A Framework for Improving the Requirements Engineering Process Management

This paper presents a system dynamics model for improving the requirements engineering process management. The paper argues that improving RE process management improves the quality of the specification produced. It uses a simulation modelling approach to capture the complex and dynamic nature of quality and also the cost of resources and time needed to complete the process. Current claims by various researchers and empirical evidence has led to our proposition that “the earlier in the requirements engineering phase that system dynamics simulation modelling is used, the more effective the RE process management is and the better its product quality will be.” In developing such a model, the paper fills an important gap in the RE process management literature and has potential to provide requirement engineers, managers and software development organisations with a model-based process framework to aid quality assessment and improvement. The paper concludes by suggesting that the framework makes a useful contribution both in providing the foundations for theory building in RE process management and quality improvement by aiding shared understanding through learning and training situations. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Requirements Reuse for Improving Information Systems Security: A Practitioner’s Approach

Information systems security issues have usually been considered only after the system has been developed completely, and rarely during its design, coding, testing or deployment. However, the advisability of considering security from the very beginning of the system development has recently begun to be appreciated, and in particular in the system requirements specification phase. We present a practical method to elicit and specify the system and software requirements, including a repository containing reusable requirements, a spiral process model, and a set of requirements documents templates. In this paper, this method is focused on the security of information systems and, thus, the reusable requirements repository contains all the requirements taken from MAGERIT, the Spanish public administration risk analysis and management method, which conforms to ISO 15408, Common Criteria Framework. Any information system including these security requirements must therefore pass a risk analysis and management study performed with MAGERIT. The requirements specification templates are hierarchically structured and are based on IEEE standards. Finally, we show a case study in a system of our regional administration aimed at managing state subsidies.     

Security Requirements Engineering: A Framework for Representation and Analysis

This paper presents a framework for security requirements elicitation and analysis. The framework is based on constructing a context for the system, representing security requirements as constraints, and developing satisfaction arguments for the security requirements. The system context is described using a problem-oriented notation, then is validated against the security requirements through construction of a satisfaction argument. The satisfaction argument consists of two parts: a formal argument that the system can meet its security requirements and a structured informal argument supporting the assumptions expressed in the formal argument. The construction of the satisfaction argument may fail, revealing either that the security requirement cannot be satisfied in the context or that the context does not contain sufficient information to develop the argument. In this case, designers and architects are asked to provide additional design information to resolve the problems. We evaluate the framework by applying it to a security requirements analysis within an air traffic control technology evaluation project.     

基于序列的可靠性分析方法

随着软构件技术的快速发展，基于构件设计复杂软件系统的软件开发方法日趋成熟。如何利用系统架构和软构件的可靠性分析软件系统的可靠性成为一个亟待解决的问题。软件是静态的，而开发过程是动态的。为了在动态的开发过程中跟踪可靠性，本文提出了基于序列的场景模型，以便分析软件可靠性。与相关的其他方法不同的是，该方法更关注于动态开发过程中的可靠性分析。     

Effective Hybrid Content-Based Collaborative Filtering Approach for Requirements Engineering

Requirements engineering (RE) is among the most valuable and critical processes in software development. The quality of this process significantly affects the success of a software project. An important step in RE is requirements elicitation, which involves collecting project-related requirements from different sources. Repositories of reusable requirements are typically important sources of an increasing number of reusable software requirements. However, the process of searching such repositories to collect valuable project-related requirements is time-consuming and difficult to perform accurately. Recommender systems have been widely recognized as an effective solution to such problem. Accordingly, this study proposes an effective hybrid content-based collaborative filtering recommendation approach. The proposed approach will support project stakeholders in mitigating the risk of missing requirements during requirements elicitation by identifying related requirements from software requirement repositories. The experimental results on the RALIC dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach considerably outperforms baseline collaborative filtering-based recommendation methods in terms of prediction accuracy and coverage in addition to mitigating the data sparsity and cold-start item problems.     

A Requirements Engineering Methodology for Real-Time Processing Requirements

This paper describes a methodology for the generation of software requirements for large, real-time unmanned weapons systems. It describes what needs to be done, how to evaluate the intermediate products, and how to use automated aids to improve the quality of the product. An example is provided to illustrate the methodology steps and their products and the benefits. The results of some experimental applications are summarized.     

