Requirements Engineering Approach Research Articles

Towards a systematic and knowledge-based requirements and conceptual engineering for modular electrolysis plants

The production of green hydrogen and its scale-up require the enginering and installation of new electrolysis plants. Modular electrolysis plants ease the scale-up as they allow to add further modules with growing demand. While many engineering methods focus on the detailed planning of the plants and their automation systems, the early engineering phases are scarcely considered, supported or formalized. However, especially these phases are crucial in the current scale-up of modular electrolysis plants. In this paper, an intention-based engineering approach for the early engineering phases Requirements Engineering and Conceptual Engineering for modular electrolysis plants is presented and evaluated based on three different use cases. The approach is based on Goal-oriented Requirements Engineering from Software Engineering and relies on an early, systematic as well as formalized description and analysis of intentions of different engineering disciplines.

An iterative approach for model-based requirements engineering in large collaborative projects: A detailed experience report

In this paper, we report on our 7 years of practical experience designing, developing, deploying, using, and evolving an iterative Model-based Requirements Engineering (MBRE) approach and language in the context of five large European collaborative projects providing complex software-intensive solutions. Based on significant data sets collected both during project execution and via surveys realized afterward, we demonstrate that such a model-based approach can bring interesting benefits in terms of scalability (e.g., a large number of handled requirements), heterogeneity (e.g., partners with different types of RE background), adaptability and extensibility (e.g., to various project's needs), traceability (e.g., from the requirements to the software components), automation (e.g., documentation generation), consistency and quality (e.g., central model), and usefulness or usability (e.g., actual deployment and practical use). Along the way, we illustrate the application of our MBRE approach and language with concrete elements from these several European collaborative projects. More broadly, we discuss the general benefits and current limitations of using such a model-based approach and corresponding language, as well as the related lessons we learned during these past years.

An Approach to Integrated Digital Requirements Engineering

AbstractSystems engineering activities in the concept and development phases have evolved continuously for decades. The deployment of digital thread, digital engineering, MBSE approaches, and modeling and simulation techniques have driven part of this evolution.Despite this trend, requirements are still largely textual and expressed in natural language, and requirements engineering activities are still often document‐based. However, model‐based requirements‐engineering approaches have emerged in recent years and have demonstrated significant benefits, including improved requirements quality, less ambiguity, and early and efficient verification and validation.The goal of this paper is to present the current outcomes and perspectives of setting up an Integrated Digital Requirements Engineering approach as developed within our company. This approach seeks to optimize usability and maximize benefits to support end‐to‐end V&V activities while fully integrating into MBSE workflows.

Agile Software Requirements Engineering Challenges-Solutions—A Conceptual Framework from Systematic Literature Review

Agile software requirements engineering processes enable quick responses to reflect changes in the client’s software requirements. However, there are challenges associated with agile requirements engineering processes, which hinder fast, sustainable software development. Research addressing the challenges with available solutions is patchy, diverse and inclusive. In this study, we use a systematic literature review coupled with thematic classification and gap mapping analysis to examine extant solutions against challenges; the typologies/classifications of challenges faced with agile software development in general and specifically in requirements engineering and how the solutions address the challenges. Our study covers the period from 2009 to 2023. Scopus—the largest database for credible academic publications was searched. Using the exclusion criteria to filter the articles, a total of 78 valid papers were selected and reviewed. Following our investigation, we develop a framework that takes a three-dimensional view of agile requirements engineering solutions and suggest an orchestrated approach balancing the focus between the business context, project management and agile techniques. This study contributes to the theoretical frontier of agile software requirement engineering approaches and guidelines for practice.

