Abstracts
Preface
Message from the Chairs
Welcome to the 21st IEEE International Requirements
Engineering Conference (RE'13). Given a thriving Ibero-American
community of Requirements Engineering researchers and practitioners, it
is with great pride that Latin America hosts the Requirements
Engineering conference for the very first time. RE'13 will be held in
Brasil, on the campus of Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de
Janeiro (PUC-Rio), just steps away from the famous beaches of Ipanema
and Copacabana. As the Requirements Engineering community celebrates its
21st birthday, the 'Marvelous City' ('Cidade Maravilhosa') offers us a
unique stage.
To mark this important coming of age, the theme for RE'13 is 'RE@21:
Keeping Requirements on Track'. We seek to investigate whether the field
of Requirements Engineering has made its transition from adolescence
into adulthood, and we hope to guide its onward journey; are we
addressing the 'right' problems and are we providing 'effective'
solutions? RE'13 is a timely opportunity for researchers, practitioners,
educators, and students to come together to reflect and discuss our
progress as a community, and to identify the important challenges still
to be tackled.
Keynotes
Requirements Engineering as Information Search and Idea Discovery (Keynote)
Neil Maiden
(City University London, UK)
Creativity has been the subject of considerable research
over the last 60 years. This keynote will argue that most requirements
work is creative but not recognized as such. It will summarize recent
applications of creativity theories and techniques to requirements work,
then posit the general case that most requirements activities involve
information search and idea discovery, and hence can be characterized as
creative. Requirements research reported over the 21 years of this
conference series will be reframed using theories of creativity as
information search and idea discovery to support this argument,
alongside macro-economic drivers and the shifting landscape of computing
and design disciplines and conferences. The keynote will end with a
call for researchers and practitioners at RE@21 to reframe requirements
work as creative endeavors.
Starchitects and Jack-Hammers: Requirements Engineering
Challenges and Practices in the Construction Industry (Keynote)
Fiona Cousins
(Arup, USA)
Our built environment is a marvel of engineering. It is
the continuously evolving product of collaboration between civil
engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, architects,
owners, governments, voters, contractors and more. Many of the
requirements-related challenges that are commonly encountered in the
engineering of software systems have been around for centuries in the
construction industry.
This keynote seeks to describe those requirements engineering problems
that are intrinsic to the development of complex twenty-first century
buildings and to explain the practices that have evolved to address
them. It will highlight those requirements-related challenges that the
construction industry is still grappling with and some new challenges
that are emerging. The keynote will be illustrated with examples of
complex building projects from Arup. The objective is to explore the
potential synergies and the possible transfer of practical ideas between
some of the oldest engineering disciplines and one of the youngest.
Brasilian Perspectives on Software Production (Keynote Panel)
Karin K. Breitman, Roberto Leite, and Jaime Sábat
(EMC, Brasil; Siemens Chemtech, Brasil; Accenture, Brasil)
This keynote panel will explore different perspectives on
software production from three very experienced leaders in large
companies in Brasil. The panelists will present a blend of industrial
research and industrial development experiences, and their requirements
engineering challenges will be discussed. The keynote panel will be
moderated by Julio Cesar Leite of PUC-Rio, the General Chair of RE'13.
Research Track
Legal and Privacy Requirements
Automated Text Mining for Requirements Analysis of Policy Documents
Aaron K. Massey, Jacob Eisenstein, Annie I. Antón, and Peter P. Swire
(Georgia Tech, USA; Ohio State University, USA)
Businesses and organizations in jurisdictions around the
world are required by law to provide their customers and users with
information about their business practices in the form of policy
documents. Requirements engineers analyze these documents as sources of
requirements, but this analysis is a time-consuming and mostly manual
process. Moreover, policy documents contain legalese and present
readability challenges to requirements engineers seeking to analyze
them. In this paper, we perform a large-scale analysis of 2,061 policy
documents, including policy documents from the Google Top 1000 most
visited websites and the Fortune 500 companies, for three purposes: (1)
to assess the readability of these policy documents for requirements
engineers; (2) to determine if automated text mining can indicate
whether a policy document contains requirements expressed as either
privacy protections or vulnerabilities; and (3) to establish the
generalizability of prior work in the identification of privacy
protections and vulnerabilities from privacy policies to other policy
documents. Our results suggest that this requirements analysis
technique, developed on a small set of policy documents in two domains,
may generalize to other domains.
Formal Analysis of Privacy Requirements Specifications for Multi-tier Applications
Travis D. Breaux and Ashwini Rao
(CMU, USA)
Companies require data from multiple sources to develop
new information systems, such as social networking, ecommerce and
location-based services. Systems rely on complex, multi-stakeholder data
supply-chains to deliver value. These data supply-chains have complex
privacy requirements: privacy policies affecting multiple stakeholders
(e.g. user, developer, company, government) regulate the collection, use
and sharing of data over multiple jurisdictions (e.g. California,
United States, Europe). Increasingly, regulators expect companies to
ensure consistency between company privacy policies and company data
practices. To address this problem, we propose a methodology to map
policy requirements in natural language to a formal representation in
Description Logic. Using the formal representation, we reason about
conflicting requirements within a single policy and among
multiple policies in a data supply chain. Further, we enable tracing
data flows within the supply-chain. We derive our methodology from an
exploratory case study of Facebook platform policy. We demonstrate the
feasibility of our approach in an evaluation involving Facebook, Zynga
and
AOL-Advertising policies. Our results identify three conflicts that
exist between Facebook and Zynga policies, and one conflict within the
AOL Advertising policy.
An Empirical Investigation of Software Engineers' Ability to Classify Legal Cross-References
Jeremy C. Maxwell, Annie I. Antón, and Julie B. Earp
(North Carolina State University, USA; Georgia Tech, USA)
Requirements engineers often have to develop software for
regulated domains. These regulations often contain cross-references to
other laws. Cross-references can introduce exceptions or definitions,
constrain existing requirements, or even conflict with other compliance
requirements. To develop compliant software, requirements engineers must
understand the impact these cross-references have on their software. In
this paper, we present an empirical study in which we measure the
ability of software practitioners to classify cross-references using our
previously developed cross-reference taxonomy. We discover that
software practitioners are not well equipped to understand the impact of
cross-references on their software.
Automated Traceability
Supporting Requirements Traceability through Refactoring
Anas Mahmoud and Nan Niu
(Mississippi State University, USA)
Modern traceability tools employ information retrieval
(IR) methods to generate candidate traceability links. These methods
track textual signs embedded in the system to establish relationships
between software artifacts. However, as software systems evolve, new and
inconsistent terminology finds its way into the system's taxonomy, thus
corrupting its lexical structure and distorting its traceability
tracks. In this paper, we argue that the distorted lexical tracks of the
system can be systematically re-established through refactoring, a set
of behavior-preserving transformations for keeping the system quality
under control during evolution. To test this novel hypothesis, we
investigate the effect of integrating various types of refactoring on
the performance of requirements-to-code automated tracing methods. In
particular, we identify the problems of missing, misplaced, and
duplicated signs in software artifacts, and then examine to what extent
refactorings that restore, move, and remove textual information can
overcome these problems respectively.We conduct our experimental
analysis using three datasets from different application domains.
Results show that restoring textual information in the system has a
positive impact on tracing. In contrast, refactorings that remove
redundant information impact tracing negatively.
Refactorings that move information among the system modules are found to
have no significant effect. Our findings address several issues related
to code and requirements evolution, as well as refactoring as a
mechanism to enhance the practicality of automated tracing tools.
