Requirements Engineering as Creative Problem Solving: A Research Agenda for Idea Finding

This vision paper frames requirements engineering as a creative problem solving process. Its purpose is to enable requirements researchers and practitioners to recruit relevant theories, models, techniques and tools from creative problem solving to understand and support requirements processes more effectively. It uses 4 drivers to motivate the case for requirements engineering as a creative problem solving process. It then maps established requirements activities onto one of the longest-established creative problem solving processes, and uses these mappings to locate opportunities for the application of creative problem solving in requirements engineering. The second half of the paper describes selected creativity theories, techniques, software tools and training that can be adopted to improve requirements engineering research and practice. The focus is on support for problem and idea finding - two creative problem solving processes that our investigation revealed are poorly supported in requirements engineering. The paper ends with a research agenda to incorporate creative processes, techniques, training and tools in requirements projects

Supporting reflection and creative thinking by carers of older people with dementia

This vision paper frames requirements engineering as a creative problem solving process. Its purpose is to enable requirements researchers and practitioners to recruit relevant theories, models, techniques and tools from creative problem solving to understand and support requirements processes more effectively. It uses 4 drivers to motivate the case for requirements engineering as a creative problem solving process. It then maps established requirements activities onto one of the longest-established creative problem solving processes, and uses these mappings to locate opportunities for the application of creative problem solving in requirements engineering. The second half of the paper describes selected creativity theories, techniques, software tools and training that can be adopted to improve requirements engineering research and practice. The focus is on support for problem and idea finding - two creative problem solving processes that our investigation revealed are poorly supported in requirements engineering. The paper ends with a research agenda to incorporate creative processes, techniques, training and tools in requirements projects

Task-driven tools for requirements engineering

This research aims at designing and evaluating a new generation of usable and multimodal Require ments and Analysis Tools, capable of promoting arti fact co-evolution in a useful manner, enabling coop eration and communication of multiple stakeholders over a common semantic model. The main goal is to leverage the elicitation of functional and non functional requirements by using multimodal interac tion techniques, and driving software development using a conceptual architecture easily extracted from user task flows.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On the engineering of systems of systems: key challenges for the requirements engineering community!

Software intensive systems of the future will be ultra large-scale systems of systems. Systems of Systems Engineering focuses on the interoperation of many independent, self-contained constituent systems to achieve a global need. The scale and complexity of systems of systems possess unique challenges for the Requirements Engineering community. Current requirements engineering techniques are inadequate in addressing these challenges and new concepts, methods, techniques, tools and processes are required. This paper identifies some immediate key challenges for the Requirements Engineering community that need to be scoped and describes some road-mapping activities that aim to address these challenges

Requirements Management Tools: A Quantitative Assessment

This report is primarily aimed at people with some background in Requirements Engineering or practitioners wishing to assess tools available for managing requirements. We provide a starting point for this assessment, by presenting a brief survey of existing Requirements Management tools. As a part of the survey, we characterize a set of requirements management tools by outlining their features, capabilities and goals. The characterization offers a foundation to select and possibly customize a requirements engineering tool for a software project. This report consists of three parts. In Part I we define the terms requirements and requirements engineering and briefly point out the main components of the requirements engineering process. In Part II, we survey the characteristics and capabilities of 6 popular requirements management tools, available in the market. We enumerate the salient features of each of theses tools. In Part III, we briefly describe a Synergistic Environment for Requirement Generation. This environment captures additional tools augmenting the requirements generation process. A description of these tools is provided. In the concluding section, we present a discussion defining the ideal set of characteristics that should be embodied in a requirements management tool. This report is adapted from a compendium of assignments that were prepared by the students in a Requirements Engineering class offered in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech

Improving lifecycle query in integrated toolchains using linked data and MQTT-based data warehousing

The development of increasingly complex IoT systems requires large engineering environments. These environments generally consist of tools from different vendors and are not necessarily integrated well with each other. In order to automate various analyses, queries across resources from multiple tools have to be executed in parallel to the engineering activities. In this paper, we identify the necessary requirements on such a query capability and evaluate different architectures according to these requirements. We propose an improved lifecycle query architecture, which builds upon the existing Tracked Resource Set (TRS) protocol, and complements it with the MQTT messaging protocol in order to allow the data in the warehouse to be kept updated in real-time. As part of the case study focusing on the development of an IoT automated warehouse, this architecture was implemented for a toolchain integrated using RESTful microservices and linked data.Comment: 12 pages, worksho