Semi-structured expert interview-based requirements elicitation for a digitalized production ramp-up

Due to the ever-shortening innovation cycles and the rapid change of customer demands, enterprises introduce new, innovative, and modern products at an increasingly faster frequency and desirably lower costs. The technological change of products and mass customization increase the product complexity. This development requires manufacturing enterprises to perform more frequent production ramp-ups. Many production ramp-up projects miss the time, cost, and quality targets, causing manufacturing enterprises to lose potential profit due to later market introduction. Although digital tools are widely applied during the serial production phase, their potential during production ramp-up is hardly investigated in the scientific literature. Moreover, no guidelines exist on how to use digital tools during the production ramp-up in various industries. To provide data-driven support for the production ramp-up phase, requirements for the functionality of digital tools need to be defined. Henceforth, this paper applies a requirements engineering (RE) approach to elicit the requirements for digital tools to support the production ramp-up phase based on a comprehensive literature review and semi-structured expert interviews. In total, 13 experts from seven different industries participated in the interviews. After introducing the necessary theoretical foundations and the current state of research in ramp-up management literature, the RE process is described in detail. The RE process is based on user stories – an agile development tool – and the ISO 29148, which outlines an international standard for RE processes. The result is a set of requirements for the functionality of digital tools during the production ramp-up phase. Finally, the paper presents an outlook on future research perspectives for applying the elicited requirements in practice.

SRE_BBC: A Self-Adaptive Security Enabled Requirements Engineering Approach for SLA Smart Contracts in Blockchain-Based Cloud Systems.

Current blockchain-based cloud (BBC) systems have several security vulnerabilities regarding smart contracts (SC), and several attacks have been reported recently. The SC development lacks standard design processes that follow software lifecycle principles to model secure SC. Secondly, the security mechanisms in the SC are not constantly evolved to resist evolving adversary attacks. BBC systems lack self-adaptive security capability to make spontaneous decisions when adversarial attacks are encountered. To build a self-adaptive secure BBC system that follows standard software development lifecycle principles to model secure SC, we propose the so-called self-adaptive security RE_BBC framework. The framework would utilize the MAPE-BBC adaptation loop to make decisions internally based on the threat models, goal models, and service level agreement (SLA) SC security specifications. The framework identifies vulnerabilities and threats and takes precautionary measures using self-adaptive SC agents. We validated the proposed methodology theoretically and empirically, and statistically proved the research questions and hypothesis using the t-test and Mann–Whitney U test. Subsequently, we compare our proposed approach with the Security Quality Requirements Engineering approach (SQUARE). The feasibility results and the replicated study results indicate that the proposed approach outperformed the SQUARE approach in terms of artifacts quality, self-adaptive security evaluation quality, efficiency in response time, complexity, and usefulness of the proposed approach for the Healthcare Data Management (HDM) system. SC security developers can immensely benefit from our proposed methodology. They need not reengineer SC from scratch; depending on their security needs and plan, the contract can be adapted to execute a new plan.

Early timing analysis based on scenario requirements and platform models

Distributed, software-intensive systems (e.g., in the automotive sector) must fulfill communication requirements under hard real-time constraints. The requirements have to be documented and validated carefully using a systematic requirements engineering (RE) approach, for example, by applying scenario-based requirements notations. The resources of the execution platforms and their properties (e.g., CPU frequency or bus throughput) induce effects on the timing behavior, which may lead to violations of the real-time requirements. Nowadays, the platform properties and their induced timing effects are verified against the real-time requirements by means of timing analysis techniques mostly implemented in commercial-off-the-shelf tools. However, such timing analyses are conducted in late development phases since they rely on artifacts produced during these phases (e.g., the platform-specific code). In order to enable early timing analyses already during RE, we extend a scenario-based requirements notation with allocation means to platform models and define operational semantics for the purpose of simulation-based, platform-aware timing analyses. We illustrate and evaluate the approach with an automotive software-intensive system.