Foundations for an Expert System in Domain-Specific Traceability
Jin Guo, Jane Cleland-Huang, and Brian Berenbach
(DePaul University, USA; Siemens, USA)
VIDEO
Attempts to utilize information retrieval techniques to
fully automate the creation of traceability links have been hindered by
terminology mismatches between source and target artifacts. Therefore,
current trace retrieval algorithms tend to produce imprecise and
incomplete results. In this paper we address this mismatch by proposing
an expert system which integrates a knowledge base of domain concepts
and their relationships, a set of logic rules for defining relationships
between artifacts based on these rules, and a process for mapping
artifacts into a structure against which the rules can be applied. This
paper lays down the core foundations needed to integrate an expert
system into the automated tracing process. We construct a knowledge base
and inference rules for part of a large industrial project in the
transportation domain and empirically show that our approach
significantly improves precision and recall of the generated trace
links.
Application of Reinforcement Learning to Requirements Engineering: Requirements Tracing
Hakim Sultanov and Jane Huffman Hayes
(University of Kentucky, USA)
VIDEO
We posit that machine learning can be applied to
effectively address requirements engineering problems. Specifically, we
present a requirements traceability method based on the machine learning
technique Reinforcement Learning (RL). The RL method demonstrates a
rather targeted generation of candidate links between textual
requirements artifacts (high level requirements traced to low level
requirements, for example). This work also presents the utilization of
synonyms in the context of common textual segments. The technique has
been validated using two real-world datasets from two problem domains.
Our technique demonstrated statistically significant better results than
the Information Retrieval technique.
Formal Modeling
On Requirements Verification for Model Refinements
Carlo Ghezzi, Claudio Menghi, Amir Molzam Sharifloo, and Paola Spoletini
(Politecnico di Milano, Italy; Universita dell'Insubria, Italy)
VIDEO
Conventional formal verification techniques rely on the
assumption that a system's specification is completely available so that
the analysis can say whether or not a set of properties will be
satisfied. On the contrary, modern development lifecycles call for
agile-incremental and iterative- approaches to tame the boosting
complexity of modern software systems and reduce development risks. We
focus here on requirements verification performed in the early
exploratory stages on high-level models and we discuss how this can be
integrated into an agile approach. We present a new technique to
model-check incomplete high-level specifications against formally
specified requirements. We do this in the context of incomplete
hierarchical Statecharts, verified against qCTL properties. Our approach
supports step-wise specification and refinement verification.
Verification can be incremental, that is alternative refinements may be
separately explored and verification is only replayed for the modified
parts. The results are presented by introducing the formalisms, the
model-checking algorithm, and the tool we have implemented.
Distributing Refinements of a System-Level Partial Behavior Model
Ivo Krka and Nenad Medvidovic
(University of Southern California, USA)
Early in a system's life cycle, a system's behavior is
typically partially specified using scenarios, invariants, and temporal
properties. These specifications prohibit or require certain behaviors,
while leaving other behaviors uncategorized into either of those.
Engineers refine the specification by eliciting more requirements to
finally arrive at a complete behavioral description. Partial-behavior
models have been utilized as a formal foundation for capturing partial
system specifications. Mapping the requirements to partial behavior
models enables automated analyses (e.g., requirements consistency
checking) and helps to elicit new requirements. Under the current
practices, software systems are reasoned about and their behavior
specified exclusively at the system level, disregarding of the fact that
a system typically consists of interacting components. However,
exclusively refining a behavior specification at the system-level runs
the risk of arriving at an inconsistent specification, i.e. one that is
not realizable as a composition of the system's components. To address
this problem, we propose a framework that provides the lacking support: a
newly specified requirement implicitly refines the system's underlying
partial behavior model; our framework maps the new requirement to
components by automatically distributing the system model refinements to
the components' underlying models. By doing so, our framework prevents
requirements inconsistencies and helps to identify further necessary
requirements. We discuss the framework's soundness and correctness, and
demonstrate its features on a case study previously used in related
literature.
A Mode-Based Pattern for Feature Requirements, and a Generic Feature Interface
David Dietrich and Joanne M. Atlee
(University of Waterloo, Canada)
In this paper, we propose a pattern for decomposing and
structuring the model of a feature's behavioural requirements, based on
modes of operation (e.g., Active, Inactive, Failed) that are common to
features in multiple domains. Interestingly, the highest-level modes of
the pattern can serve as a generic behavioural interface for all
features that adhere to the pattern. We have applied the pattern in
modelling the behavioural requirements of 19 automotive features that
were specified in 5 production-grade requirements documents. We found
that the pattern was applicable to all 19 features, and that our
proposed generic feature interface was applicable to 50 out of 57
inter-feature references.
Elicitation
Requirements Elicitation: Towards the Unknown Unknowns
Alistair Sutcliffe and Pete Sawyer
(University of Lancaster, UK)
Requirements elicitation research is reviewed using a
framework categorising the relative 'knowness' of requirements
specification and Common Ground discourse theory. The main contribution
of this survey is to review requirements elicitation from the
perspective of this framework and propose a road map of research to
tackle outstanding elicitation problems involving tacit knowledge.
Elicitation techniques (interviews, scenarios, prototypes, etc.) are
investigated, followed by representations, models and support tools. The
survey results suggest that elicitation techniques appear to be
relatively mature, although new areas of creative requirements are
emerging. Representations and models are also well established although
there is potential for more sophisticated modelling of domain knowledge.
While model-checking tools continue to become more elaborate, more
growth is apparent in NL tools such as text mining and IR which help to
categorize and disambiguate requirements. Social collaboration support
is a relatively new area that facilitates categorisation, prioritisation
and matching collections of requirements for product line versions. A
road map for future requirements elicitation research is proposed
investigating the prospects for techniques, models and tools in
green-field domains where few solutions exist, contrasted with
brown-field domains where collections of requirements and products
already exist. The paper concludes with remarks on the possibility of
elicitation tackling the most difficult question of 'unknown unknown'
requirements.
How Cloud Providers Elicit Consumer Requirements: An Exploratory Study of Nineteen Companies
Irina Todoran, Norbert Seyff, and Martin Glinz
(University of Zurich, Switzerland)
Requirements elicitation is widely seen as a crucial step
towards delivering successful software. In the context of emerging cloud
systems, the question is whether and how the elicitation process
differs from that used for traditional systems, and if the current
methods suffice. We interviewed 19 cloud providers to gain an in-depth
understanding of the state of practice with regard to the adoption and
implementation of existing elicitation methods. The results of this
exploratory study show that, whereas a few cloud providers try to
implement and adapt traditional methods, the large majority uses ad-hoc
approaches for identifying consumer needs. There are various causes for
this situation, ranging from consumer reachability issues and previous
failed attempts, to a complete lack of development strategy. The study
suggests that only a small number of the current techniques can be
applied successfully in cloud systems, hence showing a need to research
new ways of supporting cloud providers. The main contribution of this
work lies in revealing what elicitation methods are used by cloud
providers and clarifying the challenges related to requirements
elicitation posed by the cloud paradigm. Further, we identify some key
features for cloud-specific elicitation methods.
Requirements Sources
Visual Notation Design 2.0: Towards User Comprehensible Requirements Engineering Notations
Patrice Caire, Nicolas Genon, Patrick Heymans, and Daniel L. Moody
(University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg; University of Namur, Belgium; Ozemantics, Australia)
The success of requirements engineering depends critically
on effective communication between business analysts and end users, yet
empirical studies show that business stakeholders understand RE
notations very poorly. This paper proposes a novel approach to designing
RE visual notations that actively involves naïve users in the process.
