In this paper1, we investigate and discuss the underlying nature of the requirements traceability problem. Our work is based on empirical studies, involving over 100 practitioners, and an evaluation of current support. We introduce the distinction between pre-requirements specification (pre-RS) traceability and post-requirements specification (post-RS) traceability, to demonstrate why an all-encompassing solution to the problem is unlikely, and to provide a framework through which to understand its multifaceted nature. We report how the majority of the problems attributed to poor requirements traceability are due to inadequate pre-RS traceability and show the fundamental need for improvements here. In the remainder of the paper, we present an analysis of the main barriers confronting such improvements in practice, identify relevant areas in which

The success of large software engineering projects depends critically on the specification, which must represent the requirements of a large number of people with widely differing perspectives. Conventional approaches to software engineering do not address the process of identifying and integrating these perspectives, but instead concentrate on the maintenance of a single consistent description. This results in a specification which represents only one point of view, often the analyst's, excluding suggestions which do not fit with this view. The processes which led to the adoption of this point of view will go unrecorded, making any rationale attached to such a specification incomplete. Other participants will not be able to validate it properly, as it does not relate to their requirements. This thesis integrates ideas drawn from the study of knowledge acquisition, computer-supported co-operative work and negotiation into a model of the specification activity which allows the capture ...

Many researchers have proposed representational schemes to capture complex reasoned discourses. In this paper, we use our experiences with argument representation to examine some of the issues affecting the design of these representational schemes. Our discussions focus on how well a particular scheme, Toulmin structures, maps into the domain of argumentative discourse and captures and highlights various phenomena we consider central to argumentation. We then use this analysis to explore several complementary representational schemes. Finally, we discuss some relatively unexplored factors that influence the usability of these schemes. 1.

Hypertext is a computer-supported medium for information in which many interlinked documents are displayed with their links on a high-resolution computer screen. The links may be directly activated by a pointing device such as a mouse, which causes the document referenced by the link to appear instantly in a new window on the screen. While the concepts of hypertext are not new, the technology to make it effective is new. This paper reviews most of the existing hypertext systems, and then explores in some detail the fundamental features of hypertext and some of the design options in constructing hypertext systems. The advantages and disadvantages of hypertext are discussed in terms of four major application categories: macro literary systems, problem exploration systems, structured browsing systems, and systems developed to explore hypertext technology.

The CoAUTHOR system provides a real-time-oriented environment for multiple authors who wish to collaborate on the production of hypermedia documents. In this report, we describe a model of hypermedia document authoring, consider the group aspects of co-authoring, and the technical communication and coordination tools we areusing as a baSis for the implementation of a CoAUTHOR prototype. The interactions among the members of the authoring team concerning idea processing, document design and generation as well as group-specific activities such as critiquing issues, negotiating divergent-opinions, and treating inconsistent or incoin~ plete specifications are shown to be fairly knowledge-intensive and thus require maintenance facilities provided by a sophisticated knowledge base management system underlying the hypermedia surface. 1

This paper presents an approach towards the definition of a formal framework for rhetorical argumentation. Before describing the competence theory behind the framework, we introduce the notion of rhetorical argument, and describe the New Rhetoric, a well known theory in the philosophy of argumentation, upon which our work is based. 1

This article is divided into four sections. In the first section, we describe hypertext systems and some information retrieval problems. Next, we reveal the Bayesian principles and illustrate them with an example. In the third section, we explain how we create a Bayesian inference network using a tree structure. Finally, we illustrate how one can search 0894--3982/91/020087--22$11.00 Received 12 November 1990 c #1991 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Revised 30 May 1991 1998 by University of Nottingham.

Data Type which consists of an object and an execution submodel. Both are influenced by the context and 4 organization in which their instances are used -- large communities of software developers, users, and managers. Change, complexity, and heterogeneity of representation are ubiquitous in specification management. They must be addressed in the object submodel, e.g., by representations for versioning, configuration, and mapping between different object views. The execution model has to cope not only with the problems of multi-version concurrency control but also with explicit communication and coordination in large development teams, possibly distributed in space and time. The meta data model that supports such a setting could in principle be very loose (e.g., hypertext), or it could require full formalization of the available language concepts, methods, and tools, even of the roles of human developers. Probably, neither extreme should be followed. Simple hypertext structures have ...

We have developed a method and prototype program, called carter, that assists two experts in agreeing on what knowledge should go into a single, consensus knowledge base, i.e., a knowledge base that reflects the best judgment of each of them. We show that consensus building can be effectively facilitated by a debugging approach that identifies, explains, and resolves differences in the knowledge of the two experts. carter's expertise is in the task of consensus building; its knowledge base is a collection of some 35 entries, each made up of a discrepancy detection procedure and a corresponding resolution procedure. Examples of the use of this knowledge are illustrated with descriptions of the program in operation, assisting with the reconciliation of two independently developed knowledge based systems.

Report on past research works Helping knowledge representation, sharing and retrieval Dr Philippe MARTIN My research so far has been focused on integrating and developing methodologies, techniques, tools and resources to support a precise manual knowledge representation, sharing and retrieval (KRSS). The resulting models, notations and normalization techniques for representing, indexing, querying, evaluating and integrating knowledge are however also important to follow for precision-oriented (semi-)automatic knowledge extraction and integration. From the end of 1992 to the end of 1999, the context of my work was the "semi-independent knowledge representation approach " where knowledge providers do not have to represent their information into a shared knowledge base (KB). This approach is still the only one considered by most knowledge representation, sharing and retrieval (KRSS) related works today. Nonetheless, as detailed below, this approach is very restricting for precise KRSS. Hence, from 2000 to 2007, my work focused more on also enabling people to easily update a very large consistent well-organized KB while avoiding the classic problem of either allowing any user to modify any part of the KB (as in wikis) or having