Microgrid system design based on model based systems engineering: the case study in the Amazon region / Projeto de sistemas de microrredes baseado em engenharia de sistemas baseado em modelos: um estudo de caso na região Amazônica

Microgrid is a technically and economically viable opportunity to meet the demands of populations that, for various reasons, do not have access to electricity. The complexity of Smart Grid (SG) systems requires considerable engineering effort in the design process. Designing this type of complex system requires new approaches, methods, concepts and engineering tools. Where, requirements analysis plays a major role in better characterizing, understanding and specifying the domain of application that SG systems should solve. This work presents a systemic proposal based specifically on System Systems (SoS) which anticipates the formalization of requirements, aiming to understand, analyze and design SG within the scope of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). The definition of a microgrid from the SoS perspective is presented in order to provide a complete view of its life cycle. Requirements would be represented in an Objective Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) approach, specifically using visual diagrams based on the Keep All Objectives Satisfied (KAOS) method, where network operation and control will be formally represented. A case study for small communities in the equatorial Amazon Forest is used as a case study for the proposed method.

Effective Hybrid Content-Based Collaborative Filtering Approach for Requirements Engineering

Requirements engineering (RE) is among the most valuable and critical processes in software development. The quality of this process significantly affects the success of a software project. An important step in RE is requirements elicitation, which involves collecting project-related requirements from different sources. Repositories of reusable requirements are typically important sources of an increasing number of reusable software requirements. However, the process of searching such repositories to collect valuable project-related requirements is time-consuming and difficult to perform accurately. Recommender systems have been widely recognized as an effective solution to such problem. Accordingly, this study proposes an effective hybrid content-based collaborative filtering recommendation approach. The proposed approach will support project stakeholders in mitigating the risk of missing requirements during requirements elicitation by identifying related requirements from software requirement repositories. The experimental results on the RALIC dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach considerably outperforms baseline collaborative filtering-based recommendation methods in terms of prediction accuracy and coverage in addition to mitigating the data sparsity and cold-start item problems.

ОБЗОР МЕТОДОЛОГИЙ ПЕРЕХОДА ОТ ТРЕБОВАНИЙ К РЕШЕНИЯМ В СИСТЕМНОЙ ИНЖЕНЕРИИ

The creation of rules for transitions between design stages: the goals of the consumer of the system, system requirements, technical solutions and consumer properties of systems, remains one of the most important aspects of the development of complex systems. The article discusses the INCOSE decisions on the topic and justifies the need to introduce regularity in connection between the design stages in order to validate and validate each action. To simplify the transitions between the stages, three methodologies are compared with each other: the unified modeling language UML, the ontological language OntoUML and the modeling methodology IDEF0, the article also explains why it is suggested to apply the IDEF0 notation together with the Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering approach, which allows compensating for some of the shortcomings of that notation

Gamification for Student Achievement in Classroom: In Search of Requirement for Student Achievement Application

There are numerous methods available in the education arena for increasing student participation in class. The experience that students have during class is critical not just for the students, but also for the instructor. Student achievement in the classroom can be increased to the point that the student enjoys performing class tasks. Problems arise when the students are burned out because they are exhausted by learning, especially online learning during the pandemic situation. It is necessary to develop an application that may be utilized as a tool to assist teachers and students in managing student achievement through the use of gamification. The objective of this study is to ascertain which requirements and functions should be incorporated into the design of the student achievement application. User centered requirement engineering approach is used in this research to elicit the requirement from the users. Lecturers and students were employed as respondents in this study to ascertain the development phase's priorities and essential functions. The application's functions and characteristics are separated into two broad categories: technical and usability / content. The Delphi technique is used to identify the function/characteristics. Further research could be conducted to develop systems / applications based on the functional requirements identified during the study in order to develop a student achievement application.

A Methodological Approach to Evaluate Security Requirements Engineering Methodologies: Application to the IREHDO2 Project Context

An effective network security requirement engineering is needed to help organizations in capturing cost-effective security solutions that protect networks against malicious attacks while meeting the business requirements. The diversity of currently available security requirement engineering methodologies leads security requirements engineers to an open question: How to choose one? We present a global evaluation methodology that we applied during the IREHDO2 project to find a requirement engineering method that could improve network security. Our evaluation methodology includes a process to determine pertinent evaluation criteria and a process to evaluate the requirement engineering methodologies. Our main contribution is to involve stakeholders (i.e., security requirements engineers) in the evaluation process by following a requirement engineering approach. We describe our experiments conducted during the project with security experts and the feedback we obtained. Although we applied it to evaluate three requirements engineering methods (KAOS, STS and SEPP) in the context of network security, our evaluation methodology can be instantiated in other contexts and other methods.

