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Requirements specification is a core activity in the requirements engineering phase of a software development project. Researchers have contributed extensively to the field of requirements specification, but the extent to which their proposals have been adopted in practice remains unclear. We gathered evidence about the state of practice in requirements specification by focussing on the artefacts used in this activity, the application of templates or guidelines, how requirements are structured in the specification document, what tools practitioners use to specify requirements, and what challenges they face. We conducted an interview-based survey study involving 24 practitioners from 12 different Swedish IT companies. We recorded the interviews and analysed these recordings, primarily by using qualitative methods. Natural language constitutes the main specification artefact but is usually accompanied by some other type of instrument. Most requirements specifications use templates or guidelines, although they seldom follow any fixed standard. Requirements are always structured in the document according to the main functionalities of the system or to project areas or system parts. Different types of tools, including MS Office tools, are used, either individually or combined, in the compilation of requirements specifications. We also note that challenges related to the use of natural language (dealing with ambiguity, inconsistency, and incompleteness) are the most frequent challenges that practitioners face in the compilation of requirements specifications. These findings are contextualized in terms of demographic factors related to the individual interviewees, the organization they are affiliated with, and the project they selected to discuss during our interviews. A number of our findings have been previously reported in related studies. These findings show that, in spite of the large number of notations, models and tools proposed from academia for improving requirements specification, practitioners still mainly rely on plain natural language and general-purpose tool support. We expect more empirical studies in this area in order to better understand the reason of this low adoption of research results.

Software Requirements Engineering (SRE) varies significantly between agile and traditional methods, particularly in documentation practices. In traditional methods, for instance, the team is required to produce one structured and detailed document which is the software requirements specification. While agile methods require less documentation, which is spread over several artefacts. These differences can lead to communication challenges in hybrid development environments, where both agile and traditional teams collaborate. In such contexts, documentation can serve as a crucial communication tool, bridging the gap between the two methods. This paper proposes ARDocS approach, which translates agile artefacts into a structured document compatible with traditional methods. ARDocS involves defining and specifying agile and traditional documentation through multiple abstraction levels using metamodeling, and mapping the concepts between these two metamodels. We validate our approach through a case study that applies ARDocS to the Scrum method for agile and the VOLERE template for traditional. ARDocS effectively consolidates information from various agile artefacts into structured documentation that can be understood and used by both agile and traditional teams.

The international dimension of multinational corporations creates opportunities for pursuing both global as well as local (i.e., unilateral subsidiary country) tax planning strategies. To date, however, researchers have limited insights into both the dynamics and relative importance of one versus another strategy for multinationals. We propose and test a group-level ETR-based measure of profit shifting and validate it by showing it correctly identifies profit shifting reductions when shifting costs increase. We confirm that multinationals can keep group ETRs stable after the introduction of tighter tax compliance and documentation rules and suggest they can do so by relying relatively more on local tax planning. In line with the substitution argument, we document that especially groups identified as ex-ante income shifters as well as those with greater target ETR pressure are responsible for the results.

This contribution examines the challenges posed to the cultural heritage documentation community (the CIPA community and others) in implementing a preventive conservation approach of the built heritage in today’s society. The “DNA” of Preventive Conservation. Various authors so far support the argument that preventive conservation is an effective way to respond to the challenges society faces with the preservation of its Cultural Heritage (Van Balen, 2013). A few decades of experiences with the application of preventive conservation in the field of immovable heritage in the form of Monumentenwacht in The Netherland and in Flanders have shown that a good monitoring of the state of preservation with a strong push for maintenance activities contributes to more preservation of authenticity, to more cost-effective preservation and to empowering society in dealing with heritage preservation. (Cebron, 2008) An analysis of these and similar experiences demonstrates that these “Monumentenwacht” activities represent only a part of what could be named a preventive conservation system. Other fields in which prevention is advocated for its higher efficiency, show the importance of system thinking in the development of improved strategies. Applying this approach to the field of the immovable heritage, referring to the initial results shown by the Monumentenwacht practices, it becomes clear that different dimension are at stake simultaneously: the preservation of authenticity or integrity, the management of resources and the connection with society. It shows that the analysis of challenges in heritage preservation and the development of strategies is à priori multifaceted and therefor has a certain level of complexity. The sustainability of the preservation of cultural heritage buildings and sites can be measured according to its multiple economic, social, environmental and cultural support. The Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe report shows that the more diverse the support is for cultural heritage preservation actions, the more those actions will contribute to sustainable development and the more sustainable the preservation of that heritage will be. This reasoning has led to the “upstream approach” which argues that cultural heritage preservation can benefit from a variety of resources which do not necessarily have to be earmarked for it à priori (CHCfE, 2015). It leads to arguing for an holistic and integrated approach for cultural heritage preservation that taps into different kinds of resources, which requires acknowledgement of the complex nature of understanding and managing heritage values into an overall societal development goal (Vandesande, 2017). Challenges in the Cultural Heritage documentation field. Documentation needs in the field of cultural heritage preservation therefor are challenged by the complexity of the sources of information, by the need to integrate them in an holistic tool and by the way they are able to dialogue with society. 1. The proper analysis of heritage requires increasing efforts by the diversity of sources and the complexity of their interaction.This (complexity acknowledging) analysis should be linked to monitoring tools which eventually contribute to monitor culturalheritage values. This monitoring is also a documentation challenge as it has to be pertinent and dynamic. Analysis andmonitoring are important as they are the basis for understand threats that impact heritage values. 2. As resources for heritage development or heritage guided development can have a variety of origins, their documentation andanalysis –compared to the traditional curative object oriented preservation- should be extended to include many more possibleresources. Experiences exist with documentation of the physical environment of heritage sites but the upstream approachpoints toward a larger number of development resources that can be tapped into. This implies the need to identify newapproaches, to document them and to integrate them in a dynamic analytical process. 3. As preventive conservation focusses not only on the empowerment of the owners and managers but also on a betterintegration of a wider group of stakeholders, the question of ownership and continuous co-creation challenges thedocumentation process as well. 4. Longevity of documentation: the need for continuous updating and monitoring as part of the cyclic approach of PC challengesthe longevity, accessibility of the documentation itself and the tools that will use them in the future.

