Novel Approaches to Theories Underlying Requirements Engineering
Description
- Project Title:
- Novel Approaches to Theories Underlying Requirements Engineering
- Acronym:
- NATURE
- Number:
- 6353
- Work Area:
- Knowledge Engineering & Representation
- Coordinator:
- RWTH Aachen
Ahornstrasse 55
D-W - 52056 AACHEN
- Coordinator Country:
- D
- Partners
- Université de Paris I F
ICS - FORTH GR
SISU S
City University UK
- Contact Point:
- Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
- Telephone:
- +49/241 8021 500
- Fax:
- +49/241 8021 529
- E-Mail:
- jarke@picasso.rwth-aachen.de
- Keywords:
- requirements engineering, process modelling, domain analysis, reusability, traceability, informal-formal transition, conceptual modelling, knowledge representation
- Start Date:
- 15 August 92
- Duration:
- 36 months
- Status:
- running
- Abstract:
- NATURE is developing an integrated framework for requirements engineering and management, encompassing domain theories, process theories, and knowledge representation theories that allow comprehensive guidance and reuse of requirements processes. Prototypical tools are developed to demonstrate the theories and empirical studies are conducted to validate them.
AIMS
NATURE addresses the central problems of requirements engineering: requirements capture, representation and management of functional and nonfunctional requirements in a process context, the interplay between informal and formal representations, and process traceability and guidance. Comprehensive reuse of requirements experience is supported both at the product and at the process level. To guide the work, a comprehensive framework has been developed to define what requirements engineering is and is not.
APPROACH AND METHODS
The NATURE framework views requirements engineering as a process of establishing visions in context. Context is organised according to domain theories and structured around the "four worlds" relevant to information systems. Progress in the requirements process is characterised according to three dimensions of social agreement, cognitive understanding, and technical representation. A process model based on situated decision-making deals with the flexible nature of requirements engineering processes, and has been augmented with the explicit consideration of nonfunctional goals. Knowledge representation theories in NATURE integrate formal, semi-formal and informal representations in the framework of the Telos language, and emphasise automated support over fully formal but not evaluable descriptions.
The emphasis of NATURE is to develop the foundations of all these techniques and to demonstrate their usefulness through prototypical implementations and user studies, often in collaboration with industrial projects.
PROGRESS AND RESULTS
The first months of the NATURE project have been an initial integration phase, resulting in the above framework and the design of a coordinated demonstrator prototype intended to show the interplay of the different theories.
Within this framework, NATURE has made contributions to the management and comprehensive reuse of requirements experience. Reuse of system experiences is addressed by reverse modelling, reuse of subject domain knowledge by libraries of domain theories, reuse of process knowledge by libraries of type process chunks. These processes are supported by formal models represented in the Telos, language, and by software information systems (ConceptBase, SIB) with flexible consistency and completeness checks, hypertext-oriented integration of formal and informal representation, and similarity-based retrieval.
An initial coordinated NATURE demonstrator has been completed in summer 1993; it consists of eight prototype tools, partially integrated at the data, process, and control level in an innovative manner. The purpose of the demonstrator is to convince industry that standard CASE methods can be significantly enhanced -- without excessive need for analyst re-training -- by back-ending and interconnecting them with intelligent support derived from the NATURE theories.
POTENTIAL
Progress in requirements engineering is crucial for applications such as software development, organisational information systems management, and computer-integrated manufacturing. Collaborations have been established with industrial projects inside and outside ESPRIT in all of these areas, to foster technology transfer and obtain feedback for theory validation. Examples include the F3 and ITHACA projects in ESPRIT, the Quality Management Programme of the German BMFT, and several new ESPRIT proposals. There is also intensive collaboration with several US and Canadian universities and research programmes.
LATEST PUBLICATIONS
- Jarke M, Bubenko J, Rolland C, Sutcliffe A, Vassiliou Y Theories Underlying Requirements Engineering - An Overview of NATURE at Genlsis In: Proceedings of the 1st International IEEE Symposium on Requirements Engineering, Plenary Talk, San Diego, Ca, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 19-31 (Jan 4-6, 1993)
- Jarke M, Pohl K, Jacobes S et al. Requirements Engineering - An Integrated View of Representation, Process, and Domain In: proceedings of the 4th european conference on software engineering, Garmish (1993)
- Maiden N A M and Sutcliffe A G Requirements Engineering by Example: an Empirical Study In: proceedings of 1st international ieee symposium on requirements engineering San Diego CA, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 104-111 (Jan 4-6, 1993)
- Pohl K The Three Dimensions of Requirements Engineering Information Systems, volume 19, No. 2 (1994)
- Rolland C Modelling the Requirements Engineering Process In: Kangassalo H and Jaakkola H (Eds) 3rd european japanese seminar on information modelling and knowledge bases, Budapest Hungary (June 1993)
- Spanoudakis G and Constantopoulos P Similarity for Analogical Software Reuse: A Conceptual Modelling Approach In: Rolland C, Bodart F, Cauvet C (Eds.) Proceedings of the 5th International Conference, CAISE'93, Paris, June 1993, pp. 483-503
- Johannesson P A Logical Basis for Schema Integration In: Bertion E (Ed.) Proceedings of Third International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering - Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems, IEEE Press, Vienna, April 1993, pp. 86 - 95
INFORMATION DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES
A NATURE Report Series has been established to provide easy access to publications. NATURE promotes technology transfer through summer schools, tutorials at leading database and software engineering conferences, and demonstrations of the NATURE prototype. It has coordinating role in RE research by organising a Dagstuhl Seminar on Systems Requirements in late 1994, and by editing special issues of leading international journals (eg, IEE Transations on Software Engineering, June 1992; Information Systems, March 1994).
Sven Müßig, last update 07-nov-1995. Your feedback is welcome.