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CaRE: A refinement calculus for requirements engineering based on argumentation semantics
The requirements problem consists of transforming
stakeholder requirements - however informal, ambiguous, conflicting,
unattainable, imprecise and incomplete – into a consistent,
complete and realizable specification through a systematic
process. We propose a refinement calculus for requirements
engineering (CaRE) for solving this problem, which takes into
account the typically dialectic nature of requirements activities.
The calculus casts the requirement problem as an iterative
argument between stakeholders and requirements engineers,
where posited requirements are attacked for being ambiguous,
incomplete, etc. and refined into new requirements that address
the defect pointed out by the attack. Refinements are carried
out by operators provided by CaRE that refine (e.g., strengthen,
weaken, decompose) existing requirements, to build a refinement
graph. The semantics of the operators is provided by means
of argumentation theory. Examples are given to illustrate the
elements of our proposal