Using mobile RE tools to give end-users their own voice

Researchers highlight end-user involvement in system design as an important concept for developing useful and usable solutions. However, end-user involvement in software engineering is still an open-ended topic. Novel paradigms such as service-oriented computing strengthen the need for more active end-user involvement in order to provide systems that are tailored to individual end-user needs. Our work is based on the fact that the majority of end-users are familiar with mobile devices and use an increasing number of mobile applications. A mobile tool enabling end-user led requirements elicitation could be just one of many applications installed on end-users' mobile devices. In this paper, we present a framework of end-user involvement in requirements elicitation which motivates our research. The main contribution of our research is a tool-supported requirements elicitation approach allowing end-users to document needs in situ. Furthermore, we present first evaluation results to highlight the feasibility of on-site end-user led requirements elicitation

A New Approach for System Requirements Elicitation Using Discount Focus Subgroups Method

Requirements elicitation is a key and critical activity for software/system development success. Several methods and techniques have been developed and used for requirements elicitation. Prior research referred to many problems and shortfalls with existing group-based methods (e.g., brainstorming, focus groups, and joint application development [JAD]). This paper provides a new approach for requirements elicitation using a novel method called discount focus subgroups (DFSG). The current paper demonstrates that DFSG is an alternative effective technique to improve requirements elicitation activity by addressing pitfalls and problems with existing group-based methods. The method is effective in several situations such as when the development team aims to minimize the costs of system development, large numbers of stakeholders need to be involved in large projects like enterprise systems (ERP), the system is novel and where no similar systems have been developed before

A socio-technical-based process for questionnaire development in requirements elicitation via interviews

Software development is the process of building systems that solve users’ need and satisfy stakeholders’ objectives. Such needs are determined through requirements elicitation, which is considered an intensive, complex, and multi-disciplinary process. Traditional methods of elicitation often fail to uncover requirements that are critical for successful and wide-scale user adoption because these methods primarily focus on the technical aspects and constraints of the systems rather than considering a socio-technical perspective. The success of information system development involves the identification of the social, organizational and technical features of the systems, which in turn can result in a more acceptable system by users. In this paper, we propose a requirements elicitation process based on socio-technical (ST) systems theory. The process leverages ST system components to help identify a set of ST imbalances, which in turn help in requirements elicitation. The applicability of the process is demonstrated using empirical investigation with a randomized two-group experimental design, where the objective is to see the potential of the proposed process to enhance analysts’ understanding of socio-technical aspects of a domain, interview readiness, and questionnaire quality

Generating target system specifications from a domain model using CLIPS

The quest for reuse in software engineering is still being pursued and researchers are actively investigating the domain modeling approach to software construction. There are several domain modeling efforts reported in the literature and they all agree that the components that are generated from domain modeling are more conducive to reuse. Once a domain model is created, several target systems can be generated by tailoring the domain model or by evolving the domain model and then tailoring it according to the specified requirements. This paper presents the Evolutionary Domain Life Cycle (EDLC) paradigm in which a domain model is created using multiple views, namely, aggregation hierarchy, generalization/specialization hierarchies, object communication diagrams and state transition diagrams. The architecture of the Knowledge Based Requirements Elicitation Tool (KBRET) which is used to generate target system specifications is also presented. The preliminary version of KBRET is implemented in the C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS)