Survey Evaluation of an Approach for Dynamic Software Product Lines

In Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs) product configuration occurs at runtime. Modelling variability and configuring the product in DSPLs should consider the context and non-functional requirements (NFRs) satisfaction. ConG4DaS (Contextual Goal models For Dynamic Software product lines) is a Requirements Engineering (RE) approach for DSPL which supports (i) modelling of variability with goals, NFRs, contexts and the relationship be-tween them; and (ii) offers a product configuration based on contexts, NFRs and their priority and interactions. In this paper, we present a survey evaluation of ConG4DaS with RE and DSPL researchers in regard to the perceived usefulness. In the survey, both RE and DSPL researchers perceived ConG4DaS as useful for modelling and configuring DSPLs. However, the RE group gave more positive answers than the DSPL group.

A Formal Approach to Requirements Engineering of Automated Systems: Facing the Challenge for New Automated Systems

It is a consensus that intelligent manufacturing plants should be automated, especially in what concerns automated processes to Industry 4.0. This new manufacturing approach is based on multifunctional distributed systems that, for its turn, depend on a sound design requirements phase. Consequently, the requirement specifications became even more significant in the design of intelligent manufacturing systems, where the possibility to analyze requirements previously could save time and effort. Frequently, relevant requirements assumptions change during the engineering process due to emergent and volatile requirements—called “scope creep.” A revision of the requirements approach should be demanding to minimize this problem. The proposal presented in this work anticipates the formal representation of automated systems requirements to allow the proper analysis and validation. Also, since conventional production lines have been replaced by a product-service (production) systems (PSS), there is pressure to review the requirements phase, mainly to automated systems. To increase the accuracy, we propose a requirements cycle composed of modeling, analysis, and (formal) verification where formalization is anticipated by capturing visual modeled requirements. Alternative approaches to the functional method are also explored, considering the Goal-oriented Requirements Engineering approach, the best fit to PSS. A formal process to treat requirements in a functional approach, represented by UML diagrams, is transferred to Petri Nets and submitted to formal analysis. Traditional translation from UML to Petri Nets is replaced by an object-oriented match to Petri Nets extensions covered by the standard ISO/IEC 15.909. A comparison between this approach and the goal-oriented raises a discussion about the requirements efficiency dilemma, where functionality could be pointed as the main reason to scope creep. Therefore, a strictly functional approach is proposed with a new transference algorithm, and the results are used to support the discussion about using goal-oriented alternatives. A case study of the chemical industry illustrates the practical use of the proposal.

Research Efforts and Challenges in Crowd-based Requirements Engineering: A Review

Eliciting software system development requirements is a challenging task as the information is from various resources. The most constructive resource is the stakeholders of the system to be developed. It is critical yet time-consuming to capture essential requirements to realize a reliable and workable software system. The crowd-based Requirements Engineering (crowd-based RE) approach adapts the crowdsourcing technique to access an extensive range of stakeholders and save time, especially for the generic type system with no clear stakeholder. This paper presents current research efforts and challenges in crowd-based RE. A systematic literature review method is adopted to explore literature based on two specific research questions. The first question aimed at identifying research efforts on crowd-based RE, and the second question focused on the main challenges discovered in pursuing crowd-based RE. The findings from the literature review show that many efforts have been made to explore and further improve crowd-based RE. This paper provides a foundation to pursue research in improving crowdsourcing techniques for the benefit of requirements engineering.

