Quality attributes are usually integrated with functional requirements at the later stages of the software development process. One of the reasons is that the current approaches fail in dealing with the crosscutting nature of some of those attributes, i.e. it is difficult to represent clearly how these attributes can affect several requirements simultaneously. Since this integration is not supported from requirements to the implementation, some of the software engineering principles, such as abstraction, localization, modularisation, uniformity and reusability, can be compromised. What we propose is a model to identify and specify quality attributes that crosscut requirements including their systematic integration into the functional description at an early stage of the software development process, i.e. at the requirements stage.

Software requirements analyst work is considered crucial in the software development lifecycle. This paper presents a descriptive study on the software requirements analyst profile, considering Brazilian and Mexican markets, two countries that lead IT investment ranking in Latin America. To identify the competences expected by the Brazilian and Mexican markets for software requirements professionals was the study objective. The competency model considers a set of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Content analysis and Nvivo software were used to categorize 311 job ads for software requirements analysts between 2016 and 2017. In terms of knowledge, the importance of higher education for both countries was identified. "Using techniques and tools," "methodological competence," "good written communication," and "good verbal communication" were identified as relevant skills. The most important attitudes identified were: "analytical thinking," "organization," "interpersonal relationship" and "information sharing." Most of results obtained confirm requirements analyst skills pointed out by other authors, but there are some differences due to the geographic context. At the same time, findings can help improve the understanding of different approaches in the requirements engineering field in the two countries and professionals working particularly in the Latin American market.

Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) techniques are gaining increased attention from both academic and industrial organisations. In order to promote a smooth adoption of such techniques it is of paramount importance to perform empirical analysis of AOSD to gather a better understanding of its benefits and limitations. In addition, the effects of aspect-oriented (AO) mechanisms on the entire development process need to be better assessed rather than just analysing each development phase in isolation. As such, this paper outlines our initial effort on the design of a testbed that will provide end-to-end systematic comparison of AOSD techniques with other mainstream modularisation techniques. This will allow the proponents of AO and non- AO techniques to compare their approaches in a consistent manner. The testbed is currently composed of: (i) a benchmark application, (ii) an initial set of metrics suite to assess certain internal and external software attributes, and (in) a "repository" of artifacts derived from AOSD approaches that are assessed based on the application of (i) and (ii). This paper mainly documents a selection of techniques that will be initially applied to the benchmark. We also discuss the expected initial outcomes such a testbed will feed back to the compared techniques. The applications of these techniques are contributions from different research groups working on AOSD.