' Health Policy, 107(2012), pp.1-10 SCIENCE

DIRECT [Online] Available from:

http://www.sciencedirect.com (Accessed: 9 August

2013)

Birks, M., Chapman, Y. and Francis, K. (2006)

‘Baccalaureate Nursing Studies: Voyaging Towards

Discovery’ International Journal of Nursing Practice,

12(1), pp. 267-272 EBSCO [Online]. Available from:

http://search.ebscohost.com (Accessed: 10 August 2013)

Biron, L., Rumbold, B., and Faden, R. (2012) 'Social

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Review Paper on the importance of Usability in Agile Software

Development

Saad Masood Butt

(Faculty of Computer Engineering, Bahria University Islamabad, Pakistan

[email protected])

Mazlina Abdul Majid

(Faculty of Computer Systems & Software Engineering, University Malaysia Pahang,

[email protected])

Lubna Yaqoob

(Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutoo Institute of Science and Technology, Pakistan

[email protected])

ABSTRACT: There are many software model are being used in industry like waterfall, rad, and scrum etc. Among all agile

model is considered as fastest software development model. In agile, the software development is based on iterative cycle

and the main objective is to deliver the software faster with on-going user participation. Traditional software development

considered comprehensive feasibility documentation for the success of project where as requirement gathering and

comprehensive feasibility report of project are not emphasized in the case of agile software development. Agile model

provides rapid solution of software development which leads towards the absence of good design, and architecture and it is

observed to be very expensive if followed. As a remedy, a proposed lifecycle for agile software development has been

designed. The proposed lifecycle outlined in this paper integrates usability evaluation concepts and agile software

methodologies for the development of interactive software. An experimental report will be provided in future after successful

testing of proposed lifecycle in the software companies by developing an interactive desktop based application.

Key words: usable software model, usability engineering, agile methods, software development

1. Introduction

Now a days usability is considers as an important feature

in software products. Products which are lacking in poor

design and usability results in the failure of software

product. Therefore, one of the complications involved in

software development is to observe users and analyse its

participation in the design and development stages, their

behaviour and effective, then to collect information idea

for the ensuing development.

It is quite apparent that the development of better

systems needs the collaboration of different professionals

like HCI, SE, Stakeholder, Usability experts and User

experience experts etc. Software Engineers, HCI experts

and Users are the most important key players of the

software development. Involving users in the software

development is an important thought-provoking task.

Neglecting HCI approaches from software development

will affect the role of usability in the software and make

the software difficult to learn, difficult to use and result

in the dissatisfaction of the users. They need to cooperate

with each other to create a software product that is usable

and useful for the target audience. But, in reality, these

three key players (Software Engineers, HCI experts and

Users) do not cooperate as smoothly as they should. By

the time this lack of cooperation is seen, big software

projects may not provide what they promise; therefore,

such projects often fall short [1]. Their failure can be in

various forms. Sometimes, the delivered system isn't able

to offer considerable specifications to the conventional

system that is top quality which would make it possible

to actually set up the system. Sometimes, involvement of

the user is introduced too late which produces a high

impact on the software efficiency. Sometimes, the cost,

time and resources are exceeded by large factors.

Sometimes, the product is difficult to understand due to

the lack of usability role in the development. The agreed

upon factors for which software projects fail are many

and various [2]. In this paper, a new agile software

process is proposed where usability evaluation has been

integrated in to agile software development method. The

paper contains few sections. Section 2 focuses on the

literature review; section 3 discussing on the proposed

lifecycle; section 4 discussed about the experiment and

future work and section 5 concludes with the paper.

2. Literature Review

The word agile means fast, lighter and nimble. Agile

process is also considered as light weight process [11].

One the major catastrophe in many software projects was

the time it took for development exceed from the

deadline. To developed system faster with its limited

time, agile software methods were developed. These

methods develop system faster by less focusing on

analysis and designing [12].