Using Behaviour-driven Requirements Engineering for Establishing and Managing Agile Product Lines

Requirements engineering in agile product line engineering refers to both common and variability components establishing a software. Although it is conventional for the requirements engineering to take place in a dedicated upfront domain analysis phase, agile-based environments denounce such a proactive behaviour. This paper provides an observational study examining a reactive incremental requirement engineering approach called behaviour-driven requirements engineering. The proposed approach uses behaviour-driven development to establish and maintain agile product lines. The findings of the study are very promising and suggest the following: the approach is easy to understand and quick to learn; the approach supports the constantly changing nature of software development; and using behaviour-driven requirements engineering produces reliable and coherent requirements. In practice, the observational study showed that using the proposed approach saved time for development team and customers, decreased costs, improved the software quality, and shortened the time-to-market.

GMSM: A Design Method for Misinformation-Aware Social Media

Misinformation is highly circulating on social media which harmfully affect users of these platforms and the online content value. Previous efforts to decrease misinformation distribution on social media have mainly focused on the development of misinformation detection algorithms. To extend these efforts, this paper adopts gamification techniques to minimize the spread of misinformation on social media and proposes a three-phase requirement engineering method for the design of a Gamified Misinformation-aware Social Media (GMSM). The method combines the strengths of well-known requirement engineering approaches in a sequence that offers software engineers better understanding of users’ requirements on the adoption of gamification to minimize the spread of misinformation on social media. This can lead to a better coverage of important users’ requirements thus, a better user satisfaction and a higher quality of online content.

Enterprise interoperability assessment: a requirements engineering approach

ABSTRACTOne of the main challenges within collaborative business ecosystems are the management of Interoperability. Indeed, Interoperability is a crucial prerequisite that must be satisfied when enterprises need to work together for seizing new business opportunities and improving competitiveness. To develop and improve enterprise systems interoperability, a set of interoperability requirements needs to be verified. Indeed, knowing the different requirements and their relationships are paramount for identifying potential impacts on the overall system. Many research works have been proposed in the literature for defining and analysing such requirements. However, existing work do not explicitly specify the interdependencies between interoperability requirements. The objective of this article is, therefore, to investigate and define the interoperability requirements and their interdependencies. This will provide a holistic and clear view of the relations between the system components and their associated requirements. Therefore, one will be able to identify potential causes of the non-fulfilment of requirements, and their impacts on the concerned system. To do so, a Requirements Engineering approach is used to identify and formalise interoperability requirements and their relationships.

A Requirement Engineering Approach to User-Centered Design

This paper introduces a user-centered design method in software engineering practice. This method can develop software more effectively based on the design results of UCD, and make these results be tracked and tested in the future. Another feature of this method is to make UCD as schedulable and manageable as other software development activities. This paper introduces a requirement analysis framework based on three types of usability requirements, which reflect the results of UCD activities in software development. These types of requirements come from the description of UCD in ISO 13407 model.

Enterprise Architecture Oriented Requirements Engineering for the Design of a School Friendly Open Data Web Interface

Open Data is considered a key to scientific innovations. These freely available datasets can also be used as a foundation to enhance the digital and data literacies among the younger generation of school pupils. This article presents the design and prototype of an Open Data web interface based on the Enterprise Architecture Oriented Requirements Engineering (EAORE) approach for Open Data usage as an educational resource in Danish public schools. We first systematically review the literature on Open Data use in educational fields and selected 14 research articles with a particular focus on the use of Open Data in the educational domain after prescribing an inclusion/exclusion criteria on 101 research articles identified initially. The review indicates that there is a gap between Open Data opportunities within the educational domain and in exploring the use of Open Data as a source to develop twenty-first-century skills, specifically digital and data literacies among younger school pupils. To fill this gap, we propose an EAORE approach that represents how Enterprise Architecture (EA) models can guide the overall Requirements Engineering (RE) process for the use of Open Data in Danish public schools. Based on these EA models, we designed the prototype of an Open Data web interface for schools.