A Set of Artifacts and Models to Support Requirements Communication Based on Perspectives

Abstract

The effective communication of the requirements influences the success of software development projects. Achieving effective communication of the requirements is difficult due to the involvement of several persons with different roles, skills, knowledge and responsibilities. Although many studies analyze the communication between clients and system analysts, they do not focus on the communication within the development team. In this research, we propose the creation of a set of artifacts and models to support the communication of requirements. We will base our proposal on the different perspectives of the team members according to their experience in the artifacts and models adopted in the development process within their organization. We will follow a methodology based on Design Science Research guidelines, which will guide us through the creation and evaluation of the artifacts and models to solve problems with the communication of requirements. Our goal is to improve the communication of requirements between the members of a development team, reducing the loss of requirements information during the execution of the software project

References

1. Al-Rawas A, Easterbrook S. 1996. Communication problems in requirements engineering: A field study, In: Proceedings of Conference on Professional on Awareness in Software Engineering, London, 1-2 February, 47--60.
2. Bjarnason, E., Wnuk, K., & Regnell, B. 2011. Requirements are slipping through the gaps - A case study on causes & effects of communication gaps in large-scale software development. In Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 2011 19th IEEE International. 37--46. IEEE. DOI =
3. Broy, M. 2006. Requirements engineering as a key to holistic software quality. In Computer and Information Sciences-ISCIS. 24--34. Springer Berlin Heidelberg DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11902140_3.
4. Chakraborty, S., Sarker, S., & Sarker, S. 2010. An Exploration into the Process of Requirements Elicitation: A Grounded Approach. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, v. 11, n.4, 212--249.
5. Coughlan, Jane; Macredie, Robert D. 2002. Effective communication in requirements elicitation: a comparison of methodologies, Requirements Engineering Journal, v. 7, n. 2, 47--60. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s007660200004.
6. Daneva, M., Damian, D., Marchetto, A., & Pastor, O. 2014. Empirical research methodologies and studies in Requirements Engineering: How far did we come?. Journal of systems and software, v. 95, 1--9. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2014.06.035.
7. Easterbrook S., Singer J., Storey M.A., & Damian D. 2008. Selecting empirical methods for software engineering research. In Guide to advanced empirical software engineering. Springer London, 285--311. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-044-5_11.
8. Fagerholm, F., & Münch, J. 2012. Developer experience: Concept and definition, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and System Process, 73--77.
9. ISO 9241-210:2010. International Standardization Organization (ISO). Ergonomics of human system interaction -- Part 210: Human-centered design for interactive systems. Switzerland.
10. Kitchenham, B., Dyba, T., Jorgensen, M. 2010. The value of mapping studies -- A participant-observer case study. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. British Computer Society. 25--33. DOI = http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2664372.
11. Liskin O. 2015.How artifacts support and impede requirements communication. In Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. Springer, 2015, pp. 132--147. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30282-9_21.
12. Mafra, P. ; Kalinowski, M. ; Méndez Fernández, D., Felderer, M. , Wagner, S. 2016. Towards Guidelines for Preventing Critical Requirements Engineering Problems. In: Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), Limassol, Chipre. pp. 1--6.
13. Méndez Fernández, D., Wieringa, R. 2013. Improving requirements engineering by artefact orientation. In Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, p. 108--122. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39259-7_11.
14. Méndez Fernández, D., Wagner, S. 2015. A Case Study on Artefact-Based RE Improvement in Practice. 114--130. Springer International Publishing. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26844-6_9.
15. Méndez Fernández, D.; Wagner, S.; Kalinowski, M.; Felderer, M.; Mafra, P.; Vetro, A.; Conte, T.; Christiansson, M.; Prikladnicki,
16. Mund, J., Méndez Fernández, D., Femmer, H., & Eckhardt, J. 2015. Does Quality of Requirements Specifications matter? Combined Results of Two Empirical Studies. In Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), 2015 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on .1--10. IEEE. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2015.7321195.
17. Nuseibeh, B., & Easterbrook, S. 2000. Requirements engineering: a roadmap. In Proceedings of the Conference on the Future of Software Engineering. 35--46. ACM. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/336512.336523.
18. Pacheco, C., & Garcia, I. 2012. A systematic literature review of stakeholder identification methods in requirements elicitation. Journal of Systems and Software, v. 85, n. 9, 2171--2181. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.04.075.
19. Pandey, D., Suman, U., & Ramani, A. K. 2010. An effective requirement engineering process model for software development and requirements management. In Advances in Recent Technologies in Communication and Computing (ARTCom), 2010 International Conference. 287--291. IEEE. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ARTCom.2010.24.
20. Pires, P. F., Delicato, F. C., Cóbe, R., Batista, T., Davis, J. G., & Song, J. H. 2011. Integrating ontologies, model driven, and CNL in a multi-viewed approach for requirements engineering, Requirements Engineering, v. 16, n. 2, 133--160. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00766-011-0116-1.
21. Stapel, K., Knauss, E., & Schneider, K. 2009. Using flow to improve communication of requirements in globally distributed software projects. In Requirements: Communication, Understanding and Softskills, 2009 Collaboration and Intercultural Issues. 5--14. IEEE. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CIRCUS.2009.6.
22. Tu, Yu-Cheng; Tempero, Ewan; Thomborson, Clark. 2015. An experiment on the impact of transparency on the effectiveness of requirements documents. Empirical Software Engineering, v. 21, n. 3, 1035--1066. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10664-015-9374-8.
23. Tullis, T.; Albert, W. 2008. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA.
24. Wieringa, R. 2009. Design Science as Nested Problem Solving. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology, Philadelphia, 8. ACM. DOI = http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1555619.1555630.
25. Wöhlin, C. 2014. Guidelines for snowballing in systematic literature studies and a replication in software engineering. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering -- EASE '14. n. 38. DOI = http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2601248.2601268.
26. Wöhlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M., Regnell, B., Wesslén, A. 2000. Experimentation in Software Engineering: An Introduction. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Management of computing and information systems

      • Software management

        • Software maintenance

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Designing software

      • Requirements analysis

    • Software post-development issues