The role of Comprehension in Requirements and Implications for Use Case Descriptions

Within requirements engineering it is generally accepted that in writing specifications (or indeed any requirements phase document), one attempts to produce an artefact which will be simple to comprehend for the user. That is, whether the document is intended for customers to validate requirements, or engineers to understand what the design must deliver, comprehension is an important goal for the author. Indeed, advice on producing ‘readable’ or ‘understandable’ documents is often included in courses on requirements engineering. However, few researchers, particularly within the software engineering domain, have attempted either to define or to understand the nature of comprehension and it’s implications for guidance on the production of quality requirements. Therefore, this paper examines thoroughly the nature of textual comprehension, drawing heavily from research in discourse process, and suggests some implications for requirements (and other) software documentation. In essence, we find that the guidance on writing requirements, often prevalent within software engineering, may be based upon assumptions which are an oversimplification of the nature of comprehension. Hence, the paper examines guidelines which have been proposed, in this case for use case descriptions, and the extent to which they agree with discourse process theory; before suggesting refinements to the guidelines which attempt to utilise lessons learned from our richer understanding of the underlying discourse process theory. For example, we suggest subtly different sets of writing guidelines for the different tasks of requirements, specification and design

A lightweight state-machine for validating use case descriptions

This paper presents a tool to provide an enaction capability for use case descriptions. Use cases have wide industry acceptance and are well suited for constructing initial approximations of the intended behaviour. However, use case descriptions are still relatively immature with respect to precise syntax and semantics. Hence, despite promising work on providing writing guidelines, rigorous validation of use case descriptions requires further support. One approach to supporting validation is to use enaction. Indeed, enactable models have been used extensively within process modelling to clarify understanding of descriptions. Given the importance of requirements validation, such automated support promises significant benefits. However, the need to produce formal descriptions, to drive enaction, is often seen as a barrier to the takeup of such technologies. That is, developers have traditionally been reluctant to increase the proportion of effort devoted to requirements activities. Our approach involves the development of a lightweight state-machine, which obviates any need to create intermediate formal descriptions, thereby maintaining the simple nature of the use case description. Hence, this 'lightweight ' approach, which provides an enaction capability ‘for minimal effort’, increases the likelihood of industrial take-up. 1

SmartPrescription:A principled approach towards eliminating prescription errors in healthcare

While it might deceptively appear that the major issues in medication concern medicine prescription calculations and the subtleness of conversions between measuring units, research in healthcare shows that the key issues relate to the context in which medication is prescribed. For instance, calculation of dose for the elderly is particularly sensitive especially in cases of repeat prescriptions whereby monitoring is crucial to avoid misuse. Initial (UK-based) primary research among four primary care surgeries and interviews with paediatricians indicated the lack of custom functions within existing information systems in a way that exploits knowledge about drugs, past prescriptions and patients' medical history. This paper presents the research we carried out towards addressing these issues. In particular, the paper presents a prototype software system developed that illustrates the efficacy of addressing medicine calculation issues where contextual information about drug, illness, and patient history are used to reliably inform the prescription process

Embedding requirements within model-driven architecture. Software Quality Control

Abstract The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) brings benefits to software development, among them the potential for connecting software models with the business domain. This paper focuses on the upstream or Computation Independent Model (CIM) phase of the MDA. Our contention is that, whilst there are many models and notations available within the CIM Phase, those that are currently popular and supported by the Object Management Group (OMG), may not be the most useful notations for business analysts nor sufficient to fully support software requirements and specification. Therefore, with specific emphasis on the value of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) for business analysts, this paper provides an example of a typical CIM approach before describing an approach which incorporates specific requirements techniques. A framework extension to the MDA is then introduced; which embeds requirements and specification within the CIM, thus further enhancing the utility of MDA by providing a more complete method for business analysis.