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CREWS Reports 1997
S. Nurcan, C. Rolland
appeared in
Proceedings of the Workshop on the many facets of Process Engineering (MFPE’97),
Gammarth, Tunis, September 22-23, 1997.
Abstract
The Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) discipline examines the possibilities and
effects of technological support for humans involved in collaborative group communication
and work processes. Organizations are built on the principle that groups of people can
carry out tasks which are not feasible individually. For many of them, well-structured and
ill-structured procedures coexist in work processes and must be managed in the final
solution. Cooperative work techniques become very important in organizations. One can note
the emergence of many products dedicated to developing cooperative systems. Therefore, it
is necessary to emphasize the specificities of these applications in order to take them
into account as soon as possible during design. This paper presents a process meta-model
for goal-driven cooperative work processes.
Klaus Weidenhaupt, Klaus Pohl, Matthias Jarke, Peter Haumer, CREWS Team
appeared in:
IEEE Software, March, 1998 and
International Requirements Engineering Conference (ICRE’98), Colorado Springs,
Colorado, USA, April 6-10, 1998.
Abstract
Scenario-based approaches are becoming ubiquitous in systems analysis and design but their
definition and scope remain vague. Complementing the recently proposed CREWS
classification framework for scenario-based RE, this paper reports on an exploratory
survey of practice conducted through site visits with 15 projects in four European
countries. The main findings include that: (1) the variety of purposes and uses of
scenarios in the process is much greater than expected; (2) as a consequence, we must take
scenarios much more seriously as important design artifacts, offering better means for
structuring, management, and evolution. To handle these complex processes, users request
more explicit methodological guidance and more adequate tool support.
Camille Ben Achour, Colette Rolland
submitted to:
International Requirements Engineering Conference (ICRE’98), Colorado Springs,
Colorado, USA, April 6-10, 1998.
Abstract
This paper attempts to define the role and the constraints of Natural Language (NL)
interpretation within the Requirement Engineering (RE) process. In so doing, it addresses
two key features of a NL interpretation tool. First, genericity towards the design
modelling language targeted by the interpretation can be supported owing to the semantic
level of analysis of the input scenario. Genericity allows to interpret any kind of
textual scenario into any kind of target design model. The second characteristic of the
interpretation tool is its modularity which permits to automate partly RE tasks. Tightly
embedded in the RE process, the interpretation becomes a powerful support that
participates efficiently to the automation of numerous RE tasks. We illustrate this
feature with an example making use of the interpretation tool for the improvement of the
consistency between sequence diagrams and textual scenarios.
N.A.M. Maiden, S. Minocha, K. Manning, M. Ryan
appeared in:
International Requirements Engineering Conference (ICRE’98), Colorado Springs,
Colorado, USA, April 6-10, 1998.
Abstract
CREWS-SAVRE is a first-draft method and software tool for systematic scenario generation
and use. This paper reports on two interleaved strands of research and development. The
first involves theoretical research into classes of exceptions in software-intensive
systems. The second is the development of a software prototype which has been used to
acquire requirements from current scenario users. These user requirements are presented
and implications for the second version of the prototype are discussed. The paper ends
with advantages of integrating basic software engineering research with user-centred
system design.
Patrick Heymans
Abstract
Writing requirements specifications of complex composite systems makes it necessary to
have a language which is both formal to allow reasoning on specifications and declarative
enough to allow the analyst to express himself in a natural way. Albert II is a language
that tries to achieve these goals and, besides that, provides templates that guide the
analyst in writing the specification. However, because of its formality, the resulting
specification cannot in general be read by the various stakeholders. Validation tools are
therefore required, among which an animator. In this paper we aim at giving an overview of
the functionalities and the architecture of the animator for Albert II specifications.
Klaus Pohl, Klaus Weidenhaupt
appeared in
Proceedings of the 6th European Software Engineering Conference / 5th ACM SIGSOFT
Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 97), Zurich, September
22-25, 1997.
Abstract
Research in process-centered environments (PCEs) has focused on project management support
and has been dominated by the search for suitable process modelling languages and
enactment mechanisms. The consequences of the process orientation on the tools used during
process performance, and for offering fine-grained, method-based support to the engineers
performing the process have been studied much less. In this paper, we discuss the
requirements for a tighter integration of interactive engineering tools and present a
contextual approach for the process-integration of those tools. To achieve process
integration we argue that tools, like processes, should be explicitly defined. The
integration of the tool models with the process definitions forms an environment model
which is interpreted during tool execution. Based on this interpretation tool behavior is
adjusted according to the process definition; i.e. the interpretation empowers the tools
to provide fine-grained method-conform process support. Our approach has been implemented
as a reusable object-oriented framework and validated by specializing this framework to
develop two prototypical process-integrated environments (PIEs).