一种用户故事需求质量提升方法

敏捷开发采用用户故事表达用户需求.一般采用格式受限的自然语言编写,但在用户故事编写过程中经常出现一些表述上的缺陷.典型的缺陷包括缺失必要信息、意思表达含糊不清、故事间有重复或存在冲突等.这很大程度上影响了需求的质量,影响软件开发项目的进行.提出一种用户故事需求质量提升方法.从故事缺陷定位的角度出发,该方法构建了用户故事概念模型,并根据实际案例总结并提出11条用户故事应遵循的质量准则.从而提出故事结构分析、句法模式分析以及语法分析等技术,用于自动构建带场景用户故事的实例层模型,并根据准则进行故事缺陷检测,进而提升用户故事质量.在包含36个用户故事84个场景的实际项目中进行实验,自动检测出173个缺陷,缺陷检测的准确率和召回率分别达到88.79%和95.06%.     

REUBI: A Requirements Engineering method for ubiquitous systems

Recent technological advances are increasing the spread of Ubiquitous Computing, leading to the appearance of numerous software systems, which benefit from the features of this new paradigm. Nevertheless, there are a lack of methodologies to properly support the development process of these systems. An important part of the Software Engineering lifecycle is the Requirements Engineering stage, as it grounds the bases for system design for their success. In particular, systematically addressing Non-Functional Requirements such as dynamicity and adaptation, that are important features of ubiquitous systems, eventually leads to higher quality designs. In this paper, a Requirements Engineering Method for the analysis of Ubiquitous Systems, called REUBI, is introduced. It is a goal-based method that represents the influence of context and adverse situations, providing an evaluation procedure to help in the decision making about objectives satisfaction. The proposal is illustrated through the analysis of a Positioning Service of a real system. Additionally, the application of the method has been evaluated by a team of software engineers for the analysis of an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) health care system.     

需求分析与软件可靠性保证

通过对软件测试过程中产生的数据进行分析,对照软件设计过程中需求分析中的错误或缺陷,对有关可靠性指标进行反复度量,明确软件错误的分布以减少其对软件需求分析可靠性的影响,进而对相关的错误或缺陷进行控制。     

一种综合的概念相似度计算方法

本体映射可以用来解决本体异构问题,也是本体结盟、本体集成、本体合并、本体翻译等的技术基础。本文针对目前本体映射中概念相似度计算所存在的问题,提出了一种综合的相似度计算方法。首先根据两个概念名称相似性过滤出最相关的概念,减少相似度的计算;然后基于概念实例、基于概念属性、基于概念关系计算概念相似度,并进行综合;最后对其性能进行了简单分析。     

基于RFCA的概念相似度计算方法

本文主要针对基于FCA的概念相似度计算模型不能计算非形式概念之间的相似度问题,引入粗糙集理论,给出了FCA中等价关系的定义,提出了基于RFCA的概念相似度计算方法,通过实例说明该方法是可行的。     

Large-Scale Requirements Analysis Revisited: The need for Understanding the Political Ecology of Requirements Engineering

This paper addresses the political nature of requirements for large systems, and argues that requirements engineering theory and practice must become more engaged with these issues. It argues that large-scale system requirements is constructed through a political decision process, whereby requirements emerge as a set of mappings between consecutive solution spaces justified by a problem space of concern to a set of principals. These solution spaces are complex socio-technical ensembles that often exhibit non-linear behaviour in expansion due to domain complexity and political ambiguity. Stabilisation of solutions into agreed-on specifications occurs only through the exercise of organisational power. Effective requirements engineering in such cases is most effectively seen as a form of heterogeneous engineering in which technical, social, economic and institutional factors are brought together in a current solution space that provides the baseline for construction of proposed new solution spaces.     

Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering: A Unifying Framework

The study of contemporary requirements engineering (RE) methodologies indicates that modelling of organisational goals constitutes a central activity of the RE process. In particular, goals provide the rationale and drive the elaboration of the requirements that operationalise them. They also provide the criteria against which the completeness and correctness of the requirements specification is validated. In other words, requirements implement goals in the same way that programs implement design specifications. Despite the significance of goals in RE, research in the field is fragmented. No research has so far taken place in order to define the overall role that goals play in RE. This paper puts forward a unifying view of goal analysis in the context of RE. This allows the identification of similarities and differences between the different conceptions of goal used by different approaches and promotes the understanding of the overall role of goal analysis in RE. Based on this understanding the various approaches can be put together, thus leading to a stronger goal-driven RE framework that takes advantage of the contributions from the many streams of goal-oriented research.     

