Requirements engineering for business workflow systems: a scenario-based approach

Workflow implementations require a deep understanding of business and human cooperation. Several approaches have been proposed to address this need for understanding, but largely in a descriptive way. Attempts to use them in software development have had mixed results. The work reported here proposes that these approaches can be used in a generative way, as part of the requirement engineering process, by (a) extending requirements engineering modelling techniques with underlying cooperation properties, (b) integrating these techniques through the use of a derivation modelling approach, and (c) providing pragmatic heuristics and guidelines that support the real-world requirements engineering practitioner to ensure a high probability of success for the business workflow system to be developed. This thesis develops and evaluates a derivation modelling approach that is based on scenario modelling. It supports clear and structured views of cooperation properties, and allows the derivation of articulation protocols from business workflow models in a scenario-driven manner. This enables requirements engineering to define how the expectations of the cooperative situation are to be fulfilled by the system to be built - a statement of requirements for business workflow systems that reflects the richness of these systems, but also acts as a feasible starting point for development. The work is evaluated through a real-world case study of business workflow management. The main contribution of this work is a demonstration that the above problems in modelling requirements for business workflow systems can be addressed by scenario-based derivation modelling approach. The method transforms models through a series of properties involving cooperation, which can be addressed by using what are effectively extensions of current requirements engineering methods

A reuse-Oriented Approach for the Construction of Scenario Bases Methods

International audienceDespite the recent interest in scenarios, the development of new methods and tools for Requirements Engineering integrating scenario based approaches has been limited. This paper reports on four different processes developed from research undertaken as part of the CREWS project which the authors believe will improve scenario use and make it more systematic. Furthermore CREWS aims to integrate these approaches into a method for scenario-based requirements engineering. To achieve this objective and be able to include existing approaches such as use case analysis we develop a component based approach which reflects a shift towards a reuse-centric approach to method engineering. The paper presents CREWS method and meta-method knowledge through the implementation of an SGML database to store, retrieve and dynamically compose chunks of CREWS processes

Space-based geoengineering: challenges and requirements

The prospect of engineering the Earth's climate (geoengineering) raises a multitude of issues associated with climatology, engineering on macroscopic scales, and indeed the ethics of such ventures. Depending on personal views, such large-scale engineering is either an obvious necessity for the deep future, or yet another example of human conceit. In this article a simple climate model will be used to estimate requirements for engineering the Earth's climate, principally using space-based geoengineering. Active cooling of the climate to mitigate anthropogenic climate change due to a doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the Earth's atmosphere is considered. This representative scenario will allow the scale of the engineering challenge to be determined. It will be argued that simple occulting discs at the interior Lagrange point may represent a less complex solution than concepts for highly engineered refracting discs proposed recently. While engineering on macroscopic scales can appear formidable, emerging capabilities may allow such ventures to be seriously considered in the long term. This article is not an exhaustive review of geoengineering, but aims to provide a foretaste of the future opportunities, challenges, and requirements for space-based geoengineering ventures

Improving Requirements Elicitation By Leveraging the Discipline of Screenwriting

As the field of Engineering has expanded, researchers and practitioners have shown increasing interest in the role of high quality Requirements Engineering (RE) in the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and its impact in determining project success. Traditionally, the literature has been dominated by an effort to establish a wider acceptance of the scenario based approach. New ideas, however, are emerging within the past decade which shows researchers presenting various ways that narrative storytelling might be applied to the scenario based approach. This project contributes to the latest wave of literature that looks at narrative and the scenario based approach to requirements. It examines how screenwriting techniques complementary to the Cooperative Requirements Engineering With Scenarios (CREWS) framework could create advantages when building essential scenarios for requirements elicitation. It shows how screenwriting can be a critical solution technology used in the requirements task of elicitation. These findings verify B. Norden\u27s (2007) previously unproven claim that screenwriting techniques can be used in a Requirements Engineering process. This study, for the first time, compiles the work of the two leading screenwriting authorities R. McKee (1997) and S. Field (2005), showing that there is a coherent screenwriting process. Using the well established CREWS framework, the results show that screenwriting methods are a viable way to generate elicitation scenarios

Comparison of Traditional Versus CubeSat Remote Sensing: A Model-Based Systems Engineering Approach

This thesis compares the ability of both traditional and CubeSat remote sensing architectures to fulfill a set of mission requirements for a remote sensing scenario. Mission requirements originating from a hurricane disaster response scenario are developed to derive a set of system requirements. Using a Model-based Systems Engineering approach, these system requirements are used to develop notional traditional and CubeSat architecture models. The technical performance of these architectures is analyzed using Systems Toolkit (STK); the results are compared against Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) derived from the disaster response scenario. Additionally, systems engineering cost estimates are obtained for each satellite architecture using the Constructive Systems Engineering Cost Model (COSYSMO). The technical and cost comparisons between the traditional and CubeSat architectures are intended to inform future discussions relating to the benefits and limitations of using CubeSats to conduct operational missions

Reusing Scenario Based Approaches in Requirement Engineering Methods: CREWS Method Base

