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REQUIREMENTS
ENGINEERING, Published by Springer
Volume 17, Number
3 (2012), 157-170, DOI: 10.1007/s00766-011-0131-2
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Comparing task
practicing and prototype fidelities when applying scenario
acting to elicit requirements” BY
Gyda Atladottir, Ebba Thora Hvannberg &
Sigrun Gunnarsdottir
ABSTRACT
Identifying
accurate user requirements early in the design cycle is of the
utmost importance in system development. The purpose of this
study of requirements elicitation was to compare the results
of involving the user early in the design cycle using a
low-fidelity prototype with the results of involving the user
after a high-fidelity prototype was available. Three groups of
potential users applied the method of Scenario Acting.
Participants in the first group were given a working prototype
of a human capital development system. The participants of the
second group were given a detailed description of proposed
features of the system and were told to practice on a paper
prototype or with current methods, such as an Internet
browser. These groups then practiced the tasks for some time
before participating in the Scenario Acting. The third group
received a brief description of the objectives of the system
and did not practice the tasks. The results of the study
showed that the use of the high-fidelity prototype was not
helpful for eliciting requirements when working with users.
However, the second group, taking time to practice the tasks
given a low-fidelity paper prototype outperformed the others.
Furthermore, the analysis of the Scenario Acting sessions
revealed that two sessions were better than one, especially
for participants of the group working with a low-fidelity
prototype. An analysis of the topic of requirements showed
that there was no difference between the groups on the domain
tasks (here, human capital development), but the group
practicing on the high-fidelity prototype commented more on
its ease of use and usefulness than the other two. By
comparison, the group practicing on low-fidelity prototype had
more comments on the practice of the work and output of the
tasks.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“The
effectiveness of an optimized EPMcreate as a creativity
enhancement technique for Web site requirements elicitation”
BY
ABSTRACT
Creativity is
often needed in requirements elicitation, i.e., requirement
idea generation; and techniques to enhance creativity are
believed to be useful. This paper describes two controlled
experiments to compare the requirements-elicitation
effectiveness of three creativity enhancement techniques
(CET): (1) full EPMcreate; (2) Power-Only EPMcreate, an
optimization of full EPMcreate; and (3) traditional
brainstorming. In each experiment, one team of university
students applied one of the two or three CETs under study in
the experiment to generate ideas for requirements for
enhancing a high school’s public Web site. The results of the
first experiment indicate that Power-Only EPMcreate is more
effective, by the quantity and quality of the ideas generated,
than the full EPMcreate, which is, in turn, more effective
than brainstorming. The results of the second experiment
confirm that Power-Only EPMcreate is more effective, by the
same measures, than full EPMcreate. In each experiment, for
the sake of uniform, reproducible evaluation, a requirement
idea is considered high quality if it is both new and useful.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Constructing
high quality use case models: a systematic review of current
practices” BY
Mohamed El-Attar & James Miller
ABSTRACT
There is an
increasing recognition for the need to develop high quality
use case models from the professional and academic
communities. Quality in use case models is of particular
importance when they are utilized within a use case driven
development process, whereby every aspect of development is
driven by the models and influenced by their quality. Many
practitioners and researchers have provided guidelines,
suggestions and techniques to construct high quality use case
models. This invaluable body of knowledge is disseminated
across numerous literature resources. Without unifying this
knowledge into one resource, it cannot be expected that a use
case modeler would be fully aware of the entire body of
knowledge and benefitting from it. This paper presents a
systematic review that was conducted in order to identify and
amalgamate this knowledge. The amalgamated knowledge is
presented in a unified form, specifically as a set of 26
anti-patterns, which modelers can use to improve the quality
of their models.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Using conceptual
models to explore business-ICT alignment in networked value
constellations” BY
V. Pijpers, P. de Leenheer, J. Gordijn &
H. Akkermans
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we
introduce e 3 alignment for
inter-organizational business-ICT alignment. With the e
3 alignment framework, we
create alignment between organizations operating in an agile
networked value constellation—which is a set of organizations
who jointly satisfy a customer need—by (1) focusing on the interaction
between the organizations in the constellation, (2)
considering interaction from four different
perspectives, and (3) utilizing conceptual modeling
techniques to analyze and create alignment within and
between the perspectives. By creating inter-organizational
business-ICT alignment between the actors in the
constellation, e 3 alignment ultimately
contributes to a sustainable and profitable constellation. To
actually create alignment, e 3 alignment iteratively
takes three specific steps: (1) identification of alignment
issues, (2) solution design, and (3) impact analysis. We
illustrate our approach with cases from the Dutch aviation
industry, Spanish electricity industry, and Dutch telecom
industry.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
“Exploring the
impact of software requirements on system-wide goals: a method
using satisfaction arguments and i* goal modelling” BY
James Lockerbie, Neil Arthur McDougall Maiden,
Jorgen Engmann, Debbie Randall, Sean Jones & David Bush
ABSTRACT
This paper
describes the application of requirements engineering concepts
to support the analysis of the impact of new software systems
on system-wide goals. Requirements on a new or revised
software component of a socio-technical system not only have
implications on the goals of the subsystem itself, but they
also impact upon the goals of the existing integrated system.
In industries such as air traffic management and healthcare,
impacts need to be identified and demonstrated in order to
assess concerns such as risk, safety, and accuracy. A method
called PiLGRIM was developed which integrates means-end
relationships within goal modelling with knowledge associated
with the application domain. The relationship between domain
knowledge and requirements, as described in a satisfaction
argument, adds traceability rationale to help determine the
impacts of new requirements across a network of heterogeneous
actors. We report procedures that human analysts follow to use
the concepts of satisfaction arguments in a software tool for
i* goal modelling. Results were demonstrated using models and
arguments developed in two case studies, each featuring a
distinct socio-technical system—a new controlled airspace
infringement detection tool for NATS (the UK’s air navigation
service provider), and a new version of the UK’s HIV/AIDS
patient reporting system. Results provided evidence towards
our claims that the conceptual integration of i* and
satisfaction arguments is usable and useful to human analysts,
and that the PiLGRIM impact analysis procedures and tool
support are effective and scalable to model and analyse large
and complex socio-technical systems.