We use i*, one of the most influential RE notations, to demonstrate the
approach, but the same approach could be applied to any RE notation. We
present the results of 5 related empirical studies that show that
novices outperform experts in designing symbols that are comprehensible
to novices: the differences are both statistically significant and
practically meaningful. Symbols designed by novices increased semantic
transparency (their ability to be spontaneously interpreted by other
novices) by almost 300% compared to the existing i* notation. The
results challenge the conventional wisdom about visual notation design:
that it should be conducted by a small group of experts; our research
suggests that it should instead be conducted by large numbers of
novices. The approach is consistent with Web 2.0, in that it harnesses
the collective intelligence of end users and actively involves them in
the notation design process as "prosumers" rather than passive
consumers. We believe this approach has the potential to radically
change the way visual notations are designed in the future.
User Feedback in the AppStore: An Empirical Study
Dennis Pagano and Walid Maalej
(TU Munich, Germany; University of Hamburg, Germany)
Application distribution platforms - or app stores - such
as Google Play or Apple AppStore allow users to submit feedback in form
of ratings and reviews to downloaded applications. In the last few
years, these platforms have become very popular to both application
developers and users. However, their real potential for and impact on
requirements engineering processes are not yet well understood. This
paper reports on an exploratory study, which analyzes over one million
reviews from the Apple AppStore. We investigated how and when users
provide feedback, inspected the feedback content, and analyzed its
impact on the user community. We found that most of the feedback is
provided shortly after new releases, with a quickly decreasing frequency
over time. Reviews typically contain multiple topics, such as user
experience, bug reports, and feature requests. The quality and
constructiveness vary widely, from helpful advices and innovative ideas
to insulting offenses. Feedback content has an impact on download
numbers: positive messages usually lead to better ratings and vice
versa. Negative feedback such as shortcomings is typically destructive
and misses context details and user experience. We discuss our findings
and their impact on software and requirements engineering teams.
Handling Change
Learning from Evolution History to Predict Future Requirement Changes
Lin Shi, Qing Wang, and Mingshu Li
(ISCAS, China; UCAS, China)
Managing the costs and risks of evolution is a challenging
problem in the RE community. The challenge lies in the difficulty of
analyzing and assessing the proneness to requirement changes across
multiple versions, especially when the scale of requirements is large.
In this paper, we define a series of metrics to characterize historic
evolution information, and propose a novel method for predicting
requirements that are likely to evolve in the future based on the
metrics. We apply the prediction method to analyze the product updates
history through a case study. The empirical results show that this
method can provide a tradeoff solution that narrows down the scope of
change analysis to a small set of requirements, but it still can
retrieve nearly half of the future changes. The results indicate that
the defined metrics are sensitive to the history of requirements
evolution, and the prediction method can reach a valuable outcome for
requirement engineers to balance their workload and risks.
Assessing Regulatory Change through Legal Requirements Coverage Modeling
David G. Gordon and Travis D. Breaux
(CMU, USA)
Developing global markets offer companies new
opportunities to manufacture and sell information technology (IT)
products in ways unforeseen by current laws and regulations. This
innovation leads to changing requirements due to changes in product
features, laws, or the locality where the product is sold or
manufactured. To help developers rationalize these changes, we introduce
a preliminary framework and method that can be used by requirements
engineers and their legal teams to identify relevant legal requirements
and trace changes in requirements coverage. The framework includes a
method to translate IT regulations into a legal requirements coverage
model used to make coverage assertions about existing or planned IT
systems. We evaluated the framework in a case study using three IT laws:
California's Confidentiality of Medical Records Act, the U.S. Health
Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and amendments
from the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health
(HITECH) Act, and the India 2011 Information Technology Rules. Further,
we demonstrate the framework using three scenarios: new product features
are proposed; product-related services are outsourced abroad; and
regulations change to address changes in the market.
A Goal Model Elaboration for Localizing Changes in Software Evolution
Hiroyuki Nakagawa, Akihiko Ohsuga, and Shinichi Honiden
(University of Electro-Communications, Japan; NII, Japan)
Software evolution is an essential activity that adapts
existing software to changes in requirements. Localizing the impact of
changes is one of the most efficient strategies for successful
evolution. We exploit requirements descriptions in order to extract
loosely coupled components and localize changes for evolution. We define
a process of elaboration for the goal model that extracts a set of
control loops from the requirements descriptions as components that
constitute extensible systems. We regard control loops to be independent
components that prevent the impact of a change from spreading outside
them. To support the elaboration, we introduce two patterns: one to
extract control loops from the goal model and another to detect possible
conflicts between control loops. We experimentally evaluated our
approach in two types of software development and the results
demonstrate that our elaboration technique helps us to analyze the
impact of changes in the source code and prevent the complexity of the
code from increasing.
Directions in Decentralized RE
Ongoing Software Development without Classical Requirements
Thomas A. Alspaugh and Walt Scacchi
(UC Irvine, USA)
Many prominent open source software (OSS) development
projects produce systems without overt requirements artifacts or
processes, contrary to expectations resulting from classical software
development experience and research, and a growing number of critical
software systems are evolved and sustained in this way yet provide
quality and rich functional capabilities to users and integrators that
accept them without question. We examine data from several OSS projects
to investigate this conundrum, and discuss the results of research into
OSS outcomes that sheds light on the consequences of this approach to
software requirements in terms of risk of development failure and
quality of the resulting system.
Assumption-Based Risk Identification Method (ARM) in Dynamic Service Provisioning
Alireza Zarghami, Eelco Vriezekolk, Mohammad Zarifi Eslami, Marten van Sinderen, and Roel Wieringa
(University of Twente, Netherlands)
In this paper we consider service-oriented applications
composed of component services provided by different, economically
independent service providers. As in all composite applications, the
component services are composed and configured to meet requirements for
the composite application. However, in a field experiment of composite
service-oriented applications we found that, although the services as
actually delivered by the service providers meet their requirements,
there is still a mismatch across service providers due to unstated
assumptions, and that this mismatch causes an incorrect composite
application to be delivered to end-users. Identifying and analyzing
these initially unstated assumptions turns requirements engineering for
service-oriented applications into risk analysis. In this paper, we
describe a field experiment with an experimental service-oriented
homecare system, in which unexpected behavior of the system turned up
unstated assumptions about the contributing service providers. We then
present an assumptions-driven risk identification method that can help
identifying these risks, and we show how we applied this method in the
second iteration of the field experiment. The method adapts some
techniques from problem frame diagrams to identify relevant assumptions
on service providers. The method is informal, and takes the view from
nowhere in that it does not result in a specification of the component
services, but for every component service delivers a set of assumptions
that the service must satisfy in order to contribute to the overall
system requirements. We end the paper with a discussion of
generalizability of this method.
Can Requirements Dependency Network Be Used as Early Indicator of Software Integration Bugs?
Junjie Wang, Juan Li, Qing Wang, Da Yang, He Zhang, and Mingshu Li
(ISCAS, China; UCAS, China; University of East London, UK)
Complexity, cohesion and coupling have been recognized
as prominent indicators for software quality. One characterization
of software complexity is the existence of dependency
relationship. Moreover, degree of dependency reflects the cohesion
and coupling between software elements. Dependencies on
design and implementation phase have been proven as important
predictors for software bugs. We empirically investigated how
requirements dependencies correlate with and predict software
integration bugs, which can provide early estimate regarding
software quality, therefore facilitate decision making early in the
software lifecycle. We conducted network analysis on requirements
dependency networks of two commercial software projects.
We then performed correlation analysis between network measures
(e.g., degree, closeness) and number of bugs. Afterwards,
bug prediction models were built using these network measures.
