Pierre-Jean Charrel

Eliciting requirements for an inter‐company cooperative information system

Purpose – The requirements engineering (RE) process constitutes the earliest phase of the information system development life cycle. Requirements elicitation is considered as one of the most critical activities of this phase. Moreover, requirements elicitation is still a challenge, especially in the distributed environment of so‐called inter‐company cooperative information systems (ICISs). The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology to elicit requirements for an ICIS.Design/methodology/approach – An analytical research approach was conducted. The current RE approaches, which are based either on goal, scenario or viewpoint were evaluated. Then the role of the elicitation technique selection step within the requirements elicitation process was examined. Finally the factors that affect this step in a distributed environment were studied. An example from the textile industry is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology.Findings – Though existing requirements elicitation approa...

AspeCis: an aspect-oriented approach to develop a cooperative information system

It is difficult for a single Information System (IS) to accomplish a complex task. One solution is to look for help of other ISs and make them cooperate, leading to so-called Cooperative Information System (CIS). So Information Systems cooperation is an active ongoing area of research in the field of information systems, where reuse is an important issue. Besides, the aspect paradigm is a promising avenue for reuse. Thus, we argue that it is interesting to propose an aspect approach to build a new information system capable to accomplish complex tasks based on the reuse of systems artifacts previously developed. According to our best of knowledge few works have tackled this question. In this paper, we present an aspect-oriented approach called AspeCis, applied from the requirements until the development phases, in order to develop a CIS from existing ISs by using their artifacts such as requirements, architectures and design.

INCONSISTENT REQUIREMENTS: AN ARGUMENTATION VIEW

In this article, we present a logical framework for reasoning about inconsistent requirements in the context of multi-viewpoint requirements engineering process. In order to analyse the sources of ...

Identifying and Modeling Non-Functional Concerns Relationships

Requirements elicitation step is of paramount importance in the requirements engineering process. In the distributed environment of so-called inter-company cooperative information system, this step is a thorny issue. To elicit require-ments for an inter-company cooperative information system, we early proposed a methodology called MAMIE (from MAcro to MIcro level requirements Elicitation) with an accompanied tool. In MAMIE methodology, requirements are the result of composing functional and non-functional concerns. Before non-functional concerns composition, it’s primary to identify relationships between them. According to the most existing approaches, a non-functional concern may have a negative, positive or null contribution on the other non-functional concerns. In this paper, we argue that using only these three contributions types is not sufficient to express relationships which may exist between non-functional concerns. Thus, we propose a process which aims to identify non-functional concerns’ relationships and model them using a fuzzy cognitive map. The resulting model is composed of non-functional concerns, relationships between them and the weight of these relationships expressed with linguistics fuzzy values. Using fuzzy cognitive maps to model non-functional concerns relationships allows moving from the conventional modelling toward developing a computer based model. An example from the textile industry is used to illustrate the applicability of our process.

MAMIE: A Methodology to Elicit Requirements in Inter-company Co-operative Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a methodology, namely MAMIE (from MAcro to MIcro level requirements Elictation) in order to elicit requirements for an Inter-company Co-operative Information Systems development. It is based on UML use cases and sequence diagrams: they represent understandable notations by all stakeholders and they are useful for acquiring, analyzing and modeling requirements. The sequence diagram allows also to model interaction between companies and constraints of co-operation. MAMIE methodology is also based on viewpoints which have advocated as a means of partitioning requirements as a set of partial specifications that are helpful for traceability and consistency management. Preliminary results suggest that MAMIE methodology is of valuable help to requirements engineers during elicitation process.

Prioritizing Non-functional Concerns in MAMIE Methodology

The increasing globalization of markets and companies demands more and more investigations of distributed requirements engineering. Requirements elicitation is organized as one of the most critical activities of the requirements engineering process. It is a difficult task enough when done locally, but it is even more difficult in a distributed environment due to cultural, language and time zone boundaries. In our previous research we have proposed a methodology to elicit requirements for an inter-company co-operative information system. In this methodology the analyst must specify a priority value for each non-functional concern that may be considered in the inter-company co-operation process. To do, s/he must take in consideration several viewpoints of concerned stakeholders. In order to help the analyst to better accomplish this task, we propose in the present paper a process based on Grunig and Hunt model to identify concerned stakeholders and Michell et al model to prioritize them. A mathematical function proposed to return the final non-functional concern priority constitutes a cornerstone of this process. Preliminary results suggest that this process is of valuable help to analysts during requirements elicitation.

Inconsistent requirements: an argumentation view

We present a logical framework for reasoning about inconsistent requirements in the context of the multi-viewpoint requirements engineering process. In order to analyse the sources of inconsistencies and to reason with inconsistent requirements, we present an argumentation view of the requirements. Intuitively, argumentation is a tool for reasoning with inconsistent knowledge: requirements are defined in terms of arguments (a conclusion with its support); then, a class of acceptable arguments is built (arguments with no counterarguments). We propose to characterize different classes of requirements which are ordered: from weakly confident to strongly confident (i.e. consistent). We present inference rules to build intra and inter-viewpoint reasoning. Inference rules are issued from the classes of requirements. We show how this work is useful for the requirements engineers to analyse inconsistent fragments of requirements.

Translation of Heterogeneous Requirements Meta-Models Through a Pivot Meta-Model.

Companies use these different approaches to elicit, specify, analyse and validate their requirements in different contexts. The globalization and the rapid development of information technologies sometimes require companies to work together in order to achieve common objectives as quickly as possible. We propose a Unified Requirements Engineering meta-model (UREM) that allows cooperation in the requirements engineering process between heterogeneous RE (Requirement Engineering) models. In this paper, we explore UREM as a pivot meta-model to ensure interoperability between heterogeneous RE models.

Translation of Requirements Engineering Models

The globalization and the rapid development of information and communication technologies encourage organizations to work together. In software development, many works have emerged to support this cooperation using different tools and methodologies. Most of them focus on the design-stage concerns. However, very little works have dealt with cooperation during the early stage of software projects, namely Requirements Engineering (RE), despite the importance of this stage for the failure or the success of software projects. There exist different kinds of approaches to support the RE process in different contexts, based on models such as goal, viewpoint and scenario oriented. Each of these models relies on concepts which differ from one model to another. One of the difficulties for organizations that intend to work together in the upstream phases of software projects is summarized by the following question: What is the most appropriate approach every partner has to adopt? In this paper, we propose a translation process between RE models in order to ensure that organizations with different types of RE backgrounds and methodologies can work together to achieve their objectives while still using their own approach. The translation is performed using a unified meta-model issued from a semantic process of computing similarities between concepts of RE models.

Information System Design as a Persistent Multi-Viewpoints Requirements Elicitation Process

Requirements Engineering, as the first stage of any system design project, often implies that respecting diversity during the upstream stages is an unavoidable feature of the design process. In the field of Information Systems, the ability to evolve is currently a pivotal quality of its computerised components. In order to introduce the necessary flexibility of any current organisation in its Information System, a framework is presented to view an Information System in a persistently evolving design state space where requirements are continuously elicited. The framework considers the Information System in terms of a system of signs. Viewed from this semiotic angle, each actor is a stakeholder of a particular viewpoint on the Information System and gives it some sense. We also introduce a new actor, the Requirements Semiotic Engineer, whose task is to organize the elicitation of the other actors’ requirements. A six-stage method is then sketched to organize the information system so that it is similar to a persistent multi-viewpoint requirements elicitation process.