J u n e V o l 1 I s s u e 2 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5 In [17] usability evaluation of university websites within

the domain of Saudi Arabia. Particularly two kind of

domains are discussed including government and private

university websites and these domains are discussed on

the basis of heuristic evaluation components. Within the

scope of the paper almost seven HE components are

considered in order to find the usability of university

websites. Results predicted that the majority of websites

have an acceptable level of usability practices and as

compare to private universities, government universities

have higher level of usability practices.

In order to provide the quality software, many usability

issues must address at the time of design because

software designing and usability both are really inter

related concepts. Along with other quality attributes,

usability must be done at the time of software design.

HCI community has not reached to acceptable level of

components that can be used for usability. But it must be

kept in mind that usability is not the only quantity

attribute to keep in mind for the successful software

implementation [18].

Usability is highly considered in health software and

information system these days [19]. Health information

system has become the most invested field in the recent

years and lot of money is being invested in this field in

order to provide better health facilities to the common

man. Different methodological approaches are studied in

order to find out the evaluation based on the health

information systems. Rapid development of biomedical

based software has created the need of testing more about

the usability of these applications. Usability inspection of

clinical methods are also being employed, and these are

the testing that are done by the analyst in terms of

medical health care systems. And both usability testing

and usability evaluation methods are applied on the

patient health care system.

In security it is hard to find the usability evaluation of

ITSM tool by using the conventional methods. Author

proposes a set of ITSM usability heuristics techniques

that are based on activity theory. These theories are

supported by prior research work as well and consider

the cooperative and complex nature of security

management. In order to get evaluation of a commercial

identity management system the Writers has made the

comparison of the employment of the ITSM and

Nielsen’s heuristics based methodologies. Participants

who used the Nielsen’s heuristics based methodologies

have less problems as compare to the ITSM. Evaluators

analysed lot of problems while two data sets of

heuristics, in different situations writers recommends

both of them [20][22]. U-SCRUM methodology [13] is

proposed by Singh to improve the usability. Unlike

SCRUM having one product owner, U-SRUM has two

product owners, one focused on the functionality and

other focused on the usability. Result shows U-SRUM

improve usability in the product then traditional

SCRUM.

As mentioned in [3] the author claimed that user

contribution at the design stage has a smaller footprint

size because it contains specific or functional matters.

Due to this purpose, software designers normally avoid

including users in the level. Olsson [4], in his research,

claimed that users should be engaged in the design and

development of systems. Users engaged in the

application development process have an important

responsibility towards the result of the application item

[5]. Furthermore Carrol [6] strengthened that user

participation is an important factor in the success of a

project and is the best choice for many projects. Robert

Pessagno [7] discussed the importance of usability in

developing interactive software’s. Results of the survey

and usability test mentioned in his paper have shown that

design is an important factor in determining a site’s

success because it creates it identity while

simultaneously facilitating its usability.

As mentioned in [8], the modified heuristics are more

efficient and capture more defects then the one proposed

by Nielsen 10 heuristics. Also the research [9] shows that

pitfalls of the HE and it seems useful to follow more than

one method for software usability evaluation.

The methodology mentioned in [10] is to improve the

problems with the agile process and focus on the

software design approach. Agile software development is

the most widely used software models in the software

Industry. Its efficiency to handle rapid change in the

requirement handling and involving user at every stage

of development is valued. However, agile based projects

fail due to insufficient quality attributes.

McInerney and Maurer mentioned in [14], the possibility

of integration software engineer and usability experts in

agile software development. As both are from different

backgrounds having different domain knowledge helps to

solve the problem that mostly occurred in software

development, in their own ways and most importantly

agile methods only focus in functional requirement and

neglecting usability issues.

the stakeholders of having the product near perfection.

3. Proposed Agile Model

Figure 1: Proposed Agile Model

Figure 1 shows the agile lifecycle staring from FlexREQ

[15] and ends at final product. Passing through various

processes helps agile experts, usability experts and user

to work together. FlexREQ [15] is a process develop

product feasibility documents in a small amount of time

unlike traditional soft model spend considerable amount


J u n e V o l 1 I s s u e 2 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5 of time in documentation to achieve product quality at

the end. Interactive User Prototyping consists of two

further process user interface prototyping and

architectural prototyping as shown in figure 2. The final

requirements gathered from the FlexREQ phase are now

in the phase of designing (IUP) where interface and

architecture prototypes are refined according to the

specified requirement.