R. Motschnig-Pitrig, H.W. Nissen, M. Jarke
appeared in
Proc. of the 9th Intl. Conf. On Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE
’97), Madrid, Spain, June 17-20, 1997.
Abstract
Semi-formal methods for requirements and design suffer from a problem of scalability. They
offer different notations to describe complementary abstractions of the problem to be
analized, but each such abstraction in itself becomes rapidly much too big to be handled
in one piece. Some methods therefore offer basic view mechanisms, variously called
modules, categories, viewpoints etc., to introduce smaller units. However, they lack in
guidance what views to define and how to interrelate them in a systematic manner. The
problem we address in this paper can be simplistically stated as: "Given that a
multi-notation specification must be composed from hundreds of fragments each no larger
than one page, according to what facets should we acquire, classify, compose/decompose,
and compare these views?" We develop a situational framework of such facets, and
formalize it in a metamodel. We compare three basic process models of how the framework
can be applied, and describe the formal and technical support required for each of these
models.
Matthias Jarke, Klaus Pohl, Peter Haumer, Klaus Weidenhaupt, Eric Dubois, Patrick
Heymans, Colette Rolland, Camille Ben Achour, Corinne Cauvet, Jolita Ralyté, Alistair
Sutcliffe, Neil Maiden, Shailey Minocha
Abstract
This paper reports on the results of 15 site visits which aimed at gaining explorative
insights into scenario use in current industrial practice. Moreover, highlights of an
follow-up questionnaire disseminated to a larger number of organizations are presented.
Camille Ben Achour
appeared in
Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation
for Software Quality (REFSQ'97), Barcelona, Catalonia, June 16-17, 1997
Abstract
Scenario based approaches intend to include end stakeholders in the Requirements
Engineering process by the use of adapted expression media such as natural language.
However if they describe how to use scenarios for the elicitation, exploration, or
validation of requirements, very few approaches say how scenario could be integrated into
different existing methods and supported by tools. Based on a survey on linguistic based
requirements engineering instruments, this paper proposes to adapt two linguistic
theories, namely Grice's dialogue theory and on Fillmore's Case Grammar, respectively to
support the dialogue on scenario, and to automate the interpretation of scenario described
in natural language. Described as generic chunks of processes, these instruments are
intended to be adapted to any method and to any scenario based approach of Requirement
Engineering relying on the use of text.
Jolita Ralyte and Camille Ben Achour
appeared in
Proceedings of the Workshop on the Many Facets of Process Engineering (MFPE'97), Gammarth,
Tunis, September 22-23, 1997.
Abstract
Scenario Based Requirement Engineering (RE) techniques have for main motivation the
opening of Requirement Engineering processes to neophytes. By combining the methodological
approach of requirement analysis to informal descriptions, they increase productivity into
classical RE techniques. In this context, an important problem is the integration of
scenario approaches into RE methods. This paper presents a knowledge base of different
scenario chunks which allows to identify the scenarios appropriate to the context of the
RE project, and to integrate them into any RE methods. The identification of scenario
chunks is partly based on the internal properties of scenarios which are extensively
described in a framework for scenario classification.
Selmin Nurcan and Colette Rolland
appeared in
Proceedings of the Seventh European-Japanese Conference on Information Modeling and
Knowledge Bases, Toulouse, France, May 27-30, 1997
Abstract
Cooperative work techniques are becoming very important in organisations as well as in the
information systems community. The Computer Supported Cooperative Work(CSCW) discipline
makes the assumption that collaborative work and processes can be supported by software
tools. This requires among others to develop models able to represent cooperative work
processes. In this paper we propose a meta-modeling framework to deal with a range variety
of CSCW models. We present and exemplify a meta-model from which models can be
instantiated. The meta-model is taylored to support the modeling of both well-structured
and ill-defined work procedures and their interactions.
Colette Rolland
appeared in
Proceedings of the INFORSID Conference (INFormatique des ORganisations et Systemes
d'Information et de Decision) Toulouse, France, June 10-13, 1997
Abstract
The area of method engineering has emerged in response to an increasing feeling that
methods are not well suited to the needs of their users, the application engineers. Method
engineering aims at developing methods. The paper uses the four worlds framework to
investigate the subject of method engineering. It presents a state-of-art survey with a
view to identifying the important problems and research directions being followed to solve
these. The major problems not yet addressed or which have newly emerged are highlighted.
