Joaquín Nicolás

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.

On the generation of requirements specifications from software engineering models: A systematic literature review

System and software requirements documents play a crucial role in software engineering in that they must both communicate requirements to clients in an understandable manner and define requirements in precise detail for system developers. The benefits of both lists of textual requirements (usually written in natural language) and software engineering models (usually specified in graphical form) can be brought together by combining the two approaches in the specification of system and software requirements documents. If, moreover, textual requirements are generated from models in an automatic or closely monitored form, the effort of specifying those requirements is reduced and the completeness of the specification and the management of the requirements traceability are improved. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature related to the generation of textual requirements specifications from software engineering models.

Towards use case and conceptual models through business modeling

A guide to requirements modeling is presented in this paper, in which use cases and the conceptual model are directly obtained from a business modeling based on UML activity diagrams. After determining the business processes of the organization, and describing their workflows by means of activity diagrams, use cases are elicited and structured starting from the activities of each process, while the concepts of the conceptual model are obtained from the data that flow between activities. Furthermore, business rules are identified and included in a glossary, as part of the data and activities specification. One notable aspect of our proposal is that use case and conceptual modeling are performed at the same time, thus making the identification and specification of suitable use cases easier. Both use case and conceptual modeling belong to the requirements analysis phase, which is part of a complete process model on whose definition we are currently working. This process is being experimented in a mediumsized organism of a Regional Public Administration.

Risks and Safeguards for the Requirements Engineering Process in Global Software Development

The rise of new development paradigms such as Global Software Development (GSD) forces Requirements Engineering (RE) to face up to new challenges and risks not common in traditional development models. When an organization first embarks upon a GSD project it exposes itself to plenty of risks. Many of these risks appear as a result of the lack of experience of the development team on GSD projects. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has led to the compilation of a repository which gathers the risks that concern RE when developed in a distributed software development environment, as well as a set of safeguards, which help overcoming such risks. This repository, open to progressive enrichment, provides a novel basis to assist in RE activities for GSD projects. It could be especially useful when the developers have little experience in distributed projects and cannot prevent communication, distance, cultural, or organizational risks. Although the repository collects the main contributions from published work in the field, it has not been validated on real GSD projects yet.

Reusing Requirements in Global Software Engineering

Knowledge sharing and reuse in global software engineering (GSE) are challenging issues. Knowledge management (KM) is specifically impacted because on top of distance, culture and language mismatches, there is also the perceived risk of sharing something which could mean that others could take over some work. Mistrust and protectionism are often the consequence, leading to insufficient reuse. This is visible specifically in requirements engineering (RE), where all reuse should start. In this chapter, we will look to reuse in RE with a detailed look on how to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration in distributed environments. We first look into the state of the practice. Then we present a lightweight, reuse-based, global RE method called PANGEA (Process for globAl requiremeNts enGinEering and quAlity), based on natural language requirements and software engineering standards. Based on this method, we also build a prototypical tool, called PANTALASA (PANgea Tool And Lightweight Automated Support Architecture) which provides automated support for PANGEA. Its features are drawn from PANGEA and the state of the practice commercially available RE tools. A prototype of PANTALASA was developed by using Semantic MediaWiki and Facebook and applied to a case study in the domain of hotel management. We could show with this method and prototype that collaboration and thus KM and reuse in RE are improved.

Internationalization requirements for e-learning audit purposes

In an increasingly globalized world, the diversity of languages and cultures of the students requires the adaptability of the learning environment to satisfy their needs and preferences. In order to achieve this aim, current and future e-learning tools should take into account the internationalization aspects. With this purpose, and to help in the process of review and analysis of these features, we present an internationalization requirements catalog, obtained from the main related standards, together with the identification of the central elements needed to perform an effective e-learning software audit regarding these characteristics.

Learning systems development using reusable standard-based requirements catalogs

Requirements engineering (RE) is a discipline of critical importance in software development. This paper provides a process and a set of software artifacts to help in the production of e-learning systems with emphasis on reuse, standards and globalization issues.

An integrated domain analysis approach for teleoperated systems

Teleoperated systems for ship hull maintenance (TOS) are robotic systems for ship maintenance tasks, such as cleaning or painting a ship’s hull. The product line paradigm has recently been applied to TOS, and a TOS reference architecture has thus been designed. However, TOS requirements specifications have not been developed in any rigorous way with reuse in mind. We therefore believe that an opportunity exists to increase the abstraction level at which stakeholders can reason about this product line. This paper reports an experience in which this TOS domain was analyzed, including the lessons learned in the construction and use of the TOS domain model. The experience is based on the application of extensions of well-known domain analysis techniques, together with the use of quality attribute templates traced to a feature model to deal with non-functional issues. A qualitative research method (action research) was used to carry out the experience.

Transforming the OOram Three-Model Architecture into a UML-based Process.

1 Partially granted by the CICYT (Science and Technology Joint Committee TIC97-0593-C05-02. Abstract Three-model architecture (TMA) is a software process defined for the OOram method, and aimed at developing business information systems. In our experience, TMA is very helpful in building client-server applications using object-oriented and database technology. However, in order to use a standard notation and to take full advantage of the benefits provided by use case-driven processes, it is convenient to transfer TMA to UML. In this paper, we present the translation of TMA into a UMLbased process. The enterprise, information and task models of TMA are translated into UML models while preserving their original purpose. An important benefit of the process obtained is to provide guidelines for the elicitation of use cases and domain classes from the enterprise model.

Co-located and distributed natural-language requirements specification: traditional versus reuse-based techniques

Requirements Engineering (RE) includes processes intended to elicit, analyse, specify and validate systems and software requirements throughout the software life cycle. Mastering the principles of RE is key to achieving the goals of better, cheaper and quicker systems and software development projects. It is also important to be prepared to work with remote teammates, as distributed and global projects are becoming more common. This paper presents an experiment with a total of 31 students from two universities in Spain and Morocco who were assigned to either a co‐located or a distributed team. Both traditional and reuse‐based requirements specification techniques were applied by the participants to produce requirements documents. Their outcomes were then analysed, and the approaches were compared from the point of view of their effect on a set of performance‐based and perception‐based variables in co‐located and distributed settings. We found significant differences in only productivity (Z = −2.320, p = 0.020) and difficulty (Z = −2.124, p = 0.034) as regards the scores attained for non‐reuse and reuse conditions, both in the co‐located modality. Our findings show that, in general, the participants attained similar results for requirements specification when using the two strategies in both distributed and non‐distributed environments. Copyright