William N. Robinson

Requirements interaction management

Requirements interaction management (RIM) is the set of activities directed toward the discovery, management, and disposition of critical relationships among sets of requirements, which has become a critical area of requirements engineering. This survey looks at the evolution of supporting concepts and their related literature, presents an issues-based framework for reviewing processes and products, and applies the framework in a review of RIM state-of-the-art. Finally, it presents seven research projects that exemplify this emerging discipline.

Monitoring Web service requirements

Businesses that rely on Web services are vulnerable to the problems of those Web services. Service contracts and warranties can provide some assurances. However, they provide traditional recourse, rather than timely alerts of impending problems. While electronic commerce has increased the speed of online transactions, the technology of monitoring online transactions has lagged behind. To address the problem of Web service monitoring, we integrated methods of requirements analysis and software execution monitoring. The resulting system assists analysts in the development of Web service requirements monitors. We presented here builds on prior research by: (1) building on a goal-based method for obstacle discovery, (2) illustrating the derivation of assigned monitors from obstacles, and (3) automatically deriving Web service monitors from high-level requirements descriptions. The framework, and tool, provides an important contribution by demonstrating how distributed concurrent Web service transactions can be monitored at the requirements level.

Awareness requirements for adaptive systems

Recently, there has been a growing interest in self-adaptive systems. Roadmap papers in this area point to feedback loops as a promising way of operationalizing adaptivity in such systems. In this paper, we define a new type of requirement - called Awareness Requirement - that can refer to other requirements and their success/failures. We propose a way to elicit and formalize such requirements and offer a requirements monitoring framework to support them.

Integrating multiple specifications using domain goals

Design is a process which inherently involves tradeoffs. We are currently pursuing a model of specification design which advocates the integration of multiple perspectives of a system. We have mapped the integration problem onto the negotiation problem of many issues between many agents in order to apply known resolution techniques. Part of that mapping requires the modeling of domain goals which serve as issues for negotiation. Herein, we describe the use of domain goals in our conflict resolution process which is applied during the integration of specifications. Consider the problem of integrating two databases which (I) have constraints governing their form, (2 1’ represent rich semantic entities, and 3) are the resu t of a large design effort-possibly con 6 ucted by multiple agents. Problems arise immediately: how does one determine (1) the correspondence between database entities, (2) the identification of conflicts, and (3) the resolution of those conflicts? Each of these problems in turn consists of subproblems: determining correspondences is a labeling P roblem that involves as ects of graph isomorphism lo] and concept learning 41; identification of conflicts requires P a theory of goa s and plans[29]; finally, a theory of compromise and negotiation IS necessary for the resolution of conflicts[22]. Instances of this integration problem may be found in the merging of database versions, program versions[l4], software designs[l2], and the area we are exploring-specification designs[25]. In this paper we will consider a model which uses the general notion of plan integration as part of its specification Permission to copy without fee all or part of this ma terial is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permis sion of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requries a fee and/or specific permission. integration knowledge. Viewed as an integration element of rich semantic entities (i.e., plans consist operators b , organized in a particular partial order, generated y a complex problem solving process. Commonly, the planning process involves the maintenance of a goal tree which records the derivation of subgoals and plan operators from the root goals of a plan. Our extended goal tree, termed the development record, plays a significant role in the characterization and resolution of integration interactions. In section 3, we describe the model around which we are constructing a computer-based system which automates integration via the maintenance and analysis of the development record. Section 4 traces the integration algorithm as two types of integrations are carried out. As a precursor, we describe the methodology by which we construct parallel designs and allow for their subsequent integration. Functional decomposition is a methodology in which software components can be independently designed under the constraints of common interfaces. Recognizing the benefits of such a methodology, Feather melded this approach with that of the transformational implementation paradigm[l] with the added twist that interface constraints need not be consistent across development lines[8 . I Such an approach benefits from incremental deve opment, i.e., (1) ease of understanding via a record of gradual refinement, (2) automation of specification editing operators, (3) reuse of (intermediate) specifications rather than code, and (4) maintenance of the specification by altering elaborations and then “repla ing” them to a create a new specification (cf. !?i!;2(t!)d t 2 It also benefits from parallel development, re UC ion lines o in the number of concerns along development, and (2) explicit consideration of compromises during the integration of independently developed specification components. We are are currently formalizing Feather’s model to allow for automation. Consider figure 1 as we describe our version of the Parallel Elaboration of Specifications (PES) methodology. At the top of the

Supporting the negotiation life cycle

Negotiation is often associated with the strategic posturing prior to agreements among nations or between management and labor. Computer negotiation is often associated with the “handshake” protocol between connecting computer modems. In fact, both are types of negotiation behavior. So broad and powerful are the techniques, that many human interactions, and increasingly human computer interactions, can be classified as negotiation behavior.