Klaus Pohl and Peter Haumer
appeared in
'Third International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality
RESFQ', June 16-17, 1997, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract
Scenario-based approaches have proven useful for requirements elicitation, validation and
negotiation. Besides the direct and indirect stated requirements current scenario-based
approaches capture also contextual information about the existing or future system, but
lack in a systematic support for representing and reasoning about this information.
Based on a literature survey we define a comprehensive set of concepts needed to represent
contextual usage knowledge of scenarios. In contrast to existing approaches, we propose to
relate contextual knowledge not only to the whole scenario, but also to the scenario
components, e.g. single interactions between the system and the user of the system.
Consequently, we propose two contextual models, a scenario context model (SCM) and an
interaction context model (ICM).
Patrick Heymans
appeared in
Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium of the third IEEE International Symposium on
Requirements Engineering (RE'97), Annapolis, MD, USA, January 6-10, 1997
Abstract
Formally and declaratively specifying requirements on real-time composite systems requires
validation by stakeholders. One way to perform such validation is allowing people to
experience the dynamic properties of the system to be built by using an animation tool. In
this paper, we give an overview of the issues raised by the development of such a tool for
the ALBERT language with the main goal of obtaining feedback on research that is a its
very early stages.
Klaus Pohl, Ralf Dömges and Matthias Jarke
appeared in
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Advanced Information System
Engineering, Barcelona, Spain, June 18-20, 1997.
Abstract
Traceability is a prerequisite for managing the evolution of (software) systems. Assuring
overall traceability of a system development process, i.e., capturing and interrelating
all possible data, is almost impossible and by far too expensive and labor intensive. To
minimize the information to be recorded and to reduce the additional costs the types of
trace information to be captured should be adjusted to project-specific needs, e.g.,
intended trace usage, time and money available.
In this paper we present an approach which supports method-driven trace capture. The
project manager defines the trace information and the trace steps required for recording
this information according to the actual needs in explicit traceability (method) models.
In addition, the trace steps are integrated with the method definition used to guide the
product development process. Based on the so gained extended method definition, the
stakeholders are guided in capturing the defined trace information and trace capture is
even partially automated. We report on experiments made with the prototypical
implementation of the approach and discuss possible extensions.
Neil Maiden, Shailey Minocha, Keith Manning and Michele Ryan
appeared in
'Third International Workshop on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality
RESFQ', June 16-17, 1997, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract
Scenarios, in most situations, are descriptions of required interactions between a desired
system and its environment which detail normative system behaviour. There is considerable
current interest in the use of scenarios for acquisition, elaboration and validation of
system requirements. However, despite this interest, there remains a lack of methods and
software tools to generate and use scenarios during the requirements analysis phase. In
this paper, we outline the architecture of a toolkit for semi-automatic generation of
scenarios. We have derived complex taxonomies of exceptions to help a requirements
engineer to predict non-normative system behaviour in a scenario. We have outlined a
method of cause-consequence analysis to explore the occurrence of problem exceptions and
their effects on system behaviour.
Neil Maiden, Shailey Minocha, Michele Ryan, Keith Hutchings and Keith Manning
appearded in 'Proceedings of the Workshop on Human Error and Systems Development',
19-22nd March, 1997, Glasgow University, Scotland, United Kingdom, organised by Dr. Chris
Johnson
Abstract
Scenario based requirements analysis is an inquiry based collaborative process which
enables requirements engineers and other stakeholders to acquire, elaborate and validate
system requirements. A scenario, in most situations, describes the normative or expected
system behaviour during the interactions between the proposed system and its environment.
To account for non-normative or undesired system behaviour, it is vital to predict and
explore the existence or occurrence of 'exceptions' in a scenario. Identification of
exceptions and inclusion of additional requirements to prevent their occurrence or
mitigate their effects yields robust and fault-tolerant design solutions.
In this paper, we outline the architecture of a toolkit for semi-automatic generation of
scenarios. The toolkit is co-operative in the sense that it aids a requirements engineer
in systematic generation and use of scenarios. The toolkit provides domain knowledge
during requirements acquisition and validation of normative system behaviour. It also
provides systematic guidance to the requirements engineer to scope the contents of a
scenario.
Furthermore, we have identified three kinds of exceptions: generic, permutation and
problem exceptions, and have derived complex taxonomies of problem exceptions. We propose
to populate the toolkit with lists of meaningful and relevant 'what-if' questions
corresponding to the taxonomies of generic, permutation and problem exceptions. The
exceptions can be chosen by the requirements engineer to include them in the generated
scenarios to explore the correctness and completeness of requirements. In addition, the
taxonomies of problem exceptions can also serve as checklists and help a requirements
engineer to predict non-normative system behaviour in a scenario.
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