Figure 2: IUP Cycle

The resulted prototypes from the IUP phase will further

tested for the Usability by using CASI [16]. CASI is a

Usability evaluation method helps to improve the

usability of software interfaces. Involvement of user and

usability expert is highly important in this phase to find

the usability defects. CASI keeps on the evaluating the

interface until user fully satisfied. After CASI phase the

coding starts and later unit and acceptance testing will be

conducted to check final product satisfies all

specifications and useful for the customer.

4. Experiment and Future work

The proposed lifecycle will be tested under software

companies by developing interactive desktop based

application. For the theoretical point of view the

proposed lifecycle integrates both agile attribute and

usability attributes in one lifecycle

5. Future work and conclusion

Evolving from non-agile software development methods

to agile software development methods, agile

development methods are the most flexible approach for

software development where development team keeps on

improving the software with ongoing involvement of

user. But agile methods have not integrated with usability

approaches which are crucial to achieve software

usability. Incorporating usability process in agile

software method is important to achieve which is an

essential quality. This paper explored the key features of

agile software development methods and Usability

Evaluation methods. The literature mentioned in this

paper highlights the importance of usability in agile

methods. Furthermore the proposed lifecycle proves the

possibility of integrating usability evaluation techniques

in agile software development methods. However from

the literature and proposed life cycle it appears that there

are many benefits that can be achieved by integrate

usability in agile software model. In future the particle

testing of this proposed lifecycle is required to identify at

what level usability can be integrated in agile software

methods.

References

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Reasons and a solution using a Bayesian

classifier to predict potential risk”, 11th IEEE

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2. Jorge Belengueret, “HCI Designers and

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in agile methods”,VTT publication 5 14,

ESPOO, 2003, pp I-54.

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for promoting usability". Proc, AGILE 2009

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555-560.

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projects: dream team or odd couple?"

Interactions, vol. 12, issue 6, ACM Press,

2007, pp, 19-23.

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June). Handling requirements using FlexREQ

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Science (ICSESS), 2012 IEEE 3rd

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IEEE.

16. Butt, Saad Masood, and Wan Fatimah Wan

Ahmad. "ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

OF COGNITIVE BEHAVIOR IN

SOFTWARE INTERFACES USING AN

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M. I. (2007). Analysing the impact of usability

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IDS."



Impact of Offshoring on Competitive Advantage of U.S

Multinational Corporations

Muhammad Usman Tariq

(College of Signals, National University of Science & Technology, Pakistan

[email protected])

Suziyanti Marjudi (Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Selangor (UNISEL), Malaysia

[email protected])

Azura Onn (Department of Management and Human Resource, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia

[email protected])

ABSTRACT: This paper presents the analysis of reasons of offshoring for the multinational corporations in the U.S and the

value addition to the economy. It explains the impact of offshoring on competitive advantage of U.S. Multinational

Corporations on the economy and different other factors focusing on the root cause of offshoring in different countries. The

study is limited to analysis of offshoring, economy effect, currency value addition and reasons behind shifting bases to other

countries. This paper will help to build up the understanding about the basic offshoring, outsourcing, branching concepts

with the competitive advantage that multinational firms are having by shifting their bases to other countries.

Key words: Economy, Offshoring, Outsourcing, Corporations, Competition

1. Introduction

Every country has to follow a set of policies, methods

and processes in order to perform imports and exports. A

number of conflicts arise due to weak foreign trading

policies by countries. It requires professional expertise to

manage the trade of a country. There are also a number

of conflicts generated between the different countries

related to financial decisions of countries. To eliminate

the risk involved in financial issues a system of

principles, procedures, policies, responsibilities,

accountabilities are used by stakeholders. Many of the

famous financial scandals are noted in the history

occurring at Parmalat, Nortel, and Enron. It has cost a lot

of drop in the market, huge loss of saving, loss of jobs

and decrease in taxes. The financial scandals have made

corporations to learn and practice new methods. There

are a number of departments involved combined together

to create a nation. A nation economy is the representation

of the nation in the world. Different nations have

different currencies and different resources. Some are

abundant in resources, some have less resources. There is

another effect of such conditions on different corporation

which includes offshoring and outsourcing. The

offshoring ad outsourcing concept started after the

internet became an easy way to promote business in U.S.