Significant correlation is observed between most of our network
measures and number of bugs. These network measures can
predict the number of bugs with high accuracy and sensitivity.
We further identified the significant predictors for bug prediction.
Besides, the indication effect of network measures on bug number
varies among different types of requirements dependency. These
observations show that requirements dependency network can be
used as an early indicator of software integration bugs.
Traceability in Practice
An Empirical Study on Project-Specific Traceability Strategies
Patrick Rempel, Patrick Mäder, and Tobias Kuschke
(TU Ilmenau, Germany)
Effective requirements traceability supports practitioners
in reaching higher project maturity and better product quality.
Researchers argue that effective traceability barely happens by chance
or through ad-hoc efforts and that traceability should be explicitly
defined upfront. However, in a previous study we found that
practitioners rarely follow explicit traceability strategies. We were
interested in the reason for this discrepancy. Are practitioners able to
reach effective traceability without an explicit definition? More
specifically, how suitable is requirements traceability that is not
strategically planned in supporting a project's development process. Our
interview study involved practitioners from 17 companies. These
practitioners were familiar with the development process, the existing
traceability and the goals of the project they reported about. For each
project, we first modeled a traceability strategy based on the gathered
information. Second, we examined and modeled the applied software
engineering processes of each project. Thereby, we focused on executed
tasks, involved actors, and pursued goals. Finally, we analyzed the
quality and suitability of a project's traceability strategy. We report
common problems across the analyzed traceability strategies and their
possible causes. The overall quality and mismatch of analyzed
traceability suggests that an upfront-defined traceability strategy is
indeed required. Furthermore, we show that the decision for or against
traceability relations between artifacts requires a detailed
understanding of the project's engineering process and goals;
emphasizing the need for a goal-oriented procedure to assess existing
and define new traceability strategies.
Keeping Requirements on Track via Visual Analytics
Nan Niu, Sandeep Reddivari, and Zhangji Chen
(Mississippi State University, USA)
For many software projects, keeping requirements on track
needs an effective and efficient path from data to decision. Visual
analytics creates such a path that enables the human to extract insights
by interacting with the relevant information. While various
requirements visualization techniques exist, few have produced
end-to-end values to practitioners. In this paper, we advance the
literature on visual requirements analytics by characterizing its key
components and relationships. This allows us to not only assess existing
approaches, but also create tool enhancements in a principled manner.
We evaluate our enhanced tool supports through a case study where
massive, heterogeneous, and dynamic requirements are processed,
visualized, and analyzed. In particular, our study illuminates how
increased interactivity of requirements visualization could lead to
actionable decisions.
RE@21: Keeping Requirements on Track
A History of the International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE) (RE@21)
Nancy R. Mead
(SEI, USA)
This paper traces the history of the International
Requirements Engineering Conference from its beginnings to the present,
with suggestions for future considerations. Other requirements
engineering events and activities are also discussed. A timeline of
major milestones is included, along with a brief discussion of
requirements engineering research activities that occurred in parallel
with the conference.
A Review of Traceability Research at the Requirements Engineering Conference (RE@21)
Sunil Nair, Jose Luis de la Vara, and Sagar Sen
(Simula Research Laboratory, Norway)
Traceability between development artefacts and mainly from
and to requirements plays a major role in system lifecycle, supporting
activities such as system validation, change impact analysis, and
regulation compliance. Many researchers have been working on this topic
and have published their work throughout editions of the Requirements
Engineering Conference. This paper aims to analyse the research on
traceability published in the past 20 years of this conference and
provide insights into its contribution to the traceability area. We have
selected and reviewed 70 papers in the proceedings of the conference
and summarised several aspects of traceability that have been addressed
and by whom. The paper also discusses the evolution of the topic at the
conference, compares the results with those reported in other
publications, and proposes aspects on which further research should be
conducted.
Models in the RE Series (RE@21)
Stephen J. Morris
(City University London, UK)
This paper reports on the use and importance of models in
the RE series of conferences based on the results of an analysis of the
use of the word 'model' and of other words with 'model...' as their stem
in the main bodies of the texts of published papers. The 620 papers
examined contained 18,066 instances of these words. The words identified
were divided into 'general terms' for models (505), 'special names' for
models (215) and names for the 'nature and characteristics' of models
and modelling (120). The large numbers are a clear indicator of the
overall importance which the model has as a dominant concept and as a
still proliferating artifact in the practice of those participating in
the series. The three groups of names represent social conventions
adopted for communication and continuity, the third providing a
pragmatically rather than theoretically based overview of the factors
affecting models and modelling. The conclusions use evidence from the
study to suggest questions that may improve general practice and form
the basis of more specific model declaration.
A Vision for Generic Concern-Oriented Requirements Reuse (RE@21)
Gunter Mussbacher and Jörg Kienzle
(University of Ottawa, Canada; McGill University, Canada)
Reuse is a powerful tool for improving the productivity of
software development. The paper puts forward arguments in favor of
generic requirements reuse rooted in the vision that effectiveness
requires a focus on coordinated composition of reusable artifacts across
the whole software development life cycle. A survey of publications on
requirements reuse from the International Requirements Engineering (RE)
Conference series determines the research landscape in this area over
the last twenty years, assessing the hypothesis that there is no or
little research reported at RE about generic reuse of requirements
models that spans the software development life cycle. The paper then
outlines, for the RE community, a research agenda associated with the
presented vision for such an approach to requirements reuse that builds
on concern-orientation, i.e., the ability to modularize and compose
important requirements concerns throughout the software development life
cycle, and model-driven engineering principles. In addition, early
research results are briefly presented that illustrate favorably the
feasibility of such an approach.
Industry Track
Industry Challenges and Research Needs
Requirements Reviews Revisited: Residual Challenges and Open Research Questions
Frank Salger
(City of Munich, Germany)
It is widely accepted that early reviews on requirements
specifications (RS) are an effective and efficient quality assurance
technique. So why are they still not applied all over the software
industry? In this paper we pinpoint that this is due to five major
challenges: 1) Software requirements are based on flawed 'upstream'
requirements and reviews on RS are thus in vain. 2) The impact of
sociological issues related to reviews is underestimated. 3) Important
quality aspects of RS escape reviews. 4) The goal of applying reviews is
not made clear and different review approaches are mixed. 5)
Incremental software development poses specific challenges to applying
reviews on RS. In this paper we argue that in order to solve these five
challenges research on reviews must take a more holistic approach,
stretching to pre-project phases and incorporating various other
disciplines in order to add more value for the software industry. The
paper also offers preliminary solutions to the discussed challenges and
sketches open research questions of high relevance for the software
industry.
Challenges in Balancing the Amount of Solution Information in Requirement Specifications for Embedded Products
Juha Savolainen, Dagný Hauksdóttir, and Mike Mannion
(Danfoss Power Electronics, Denmark; DTU, Denmark; Glasgow Caledonian University, UK)
Requirements are traditionally viewed as being free of the
details of an envisioned solution and specified using purely problem
domain entities. Preventing premature design in the requirements permits
the available design space not to be restricted too early which might
inhibit innovative designs. In practice, on many industrial projects,
separating the problem and solution domain entities can be difficult,
and arguably there are benefits for not doing so. Many customers feel
more confident describing their requirements, often as the difference
between the existing products and their needs, some customers have such
intimate knowledge of their products that their requirements tend to be
very specific, and if the customer knows the exact solution needed that
naturally will reduce the cost of the requirements elicitation as well
as design activities. Practitioners are challenged to understand when
having solution information in requirements is sensible and when it
should be avoided. In this research challenge paper, we advocate that
researchers should identify different contexts and corresponding
criteria that practitioners can use to evaluate when requirements
specifications may include design information. To understand the
research challenge we present experiences from real projects and suggest
possible factors that affect when design information may be viable in
requirements specifications.
