We describe a case study in which we evaluated an open-source electronic health record (EHR) systempsilas requirements for compliance with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Our findings suggest that legal compliance must be requirements-driven, while establishing due diligence under the law must be test-driven.
{"title":"Aligning Requirements with HIPAA in the iTrust System","authors":"Aaron K. Massey, Paul N. Otto, A. Antón","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.53","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.53","url":null,"abstract":"We describe a case study in which we evaluated an open-source electronic health record (EHR) systempsilas requirements for compliance with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Our findings suggest that legal compliance must be requirements-driven, while establishing due diligence under the law must be test-driven.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114646113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A method of generating alternative/exceptional scenarios using differential information is presented. Behaviors of normal scenarios of similar purpose are quite similar, while actors and data in scenarios are different among these scenarios. We derive the differential information between them and apply the information to generate new alternative/exceptional scenarios.
{"title":"A Method of Scenario Generation with Differential Scenario","authors":"Masayuki Makino, A. Ohnishi","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.17","url":null,"abstract":"A method of generating alternative/exceptional scenarios using differential information is presented. Behaviors of normal scenarios of similar purpose are quite similar, while actors and data in scenarios are different among these scenarios. We derive the differential information between them and apply the information to generate new alternative/exceptional scenarios.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"229 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122066368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eero J. Uusitalo, Marko Komssi, Marjo Kauppinen, A. Davis
An increasing number of organizations are interested in binding requirements and testing more closely together. Based on a series of practitioner interviews conducted in five Finnish organizations, this paper presents a set of good practices that can be applied to create a stronger link between requirements engineering and testing. These practices include early tester participation particularly in requirements reviews, setting up traceability policies, taking feature requests from testers into account, and linking testing personnel with requirement owners. Due to reported hardships in implementing complete test traceability to requirements, communication links between testers and requirement owners are suggested in order to overcome the deficiencies of document links.
{"title":"Linking Requirements and Testing in Practice","authors":"Eero J. Uusitalo, Marko Komssi, Marjo Kauppinen, A. Davis","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.30","url":null,"abstract":"An increasing number of organizations are interested in binding requirements and testing more closely together. Based on a series of practitioner interviews conducted in five Finnish organizations, this paper presents a set of good practices that can be applied to create a stronger link between requirements engineering and testing. These practices include early tester participation particularly in requirements reviews, setting up traceability policies, taking feature requests from testers into account, and linking testing personnel with requirement owners. Due to reported hardships in implementing complete test traceability to requirements, communication links between testers and requirement owners are suggested in order to overcome the deficiencies of document links.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114165191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In their seminal paper in the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Zave and Jackson established a core ontology for requirements engineering (RE) and used it to formulate the "requirements problem", thereby defining what it means to successfully complete RE. Given that stakeholders of the system-to-be communicate the information needed to perform RE, we show that Zave and Jackson's ontology is incomplete. It does not cover all types of basic concerns that the stakeholders communicate. These include beliefs, desires, intentions, and attitudes. In response, we propose a core ontology that covers these concerns and is grounded in sound conceptual foundations resting on a foundational ontology. The new core ontology for RE leads to a new formulation of the requirements problem that extends Zave and Jackson's formulation. We thereby establish new standards for what minimum information should be represented in RE languages and new criteria for determining whether RE has been successfully completed.
{"title":"Revisiting the Core Ontology and Problem in Requirements Engineering","authors":"Ivan Jureta, J. Mylopoulos, Stéphane Faulkner","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.13","url":null,"abstract":"In their seminal paper in the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Zave and Jackson established a core ontology for requirements engineering (RE) and used it to formulate the \"requirements problem\", thereby defining what it means to successfully complete RE. Given that stakeholders of the system-to-be communicate the information needed to perform RE, we show that Zave and Jackson's ontology is incomplete. It does not cover all types of basic concerns that the stakeholders communicate. These include beliefs, desires, intentions, and attitudes. In response, we propose a core ontology that covers these concerns and is grounded in sound conceptual foundations resting on a foundational ontology. The new core ontology for RE leads to a new formulation of the requirements problem that extends Zave and Jackson's formulation. We thereby establish new standards for what minimum information should be represented in RE languages and new criteria for determining whether RE has been successfully completed.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"539 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114307737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
U.S. laws and regulations are designed to support broad societal goals, such as accessibility, privacy and safety. To demonstrate that a product complies with these goals, businesses need to identify and refine legal requirements into product requirements and integrate the product requirements into their ongoing product design and testing processes. We report on an industry case study in which product requirements were specified to comply with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. This study sought to identify: limitations in existing requirements-acquisition methods; compliance gaps between previously specified product requirements and Section 508; and additional sources of knowledge that are necessary to refine legal requirements into product requirements to comply with the law. Our study reveals the need for a community of practice and generalizable techniques that can reduce ambiguity, complexity and redundancy in legal and product requirements and manage innovation in product requirements. We present these findings with several examples from Section 508 regulations and actual product requirements that are implemented in Cisco products.
{"title":"Legal Requirements, Compliance and Practice: An Industry Case Study in Accessibility","authors":"T. Breaux, A. Antón, K. Boucher, M. Dorfman","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.36","url":null,"abstract":"U.S. laws and regulations are designed to support broad societal goals, such as accessibility, privacy and safety. To demonstrate that a product complies with these goals, businesses need to identify and refine legal requirements into product requirements and integrate the product requirements into their ongoing product design and testing processes. We report on an industry case study in which product requirements were specified to comply with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. This study sought to identify: limitations in existing requirements-acquisition methods; compliance gaps between previously specified product requirements and Section 508; and additional sources of knowledge that are necessary to refine legal requirements into product requirements to comply with the law. Our study reveals the need for a community of practice and generalizable techniques that can reduce ambiguity, complexity and redundancy in legal and product requirements and manage innovation in product requirements. We present these findings with several examples from Section 508 regulations and actual product requirements that are implemented in Cisco products.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121984782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
RE use in industry is hampered by a poor understanding of RE practices and their benefits. Teaching RE at the university level is therefore an important endeavor. This education can ideally be provided at the university level as an integrated part of developing the requisite RE and software engineering technical skills, shortly before students become engineers and enter the workforce. However, much social wisdom is packed into RE methods. It is unrealistic to expect students with little organizational experience to understand this body of knowledge. The course described in this paper uses an active, affective, experiential pedagogy giving students the opportunity of experiencing a simulated work environment that demonstrates the social/design-problem complexities and richness of a development organization in the throws of creating a new product. Emotional and technical debriefing is conducted after each meaningful experience so that students and faculty, alike, can better understand the professional relevancies of what they have just experienced. This includes an examination of the many forces experienced in industrial settings but not normally discussed in academic settings. The course uses a low-tech social simulation rather than software simulation so that students learn through interaction with real people and therefore are confronted with the complexity of true social relationships.
{"title":"Requirements Engineering Education in the 21st Century, An Experiential Learning Approach","authors":"Gil Regev, D. C. Gause, A. Wegmann","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.28","url":null,"abstract":"RE use in industry is hampered by a poor understanding of RE practices and their benefits. Teaching RE at the university level is therefore an important endeavor. This education can ideally be provided at the university level as an integrated part of developing the requisite RE and software engineering technical skills, shortly before students become engineers and enter the workforce. However, much social wisdom is packed into RE methods. It is unrealistic to expect students with little organizational experience to understand this body of knowledge. The course described in this paper uses an active, affective, experiential pedagogy giving students the opportunity of experiencing a simulated work environment that demonstrates the social/design-problem complexities and richness of a development organization in the throws of creating a new product. Emotional and technical debriefing is conducted after each meaningful experience so that students and faculty, alike, can better understand the professional relevancies of what they have just experienced. This includes an examination of the many forces experienced in industrial settings but not normally discussed in academic settings. The course uses a low-tech social simulation rather than software simulation so that students learn through interaction with real people and therefore are confronted with the complexity of true social relationships.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127793540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Thew, A. Sutcliffe, O. Bruijn, J. McNaught, R. Procter, C. C. Venters, I. Buchan
We describe the experience of using a combination of requirements engineering techniques (scenarios, storyboards, observation and workshops) in an e-science application to develop a geographical analysis tool for epidemiologists. Problems encountered were: eliciting tacit knowledge; and creating new visions and working practices for our users. The combination of techniques worked well, although observation of working practice was not so effective in this scientific domain, where activity is mainly cognitive.
{"title":"Experience in e-Science Requirements Engineering","authors":"S. Thew, A. Sutcliffe, O. Bruijn, J. McNaught, R. Procter, C. C. Venters, I. Buchan","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.34","url":null,"abstract":"We describe the experience of using a combination of requirements engineering techniques (scenarios, storyboards, observation and workshops) in an e-science application to develop a geographical analysis tool for epidemiologists. Problems encountered were: eliciting tacit knowledge; and creating new visions and working practices for our users. The combination of techniques worked well, although observation of working practice was not so effective in this scientific domain, where activity is mainly cognitive.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115515055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper points to problems in the joint use of the use case model and the domain model in the system requirements definition phase. It proposes a specialization of use cases called info cases, from which a domain model can be derived. Semi-formal rules are presented for the derivation, showing evidence of the integration between these models.
{"title":"Info Cases: Integrating Use Cases and Domain Models","authors":"Michel Heluey Fortuna, C. Werner, M. Borges","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.43","url":null,"abstract":"This paper points to problems in the joint use of the use case model and the domain model in the system requirements definition phase. It proposes a specialization of use cases called info cases, from which a domain model can be derived. Semi-formal rules are presented for the derivation, showing evidence of the integration between these models.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122516449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For several decades there has been a debate in the computing sciences about the relative roles of design and empirical research, and about the contribution of design and research methodology to the relevance of research results. In this minitutorial we review this debate and compare it with evidence about the relation between design and research in the history of science and technology. Our review shows that research and design are separate but concurrent activities, and that relevance of research results depends on problem setting rather than on rigorous methods. We argue that rigorous scientific methods separate design from research, and we give simple model for how to do this in a problem-driven way.
{"title":"Design Science, Engineering Science and Requirements Engineering","authors":"R. Wieringa, J. Heerkens","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.63","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.63","url":null,"abstract":"For several decades there has been a debate in the computing sciences about the relative roles of design and empirical research, and about the contribution of design and research methodology to the relevance of research results. In this minitutorial we review this debate and compare it with evidence about the relation between design and research in the history of science and technology. Our review shows that research and design are separate but concurrent activities, and that relevance of research results depends on problem setting rather than on rigorous methods. We argue that rigorous scientific methods separate design from research, and we give simple model for how to do this in a problem-driven way.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131814933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Requirements engineering is arguably the most important activity in the development of complex, software-intensive systems. Generally, the higher the complexity of the system under development, the more exacerbated the importance of good requirements engineering becomes. While numerous researchers in academia have focused on requirements engineering, there is still a need for practical guidelines that scale to real-world applications. This paper presents requirements engineering challenges faced and lessons learned addressing these challenges in a large-scale industrial project. The implementation of these lessons greatly contributed to the success of the project.
{"title":"Requirements Engineering in the Development of Large-Scale Systems","authors":"S. Konrad, M. Gall","doi":"10.1109/RE.2008.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/RE.2008.31","url":null,"abstract":"Requirements engineering is arguably the most important activity in the development of complex, software-intensive systems. Generally, the higher the complexity of the system under development, the more exacerbated the importance of good requirements engineering becomes. While numerous researchers in academia have focused on requirements engineering, there is still a need for practical guidelines that scale to real-world applications. This paper presents requirements engineering challenges faced and lessons learned addressing these challenges in a large-scale industrial project. The implementation of these lessons greatly contributed to the success of the project.","PeriodicalId":340621,"journal":{"name":"2008 16th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114856590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}