A pattern-based method for building requirements documents in call-for-tender processes

This paper presents our PABRE method for facilitating Requirements Elicitation on the basis of Requirement Patterns with the goal of saving time and reducing errors during this activity. The process presented applies for elicitation in Off-The-Shelf selection projects driven by call-for-tender processes and uses a Requirement Patterns Catalogue. The process selects patterns from the catalogue that apply to the particular selection project, and convert them into the real requirements that finally configure the project Requirements Document. We show some benefits of the pattern approach for requirements engineers and IT consultants, as well as for customers. Finally we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal and identify some future work.Postprint (published version

PABRE-Proj: applying patterns in requirements elicitation

© 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Software requirement patterns have been proposed as a type of artifact for fostering requirements reuse. In this paper, we present PABRE-Proj, a tool aimed at supporting requirements elicitation and specification.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Interested in improving your requirements engineering process? Try requirement patterns!

Requirement elicitation is the process of acquiring the system requirements from the system stakeholders. This process is critical in all software projects: if not all the requirements are elicited, or if some elicited requirements do not describe real stakeholder needs, or if the quality of the requirements is poor (e.g., they suffer from ambiguities), the chance of project failure increases. Techniques supporting requirements elicitation (interviews, meetings, storyboards...) are mostly oriented to obtain requirements from scratch and they may hardly take advantage of a fundamental observation: When specifying a system, it is quite usual that a significant proportion of requirements is recurrent and belongs to a relatively small number of categories, especially in the case of non-functional requirements. Our motivation is to consider this observation for improving the effectiveness of the requirement elicitation process. We are using the concept of software requirement pattern [1] (SRP). An SRP basically consists of a template that generates one or more requirements, and some information to identify its need in a particular project, and how it may be tailored to this project. The main benefits of using SRPs may be summarized as: 1) more effective requirement elicitation (requirements are not built from scratch; a process guides the engineer by giving advices, suggesting information, ...); 2) improved quality and consistency of requirements documents (by using a uniform style); 3) improved requirements management (e.g., clear traceability from requirements to goals).Postprint (author’s final draft

Requirements patterns structure for specifying and reusing software product line requirements

A well-defined structure is essential in all software development, thus providing an avenue for smooth execution of the processes involved during various software development phases. One of the potential benefits provided by a well-defined structure is systematic reuse of software artifacts. Requirements pattern approach provides guidelines and modality that enables a systematic way of specifying and documenting requirements, which in turn supports a systematic reuse. Although there is a great deal of research concerning requirements pattern in the literature, the research focuses are not on requirement engineering (RE) activities of SPLE. In this paper, we proposed a software requirement pattern (SRP) structure based on RePa Requirements Pattern Template, which was adapted to best suit RE activities in SPLE. With this requirement pattern structure, RE activities such as elicitation and identification of common and variable requirements as well as the specification, documentation, and reuse in SPLE could be substantially improved

A catalogue of non-technical requirement patterns

© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Software Requirement Patterns (SRP) have been proposed as an artifact for fostering requirements reuse. PABRE is a framework that promotes the use of SRP as a means for requirements elicitation, validation and documentation in the context of IT procurement projects. In this paper, we present a catalogue of non-technical SRP included in the framework and present in detail some of them. We also introduce the motivation to arrive to these patterns.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Analysis of expert’s opinion on requirements patterns for software product families framework using GQM method

Software product line engineering (SPLE), provides an opportunity to improve reuse of software artifacts through domain engineering and application engineering processes. During the domain engineering process, reuse activities of the product line are well-planned and subsequently executed in the application engineering process. This paper presents an analysis of interview result with experts in requirements engineering (RE) and software development for validating requirements pattern for software product families (RP-SPF) framework. The interview was conducted using goal questions metrics (GQM) method to define a goal and formulate research questions for conducting the interview. During the interview, 6 experts compared RP-SPF approach (systematic) with ad hoc (conventional) approach of reuse and documentation of requirements in terms of suitability, efficiency, and effectiveness in SPLE. The experts also gave their feedback on the perception of the use of RP-SPF tool. The analysis of the interview result shows that RP-SPF approach is suitable in SPLE and more efficient and effective than ad hoc approach of reuse and documentation of requirements

Requirement patterns: an approach for streamlining requirements engineering in software product families

Reusable structure is essential in all reuse-based software development processes. This provides a solid foundation for seamless management of reusable artefacts especially in software product line engineering (SPLE). One of the potential benefits provided by a well-defined structure is systematic reuse of these artefacts. Requirements pattern approach provides guidelines for requirement engineers to reuse and specify requirements. Although a plethora of research on requirements pattern have been reported in the literature, no research available focuses on requirement engineering (RE) activities of SPLE. In this paper, we present an anatomy of software requirement pattern (SRP) for SPLE with a structured example from e-learning domain. To enable practitioners, understand the concept of requirement pattern more, we present a meta-model for the SRP concepts and their relationships. In addition, we describe how the requirement pattern approach, streamlines RE activities, design for and with reuse in both domain and application engineering processes of SPLE. The requirement pattern approach thus helps in achieving systematic requirements reuse (RR) and generation of structured software requirement specification (SRS) for individual applications

TWENTY SOFTWARE REQUIREMENT PATTERNS TO SPECIFY RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS THAT USERS WILL TRUST

Trust has been shown as a crucial factor for the adoption of new technologies. Surprisingly, trust literature offers very little guidance for systematically integrating the vast amount of insights from behavioral research on trust into the development of computing systems. The aim of this article is to translate results from behavioral sciences into software requirement patterns that address user trust in recommender systems. Software requirement patterns are used in requirements engineering to recognize important and recurring issues and reduce the effort of compiling a list of software requirements. We collected antecedents that build trust, and developed software requirement patterns that demand functionality to support these antecedents. This paper contributes by presenting software requirement patterns consisting of the name, the goal and the pre-defined requirement template that can be used to specify trust requirements in recommender system development projects

Constructing and using software requirement patterns

Software requirement reuse strategies are necessary to capitalize and reuse knowledge in the requirement engineering phase. The PABRE framework is designed to support requirement reuse through the use of software requirement patterns. It consists of a meta-model that describes the main concepts around the notion of pattern, a method to conduct the elicitation and documentation processes, a catalogue of patterns, and a tool that supports the catalogue’s management and use. In this chapter all these elements are presented in detail making emphasis on the construction, use and evolution of software requirement patterns. Furthermore, the chapter includes the construction of a catalogue of nontechnical software requirement patterns for illustration purposes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft