Improvement of the method of scenario analysis of functional requirements to an information system

Mohammed Q Mohammed,Saif Q Muhamed,Maksym Ievlanov,Zarina Gazetdinova

doi:10.15587/1729-4061.2019.170351

Abstract

We have considered a task on improving the base method for scenario analysis of the functional requirements to an information system (IS). The results from studies of the methods for scenario analysis of the functional requirements to IS have been analyzed. Their main drawback in our opinion is the need for the implementation of these methods by analysts manually only. To overcome this shortcoming, it has been proposed to improve the base method for scenario analysis by using the models and methods based on a formal knowledge representation.For a formal description of the representation of a scenario for implementing a functional requirement at the level of knowledge, it has been proposed to use a model of structural patterns in the design of functional requirements. It has been shown that the formal description of knowledge derived from the Use Case diagrams is a special case of a given model. We have proposed a model of the subclass of structural patterns for designing scenarios for the implementation of functional requirements.An improved method of scenario analysis of functional requirements to IS has been constructed. The essence of improvement is the selection from the publications of scenarios for meeting the requirements of knowledge and a subsequent analysis of knowledge-oriented descriptions of these scenarios in order to identify overlapping scenarios for the implementation of various functional requirements to IS. To identify and address the cases of such duplication, it has been proposed to use the improved method of synthesis of architecture descriptions variants for a created IS.An example is provided of testing the improved method of scenario analysis of functional requirements in the course of analysis of functional requirements to a project of the functional module of labor safety. The verification results confirm reliability of the proposed method.The proposed improved method for scenario analysis of functional requirements to IS makes it possible to obtain a description of the architecture of a created IS based on a much smaller amount of information on the functional requirements to IS.

Highlights

Modern trends in the development of IT sector pay special attention to reducing unproductive expenses of IT projects
We have adapted the formal representation of patterns for designing requirements to information systems (IS) at the level of knowledge in terms of the features in the description of scenarios for fulfilling functional requirements by rightsholders in the form of the Use Case diagrams
It is shown that the Use Case diagram elements can be formally described as special cases of frames, the relationships between which have no their own semantics

Summary

Introduction

Modern trends in the development of IT sector pay special attention to reducing unproductive expenses of IT projects. The use of UML, and, in particular, the Use Case diagrams for the description of scenarios for meeting the requirements by rightsholders requires the development of special models, methods, and information technologies to formalize and automate the work on a requirements analysis. The base method for scenario analysis in IT projects aimed at creating information systems (IS) is, at present, implemented by analysts mostly manually In this case, Stages 1 and 2 are performed by analysts based on general recommendations on the collection and publication of the rightsholders’ requirements. Stages 3 and 4 are performed by analysts with the use of methods for a visual analysis of the Use Case diagrams, which describe the stated functional requirements to the system Such an organization of work stems from the fact that existing CASE-tools for visual modeling, as well as information technology to control requirements, have no special functions to analyze the Use Case diagrams. It is a relevant task to automate the method for analyzing the scenarios of fulfilling the rightsholders’ requirements, which would make it possible to reduce the time required to perform this analysis and to eliminate errors caused by the analysts’ lack of attention

Literature review and problem statement

The aim and objectives of the study

Conclusions

Requirements cybernetics