Doctoral Symposium

The Doctoral Symposium at the 22nd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'14) brings together PhD students and academics working in all areas of requirements engineering. Students present their research projects and receive constructive feedback from a panel of senior internationally renowned researchers. The doctoral symposium is run in a highly interactive and collegial workshop-like format.

Accepted Contributions

ID Paper
DS01 From Architecture to Requirements: Relating Requirements and Architecture for Better Requirements Engineering
Feng Chen
(University of Limerick, Ireland; Lero, Ireland)
Abstract  | Paper

The importance of software requirements is widely acknowledged. However, many software projects still exhibit inadequate Requirements Engineering (RE) practice. More importantly, dealing with Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) remains as a challenge for software practitioners. This research aims at advancing RE practice through the co-development of requirements and architecture by utilizing the relationship between Architecturally Significant Requirements (ASRs) and Architectural Design Decisions (ADDs).

DS02 Quantification of Social Sustainability in Software
Maryam Al Hinai
(University of Leicester, UK)
Abstract  | Paper

Software, as any other product, must be account for its effects on sustainability of its production and use environments. This research focuses on the social aspect of sustainable development. Currently, there are neither clear methods for evaluating social sustainability of a software system at requirements level nor a comprehensive set of metrics for social sustainability useable in requirements analysis. This research aims to develop a set of such metrics and an accompanying method for analyzing social sustainability requirements of software systems.

DS03 Improving Collaborative and Post-WIMP Systems through Requirements Specification
Miguel A. Teruel
(University of Castile–La Mancha, Spain)
Abstract  | Paper  | Video  | Additional information

A proper requirements specification is paramount for achieving the quality of the developed software products. However, well-known Requirements Engineering (RE) techniques lack of enough expressiveness to model the requirements of CSCW systems (Computer Supported Collaborative Work). This is due to the inherent complexity of collaboration among users and their need of awareness. Moreover, the way in which users interact with CSCW systems have evolved greatly to more sophisticated interfaces, beyond the classical desktop computer environments, to those called Post-WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer). Awareness is magnified in such a way that users have to be aware of their context: the artifacts with which to interact, his/her own capabilities as well as those of the others. All this awareness is necessary to allow them to collaborate in virtual and/or augmented environments. This PhD thesis aims at solving this problem by developing a RE framework able to deal with the requirements of CSCW and Post-WIMP systems, making emphasis on the awareness requirements about user’s context.

DS04 Stakeholders' Social Interaction in Requirements Engineering of Open Source Software
Tanmay Bhowmik
(Mississippi State University, USA)
Abstract  | Paper

Requirements engineering (RE) involves human-centric activities that require interaction among different stakeholders. Traditionally, RE has been considered as a centralized, collocated, and phase-specific process. However, in open-source software (OSS) development environment, the core RE activities are iterative and dynamic and follow a rather decentralized software engineering paradigm. This crosscutting characteristic of open-source RE can be conceptualized using the "Twin Peaks" model that weaves RE together with software architecture. Although many weaving mechanisms have been proposed in recent years, lack of theoretical underpinning limits a mechanism's applicability and usefulness in different scenarios. In this research proposal, we hypothesize stakeholders' social interaction as an ecologically valid weaving mechanism of the "Twin Peaks" in open-source RE. We further outline a concrete research plan to examine the generalizability of this weaving mechanism for three activities: requirements identification, requirements implementation, and creativity in RE. Carrying out this research plan will enable us to gain valuable insights to generate guidelines for enhancing software engineering practice in relevant areas.

DS05 Aligning Services and Requirements with User Feedback
Muneera Bano
(University of Technology Sydney, Australia)
Abstract  | Paper

For analysts the alignment between the requirements and the available services presents a significant challenge in service oriented paradigm. To address this challenge various technical solutions have already been proposed. Although technical issues play an important role in this selection but organizational and social factors are equally as important in selecting an optimally aligned service for a specific requirement. The users of services are mostly ignored in the alignment process. User feedback analysis has recently gained a lot of research focus, but these benefits have not been fully explored and utilized in service oriented software development. In this paper I present a method for aligning services to requirements that is designed using the Situational Method Engineering approach and it incorporates user feedback about the services. This feedback assists the analysts in extracting required information for making informed decisions while selecting services among available options that satisfies both the user requirements and customer preferences. The method is supported by a proposed tool. The method and the supporting tool will be validated by a controlled experiment and focus group feedback from the practitioners.