National audienceIn the CREWS project four different scenario-based approaches have been developed with the aim of supporting system requirements acquisition and validation in a systematic way. Two approaches deal with the requirements acquisition from real world scenes [Haumer 98] and from natural language scenario descriptions [Rolland 97], [Rolland 98a]. Two other approaches deal with the requirements validation through systematic scenario generation coupled to scenario walkthrough [Sutcliffe 98] and scenario animation [Dubois 98]. The project hypothesis is that each of the approaches might be useful in specific project situations which are not well tackled by existing analysis methods and therefore, that it is worth looking for the integration of such approaches in current methods. This shall lead to an enhancement of the existing methods with scenario-based techniques. Moreover, in the CREWS project we have proposed a framework for classifying scenarios [Rolland 98b] as a way to explore the issues underlying scenario based approaches in Requirements Engineering (RE). The application of this framework on several scenario based approaches proven the existence of the variety of products and practices of scenarios. We situate our work in the situational method engineering domain. The situational method engineering discipline aims at defining information systems development methods by reusing and assembling different existing method fragments. This approach allows to construct modular methods which can be modified and augmented to meet the requirements of a given situation. Following this approach, a method is viewed as a collection of method fragments [Rolland 96], [Harmsen 94], [Harmsen 97]. New methods can be constructed by selecting fragments from different methods which are the more appropriate to a given situation [Brinkkemper 98], [Plihon 98]. Thus, method fragments are the basic building blocks which allow to define methods in a modular way. In our work we are interested in specific method fragments, namely scenario based approaches, that we call scenario method chunks. The objective of our work is to develop an approach for integrating different kinds of scenarios as method components into usual RE methods. To achieve this goal we propose to represent the scenario based approaches in a method base as method components called scenario method chunks. We need also to define the approach for retrieving relevant scenario method chunk for the situation at hand. Finally, we need to define the approach supporting the integration of the retrieved component with the existing RE method or with another method component

Stakeholder identification in the requirements engineering process

Adequate, timely and effective consultation of relevant stakeholders is of paramount importance in the requirements engineering process. However, the thorny issue of making sure that all relevant stakeholders are consulted has received less attention than other areas which depend on it, such as scenario-based requirements, involving users in development, negotiating between different viewpoints and so on. The literature suggests examples of stakeholders, and categories of stakeholder, but does not provide help in identifying stakeholders for a specific system. In this paper, we discuss current work in stakeholder identification, propose an approach to identifying relevant stakeholders for a specific system, and propose future directions for the work

User interface requirements engineering : a scenario-based framework

Effective user interface is an important component to the success of an interactive system as any of the components that manage the underlying functionality of the system. The development of an effective user interfaces highly depends on the quality of the requirements where the end-user should be actively involved. Therefore, there is a need to accurately capture, interpret, and represent the voice of the end-user when specifying the user interface requirements. The objective of the thesis is to advance the state of the art in bridging the gap between specifying the User Interface Requirements for interactive systems on the one hand and the design and development of it on the other hand. Towards this objective, a software framework called SUCRE (acronym for Scenario and Use-Case based Requirements Engineering) was developed as a part of this thesis work. Use Case Maps (UCMs) that were introduced in the literature were examined and have been enriched with new visual notation for modeling and specifying the user interface requirements. This enriched UCM for User Interface (UCM-UI) model formed a basis for SUCRE. Thus, scenarios and use cases are used as a means to represent the user interface requirements and communicate with end-users. In addition, the thesis explores two other objectives, namely validation of user interface requirements and usability prediction of the intended user interface. SUCRE was used to build operators that validate the consistency, completeness, and precision of the UCM-UI model using heuristics for constructing a formal analysis of the requirements. SUCRE was also used to define a metrics suite to predict usability from scenarios and use cases. This metrics suite includes simple structural measures as well as content-sensitive and task-sensitive metrics. Considering the difficulties in the specification and design of user interfaces, the thesis aimed also to identify the need for a mix of both informal and formal representation in specifying user interface requirements. Therefore, SUCRE was successfully used to bridge the gap between the semi-formal requirement UCM-UI and detailed formal requirements such as UML, LOTOS specifications, and XML

Early timing analysis based on scenario requirements and platform models

Distributed, software-intensive systems (e.g., in the automotive sector) must fulfill communication requirements under hard real-time constraints. The requirements have to be documented and validated carefully using a systematic requirements engineering (RE) approach, for example, by applying scenario-based requirements notations. The resources of the execution platforms and their properties (e.g., CPU frequency or bus throughput) induce effects on the timing behavior, which may lead to violations of the real-time requirements. Nowadays, the platform properties and their induced timing effects are verified against the real-time requirements by means of timing analysis techniques mostly implemented in commercial-off-the-shelf tools. However, such timing analyses are conducted in late development phases since they rely on artifacts produced during these phases (e.g., the platform-specific code). In order to enable early timing analyses already during RE, we extend a scenario-based requirements notation with allocation means to platform models and define operational semantics for the purpose of simulation-based, platform-aware timing analyses. We illustrate and evaluate the approach with an automotive software-intensive system

Piggybacking on an Autonomous Hauler: Business Models Enabling a System-of-Systems Approach to Mapping an Underground Mine

With ever-increasing productivity targets in mining operations, there is a growing interest in mining automation. In future mines, remote-controlled and autonomous haulers will operate underground guided by LiDAR sensors. We envision reusing LiDAR measurements to maintain accurate mine maps that would contribute to both safety and productivity. Extrapolating from a pilot project on reliable wireless communication in Boliden's Kankberg mine, we propose establishing a system-of-systems (SoS) with LIDAR-equipped haulers and existing mapping solutions as constituent systems. SoS requirements engineering inevitably adds a political layer, as independent actors are stakeholders both on the system and SoS levels. We present four SoS scenarios representing different business models, discussing how development and operations could be distributed among Boliden and external stakeholders, e.g., the vehicle suppliers, the hauling company, and the developers of the mapping software. Based on eight key variation points, we compare the four scenarios from both technical and business perspectives. Finally, we validate our findings in a seminar with participants from the relevant stakeholders. We conclude that to determine which scenario is the most promising for Boliden, trade-offs regarding control, costs, risks, and innovation must be carefully evaluated.Comment: Preprint of industry track paper accepted for the 25th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE'17