Luisa Mich

Market research for requirements analysis using linguistic tools

Numerous studies in recent months have proposed the use of linguistic instruments to support requirements analysis. There are two main reasons for this: (i) the progress made in natural language processing and (ii) the need to provide the developers of software systems with support in the early phases of requirements definition and conceptual modelling. This paper presents the results of an online market research intended (a) to assess the economic advantages of developing a CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tool that integrates linguistic analysis techniques for documents written in natural language, and (b) to verify the existence of the potential demand for such a tool. The research included a study of the language – ranging from completely natural to highly restricted – used in documents available for requirements analysis, an important factor given that on a technological level there is a trade-off between the language used and the performance of the linguistic instruments. To determine the potential demand for such tool, some of the survey questions dealt with the adoption of development methodologies and consequently with models and support tools; other questions referred to activities deemed critical by the companies involved. Through statistical correspondence analysis of the responses, we were able to outline two “profiles” of companies that correspond to two potential market niches, which are characterised by their very different approach to software development.

Evaluating and designing Web site quality

There are many reasons to evaluate a Web sites quality. The growth of e-commerce, for example, has made a companys success more dependent on the quality of its Web site, whether its goal is commerce or content presentation. We developed the 2QCV3Q model to help site owners and developers evaluate Web site quality and incorporate these findings into site design. Starting with the assumption that a Web site is a hypermedia system primarily concerned with communication, we used classical rhetoric to create this model.

NL-OOPS: from natural language to object oriented requirements using the natural language processing system LOLITA

This paper describes NL-OOPS, a CASE tool that supports requirements analysis by generating object oriented models from natural language requirements documents. The full natural language analysis is obtained using as a core system the Natural Language Processing System LOLITA. The object oriented analysis module implements an algorithm for the extraction of the objects and their associations for use in creating object models.

Requirements for tools for ambiguity identification and measurement in natural language requirements specifications

This paper proposes a two-step approach to identifying ambiguities in natural language (NL) requirements specifications (RSs). In the first step, a tool would apply a set of ambiguity measures to a RS in order to identify potentially ambiguous sentences in the RS. In the second step, another tool would show what specifically is potentially ambiguous about each potentially ambiguous sentence. The final decision of ambiguity remains with the human users of the tools. The paper describes several requirements-identification experiments with several small NL RSs using four prototypes of the first tool based on linguistic instruments and resources of different complexity and a manual mock-up of the second tool.

Applying a pragmatics-based creativity-fostering technique to requirements elicitation

This paper proposes the application to requirements elicitation of an innovative creativity fostering technique based on a model of the pragmatics of communication, the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM). The EPM has been used to define a creative process, called EPMcreate (EPM Creative Requirements Engineering TEchnique) that consists of sixteen steps. In each step, the problem is analyzed according to one elementary behavior identified by the EPM. Each behavior suggests that the analyst look at the problem from a different combination of users’ viewpoints. The feasibility and effectiveness of the technique in requirements elicitation was demonstrated by experiments on two projects with very different characteristics. Each experiment compared the performances of two analysis teams, one of which used EPMcreate and the other of which used brainstorming. The results of both experiments highlights the higher effectiveness of EPMcreate. Additional data from the experiments are examined for other insights into how and why EPMcreate is effective.

NL-OOPS: A Requirements Analysis Tool Based On Natural Language Processing

The main goal of the NL-OOPS (acronym for Natural Language – ObjectOriented Production System) project is to develop a tool supporting objectoriented analysis using natural language (NL) processing. Requirements documents are analysed with LOLITA, a large-scale NL processing system, developed at Durham University and 3F Ltd. Both, the knowledge in the documents and that already stored in the knowledge base of LOLITA can then be used to produce requirements models at different levels of detail. Object oriented modelling is based on a two-phase algorithm for the identification of classes and associations. Moreover, the latest version of NL-OOPS supports traceability between the original input texts, their representation in LOLITA and the final models. To illustrate the main features and the performance of the tools we refer to the Automated Teller Machine study case described by the authors of the Object Modeling Technique.

GaiusT: supporting the extraction of rights and obligations for regulatory compliance

Abstract Ensuring compliance of software systems with government regulations, policies, and laws is a complex problem. Generally speaking, solutions to the problem first identify rights and obligations defined in the law and then treat these as requirements for the system under design. This work examines the challenge of developing tool support for extracting such requirements from legal documents. To address this challenge, we have developed a tool called GaiusT. The tool is founded on a framework for textual semantic annotation. It semiautomatically generates elements of requirements models, including actors, rights, and obligations. We present the complexities of annotating prescriptive text, the architecture of GaiusT, and the process by which annotation is accomplished. We also present experimental results from two case studies to illustrate the application of the tool and its effectiveness relative to manual efforts. The first case study is based on the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, while the second analyzes the Italian accessibility law for information technology instruments.

Text mining through semi automatic semantic annotation

The Web is the greatest information source in human history. Unfortunately, mining knowledge out of this source is a laborious and error-prone task. Many researchers believe that a solution to the problem can be founded on semantic annotations that need to be inserted in web-based documents and guide information extraction and knowledge mining. In this paper, we further elaborate a tool-supported process for semantic annotation of documents based on techniques and technologies traditionally used in software analysis and reverse engineering for large-scale legacy code bases. The outcomes of the paper include an experimental evaluation framework and empirical results based on two case studies adopted from the Tourism sector. The conclusions suggest that our approach can facilitate the semi-automatic annotation of large document bases.

Approximate Reasoning in the Modeling of Consensus in Group Decisions

In this paper we propose an approach to consensus reaching based on linguistically expressed individual opinions and on so-called opinion changing aversion. We operate within this basic context: there is a group of experts which must choose a preferred alternative from a finite set of admissible ones according to several criteria. Each expert is called upon evaluate linguistically the alternatives in terms of their performance with respect to each criterion. The task of the experts is to reach some agreement during a consensus reaching process directed by a third person called the moderator. The experts are expected subsequently to change their testimonies until sufficient agreement (consensus) has been reached. The measure of consensus depends on a function estimated for each expert according to his/her aversion to opinion change.

Collaborative creativity in requirements engineering: Analysis and practical advice

Requirements engineering (RE) often entails interdisciplinary groups of people working together to find novel and valuable solutions to a complex design problem. In such situations RE requires creativity in a form where interactions among stakeholders are particularly important: collaborative creativity. However, few studies have explicitly concentrated on understanding collaborative creativity in RE, resulting in limited advice for practitioners on how to support this aspect of RE. This paper provides a framework of factors characterising collaborative creative processes in RE. These factors enable a systematic investigation of the collaboratively creative nature of RE. They can potentially guide practitioners when facilitating RE efforts, and also provide researchers with ideas on where to focus when developing methods and tools for RE.