DS06 Requirements Development and Management of Embedded Real-Time Systems
Jiale Zhou
(Mälardalen University, Sweden)
Abstract  | Paper

It is well recognized that most of the anomalies, discovered in the development of embedded real-time systems, belong to requirement and specification phases. To ease the situation, many efforts have been investigated into the area. For requirements development, especially requirements validation and verification, model-driven architecture techniques can be considered as a cost-efficient solution. In order to utilize such advantages, the design of the proposed system is often specified in terms of analyzable models at the certain level of abstraction. Further, different levels of requirements are translated into verifiable queries and fed into the models to be either validated or verified. For requirements management, requirements traceability provides critical support for performing change impact analysis, risk analysis, regression testing, etc. In this thesis, we cover several topics about requirements validation, requirements verification, and requirements traceability. In particular, the technical contributions are three-fold: 1) we propose an approach to requirements validation by using the extended Timed Abstract State Machine (TASM) language with newly defined TASM constructs and, 2) we present a simulation-based method which is powered up by statistical techniques to conduct requirements verification, working with industrial applications and, 3) we introduce an improved VSM-based requirements traceability recovery approach using a novel context analysis. Further, we have demonstrated the applicability of our contributions in real world usage through various case studies.

DS07 Context-Sensitive Information Security Risk Identification and Evaluation Techniques
Dan Ionita
(University of Twente, Netherlands)
Abstract  | Paper

The objective of my research is to improve and support the process of Information security Risk Assessment by designing a scalable Risk argumentation framework for socio-digital- technical Risk. Due to the various types of IT systems, diversity of architectures and dynamic nature of Risk, there is no one-size-fits all RA method. As such, the research hopes to identify guidelines for conducting Risk Assessments in contexts that raise special challenges such as Telecom and virtualized infrastructures. Finally, it will suggest ways of qualitatively and quantitatively evaluating Information Security Risks in such scenarios by using argumentation and/or modelling attacker business cases.

DS08 Business Processes and Regulations Compliance Management Technology
Ilze Buksa
(Riga Technical University, Latvia)
Abstract  | Paper

Organizations must comply with a number of external and internal regulations for business governance and must ensure that their processes are running accordingly to requirements of regulations. Therefore business process and regulations compliance analysis audit and management tasks take a very important role in daily operational activities for each organization. Due to high complexity this task can become challenging. In some domains regulations are changing rapidly. Process models must be flexible and easy adjustable to changing requirements, since the lack of ability to comply with regulations can lower down the competitiveness of an organizations. Thus, rapid changes of regulations require rapid changes of related business processes. The goal of the PhD work is to develop business process and regulations compliance management technology which should enable business process construction from regulations and change monitoring of regulations and business processes to ensure easy and rapid modification of business process model or regulations, thus also ensuring compliance.

DS09 Creative Strategic Scenarios for Preparation to Requirements Evolution
Marília Guterres Ferreira
(PUC-Rio, Brazil)
Abstract  | Paper

The focus of this research is Creative Strategic Scenarios as predictive models of software evolution for socio-technical systems in organizations. This research seeks to combine theories of Strategic Planning and Creativity to generate strategic scenarios that could predict Organizational Changes. The work will integrate scenarios and the i* goal modelling mechanism to analyse the impacts of organizational change through strategic scenarios.

Organizers

Doctoral Symposium Co-Chair

Mats Heimdahl
University of Minnesota, USA
Biography

Mats Heimdahl earned an M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden and a Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California at Irvine. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, the Director of the University of Minnesota Software Engineering Center (UMSEC), and the Director of Graduate Studies for the Master of Science in Software Engineering program. His research interests are in software engineering, safety critical systems, software safety, testing, requirements engineering, formal modeling, and verification. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, the McKnight Presidential Fellow award, and the awards for Outstanding Contributions to Post-Baccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education at the University of Minnesota.

Doctoral Symposium Co-Chair

Camille Salinesi
Université Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne, France
Biography

Professor Camille Salinesi is head of the Informatics Research Center CRI at Sorbonne University. He has over 15 years experience as a researcher and consultant on Requirements Engineering and Information Systems. He has published over 100 refereed papers and has directed many PhDs on these topics. Prof Salinesi was involved in European funded projects (FP4 NATURE, FP5 CREWS, FP7 DELLIISS), and has collaborated with major French companies such as France Télécom (now Orange), SNCF, Renault, EDF, Rexel, or Alcatel Lucent. Camille Salinesi has organized many workshops on requirements related topics: REP, REFSQ, RE4Susy, RIGIM. and MReBa. Recently, he was PC chair of the CAiSE 2013 and REFSQ 2014 International Conferences. Prof Salinesi is IEEE member, member of the board of the IREB certification body, and president of the SPECIEF association for the promotion of the requirements engineering discipline in France.