From Goals to Aspects: Discovering Aspects from Requirements Goal Models

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has been attracting much attention in the software engineering community by advocating that programs should be structured according to programmer concerns, such as "efficient use of memory". However, like other programming paradigms in their early days, AOP hasn't addressed yet earlier phases of software development. In particular, it is still an open question how one identifies aspects early on in the software development process. This work proposes an answer to this question. Specifically, we show that aspects can be discovered during goal-oriented requirements analysis. Our proposal includes a systematic process for discovering aspects from relationships between functional and nonfunctional goals. We illustrate the proposed process with a case study adapted from the literature

Analyzing the Effect of the Collaborative Interactions on Performance of Requirements Validation

[Context] Requirements validation is critical in the pursuit of quality software. It usually demands the collaboration of multiple stakeholders with different perspectives. [Question] Our community has reported scarce experimental studies on the role of collaborative interaction in requirements validation. The goal of this study is to explore the effect of collaborative interactions on the performance of requirements validation. [Principal ideas] We performed a quasi-experiment involving 118 bachelor students to act analysts, and 40 volunteering students from the Social Sciences department to act clients. The requirements were specified using UML activity diagrams. The overall performance is measured in terms of efficiency (missing requirements correctly identified in a time interval), and effectiveness (degree to which the validation yielded the correct result). Moreover, we measured also subjects’ satisfaction on collaboration (questionnaire). [Contribution] We found that the teams composed exclusively of analysts showed better efficiency and effectiveness than mixed teams (client and analysts). However, for certain types of requirements, the mixed teams’ efficiency was superior. Also, the degree of satisfaction was higher among the clients than among the analysts. We end up with identifying future research topics

Requirements in the 21st Century: Current Practice and Emerging Trends

Requirements have remained one of the grand challenges in the design of software intensive systems. In this paper we review the main strands of requirements research over the past two decades and identify persistent and new challenges. Based on a field study that involved interviews of over 30 leading IT professionals involved in large and complex software design and implementation initiatives we review the current state-ofthe-art in design requirements management. We observe significant progress in the deployment of modeling methods, tools, risk-driven design, and user involvement. We note nine emerging themes and challenges in the requirement management arena: 1) business process focus, 2) systems transparency, 3) integration focus, 4) distributed requirements, 5) layered requirements, 6) criticality of information architectures, 7) increased deployment of COTS and software components, 8) design fluidity and 9) interdependent complexity. Several research challenges and new avenues for research are noted in the discovery, specification, and validation of requirements in light of these requirements features