and worldwide. Since then it has been a common practice

by the large corporations around the globe and U.S. The

current U.S. market has outsourced millions of jobs in

other countries. An analysis show that 3.3 million jobs

will be outsourced till 2015 by U.S. market and the

estimated amount to be paid to Asian countries as

salaries will be around $137 billion (Hemphill, 2004). 2. Theoretical Definitions

The multinational corporation can be defined as any

company which own controls, manage and generate

income by having assets in more than one country

(Zekos, 2005). Competitive advantage can be defined as

the businesses seeking for more advantage in terms of

developing unique competences and lowest delivery cost

or having more customer value than the other

organizations with more pay off than the average

industry (Day & Wensley, 1998). Outsourcing can be

defined as when a firms transfers some of its operations

to external supplier (Gnuschke et al,. 2004). Offshoring

can be defined as transferring of operation by acquiring

facilities in the other country or utilizations of labor for

the importing services and goods in U.S. (Gnuscke, et al.,

2004).

A National culture can be defined as the collective

thinking of a human mind that differentiate one human

race from other human race. It is based on collectively

held values (Brown, 1995). Market freedom can be

defined as the economic freedom and economic growth.

The relaxations that corporations get from the

government regarding taxes, law and regulations are

combined together to generate opportunities and

incentives for producing better product (Schiller, 2003).

3. Offshoring and Outsourcing Analysis

The offshoring concept is based on completely shifting a

firm to another country or shifting of certain operations

and goods. Different multinational firms have value

addition by shifting the operations in different countries.

It is not based on that the other countries are cheaper in

economy or production. 67% of the U.S. firms are based

in competitive economy countries like France, Europe

etc. The other concept usually is called outsourcing, it

means that a firm hire a certain number of personnel for

specific project or task for a limited time period. The

outsourcing does not shift the whole operations of the

firms. It does not require any place or permanent offices

for the organization working. The relationship between



the outsourcing, offshoring and competitive advantage is

important issue for the multinational organizations. The

growing need of business and market competition is

making multinational organizations to gain the

competitive advantage. National culture also plays an

important role according to the analysis based on the

cultural limitations for growing of relationships with

other local and foreign countries.

The analysis indicated that U.S. multinational

organizations use the outsourcing and offshoring as a

strategy to gain competitive advantage and increase their

performance. There are many organizations, general

public and government representatives who are working

out to maintain the local job quota, as loss of

employment is linked with the manufacturing. It raises

negative impact on the economic growth of the U.S.

economy at the local, state and national level (Prestowitz,

2004). The technological advantage is also lost due to

outsourcing labor and production overseas (Hemphill,

2004). It also makes negative impact on the brands of

U.S. firms. The competitiveness among to local market

in terms of productivity, strategy and creativity also

decreases. Although the concerns are much highlighted

in different debates, but the concern of economic

incentives for outsourcing the employment and

production to other countries encourage the strategy to be

continued. The information technology outsourcing has

also became part of the most of the American and

European firms.

Advantage and disadvantages The advantages and disadvantages require deep

examination. The most of the argument is related to the

offshoring outsourcing is that it promotes the status of

multinational firms and improves stability providing new

opportunities for research and development. There is also

a demand from the stakeholders to achieve different

financial goals that can be achieved by the offshoring and

outsourcing process (Chase, Jacobs, & Aquiliano, 2005).