Towards a Systematic Requirement-Based Test Generation Framework: Industrial Challenges and Needs
Shokoofeh Hesari, Razieh Behjati, and Tao Yue
(Simula Research Laboratory, Norway; University of Oslo, Norway)
Requirement-based test generation (RBTG) is a verification
and validation technique, which ensures the conformance of a final
product with its requirements. In collaboration with an industry
partner, we studied and analyzed their current practice of applying RBTG
in the context of developing a family of subsea oil and gas production
systems, which are cyber-physical systems. The company aims at improving
their current RBTG practice by enhancing the reuse of test artifacts
across different products. Due to the complexity of developing such
systems and being in the context of system product-line engineering,
achieving this goal requires a systematic approach for RBTG. As the
first step to this end, we conducted a domain analysis with the industry
partner to characterize their current practice of applying RBTG and to
identify their needs and challenges. In this paper, we report results of
the domain analysis. Moreover, we discuss the limitations of employing
existing RBTG approaches in an industrial setting and suggest directions
for improvement.
Why Feature Dependencies Challenge the Requirements Engineering of Automotive Systems: An Empirical Study
Andreas Vogelsang and Steffen Fuhrmann
(TU Munich, Germany; BMW, Germany)
Functional dependencies and feature interactions in
automotive software systems are a major source of erroneous and
deficient behavior. To overcome these problems, many approaches exist
that focus on modeling these functional dependencies in early stages of
system design. However, there are only few empirical studies that report
on the extent of such dependencies in industrial software systems and
how they are considered in an industrial development context. In this
paper, we analyze the functional architecture of a real automotive
software system with the aim to assess the extent, awareness and
importance of interactions between features of a future vehicle. Our
results show that within the functional architecture at least 85% of the
analyzed vehicle features depend on each other. They furthermore show
that the developers are not aware of a large number of these
dependencies when they are modeled solely on an architectural level.
Therefore, the developers mention the need for a more precise
specification of feature interactions, e.g., for the execution of
comprehensive impact analyses. These results challenge the current
development methods and emphasize the need for an extensive modeling of
features and their dependencies in requirements engineering.
Elicitation and Requirements Sources
Early Phase Telemedicine Requirements Elicitation in Collaboration with Medical Practitioners
Nekane Larburu, Ing Widya, Richard G. A. Bults, Hermie J. Hermens, and Carlo Napolitano
(University of Twente, Netherlands; IRCCCS Fondazione Salvarore Maugeri, Italy)
Ubiquity of Information and Communication Technology
enables innovative telemedicine treatment applications for disease
management of ambulant patients. Development of new treatment
applications must comply with medical protocols and 'way of working' to
obtain safety and efficacy evidence before acceptance and use by medical
practitioners. Usually, medical researchers design new treatment
applications and engineers elicit application requirements in
collaboration with these researchers to bridge the knowledge and 'way of
working' gaps between them.
This paper presents an elicitation method for new telemedicine
applications in a collaborative setting of time-constraint medical
practitioners and requirements engineers if the medical researcher is
absent. Engineers compensate this lack of resources through
cross-disciplinary studies and use of pathophysiological models in the
absence of medical evidence. The paper discusses the application of a
mixed elicitation method presented in earlier work in the addressed
setting. The method applies a scenario based user needs analysis
augmented by domain activity and user-system interaction analysis. The
elicitation is conducted in a separation of concerns fashion combined
with collaboration handshake protocols to align domain activities and
user-system interactions. Later phase elicitation of user-system
interaction requirements may apply known methods and is not addressed.
An Industrial Case Study of the Impact of Domain Ignorance
on the Effectiveness of Requirements Idea Generation during Requirements
Elicitation
Ali Niknafs and Daniel M. Berry
(University of Waterloo, Canada)
One of the factors that is supposed to have a significant
effect on an individual's effectiveness during requirements engineering
activities is knowledge of the problem being solved by the system to be
built, i.e., domain knowledge. Nevertheless, domain knowledge is a
double-edged sword. While in-depth domain knowledge facilitates
understanding the details of the problem, in-depth domain knowledge can
promote falling for tacit assumptions of the domain and overlooking the
obvious. On the other hand, lack of domain knowledge can facilitate more
innovative out-of-the-domain-box idea generation.
This paper describes a case study carried out in industry of the idea
generation part of a requirements idea brainstorming session conducted
by a team deliberately constructed with four domain experts supplied by
the company participating in the case study and with four domain
ignorants supplied by the authors. The results support the conclusion
that having a team consisting of a mix of domain experts and domain
ignorants improves the effectiveness of the idea generation part of
requirements idea brainstorming.
Improving the Quality of Requirements in Practice
The Impact of Requirements on Software Quality across Three Product Generations
John Terzakis
(Intel, USA)
Abstract--In a previous case study, we presented data
demonstrating the impact that a well-written and well-reviewed set of
requirements had on software defects and other quality indicators
between two generations of an Intel product. The first generation was
coded from an unorganized collection of requirements that were reviewed
infrequently and informally. In contrast, the second was developed based
on a set of requirements stored in a Requirements Management database
and formally reviewed at each revision. Quality indicators for the
second software product all improved dramatically even with the
increased complexity of the newer product. This paper will recap that
study and then present data from a subsequent Intel case study revealing
that quality enhancements continued on the third generation of the
product. The third generation software was designed and coded using the
final set of requirements from the second version as a starting point.
Key product differentiators included changes to operate with a new Intel
processor, the introduction of new hardware platforms and the addition
of approximately fifty new features. Software development methodologies
were nearly identical, with only the change to a continuous build
process for source code check-in added. Despite the enhanced
functionality and complexity in the third generation software,
requirements defects, software defects, software sightings, feature
commit vs. delivery (feature variance), defect closure efficiency rates,
and number of days from project commit to customer release all improved
from the second to the third generation of the software.
Index terms-Requirements specification, requirements defects, reviews,
software defects, software quality, multi-generational software
products.
Requirements Clinic: Third Party Inspection Methodology and
Practice for Improving the Quality of Software Requirements
Specifications
Shinobu Saito, Mutsuki Takeuchi, Masatoshi Hiraoka, Tsuyoshi Kitani, and Mikio Aoyama
(NTT DATA, Japan; Nanzan University, Japan)
We have been involved in a number of large-scale software
development projects, which might lead to loss of millions of dollars if
failed. The quality of SRS (Software Requirements Specification) is the
key to success of the software development. Review and inspection are
common practices for the verification and validation of SRS. However,
verification techniques used in projects might be characterized as ad
hoc.
In this article, we propose requirements clinic, a third party
inspection methodology for improving the quality of the SRS. In order to
systematically inspect a SRS, we developed a perspective-based
inspection methodology based on PQM (Pragmatic Quality Model) of SRS.
PQM is derived from IEEE Std. 830 from the perspective of pragmatic
quality. To inspect a SRS according to PQM, we identified 198 inspection
points, which lead to a quality score between 0 and 100. The
requirements clinic advises to the requirements engineering team by a
comprehensive quality inspection report including quality score,
benchmark and SRS patterns for improvement. Since 2010, we have been
practicing the methodology to a variety of development projects, and
revealed an average of 10.6 ROI in 12 projects. We also discuss the
feasibility of the methodology and lessons learned from the practices.