Investigating the state of requirements elicitation in Thailand

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering.This research is aimed at investigating the state of requirements elicitation in Thailand in order to increase the understanding of the area of requirements elicitation in the country. This research is based on Thailand where the culture is different from Western countries. This relates to the previous research of Thanasankit (2002) that the hierarchical culture of Thai influences the decision making process and requirement elicitation. This hierarchical structure of Thai organization also contributes to a bureaucratic, elongated decision-making process during information systems development. Therefore, understanding the influence of power in Thai culture on requirement elicitation will assist multinational information systems consulting organizations to select, adopt, better manage, or change requirement elicitation process methodologies. The research also identifies some of the problems encountered during the requirements elicitation process and elicitation techniques used in Thailand. Finally the results from this research are compared with best practice reported in literature review in order to provide useful suggestions and future research in this area. To achieve the alnl of the research, a questionnaire survey was employed. The researcher chose 30 construction firms and 30 software development firms in Thailand to provide the data for analysis. The firms were medium- and large-sized firms. The data from these firms were analysed with Statistical Software Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 12. The results of the survey in this research showed: • Software development firms were m.ore likely to be involved with projects related to system and software development than construction firms, whose main work involved with supervising the building work. • Construction firms seemed to have more problems or difficulties than software development fmns while software development firms had better performance in requirement elicitation than did the construction firms. • The most important source of requirements identified by both software development and construction firms was the same, namely customers or users' needs. The second important source of knowledge for both types of firms was also the same, namely domain information. • The problem most often confronted with by both software development and construction firms was vague requirements. • Requirement elicitation techniques information from both software development and construction firms implied that the current requirements elicitation techniques might not be appropriate. Engineers, managers and supervisors of the firms did not indicate awareness of whether the requirements elicitation techniques they used were dated or not. The recommendations from this research are: • Software development and construction firms in Thailand need to be more proactive and improve all stakeholders' requirement elicitation. • Both types of firms should take the problem of vague requirements into consideration seriously when they carry out any system development. Requirement analysis techniques should be employed to facilitate this. • It is suggested the efficiency and effectiveness of the techniques Engineers, managers and supervisors of the firms currently use for requirement elicitation be evaluated and analyzed for improvement in the RE process

A POS Tagging Approach to Capture Security Requirements within an Agile Software Development Process

Software use is an inescapable reality. Computer systems are embedded into devices from the mundane to the complex and significantly impact daily life. Increased use expands the opportunity for malicious use which threatens security and privacy. Factors such as high profile data breaches, rising cost due to security incidents, competitive advantage and pending legislation are driving software developers to integrate security into software development rather than adding security after a product has been developed. Security requirements must be elicited, modeled, analyzed, documented and validated beginning at the initial phases of the software engineering process rather than being added at later stages. However, approaches to developing security requirements have been lacking which presents barriers to security requirements integration during the requirements phase of software development. In particular, software development organizations working within short development lifecycles (often characterized as agile lifecycle) and minimal resources need a light and practical approach to security requirements engineering that can be easily integrated into existing agile processes. In this thesis, we present an approach for eliciting, analyzing, prioritizing and developing security requirements which can be integrated into existing software development lifecycles for small, agile organizations. The approach is based on identifying candidate security goals, categorizing security goals based on security principles, understanding the stakeholder goals to develop preliminary security requirements and prioritizing preliminary security requirements. The identification activity consists of part of speech (POS) tagging of requirements related artifacts for security terminology to discover candidate security goals. The categorization activity applies a general security principle to candidate goals. Elicitation activities are undertaken to gain a deeper understanding of the security goals from stakeholders. Elicited goals are prioritized using risk management techniques and security requirements are developed from validated goals. Security goals may fail the validation activity, requiring further iterations of analysis, elicitation, and prioritization activities until stakeholders are satisfied with or have eliminated the security requirement. Finally, candidate security requirements are output which can be further modeled, defined and validated using other approaches. A security requirements repository is integrated into our proposed approach for future security requirements refinement and reuse. We validate the framework through an industrial case study with a small, agile software development organization

Why and How Your Traceability Should Evolve: Insights from an Automotive Supplier

Traceability is a key enabler of various activities in automotive software and systems engineering and required by several standards. However, most existing traceability management approaches do not consider that traceability is situated in constantly changing development contexts involving multiple stakeholders. Together with an automotive supplier, we analyzed how technology, business, and organizational factors raise the need for flexible traceability. We present how traceability can be evolved in the development lifecycle, from early elicitation of traceability needs to the implementation of mature traceability strategies. Moreover, we shed light on how traceability can be managed flexibly within an agile team and more formally when crossing team borders and organizational borders. Based on these insights, we present requirements for flexible tool solutions, supporting varying levels of data quality, change propagation, versioning, and organizational traceability.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, accepted in IEEE Softwar