Evaluation Framework for Software Security Requirements Engineering Tools

Tarkvaraarenduses on nõuded kui süsteemi vundament, mis vastutavad ka ebaõnnestumiste eest. Valed nõuded võivad viia tarkvara eripäradeni, mis tegelikult ei vasta spetsifikatsioonidele. Sel põhjusel peetakse nõuete koostamist kõige keerulisemaks ja olulisemaks sammuks tarkvaraarenduse elutsükli kõikide protsesside jooksul. Tänapäeval, kus küberrünnakud on \n\rtavalised, mängivad turvalisuse nõuded väga olulist rolli tarkvaraarenduse protsessis. On levimas uut tüüpi tööriistad, mille kasutamist peetakse kõige efektiivsemaks meetodiks turvalisusnõuete väljatöötamisel. Lisaks võimaldavad need tööriistad lahendada turvalisusega seotud küsimusi kasutajal endal, hoides märgatavalt kokku inseneride aega. Siiski on nende tööriistade \n\rareng alles algstaadiumis ning neid ei ole tarkvarainseneride poolt massiliselt kasutusele võetud. Põhjus on väga pikas uue tarkvara õppimise ja sellega kohanemise protsessis, mis põhjustab ajakadu arendusprotsessis ning lisab projektile kulusid. Projekti jaoks konkreetse tööriista valimisel võib tutvumine ja katsetamine võtta inseneridel hulgaliselt aega. Lisaks sellele võib struktureerimata valikuprotsess viia vale tööriista kasutuselevõtmisele, mis raiskab omakorda kõigi aega ja pingutusi. Selles uurimuses kavatseme me koostada struktureeritud lähenemise, mis aitab insenere turvaliste tööriistade valimisel. Protsessile kaasaaitamiseks saavad analüütikud ja arhitektid hinnata tarkvara omadusi, mida nad enda seisukohast olulisimateks peavad. Sellest lähtuvalt saavad nad valida kindlate tööriistade vahel ning teha parima valiku. \n\rAntud uurimustöös konstrueeritud lähenemisega on võimalik säästa aega, vaeva ja kulutusi. Uurimuse koostamise käigus uurime me tarkvaraarenduse turvaprotsesse, meetodeid ja tööriistu ning püüame luua raamistikku, mis oleks inseneridele turvalisusnõuete tööriistade hindamisel abiks.In software development requirements are considered as building blocks of software system, which also are considered to be responsible in event of failure. Bad requirements can lead to software features that are not to the specifications. For that reason requirement gathering process is considered as the most sensitive and complicated process among all software engineering lifecycle processes. In current age where cyber-attacks are common security requirements also comes into place and plays a very important role in software development process. In order to elicit security requirements new type of tools are begin to form a shape called security engineering tools which help in eliciting security requirements. That considered being the most efficient way of eliciting security requirements. Moreover these tools empower users with artifacts specifically to cater security needs, which save time and efforts for engineers in return. Nevertheless these tools are still at their infantry and are lacking mass adoption by software security engineers. Reason because these tools have steep learning curve which can add-up to development time and end up pushing more cost to the project. In order to decide which tool to select for a particular project require engineers to use these tools which in return will consume tremendous amount of time. Moreover using unstructured tool selection process can also leads to wrong tool selection which will be the waste of time and efforts. In this research work we are going to construct structured approach which will help engineers in security engineering tool selection process. In order to aid this process analysts and architects will be able to rate the features they want the most in a particular security engineering tool. In return from this process they will be able to choose between security engineering tools and select the best one. Finally using approach constructed in this research work will save time, efforts, and costs. In our approach we will analyze security engineering processes, methods and tools, to construct a framework that will help aid engineers in security engineering tool evaluation process

The conundrum of categorising requirements: managing requirements for learning on the move

This paper reports on the experience of eliciting and managing requirements on a large European-based multinational project, whose purpose is to create a system to support learning using mobile technology. The project used the socio-cognitive engineering methodology for human-centered design and the Volere shell and template to document requirements. We provide details about the project below, describe the Volere tools, and explain how and why we used a flexible categorization scheme to manage the requirements. Finally, we discuss three lessons learned: (1) provide a flexible mechanism for organizing requirements, (2) plan ahead for the RE process, and (3) do not forget 'the waiting room