[AISWorld] Publication of Vol 17, No. 3 of REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING

[Pericles Loucopoulos]

REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING, Published by Springer
Volume 17, Number 3 (2012), 157-170, DOI: 10.1007/s00766-011-0131-2
http://www.springerlink.com/content/747570253v3t5017/?MUD=MP

Journal Home Page: http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/journal/766

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Comparing task practicing and prototype fidelities when applying scenario acting to elicit requirements” BY
Gyda Atladottir, Ebba Thora Hvannberg & Sigrun Gunnarsdottir

ABSTRACT
Identifying accurate user requirements early in the design cycle is of the utmost importance in system development. The purpose of this study of requirements elicitation was to compare the results of involving the user early in the design cycle using a low-fidelity prototype with the results of involving the user after a high-fidelity prototype was available. Three groups of potential users applied the method of Scenario Acting. Participants in the first group were given a working prototype of a human capital development system. The participants of the second group were given a detailed description of proposed features of the system and were told to practice on a paper prototype or with current methods, such as an Internet browser. These groups then practiced the tasks for some time before participating in the Scenario Acting. The third group received a brief description of the objectives of the system and did not practice the tasks. The results of the study showed that the use of the high-fidelity prototype was not helpful for eliciting requirements when working with users. However, the second group, taking time to practice the tasks given a low-fidelity paper prototype outperformed the others. Furthermore, the analysis of the Scenario Acting sessions revealed that two sessions were better than one, especially for participants of the group working with a low-fidelity prototype. An analysis of the topic of requirements showed that there was no difference between the groups on the domain tasks (here, human capital development), but the group practicing on the high-fidelity prototype commented more on its ease of use and usefulness than the other two. By comparison, the group practicing on low-fidelity prototype had more comments on the practice of the work and output of the tasks.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“The effectiveness of an optimized EPMcreate as a creativity enhancement technique for Web site requirements elicitation” BY

ABSTRACT
Creativity is often needed in requirements elicitation, i.e., requirement idea generation; and techniques to enhance creativity are believed to be useful. This paper describes two controlled experiments to compare the requirements-elicitation effectiveness of three creativity enhancement techniques (CET): (1) full EPMcreate; (2) Power-Only EPMcreate, an optimization of full EPMcreate; and (3) traditional brainstorming. In each experiment, one team of university students applied one of the two or three CETs under study in the experiment to generate ideas for requirements for enhancing a high school’s public Web site. The results of the first experiment indicate that Power-Only EPMcreate is more effective, by the quantity and quality of the ideas generated, than the full EPMcreate, which is, in turn, more effective than brainstorming. The results of the second experiment confirm that Power-Only EPMcreate is more effective, by the same measures, than full EPMcreate. In each experiment, for the sake of uniform, reproducible evaluation, a requirement idea is considered high quality if it is both new and useful.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Constructing high quality use case models: a systematic review of current practices” BY
Mohamed El-Attar & James Miller

ABSTRACT
There is an increasing recognition for the need to develop high quality use case models from the professional and academic communities. Quality in use case models is of particular importance when they are utilized within a use case driven development process, whereby every aspect of development is driven by the models and influenced by their quality. Many practitioners and researchers have provided guidelines, suggestions and techniques to construct high quality use case models. This invaluable body of knowledge is disseminated across numerous literature resources. Without unifying this knowledge into one resource, it cannot be expected that a use case modeler would be fully aware of the entire body of knowledge and benefitting from it. This paper presents a systematic review that was conducted in order to identify and amalgamate this knowledge. The amalgamated knowledge is presented in a unified form, specifically as a set of 26 anti-patterns, which modelers can use to improve the quality of their models.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Using conceptual models to explore business-ICT alignment in networked value constellations” BY
V. Pijpers, P. de Leenheer, J. Gordijn & H. Akkermans

ABSTRACT
In this paper, we introduce e 3 alignment for inter-organizational business-ICT alignment. With the e 3 alignment framework, we create alignment between organizations operating in an agile networked value constellation—which is a set of organizations who jointly satisfy a customer need—by (1) focusing on the interaction between the organizations in the constellation, (2) considering interaction from four different perspectives, and (3) utilizing conceptual modeling techniques to analyze and create alignment within and between the perspectives. By creating inter-organizational business-ICT alignment between the actors in the constellation, e 3 alignment ultimately contributes to a sustainable and profitable constellation. To actually create alignment, e 3 alignment iteratively takes three specific steps: (1) identification of alignment issues, (2) solution design, and (3) impact analysis. We illustrate our approach with cases from the Dutch aviation industry, Spanish electricity industry, and Dutch telecom industry.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Exploring the impact of software requirements on system-wide goals: a method using satisfaction arguments and i* goal modelling” BY
James Lockerbie, Neil Arthur McDougall Maiden, Jorgen Engmann, Debbie Randall, Sean Jones & David Bush

ABSTRACT
This paper describes the application of requirements engineering concepts to support the analysis of the impact of new software systems on system-wide goals. Requirements on a new or revised software component of a socio-technical system not only have implications on the goals of the subsystem itself, but they also impact upon the goals of the existing integrated system. In industries such as air traffic management and healthcare, impacts need to be identified and demonstrated in order to assess concerns such as risk, safety, and accuracy. A method called PiLGRIM was developed which integrates means-end relationships within goal modelling with knowledge associated with the application domain. The relationship between domain knowledge and requirements, as described in a satisfaction argument, adds traceability rationale to help determine the impacts of new requirements across a network of heterogeneous actors. We report procedures that human analysts follow to use the concepts of satisfaction arguments in a software tool for i* goal modelling. Results were demonstrated using models and arguments developed in two case studies, each featuring a distinct socio-technical system—a new controlled airspace infringement detection tool for NATS (the UK’s air navigation service provider), and a new version of the UK’s HIV/AIDS patient reporting system. Results provided evidence towards our claims that the conceptual integration of i* and satisfaction arguments is usable and useful to human analysts, and that the PiLGRIM impact analysis procedures and tool support are effective and scalable to model and analyse large and complex socio-technical systems.
 

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