Using Defect Taxonomies for Requirements Validation in Industrial Projects
Michael Felderer and Armin Beer
(University of Innsbruck, Austria; QE LaB Business Services, Austria; Beer Test Consulting, Austria)
Quality of requirements is of great importance for the
software development lifecycle as it influences all steps of software
development. To ensure various quality attributes, suitable requirements
validation techniques such as reviews or testing are essential. In this
paper, we show how defect taxonomies can improve requirements reviews
and testing. We point out how defect taxonomies can be seamlessly
integrated into the requirements engineering process and discuss
requirements validation with defect taxonomies as well as its benefits
and the lessons learned with reference to industrial projects of a
public health insurance institution where this approach has been
successfully applied.
RE Processes and Tools in Action
Requirements Engineering for the Uganda Police Force Crime Records Management System
Andrew Muyanja, Paul Isaac Musasizi, Catherine Nassimbwa, Sandy
Stevens Tickodri-Togboa, Edward Kale Kayihura, and Amos Ngabirano
(Makerere University, Uganda; Uganda Police Force, Uganda)
This paper presents the requirements engineering process
for the Uganda Police Force Crime Records Management System. The system
was envisioned to substantially improve the performance of the crime
records management function of the Uganda Police Force through
strengthening the pertinent processes. The requirements engineering
process involved definition of the system context and goals,
requirements elicitation, analysis and specification. The process was
championed by the ARMS Project, Makerere University. Following the
successful requirements engineering process, the ARMS Project together
with the Uganda Police Force embarked on a two year project to design,
construct and deploy the envisioned Crime Records Management System at
selected police sites in Uganda. The key challenges faced during the
requirements engineering process, such as changes in the composition of
the Uganda Police Force project team, requirements traceability, and low
representation of business process owners, are also presented.
The Integration of an RE Method and AHP: A Pilot Study in a Large Swiss Bank
Arash Golnam, Gil Regev, Alain Wegmann, and Sofia Kyriakopoulou
(EPFL, Switzerland; Credit Suisse, Switzerland)
This paper reports on a pilot study of the integration
between the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Method (SEAM) and the
Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in a requirements engineering project.
The objective of the project, conducted in one of the major banks in
Switzerland, was to select a common SOA tool that could satisfy the
needs of two of the bank's main business units, investment and private
banking. SEAM provided help in identifying stakeholders, eliciting their
requirements, and analyzing these requirements. The resulting
requirements were then grouped and translated into selection criteria
for the alternative SOA tools. Based on these criteria, the stakeholders
chose the tool to be purchased using AHP. We describe the project, the
challenges we faced and the lessons learned. These relate to the nature
and traceability of requirements, to the requirements elicitation
process and to the relations between the bank's business units.
Automatic Extraction of Glossary Terms from Natural Language Requirements
Anurag Dwarakanath, Roshni R. Ramnani, and Shubhashis Sengupta
(Accenture Technology Labs, India)
We present a method for the automatic extraction of
glossary terms from unconstrained natural language requirements. The
glossary terms are identified in two steps - a) compute units (which are
candidates for glossary terms) b) disambiguate between the mutually
exclusive units to identify terms. We introduce novel linguistic
techniques to identify process nouns, abstract nouns and auxiliary
verbs. The identification of units also handles co-ordinating
conjunctions and adjectival modifiers. This requires solving
co-ordination ambiguity and adjectival modifier ambiguity. The
identification of terms among the units adapts an in-document
statistical metric. We present an evaluation of our method over a
real-life set of software requirements' documents and compare our
results with that of a base algorithm. The intricate linguistic
classification and the tackling of ambiguity result in superior
performance of our approach over the base algorithm.
Traceability in Practice
An Approach to Carry Out Consistency Analysis on
Requirements: Validating and Tracking Requirements through a
Configuration Structure
Padmalata Nistala and Priyanka Kumari
(Tata Consultancy Services, India)
Requirements management and traceability have always been
one of grand challenges in software development area. Studies reveal
that 30- 40% of software defects can be traced to gaps or errors in
requirements. Although several models and techniques have been defined
to optimize the requirements process, ensuring alignment and consistency
of elicited requirements continues to be a challenge. All software
engineering standards and methodologies recognize the importance of
maintaining relationships among the software elements for traceability.
We have leveraged the structured relationships among the requirement
elements to come up with an approach to systematically carry out
consistency analysis of requirements for software systems. The framework
has multiple models: a multi layered requirement model, a configuration
structure to link and track the requirement items, a consistency
analysis method to identify the inconsistencies in the requirements and a
consistency index computation to indicate the level of consistency in
overall requirements of the software system. This approach helps to
validate the requirements from both completeness and correctness
perspectives and also check their consistency in forward and backward
directions. The paper outlines the framework, describes the encompassing
models and the implementation details from pilot of the framework to an
industry case study along with results.
Posters and Demos
Requirements Bazaar: Social Requirements Engineering for Community-Driven Innovation
Dominik Renzel, Malte Behrendt, Ralf Klamma, and Matthias Jarke
(RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
VIDEO
The innovation potential of niche communities often
remains inaccessible to service providers due to a lack of awareness and
effective negotiation between these two groups. Requirements Bazaar, a
browser-based social software for Social Requirements Engineering (SRE),
aims at bringing together communities and service providers into such a
negotiation process. Communities should be supported to express and
trace their requirements and eventually receive a realization. Service
providers should be supported in discovering relevant innovative
requirements to maximize impact with a realization. In this paper we
present Requirements Bazaar with focus on four aspects: requirements
specification, a workflow for co-creation, workspace integration and
personalizable requirements prioritization.
A Safety Requirement Engineering Method and Tool
Romaric Guillerm, Hamid Demmou, and Nabil Sadou
(LAAS-CNRS, France; University of Toulouse, France; SUPELEC, France)
Requirement engineering is one of the most critical system
engineering processes, particularly when it deals with the safety
requirements which are non-functional requirements and are related to
emergent system properties. In fact, safety requirements must be
formulated at system level and then be derived at sub-system level. The
main objective of this paper is to present a new tool, "SafetyLab",
which implements a method for safety treatment of complex systems. The
method allows the definition of the system safety requirements following
a risk and hazard analysis, and then their derivation according to a
top-down approach. It is based on the famous Failure Mode, Effects, and
Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and the use of Fault Trees.
MIRA: A Tooling-Framework to Experiment with Model-Based Requirements Engineering
Sabine Teufl, Dongyue Mou, and Daniel Ratiu
(Fortiss, Germany)
VIDEO
Model-based requirements engineering supports eliciting,
specifying and analyzing the work products elaborated during the
requirements engineering process by providing adequate models. However,
especially the inclusion of formal models needs to be investigated
further. These models represent requirements and have to be integrated
with reference models that define and structure the work results and
their relations. We have developed the research tool MIRA to provide an
infrastructure for the tool-based evaluation of the usage of models in
the field of requirements engineering. In this paper we present the
research questions addressed by MIRA concerning the reference model and
the formal models. We explain how MIRA supports answering these research
questions.
PABRE-Proj: Applying Patterns in Requirements Elicitation
Cristina Palomares, Carme Quer, and Xavier Franch
(Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
VIDEO:short/long
Software requirement patterns have been proposed as a type
of artifact for fostering requirements reuse. In this paper, we present
PABRE-Proj, a tool aimed at supporting requirements elicitation and
specification.
A Tool Implementation of the Unified Requirements Modeling Language as Enterprise Architect Add-In
Florian Schneider, Bernd Bruegge, and Brian Berenbach
(TU Munich, Germany; Siemens, USA)
Early modeling languages have focused on the analysis and
the design of systems under construction, but not on requirements
elicitation. Consequently, a wide variety of approaches exists for the
early phases of requirements engineer- ing, modeling various concepts as
stakeholders, goals, features, product lines, systems, processes,
risks, and requirements. The purpose of Unified Requirements Modeling
Language (URMLTM) is to combine these concepts in a single modeling
language. In addition, it strengthens support for danger modeling. URML
is implemented as an add-in to the Enterprise Architect CASE tool. This
tool demo will showcase the URML implementation.