The arguments against the offshoring and outsourcing

consists of issues related to the loss of economic stability

by reducing the employment and earned income to the

employees and the regulatory incomes such as trade and

tariffs. The actual outcome of the projects cannot be

identified directly as the ambiguity remains between the

specific organization loss to the work incentives for new

projects and theoretical outcome is different the actual

outcome that falls outside the assessment models to

analyze the economic performance. The different

concepts and relationship among the economic

performance, outsourcing, offshoring and national

culture effects can be combined together as follows:

Offshoring and outsourcing is an important

value addition that increases the competitive

advantage of U.S. multinational organizations.

National culture of the host country is also an

important factor that can impact both financial

and technological leadership of U.S. firms and

its competitive advantage.

Market freedom can also have impact on the

U.S. multinational firms to establish offshore

business that can impact their competitive

advantage.

Time, material and fixed prices can also impact

the ability of U.S. multinational organizations

to achieve their strategic goals.

The market share price can also be changed

with the change of company host business

location.

Today there are many countries as the attractive

countries for manufacturing facilities. The labor cost and

great number of people are ideal target for offshoring

outsourcing of both employment and production (Babu,

2006). The education factor is also important as different

countries have high standards then the other countries

which provide ideal employment opportunities. It is a

part of generating capital and educated offshoring nation

can attract more investors for technological productivity.

It is also narrowing the gaps between the economic

productions per capita when compared with the U.S.

4. Porter’s Competitive Advantage

Porter theory is widely accepted by a number of

stakeholders who want to gain the competitive advantage

in a business environment. It provides identification and

implementation of internal and external variables. Porter

focused on the concept that countries which take

advantage of different opportunities and maintain the

core strengths are more likely to succeed and other those

who do not focus on internal threats and weakness fail

mostly. It provides the summary of the competitive

advantage theory by identifying the needs of stakeholders

and market. There can be strategic operations that can be

generated by positioning the stakeholder correctly in the

supply chain. The stakeholder’s competitive advantage

can be increased by making the communication better

and involving them in decision making process and goal

management. The nation can achieve the international

success in a specific industry and combined impact of

regulations. Although the porter competitive theory

received a number of positive and negative criticism but

remains true about certain factors. There are now a

number of different theories also which provide effective

analysis of competitive advantage. Positive competitive

advantage provides information that a company is ahead

of the internal and external variables. The assessment of

competitive advantage consists of highly expanded

processes. Challenges are also made concerning the

approaches of assessments related to the competitive

advantage (Chase et al, 2005).

Types of Offshoring outsourcing and competitive

advantage contracts

Contract management is an important part when

offshoring, outsourcing as it provides legal binding of

documents that is signed between the legal parameters of

the host and target company. It also elaborates the legal

terms and conditions of business in the other country.

The contract assessment can be benchmark for the

multinational corporations. It offers identification of

inputs and outputs for the opportunities specific with the

offshoring and outsourcing activities. The contracts also

combine together the external and internal factors related

to the potential impact of exchanging goods and services.

The evolution of the offshoring and outsourcing depicts

the patterns of growth with the economic and production

models. The stages of maturity is also linked with the

offshoring and outsourcing concept which provide

shifting of resources to increase the competitive

advantage. The literature also suggests that there are

political effects on the offshoring and outsourcing.



The issues related with the technological organizations

are also based on the effects of international mobility

concerning software innovation (Lyengar, 2004). The

companies are shifting to attract customers but they also

face political challenges when the highly quality products

are used widely. In case of software the data movement,

development and willingness of software use is also

affected. There are also a number of risk associated with

the distribution channel in other countries. The different

culture also contributes the salable amount of the

products. These factors are more important than the

company own factors for outsourcing and offshoring.

Future work and conclusion

The future work extension to this research is comparison

of options with more extended analysis of methodologies

related to offshoring, outsourcing and competitive

advantage. The U.S. organizations have a lot of

offshoring and outsourcing collaborations but the fact

should not be denied that most of them are in highly

competitive countries. Most of the time it is not about the

labor cost or cheap resources, it is also dependent on the

political factors and ease of business. The different

manufacturing and production organizations are working

now a days in Asia region widely for the technology

development projects. The competitive advantage factor

cannot be denied but it cannot be made the prime

purpose for shifting the organization to different

countries. The host country will always remain the hub

for management of operations.

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