An Approach to Security Requirements Engineering for a High Assurance System*

Requirements specifications for high-assurance secure systems are rare in the open literature. This paper examines the development of a requirements document for a multilevel secure system that must meet stringent assurance and evaluation requirements. The system is designed to be secure, yet combines popular commercial components with specialised high-assurance ones. Functional and non-functional requirements pertinent to security are discussed. A multidimensional threat model is presented. The threat model accounts for the developmental and operational phases of system evolution and for each phase accounts for both physical and non-physical threats. We describe our team-based method for developing a requirements document and relate that process to techniques in requirements engineering. The system requirements document presented provides a calibration point for future security requirements engineering techniques intended to meet both functional and assurance goals. RID="*" ID="*"The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be construed to reflect those of their employers or the Department of Defense. This work was supported in part by the MSHN project of the DARPA/ITO Quorum programme and by the MYSEA project of the DARPA/ATO CHATS programme. Correspondence and offprint requests to: T. Levin, Department of Computer Science, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943-5118, USA. Tel.: +1 831 656 2339; Fax: +1 831 656 2814; Email: levin@nps.navy.mil     

NDT. A Model-Driven Approach for Web Requirements

Web engineering is a new research line in software engineering that covers the definition of processes, techniques, and models suitable for Web environments in order to guarantee the quality of results. The research community is working in this area and, as a very recent line, they are assuming the Model-Driven paradigm to support and solve some classic problems detected in Web developments. However, there is a lack in Web requirements treatment. This paper presents a general vision of Navigational Development Techniques (NDT), which is an approach to deal with requirements in Web systems. It is based on conclusions obtained in several comparative studies and it tries to fill some gaps detected by the research community. This paper presents its scope, its most important contributions, and offers a global vision of its associated tool: NDT-Tool. Furthermore, it analyzes how Web Engineering can be applied in the enterprise environment. NDT is being applied in real projects and has been adopted by several companies as a requirements methodology. The approach offers a Web requirements solution based on a Model-Driven paradigm that follows the most accepted tendencies by Web engineering.     

Scenario Analysis in an Automated Tool for Requirements Engineering

 This paper presents an automated tool for scenario-driven requirements engineering where scenario analysis plays the central role. It is shown that a scenario can be described by three views of data flow, entity relationship and state transition models by slight extensions of classic data flow, entity relationship and state transition diagrams. The notions of consistency and completeness of a set of scenarios are formally defined in graph theory terminology and automatically checked by the tool. The tool supports automatic validation of requirements definitions by analysing the consistency between a set of scenarios and requirements models. It also supports automatic synthesis of requirements models from a set of scenarios. Its utility and usefulness are demonstrated by a non-trivial example in the paper. Case studies of the tools are also presented.     

基于RGPS的网络式软件需求获取与分析方法

网络式软件作为一种部署在网络环境中的复杂系统,同时亦是一种典型的面向服务软件,为用户提供随需而变的在线服务。文章提出网络式软件需求获取与分析方法,该方法基于RGPS领域资产,从而避免了在需求过程中的不明确、不一致和不完整性等。为了证明方法的正确性,文章还实现了其框架,并开发出了一个工具原型来辅助需求的在线获取获取与分析。     

提高DCS可靠性的工程设计策略

分析了影响DCS可靠性的因子,从DCS可靠性设计准则、DCS选型、冗余设计、抗干扰设计和组态设计介绍了提高DCS可靠性的工程设计的整体思路和策略.     

无线通讯网络可靠度的计算

文章提出了几个保持可靠度不变的将边可靠、结点不可靠的无向网络化简以及转化成有向网络的原则,并将这些原则与已有的不交和或容斥原理方法相结合给出了一个新的计算无线通讯网络（Radio Communication Network,简称RCN）两终端可靠度的有效算法。由于文章所给的化简与转化使RCN中指定两结点之间的路径数大大减少,因此该文算法使其可靠度的计算得到很大简化。