As a means of contributing to the achievement of business advantage for companies engaging in e-business, we propose a requirements engineering framework that incorporates a business strategy dimension. We employ Jackson's Problem Frames approach, goal modeling, and business process modeling to achieve this. Jackson's context diagrams, used to represent business model context, are integrated with goal models to describe the requirements of the business strategy. We leverage the paradigm of projection in both approaches as a means of simultaneously decomposing both the requirement and context parts, from an abstract business level to concrete system requirements. Our approach maintains traceability to high-level business objectives via contribution relationship links in the goal model. We integrate use of role activity diagrams to describe business processes in detail where needed. The feasibility of our approach is shown by a well-known case study taken from the literature.

In this paper we explore the notion of problem reduction as a systematic transformation from requirements to specifications. We adopt the notion of problem as a requirement in a real-world context for which a software solution is sought, and view the process of software development as a problem solving process, leading ultimately, and hopefully, to a solution which satisfies the requirement in its context. In this paper, we focus on how a solution specification can be derived from a requirement, and introduce problem reduction as a systematic transformation to achieve this. We reflect on how problem reduction captures requirements engineering practices, express it in the context of Problem Frames and provide a set of rules for its application. The intention of the work is to increase the understanding of the problem solving process as well as to provide techniques to support sound engineering practices.

Event-B is a language for the formal development of reactive systems. At

Standards demand that assurance cases support safety critical developments. It is widely acknowledged, however, that the current practice of post-hoc assurance—that the product is built and only then argued for safety—leads to many engineering process deficiencies, extra expense, and poorer products. This paper shows how the Problem Oriented Software Engineering framework supports the concurrent design of a safe product and its safety case, by which these deficiencies can be addressed. The basis of the paper is a real development, undertaken by the second author of this paper, of safety-related subsystems of systems flying in real aircraft. The case study retains all essential detail and complexity.

and other research outputs 3rd international workshop on advances and applications of problem frames