Refining Vision Videos

[Context and motivation] Complex software-based systems involve several stakeholders, their activities and interactions with the system. Vision videos are used during the early phases of a project to complement textual representations. They visualize previously abstract visions of the product and its use. By creating, elaborating, and discussing vision videos, stakeholders and developers gain an improved shared understanding of how those abstract visions could translate into concrete scenarios and requirements to which individuals can relate. [Question/problem] In this paper, we investigate two aspects of refining vision videos: (1) Refining the vision by providing alternative answers to previously open issues about the system to be built. (2) A refined understanding of the camera perspective in vision videos. The impact of using a subjective (or "ego") perspective is compared to the usual third-person perspective. [Methodology] We use shopping in rural areas as a real-world application domain for refining vision videos. Both aspects of refining vision videos were investigated in an experiment with 20 participants. [Contribution] Subjects made a significant number of additional contributions when they had received not only video or text but also both - even with very short text and short video clips. Subjective video elements were rated as positive. However, there was no significant preference for either subjective or non-subjective videos in general.Comment: 15 pages, 25th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality 201

A Decision Support System for Pattern-Driven Software Architecture

The selection process of architectural patterns is challenging for software architects, as knowledge about patterns is scattered among a wide range of literature. Knowledge about architectural patterns must be collected, organized, stored, and quickly retrieved when it needs to be employed. In this tool paper, we introduce a decision support system that uses a decision model for supporting software architects with the pattern selection problem according to their requirements, including functional and quality requirements. The decision model is built based on a technology selection framework for modeling multi-criteria decision-making problems in software production. Twenty-four software architects in the Netherlands have evaluated the tool. They confirm that the tool supports them with their daily decision-making process

Safety and Security Interference Analysis in the Design Stage

Safety and security engineering have been traditionally separated disciplines (e.g., different required knowledge and skills, terminology, standards and life-cycles) and operated in quasi-silos of knowledge and practices. However, the co-engineering of these two critical qualities of a system is being largely investigated as it promises the removal of redundant work and the detection of trade-offs in early stages of the product development life-cycle. In this work, we enrich an existing safety-security co-analysis method in the design stage providing capabilities for interference analysis. Reports on interference analyses are crucial to trigger co-engineering meetings leading to the trade-offs analyses and system refinements. We detail our automatic approach for this interference analysis, performed through fault trees generated from safety and security local analyses. We evaluate and discuss our approach from the perspective of two industrial case studies on the space and medical domains.The research leading to this paper has received funding from the AQUAS project (H2020-ECSEL grant agreement 737475). The ECSEL Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme