Clustering and its Application in Requirements Engineering

Large scale software systems challenge almost every activity in the software development life-cycle, including tasks related to eliciting, analyzing, and specifying requirements. Fortunately many of these complexities can be addressed through clustering the requirements in order to create abstractions that are meaningful to human stakeholders. For example, the requirements elicitation process can be supported through dynamically clustering incoming stakeholders’ requests into themes. Cross-cutting concerns, which have a significant impact on the architectural design, can be identified through the use of fuzzy clustering techniques and metrics designed to detect when a theme cross-cuts the dominant decomposition of the system. Finally, traceability techniques, required in critical software projects by many regulatory bodies, can be automated and enhanced by the use of cluster-based information retrieval methods. Unfortunately, despite a significant body of work describing document clustering techniques, there is almost no prior work which directly addresses the challenges, constraints, and nuances of requirements clustering. As a result, the effectiveness of software engineering tools and processes that depend on requirements clustering is severely limited. This report directly addresses the problem of clustering requirements through surveying standard clustering techniques and discussing their application to the requirements clustering process

Towards a Unified Meta-Model for Goal Oriented Modelling

Goal oriented modelling (GOM) is one of the most prominent and widely accepted techniques in information systems research. Since the early 1990’s, a large number of GOM approaches have been proposed aiming to a better alignment between business strategy and the behaviour of supporting systems. Different GOM approaches focus on different activities in the early stages of system development and propose a variety of strategies for reasoning about goals. A number of researchers have stressed the advantages of integrating different GOM techniques, especially in the context of modern global business environments. This is evidenced in the increasing number of publications in this area. However as each GOM language (even versions of the same language) comes with its own syntactic and semantic singularities, such integration requires a number of complicated transformations which is a major obstacle to model and tool interoperability, and prevent wider adoption by practitioners. In order to provide a unified view of GOM, one needs a common understanding of GOM concepts, their semantics and deployment. To this end, this paper proposes a language independent meta-model based on the analysis of eight GOM languages. Generic concepts were identified and a robust semantic definition among these concepts was built in a unified meta-model. We claim that the unified GOM meta-model could help in a) analysing existing goal models in order to provide insights regarding different goal modelling perspectives b) identify semantic similarities / overlaps between existing GOM techniques c) provide the basis for a reference model for GOM

Requirements modelling and formal analysis using graph operations

The increasing complexity of enterprise systems requires a more advanced analysis of the representation of services expected than is currently possible. Consequently, the specification stage, which could be facilitated by formal verification, becomes very important to the system life-cycle. This paper presents a formal modelling approach, which may be used in order to better represent the reality of the system and to verify the awaited or existing system’s properties, taking into account the environmental characteristics. For that, we firstly propose a formalization process based upon properties specification, and secondly we use Conceptual Graphs operations to develop reasoning mechanisms of verifying requirements statements. The graphic visualization of these reasoning enables us to correctly capture the system specifications by making it easier to determine if desired properties hold. It is applied to the field of Enterprise modelling

Goal-Driven Approach to Model Interaction between Viewpoints of a Multi-View KDD process

International audienceA data mining project is usually held by several actors (domain experts, data analysts, KDD experts ...), each with a different viewpoint. In this paper we propose to enhance coordination and knowledge sharing between actors of a multiview KDD analysis through a goal driven modeling of interactions between viewpoints. After a brief review of our approach of viewpoint in KDD, we will first develop a Goal Model that allows identification and representation of business objectives during the business understanding step of KDD process. Then, based on this goal model, we define a set of relations between viewpoints of a multi-view analysis; namely equivalence, inclusion, conflict and requirement

A Multi-Model View of Process Modelling

International audienceSituatedness of development processes is a key issue in both the software engineering and the method engineering communities, as there is a strong felt need for process prescriptions to be adapted to the situation at hand. The assumption of the process modelling approach presented in this paper is that process prescriptions shall be selected according to the actual situation at hand i.e. dynamically in the course of the process. The paper focuses on a multi-model view of process modelling which supports this dynamicity. The approach builds on the notion of a labelled graph of intentions and strategies called a map as well as its associated guidelines. The map is a navigational structure which supports the dynamic selection of the intention to be achieved next and the appropriate strategy to achieve it whereas guidelines help in the operationalization of the selected intention. The paper presents the map and guidelines and exemplifies the approach with the CREWS-L'Ecritoire method for requirements engineering

An Industrial Case Study of Immediate Benefits of Requirements Engineering Process Improvement at the Australian Center for Unisys Software

This paper describes an industrial experience in process improvement at one of the Unisys development labs in Australia. Following a capability maturity model (CMM) mini-assessment, the organization is undertaking significant changes in the requirements management process, which include the introduction of group session approaches to requirements analysis and a structured method for writing requirements. An empirical evaluation which investigated other aspects of the process improvement than the CMM model indicates tangible benefits as well as perceived long-term benefits during design and testing. Findings confirm that a more thorough requirements analysis results in more clearly defined, better understood and specified requirements, and an enhanced ability to address the market needs and product strategy requirements. The catalyst behind these improvements included project management leadership, managing the human dimension, collaboration among stakeholders and senior management support