IRET: Requirements for Service Platforms
Luciano Baresi, Gianluca Ripa, and Liliana Pasquale
(Politecnico di Milano, Italy; Cefriel, Italy; Lero, Ireland; University of Limerick, Ireland)
VIDEO
This paper describes IRENE (Indenica Requirements
ElicitatioN mEthod), a methodology to elicit and model the requirements
of service platforms, and IRET (IREne Tool), the Eclipse-based modeling
framework we developed for IRENE.
Using TraceLab to Design, Execute, and Baseline Empirical Requirements Engineering Experiments
Jane Cleland-Huang, Adam Czauderna, and Jane Huffman Hayes
(DePaul University, USA; University of Kentucky, USA)
VIDEO
As Requirements Engineering research continues to grow
into a mature and rigorous discipline, an increasing focus is placed on
the need for sound evaluation techniques that compare the benefits of a
new solution against existing ones. In this tool demonstration we
introduce TraceLab, an instrumented environment for modeling, executing,
and comparatively evaluating experimental results. While initially
developed for the Software Traceability domain, TraceLab provides a
framework which can be populated with experiments, datasets,and reusable
components for almost any empirical software engineering domain. In
this demo we present examples from the Requirements Engineering domain.
Requirements-Driven Adaptive Digital Forensics
Liliana Pasquale, Yijun Yu, Mazeiar Salehie, Luca Cavallaro, Thein Than Tun, and Bashar Nuseibeh
(Lero, Ireland; Open University, UK)
We propose the use of forensic requirements to
drive the automation of a digital forensics process. We augment
traditional reactive digital forensics processes with proactive
evidence collection and analysis activities, and provide immediate
investigative suggestions before an investigation starts. These
activities adapt depending on suspicious events, which in turn
might require the collection and analysis of additional evidence.
The reactive activities of a traditional digital forensics process
are also adapted depending on the investigation findings.
Panels
Panel: Identifying Top Challenges for International Research on Requirements Engineering for Systems of Systems Engineering
Identifying Top Challenges for International Research on Requirements Engineering for Systems of Systems Engineering
Cornelius Ncube, Soo Ling Lim, and Huseyin Dogan
(Bournemouth University, UK)
Due to an increasingly connected society and industry, our
modern societal world and all industry sectors now increasingly depend
on large-scale complex Systems of Systems (SoS). The emerging
interdisciplinary area of SoS and Systems of Systems Engineering (SoSE)
is largely driven by societal needs including public services such as
health, transport, water, energy, food security, etc. The scale,
complexities and challenges presented by SoS require us to go beyond
traditional Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches. However, as is
evident from publications in major Requirements Engineering conferences
and journals, no significant effort has been expedited towards
addressing specific RE issues for Systems of Systems Engineering. This
panel explores key RE challenges in Systems of Systems Engineering,
specifically, the areas in which the international RE community need to
focus its research, and the approaches that are most likely to meet
these challenges effectively. We first introduce Systems of Systems
Engineering and outline key characteristics of SoS. We conclude by
arguing that there is an urgent need for the global RE community to
develop new ways of thinking, new capabilities and possibly a new
science as a key mechanism for addressing requirements complexities
posed by Systems of Systems.
Panel: Ready-Set-Transfer: Technology Transfer in the Requirements Engineering Domain
Ready-Set-Transfer: Technology Transfer in the Requirements Engineering Domain
Jane Cleland-Huang and Smitta Ghaisas
(DePaul University, USA; Tata Consultancy Services, India)
Requirements engineering research is undertaken to propose
innovative solutions, to develop concepts, algorithms, processes, and
technologies, to validate effective solutions for important
requirements-related problems, and ultimately to support the transition
of important findings to practice. However prior studies have shown that
successful projects often take from 20-25 years to reach the stage of
full industry adoption, while many other projects fizzle out and never
advance beyond the initial research phase. This panel provides the
opportunity for practitioners and academics to engage in a meaningful
discussion around the topic of technology transfer. In this third
offering of the Ready-Set-Transfer panel, three research groups will
present products that they believe to be industry-ready to a panel of
industrial practitioners. Each team will receive feedback from the
panelists. The long-term goal of the panel is to increase technology
transfer in the requirements engineering domain.
Panel: Future Directions of the RE Conference and Its Community
Future Directions of the RE Conference and Its Community
Neil Maiden
(City University London, UK)
This short piece provides an introduction to a panel
session that will take place at the RE'13 conference. The purpose of the
panel will be to explore different possible future directions of the RE
conference and its community. This piece outlines the arguments that
will be made by each of the panelists to direct the conference and
community towards different perspectives - both more academic- and
practitioner-oriented.
Requirements Engineering Conferences: Wither Industry Tracks?
Roel Wieringa, Pascal van Eck, and John Mylopoulos
(University of Twente, Netherlands; University of Trento, Italy)
This position paper argues that industry tracks have no
place in any research conference. Instead, a research conference should
always have room for industrial case studies, evaluated according to
criteria for empirical research. Such case studies would not be
acceptable at a practitioners' industrial conference, just as papers
presented at such conferences would not be acceptable at research
conferences. It follows as corollary that if researchers want to become
familiar with problems and solutions of RE practice, they should visit
industrial conferences.
A New Paradigm for Applied Requirements Engineering Research
Martin Mahaux and Alistair Mavin
(University of Namur, Belgium; Rolls Royce, UK)
This position paper reflects on recent work that sought to
make positive changes to the IEEE Requirements Engineering conference
(RE), and on twenty years of requirements engineering (REng) research.
We question the values that seem to underpin RE, and offer what we
believe are more appropriate values. We argue that these new values
would result in better alignment between research and the needs of
industry. Further, the new values would encourage more rewarding work
for researchers, and would lead to a better RE conference. We summarise
the value shift in a draft manifesto for applied research in REng. To
illustrate the potential for concrete changes, we suggest one possible
wiki-based model for REng research that could deliver these new values.
A Little Rebellion Now and Then Is a Good Thing: Views on the Requirements Engineering Conference
Tony Gorschek
(Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden)
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.
This short position statement describes my views on some of the
challenges associated with many conferences, the Requirements
Engineering Conference being among them. The main concepts are; the
goals, as well as criteria for paper selection for the conference should
be defined explicitly, and shared with the community. Industry
involvement in the conference should be increased, but the focus of all
tracks should be quality - what constitutes quality however needs to be
defined and agreed on. Industrial validation of research results have to
be more than an intention. Last but not least, how papers are presented
and discussed needs to change, focusing on quality over quantity.
Mini-Tutorials
Top Tips You Can Apply Immediately to Projects: Highlights from the RE'13 Tutorials
Maria Lencastre and Joy Beatty
(UPE, Brasil; Seilevel, USA)
This mini-tutorial highlights and conveys key practices in
Requirements Engineering that can be applied in daily projects. It
synthesizes the essence of six tutorials presented at the RE'13
Tutorial's sessions, and so promotes a great opportunity for a wider
audience to learn from practice and have knowledge transfer. Besides
that, this session is a great stimulus to increase the global synergy
between industry and academia.
Winning the Hidden Battle: Requirements Tool Selection and Adoption
Joy Beatty
(Seilevel, USA)
This mini-tutorial will provide an overview of one
approach to a requirements management (RM) tool evaluation. The guidance
will focus on how this evaluation process and results can be adapted to
work in any organization. Finally, the mini-tutorial concludes with the
major challenges organizations face in implementing RM tools and
suggestions to overcome them.