Creating a custom mass-production channel on the Internet

modity prices—with no switching costs. Alternatively, suppliers would like to sell mass-produced products at custom prices— with prohibitive switching costs. In the ongoing market tensions between buyers and suppliers, however, information technology

The brave new world of design requirements

Despite its success over the last 30 years, the field of Requirements Engineering (RE) is still experiencing fundamental problems that indicate a need for a change of focus to better ground its research on issues underpinning current practices. We posit that these practices have changed significantly in recent years. To this end we explore changes in software system operational environments, targets, and the process of RE. Our explorations include a field study, as well as two workshops that brought together experts from academia and industry. We recognize that these changes influence the nature of central RE research questions. We identify four new principles that underlie contemporary requirements processes, namely: (1) intertwining of requirements with implementation and organizational contexts, (2) dynamic evolution of requirements, (3) emergence of architectures as a critical stabilizing force, and (4) need to recognize unprecedented levels of design complexity. We recommend a re-focus of RE research based on a review and analysis of these four principles, and identify several theoretical and practical implications that flow from this analysis.

Managing requirements inconsistency with development goal monitors

Managing the development of software requirements can be a complex and difficult task. The environment is often chaotic. As analysts and customers leave the project, they are replaced by others who drive development in new directions. As a result, inconsistencies arise. Newer requirements introduce inconsistencies with older requirements. The introduction of such requirements inconsistencies may violate stated goals of development. In this article, techniques are presented that manage requirements document inconsistency by managing inconsistencies that arise between requirement development goals and requirements development enactment. A specialized development model, called a requirements dialog meta-model, is presented. This meta-model defines a conceptual framework for dialog goal definition, monitoring, and in the case of goal failure, dialog goal reestablishment. The requirements dialog meta-model is supported in an automated multiuser World Wide Web environment, called DEALSCRIBE. An exploratory case study of its use is reported. This research supports the conclusions that: an automated tool that supports the dialog meta-model can automate the monitoring and reestablishment of formal development goals; development goal monitoring can be used to determine statements of a development dialog that fail to satisfy development goals; and development goal monitoring can be used to manage inconsistencies in a developing requirements document. The application of DEALSCRIBE demonstrates that a dialog meta-model can enable a powerful environment for managing development and document inconsistencies.

Supporting multi-perspective requirements engineering

Supporting collaborating requirements engineers as they independently construct a specification is highly desirable. We show how collaborative requirements engineering can be supported using a planner, domain abstractions, and automated decision science techniques. In particular we show how requirements conflict resolution can be assisted through a combination of multi-agent multi-criteria optimization and heuristic resolution generation. We then summarize the use of our tool to rationally reconstruct a library specification. This line of research is significant in that it brings conflict detection and resolution into a requirements engineering framework. This particular work expands the automation found in previous results (W. Robinson, 1993).<<ETX>>

Implementing Rule-Based Monitors within a Framework for Continuous Requirements Monitoring

With the increasing complexity of information systems, it is becoming increasingly unclear as to how information system behaviors relate to stated requirements. Although requirements documents and Business Activity Monitoring can provide static and dynamic evidence for requirements compliance, neither provides a formal, real-time presentation of requirements satisfaction. The REQMON research project is constructing and validating methods and tools for requirements specification and real-time monitoring. The challenge is to simplify monitoring system construction while ensuring the fidelity and expressiveness of its feedback. To address this challenge, our integrative approach leverages a formal monitoring abstraction layer, dynamically configurable distributed monitors, and commercial software to define a theory for specifying, developing, and analyzing requirements monitoring systems. This article presents an implementation of rule-based monitors, which are derived from system requirements. Such an implementation can simplify the specification of temporal requirements monitors and can be efficient, as our analysis shows.