Authors: Anna Kontini, AETHON
What if the next generation of cloud platforms could be designed not just for today’s needs, but for tomorrow’s challenges? Imagine a system that adapts to the evolving landscape of data privacy, real-time decision-making, and edge computing. This is the promise of the NOUS project—a transformative initiative that isn’t just building a cloud platform, but carefully crafting it through a meticulous process of requirements elicitation and prioritization. By putting stakeholder needs at the heart of its development, NOUS aims to create a cloud ecosystem that’s as flexible and forward-thinking as the industries it serves. Here’s how NOUS is making that vision a reality.
The Art of Requirements Elicitation: Understanding What Matters Most
In the world of technology, the difference between success and failure often lies in how well we understand the needs of our users. The first challenge in building the NOUS platform was to capture those needs in the most comprehensive and accurate way possible. How do you ensure that a cloud system designed today can scale for the future? The answer lies in requirements elicitation—a deliberate, step-by-step process of gathering and defining the platform’s functional and non-functional needs. But this wasn’t just about checking off boxes; it was about diving deep into the core challenges and aspirations of every user group involved.
NOUS didn’t rely solely on assumptions. The team engaged stakeholders from across the project consortium, using a collaborative approach to capture insights from diverse sectors. Through surveys, in-depth interviews, and a hands-on workshop, the project gained invaluable clarity on what each partner truly needed from the platform. These requirements weren’t just theoretical—they were shaped by real-world challenges faced by industries ranging from mobility to energy, and everything in between.
The Prioritization Process: Ensuring the Right Focus
With such a broad set of requirements, the next hurdle was ensuring the team focused on the right elements. Enter the MoSCoW method, a proven tool that helped the NOUS team define which features were critical, which were important, and which could be postponed. This method not only provided clarity but also made sure that the development team’s resources would be used effectively, delivering the most impactful solutions first.
- Must Have: These are the pillars that form the foundation of the NOUS platform. Without them, the system wouldn’t be viable. Key features like top-tier security, data privacy, and performance scalability were flagged as indispensable, ensuring that NOUS would meet the most stringent requirements from the start.
- Should Have: Important but not mission-critical, these features could be added in the following phases without compromising the overall vision. Enhancing machine learning capabilities or integrating advanced data storage solutions were examples of features that could provide additional value.
- Could Have: These were the “nice-to-have” additions to the platform but not vital for its core functionality. Items like advanced user personalization or integrations with non-priority third-party tools fell into this category.
- Won’t Have: This category ensured that the development team remained focused, setting boundaries on features that could be explored in future iterations, like the integration of quantum computing or highly experimental technologies.
By categorizing requirements in this way, NOUS ensured that the platform would be built on a solid foundation, capable of expanding and evolving as technology and industry needs continue to grow.
Key Insights: What Did Stakeholders Say?
Through the elicitation and prioritization process, several clear themes emerged. These insights revealed the core pillars that NOUS must support to truly serve its users:
- Security and Privacy: With data breaches making headlines across the globe, it was clear that NOUS had to prioritize data protection above all. Encryption, access control, and zero-trust security were identified as top priorities, ensuring the platform could meet the highest standards for privacy across sectors like healthcare, finance, and law.
- Performance and Scalability: The digital age demands speed. Whether it’s processing energy usage statistics across a smart grid or managing real-time data for industrial monitoring systems, NOUS must handle real-time data with minimal latency. Scalability was also critical—NOUS needed to accommodate everything from edge devices to high-performance computing resources without breaking a sweat.
- Interoperability: A platform as expansive as NOUS must play well with others. Interoperability emerged as a key feature, with the need to integrate seamlessly with legacy systems, third-party services, and existing cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This flexibility ensures that NOUS isn’t just a standalone platform but a central hub in a wider ecosystem.
- Edge Computing: With the rise of IoT, the ability to collect and process data on the edge—at the point of origin—was essential. Whether it’s smart devices in healthcare or environmental monitoring systems, NOUS needed to handle data at the source, reducing latency and bandwidth requirements while enabling real-time decision-making.
Collaborative Validation: Bringing it All Together
Once the requirements were gathered and prioritized, it was time for the collaborative workshop—the moment where all partners came together to validate and refine the findings. This workshop wasn’t just a box-ticking exercise; it was an opportunity for stakeholders to have their say, ensure alignment, and commit to the project’s direction. Using the MoSCoW method, participants weighed in on what they thought was essential and what could wait, ensuring every voice was heard and no critical requirement was overlooked.
The Road Ahead: Building a Platform for the Future
The requirements elicitation and prioritization process wasn’t the end. The NOUS platform is now armed with a clear set of priorities that will guide the development of its architecture. As NOUS progresses through the next stages of development, the team will continue to engage with internal and external stakeholders, ensuring the platform remains adaptable and aligned with their needs. This ongoing process of collaboration and prioritization will guarantee that NOUS isn’t just a cloud platform—it’s an innovative cloud-based ecosystem, built from the ground up with its users at the center.
The need is then to manage the creation, modification, and deletion of any information by a robust access right and right-to-know management system, with editions also being traceable during the whole data lifecycle for later after-action analysis and potential judicialization of an incident. In the scope of NOUS, the use of blockchain will be explored to leverage the key features of these technologies while balancing its limitations regarding crisis management. More specifically, Decentralization (data not being stored in a single location but across multiple nodes avoiding a single point of failure), Immutability (Once data is recorded on a blockchain, it prevents easy alteration or deletion, a global consensus is needed, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the data), Transparency and Auditability (providing a transparent ledger where all transactions are visible to authorized participants, which helps in building trust among stakeholders, as they can verify the data independently), and the use of smart contracts (self-executing contracts automating processes and ensuring that actions are taken when specific conditions are met, reducing the need for manual intervention and thus speeding up the response) could help in reinforcing the traceability of the current platform, with specific attention being paid to the inherent overhead to the technology.
In conclusion, in the realm of crisis management, whether dealing with natural or man-made disasters, robust data traceability is not just a luxury, it’s a necessity for the response and after-review phases. NOUS provides a unique opportunity to find the best use of new technologies to ensure involved agencies that the data is accurately and securely traced throughout its lifecycle.