Practical Applications of i* in Industry: The State of the Art
Eric Yu, Daniel Amyot, Gunter Mussbacher, Xavier Franch, and Jaelson Castro
(University of Toronto, Canada; University of Ottawa, Canada; Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain; UFPE, Brasil)
i* is a goal-oriented and agent-oriented modeling
framework that focuses on the analysis of intentional and strategic
relationships among actors. In this mini-tutorial, we highlight a number
of recent applications in practical industrial and business settings.
Special Sessions
RE@21 Spotlight: Most Influential Papers from the Requirements Engineering Conference
Martin Glinz and Roel Wieringa
(University of Zurich, Switzerland; University of Twente, Netherlands)
Since 2003, an award has been presented annually at the
IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference for the Most
Influential Paper presented at the conference 10 years previously. In
2013, we celebrate 21 years of the Requirements Engineering Conference,
and we use this as an opportunity to reflect on the Most Influential
Papers to date. Two sessions of the 2013 conference highlight the work
of previous award winners and provide the authors with the opportunity
to describe the trajectory of their work over the ten years that led to
the award, and to discuss its impact since.
Creative Collisions: Meet and Create: And Other "RE Interactive" Suggestions
Martin Mahaux and David Callele
(University of Namur, Belgium; University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
The International IEEE Requirements Engineering conference
(RE) is the premier international forum for requirements engineering.
However, participant interaction mechanisms have not received
significant recent attention and conference attendees have suggested
that interaction support could be improved. The "RE Interactive" program
is a first implementation step to increase the level and quality of
interaction at RE. We present here a brief background to the initiative,
describe in greater detail those initiatives being introduced this year
and summarize possible initiatives for future years. We describe in
greater detail the focal "RE Interactive" session: Creative Collisions.
This session aims to explore the power of combinatorial creativity to
create unexpected ideas for the RE community by promoting creative
engagements between individuals, focusing on forging new relationships
within the community.
Workshops and Doctoral Symposium at RE'13: The Results:
Presentation Session of New Ideas for Researchers and Practitioners Who
Weren't There
Oliver Creighton and Marcos Borges
(Siemens, Germany; UFRJ, Brasil)
This paper describes the workshops held in conjunction
with RE'13 and its corresponding presentation of results during the main
conference. This paper presents the contents, structure, and format of
the "Results" event: A slide show is followed by a poster session. This
paper concludes with a complete list of all collocated workshops and
their descriptions.
The audience members of this session can expect a highly dynamic,
interactive discussion of what went on during the workshops. All the
interesting, new, controversial, and pioneering ideas of these exciting
preceding events can be absorbed in a memorable, enjoyable and fun way.
The Requirements Engineering Body of Knowledge (REBoK)
Birgit Penzenstadler, Daniel Méndez Fernández, Debra Richardson, David Callele, and Krzysztof Wnuk
(UC Irvine, USA; TU Munich, Germany; University of Saskatchewan, Canada; Lund University, Sweden)
A body of knowledge is a term used to represent the
complete set of concepts, terms and activities that make up a
professional domain. It encompasses the core teachings, skills and
research in a field or industry. So far, the discipline of RE is lacking
an official Requirements Engineering Body of Knowledge (REBoK).
This working session brings together researchers and practitioners to
elaborate the goals, requirements and constraints for a REBoK that shall
serve as commonly agreed basis for developing a draft over the
following months.
Doctoral Symposium
RE 2013 Doctoral Symposium
Ana Moreira and Paul Grünbacher
(Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal; JKU Linz, Austria)
The Doctoral Symposium brings together PhD students
working in requirements engineering to facilitate the interaction among
students and RE researchers. Students present their research and receive
constructive feedback from a panel of senior researchers. The doctoral
symposium is run in a highly interactive and workshop-like format.
The Regulatory World and the Machine: Harmonizing Legal Requirements and the Systems They Affect
David G. Gordon
(CMU, USA)
The past decade has seen a substantial increase in the
issuance of privacy and security regulations governing personal
information. Ensuring system and organizational compliance is both more
important and more difficult than ever before, as the penalties have
become more severe, and regulations more complex and nuanced. This also
presents substantial difficulties for multi-national companies, as
different states, countries, or regions do not adhere to a uniform
standard, resulting in a mixed set of regulations for the systems they
govern. In this work, I describe a framework to address this issue,
referred to as requirements water marking, wherein requirements from
different jurisdictions that govern the same system may be evaluated and
reduced to a single standard of care, establishing a "high water mark"
for regulatory compliance and reducing requirements complexity. The
framework, which draws on work in requirements specification languages
and requirements comparison, allows engineers and legal experts to
systematically simplify compliance and determine both high and low
standards of care, while maintaining traceability back to the original
legal text. In addition, I investigate the proposed value of legal
requirements models, demonstrating the relationship between proposed
value of these models to organizational decision-making and the validity
of the model.
Evidence Management for Evolutionary Safety Assurance and Certification
Sunil Nair
(Simula Research Laboratory, Norway)
Safety assurance and certification are amongst the most
expensive and time-consuming activities in the development of
safety-critical systems. Deeming a system to be safe involves gathering
convincing evidence to argue the safe operation of the system, usually
according to the requirements of some safety standard. To handle large
collections of safety evidence effectively, practitioners need knowledge
of how to classify different types of evidence, how to structure the
evidence to show fulfillment of standards' requirements, and how to
assess the evidence. However, the notion of evidence is vague and safety
standards' requirements can be ambiguous and difficult to understand.
Major problems also arise when a system evolves, as the body of safety
evidence has to be adequately maintained in order to ensure system
safety and allow its demonstration. In this context, this PhD aims to
propose a framework for safety evidence management in evolutionary
scenarios. The thesis work will concentrate on devising a model-based
and customizable infrastructure for storage, manipulation, reuse, and
analysis of evolving safety evidence. The infrastructure will be
developed and evaluated in the scope of OPENCOSS,a large-scale European
research project.
Visual Analytics for Software Requirements Engineering
Sandeep Reddivari
(Mississippi State University, USA)
The research on visual analytics for requirements
engineering has noticeably advanced in the past few years. For many
software projects, requirements management needs an effective and
efficient path from data to decision. Visual analytics (VA) creates such
a path that enables the user to extract insights by interacting with
the relevant information. While various requirements visualization
techniques exist, only few have produced end-to-end values to
practitioners. In this research proposal, we advance the literature on
visual requirements analytics by characterizing its key components and
relationships. Such a characterization allows us to not only assess
existing approaches, but also develop tool enhancements in a principled
manner. We describe our ongoing work on VA and outline future research
plans.
Requirements Negotiation Model: A Social Oriented Approach for Software Ecosystems Evolution
George Valença
(UFPE, Brasil)
Software Ecosystems is becoming a relevant research topic
by analysing the software industry as networked organisations based on a
common interest in a central software technology. In this context,
appropriately handling Requirements Engineering is a success factor for
Software Platform Management. Nevertheless, recent research in this
subject does not integrate the ecosystem's social dimension to a
business view during requirements negotiations. The state-of-the-art is
generally concerned with challenges of achieving and agreed requirements
understanding. Thereby, this PhD proposes a Requirements Negotiation
Model to address the negotiation process through a more holistic
perspective. It aims to present an insightful reasoning on how
requirements negotiation collaborates to ecosystem's health and success,
defining negotiation strategies along Software Ecosystem evolution
considering the Software Platform Management.