PurposeArtificial intelligence (AI) is currently one of the most disruptive technologies and can be applied in many different use cases. However, applying AI in regulated environments is challenging, as it is currently not clear how to achieve and assess the fairness, accountability and transparency (FAT) of AI. Documentation is one promising governance mechanism to ensure that AI is FAT when it is applied in practice. However, due to the nature of AI, documentation standards from software engineering are not suitable to collect the required evidence. Even though FAT AI is called for by lawmakers, academics and practitioners, suitable guidelines on how to document AI are not available. This interview study aims to investigate the requirements for AI documentations.Design/methodology/approachA total of 16 interviews were conducted with senior employees from companies in the banking and IT industry as well as with consultants. The interviews were then analyzed using an informed-inductive coding approach.FindingsThe authors found five requirements for AI documentation, taking the specific nature of AI into account. The interviews show that documenting AI is not a purely technical task, but also requires engineers to present information on how the AI is understandably integrated into the business process.Originality/valueThis paper benefits from the unique insights of senior employees into the documentation of AI.

Agile has become commonly used as a software development methodology and its success depends on face-to-face communication of software developers and the faster software product delivery. Implicit thinking knowledge has considered as a very significant for organization self-learning. The main goal of paying attention to managing the implicit thinking knowledge is to retrieve valuable information of how the software is developed. However, requirements documentation is a challenging task for Agile software engineers. The current Agile requirements documentation does not incorporate the implicit thinking knowledge with the values it intends to achieve in the software project. This research addresses this issue and introduce a framework assists to inject the implicit thinking knowledge in Agile requirements engineering. An experiment used a survey questionnaire and case study of real project implemented for the framework evaluation. The results show that the framework enables software engineers to share and document their implicit thinking knowledge during Agile requirements documentation.

Banking the Poor explores level and determinants of financial access in 54 countries, mostly in Africa. It collects information from two sources: central banks and leading commercial banks in each surveyed country. It explores associations between countries' banking policies and practices and their levels of financial access, measured in terms of the numbers of bank account per thousand adults. It builds on the previous work measuring financial access through information from regulators, from banks, and also from users' perspectives in household surveys.

The “not documented, not done” requirements of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) Auditing Standard No. 3 substantially increased auditors' obligations to document their risk assessments. This study examines a potentially unintended consequence of such a requirement on auditors who have pressure to reach lenient, client-preferred risk assessments. Because documentation requirements potentially expose auditors' lenient judgments to more ex post scrutiny (e.g., regulator inspection, litigation), one would ordinarily not expect that adding them would cause auditors with client pressures to become more lenient. However, I expect that adding documentation requirements leads auditors who assess risk in qualitative (rather than quantified) terms to engage more in a specific word-smithing strategy that is shown by prior research to help rationalize reaching more lenient audit conclusions. Thus, even though documentation potentially exposes more lenient judgments to scrutiny, I show that auditors assessing risk in qualitative terms respond to this pressure by rationalizing their lenient assessments even more vigilantly. This leads to more lenient judgments, ironically, as a result of adding the documentation requirement. Adding documentation requirements does not have this effect on quantified risk assessments. Prior research also suggests that auditors typically assess risk in words. Thus, under common conditions, the PCAOB's documentation requirements may have unintended effects, with adverse implications for audit effectiveness contrary to their regulatory intent. Data Availability: Contact the author.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the process followed to control records in a Jordanian private community hospital as an ISO 9001:2008 standard requirement. Design/methodology/approach Under the hospital quality council’s supervision, the quality management and development office staff were responsible for designing, planning and implementing the quality management system (QMS) using the ISO 9001:2008 standard. A policy for records control was established. An action plan for establishing the records control was developed and implemented. On completion, a coding system for records was specified to be used by hospital staff. Finally, an internal audit was performed to verify conformity to the ISO 9001:2008 standard requirements. Findings Successful certification by a neutral body ascertained that the hospital’s QMS conformed to the ISO 9001:2008 requirements. A framework was developed that describes the records controlling process, which can be used by staff in any healthcare organization wanting to achieve ISO 9001:2008 accreditation. Originality/value Given the increased interest among healthcare organizations to achieve the ISO 9001 certification, the proposed framework for establishing records control is developed and is expected to be a valuable management tool to improve and sustain healthcare quality.

Over the last decade, software development has seen a substantial growth in the use of agile techniques. Agile emerged as an alternative way to develop software and manage projects. Unlike traditional methods that focus on modelling and analysis, agile encourages communication and collaboration with end users to develop software without the need for modelling. Documentation that is large, paper-based, and difficult-to-read becomes the enemy because it empedes effective communication among people in projects.