Graciela Dora Susana Hadad

A Scenario Construction Process

Scenario is a description technique that has been attracting a lot of attention from practitioners and from researchers. Several disciplines have been using scenarios for some time now, but recently the information system community has dedicated special attention to the possibilities that this description technique provides to enhance understandability of task-related descriptions and communicability among stakeholders. This paper aims its attention at a particular scenario construction process, but while doing so it tackles important problems regarding scenario management, in particular scenario organisation. Our scenarios are described in a structured way, using a simple conceptual model together with a form-oriented language. We have been using this representation for some time now, and our results are based on several case studies conducted with real-world problems.

Defining System Context Using Scenarios

It is already well known that in order to define the software system requirements deep knowledge of the universe of discourse is needed. This includes not only what is actually happening but also what the plans for the future are. Unless the requirements engineer has a previous knowledge of the domain, he or she may become overloaded by data of different nature. To cope with this, a gradual process which slowly migrates from learning to definition is advisable. During the learning phase, the focus should be placed on the current facts which should be organized and recorded. Later, the forthcoming plans should be also understood but instead of recording them as they are, they should be used to design future universe of discourse models. This chapter focuses on the description of current situations and lays foundations for the description of future situations by means of an evolution process.