The process of understanding the system under analysis, the services required of it, its environment and associated constraints involves the capture, analysis and resolution of many ideas, perspectives and relationships at varying levels of detail. We believe requirements methods based on global reasoning lack the expressive framework to adequately articulate this distributed requirements knowledge structure. This paper describes the problems faced in trying to establish an adequate and stable set of requirements and proposes a novel ViewpointOriented Requirements Definition method (VORD) as a means of tackling some of these problems. This method structures the requirements engineering process using viewpoints which are associated with sources of requirements. The paper describes VORD in the light of current viewpoint-oriented requirements approaches and shows how its improves on them. A simple example of a bank auto-teller system is used to demonstrate the method. 3 1.0 Introduction...

Little guidance and few methods are available for the refinement of software requirements into an architecture satisfying those requirements. Part of the challenge stems from the fact that requirements and architectures use di#erent terms and concepts to capture the model elements relevant to each. In this paper we will present CBSP, a lightweight approach intended to provide a systematic way of reconciling requirements and architectures using intermediate models. CBSP leverages a simple set of architectural concepts (components, connectors, overall systems, and their properties) to recast and refine the requirements into an intermediate model facilitating their mapping to architectures. Furthermore, the intermediate CBSP model eases capturing and maintaining arbitrarily complex relationships between requirements and architectural model elements, as well as among CBSP model elements. We have applied CBSP within the context of di#erent requirements and architecture definition techniques. We leverage that experience in this paper to demonstrate the CBSP method and tool support using a large-scale example.

This paper introduces an approach to multi-perspective requirements engineering (PREview) which has been designed for industrial use and discusses our practical experience in applying PREview. We have developed a flexible model of viewpoints and, using examples from an industrial application, show how this can be used to organise system requirements derived from radically different sources. We show how ‘concerns’, which are key business drivers of the requirements elicitation process, may be used to elicit and validate system requirements. They are decomposed into questions which must be answered by system stakeholders. We briefly describe the process of using PREview which has been designed to allow incremental requirements elicitation. Finally, we discuss some practical considerations which emerged when the approach was applied in industry.

Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects indicated a need for a defined methodology which would guide users performing various roles in the acquisition and analysis of domain requirements for planning. This work included links to a requirement analysis methodology, CORE (COntrolled Requirements Expression) , tool support via an intelligent assistant as part of the Task Formalism (TF) Workstation and an initial collection of guidelines and checklists to aid in using the TF domain description language. This paper describes work underway to follow-on from this past research and to infuse it with knowledge gained from recent research related to planning domain development, knowledge modelling, design rationale and ontological and requirements engineering. Introduction The activities involved in discovering, engineering, documenting, and maintaining a set of domain constructs for most AI planning-based projects can be considered ad hoc and disorganised, at best. The current sources for...

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Among all the phases of software development, requirements are particularly difficult to specify and analyze, since requirements for any large software system originate with many different persons. Each person's view of the software requirements may be expressed in a different notation, based on that person's knowledge, experience, and vocabulary. In order to perform a knowledge-based analysis of the requirements in combination, a single knowledge representation must be capable of capturing the information expressible in several existing requirements notations. This paper introduces the notation of conceptual graphs based on semantic networks, that provides a general representation. Four common requirements notations are shown to be expressible using conceptual graphs; with algorithms and examples provided. Specifying Multiple-Viewed Software Requirements With Conceptual Graphs Title Pages ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Harry S. Delugach is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Depar...

We are applying the stakeholder win-win approach to software engineering education. The key stakeholders we are trying to simultaneously satisfy are the students; the industry recipients of our graduates; the software engineering community as parties interested in improved practices; and ourselves as instructors and teaching assistants. In order to satisfy the objectives or win conditions of these stakeholders, we formed a strategic alliance with the University of Southern California Libraries to have software engineering student teams work with Library clients to define, develop, and transition USC digital library applications into operational use. This adds another set of key stakeholders: the Library clients of our class projects. This paper summarizes our experience in developing, conducting, and iterating the course. It concludes by evaluating the degree to which we have been able to meet the stakeholder-determined course objectives.

Fifteen teams recently used the WinWin Spiral Model to perform the system engineering and architecting of a set of multimedia applications for the USC Library Information Systems. Six of the applications were then developed into an Initial Operational Capability. The teams consisted of USC graduate students in computer science. The applications involved extensions of USC's UNIX-based, text-oriented, client-server Library Information System to provide access to various multimedia archives (films, videos, photos, maps, manuscripts, etc.). Each of the teams produced results which were on schedule and (with one exception) satisfactory to their various Library clients. This paper summarizes the WinWin Spiral Model approach taken by the teams, the experiences of the teams in dealing with project challenges, and the major lessons learned in applying the Model. Overall, the WinWin Spiral Model provided sufficient flexibility and discipline to produce successful results, but several improvemen...

Abstract. This paper addresses the problem of “missing requirements ” in software requirements specification (SRS) expressed in natural language. Due to rapid changes in technology and business frequently witnessed over time, the original SRS documents often experience the problems of missing, not available, and hard-to-locate requirements. One of the flaws in earlier solutions to this problem has no consideration for missing requirements from multiple viewpoints. Furthermore, since such SRS documents represent an incomplete domain model, manual discovery (identification and incorporation) of missing requirements and relationships is highly labor intensive and error-prone. Consequently, deriving and improving an efficient adaptation of SRS changes remain a complex problem. In this paper, we present a new methodology entitled “Proxy Viewpoints Model-based Requirements Discovery (PVRD)”. The PVRD methodology provides an integrated framework to construct proxy viewpoints model from legacy status requirements and supports requirements discovery process as well as efficient management.

The TARA Project conducted research into the provision of tool assistance for requirements analysis techniques. In particular it concentrated on automated support for three specific areas: active method guidance, requirements animation and the reuse of specification fragments. In this article we discuss the aims and status of TARA and the application of CASE technology within a method framework. In addition, we outline work on specification and method integration which is based on some of the approaches developed within TARA. 1 Introduction Requirements analysis is one of the most critical tasks in information systems development. Unrecognised errors made early in the development process may have widespread repercussions in the later phases. As a consequence, the cost of correcting such errors is high (Boehm 1982). Support for requirements analysis is therefore crucial. The main focus of our work was the large class of systems which can be classed as "real-time information systems"; t...