Conference: 19th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, REFSQ 2013, Essen, Germany, April 8-11, 2013
[Context and Motivation] Business modeling is nowadays a common approach in huge enterprise software developments. It notably allows to align business processes and supporting IT solutions at best, to produce a documentation of the company’s “savoir-faire” and to look for possible optimizations. The business modeling discipline of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) has enriched the semantic of the Unified Modeling Language’s (UML) use case diagrams for the special purpose of representing the organization’s processes with accurate elements. [Question/Problem] RUP/UML business use case semantics are nevertheless only intended to further stereotype use case models and not to be used for reasoning. In parallel and in line with artificial intelligence concepts, researchers have developed the i* framework enabling the evaluation and decomposition of multiple design opportunities. RUP/UML business use case semantics could be used more efficiently to integrate the latter benefits. [Principal ideas/results] Through a systematic mapping of elements from i* on the one side and of the RUP/UML business use case model on the other, we have set up a RUP/UML graphical notation for i* elements. Applicability has been shown on an illustrative example. [Contribution] The main contribution of the framework is allowing to model in an i* fashion using CASE-tools meant for RUP/UML and proposing an interface for forward engineering the produced model in a classical UML requirements model. Future work is required to fully validate the proposal, notably to measure the method’s efficacy.
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... The approach followed by I-Tropos is nevertheless rather a revolution than an evolution for RUP practitionners since it is not UML-driven but based on a completely different set of artifacts. That is why, in [5], we have started to focus on mapping the i* semantics with the ones defined by the RUP business use-case model with the objective to fully capture the benefits of i* in the inherently iterative RUP. The gain for business analysts would be to integrate i* benefits relying on RUP/UML business use-case syntax and semantics. ...
... The result of our study is summarized in Table 3. The graphical notation is documented in [5]. Table 3. i* Model Mapping ...
... Also, additional advantage could come from the representation of the same problem using different modeling perspective. In [5], we point to the adoption of i* into the business modeling discipline of the RUP as only model relayed by a traditional use case model in the requirements discipline. This way, the (system) use case model would be built on the basis based on the lower-level (most operational) i* elements through a defined procedure. ...
Although widely used and recognized in the scientific community, the i* framework has, until now, failed to impose itself into enterprise practices. There are many ways that can be followed to favor industry-adoption. Among them, we believe that an integration into the (Rational) Unified Process, which already includes business modeling as a preliminary step in software development and furnishes custom syntax and semantic to do so could be an interesting approach. This paper summarizes the ideas of a research aimed at mapping i* model elements and RUP/UML business modeling ones with the best possible semantic match. The willingness is to provide RUP practitioners a powerful tool for capturing and analyzing social and organizational contexts of software systems based on the syntax they already know with as closely as possible related semantics.
... In the paper, six famous tools (i.e., OpenOME [23], TAOM4E [24], GR-Tool [25], STS-Tool [26], jUCM-Nav [27], and DesCARTES [28]) were reviewed with respect to syntactic and semantic viewpoints. According to the review, three were Java programs, and the remaining were Eclipse plugins. ...
Before introducing systems to an activity in a business or in daily life, the effects of these systems should first be carefully examined by analysts. Thus, methods for examining such effects are required at the early stage of requirements analysis. In this study, we propose and evaluate an analysis method using a modeling notation for this purpose, called goal dependency modeling and analysis (GDMA). In an activity, an actor, such as a person or a system, expects a goal to be achieved. The actor or another actor will achieve this goal. We focus herein on such a goal and the two different roles played by the actors. In GDMA, the dependencies in the roles of the two actors about a goal are mainly represented. GDMA enables analysts to observe the change of actors, their expectations, and abilities by using metrics. Each metric is defined on the basis of the GDMA meta-model. Therefore, GDMA enables them to decide whether the change is good or bad both quantitatively and qualitatively for the people. We evaluate GDMA by describing models of the actual system introduction written in the literatures and explain the effects caused by this introduction. In addition, CASE tools are crucial in efficiently and accurately performing GDMA. Hence, we develop its tools by extending an existing UML modeling tool.
... A representation in the UCD would allow us to trace which functional requirement (in the form of a Hard-goal or a Task) supports the realization of a Soft-goal. [21] suggests to map the Soft-goal with the RUP/UML Goal because a semantic analysis of both definitions concludes that those represent the same type (or at least closely related) elements. This solution is relevant for us since it allows a graphical representation of Soft-goals in the UCD as well as a potential support analysis (by highlighting which UC contributes to the satisfaction of the represented Soft-goal). ...
User Stories (US) are mostly used as basis for representing requirements in agile development. Written in a direct manner, US fail in producing a visual representation of the main system-to-be functions. A Use-Case Diagram (UCD), on the other hand, intends to provide such a view. Approaches that map US sets to a UCD have been proposed; they however consider every US as a Use Case (UC). Nevertheless, a valid UC should not be an atomic task or a sub-process but enclose an entire scenario of the system use instead. A unified model of US templates to tag US sets was previously build. Within functional elements, it notably distinguishes granularity levels. In this paper, we propose to transform specific elements of a US set into a UCD using the granularity information obtained through tagging. In practice, such a transformation involves continuous round-tripping between the US and UC views; a CASE-tool supports this.
To facilitate the suitable introduction of innovative information technologies into a social activity such as healthcare and entertainment, such an activity should be modeled and analyzed. We have already proposed a modeling language called Goal Dependency Model with Attributes (GDMA) for such purposes. To encourage many requirements analysts to use GDMA, the operational and learning effort shall be minimized as much as possible. In addition, described models shall be analyzed as efficiently as possible. To satisfy these two requirements, we proposed a UML-based notation for GDMA. We also developed a CASE tool based on an existing UML editor. We evaluated our notation and the tool through an experiment. Although subjects in the experiment were bachelor students, the subjects gave positive feedbacks to the tool.
Recently, a lot of research efforts in software engineering have focused on integrating organizational modeling as a key piece in requirements engineering. In these research works, the business models are proposed as the source of the software requirements specification process. However, the majority of these works focus only on the definition of notations that permit the representation of the semantics of the organizational context, and only a few works define processes that use these notations in a methodological way. This lack of a methodological process for generating organizational models makes practical application in software development enterprises difficult. The objective of this paper is to present a goal- based method to generate organizational models represented in the Tropos framework. These models are later used as starting point of the requirements specification process of the information system. This will enable us to develop information systems that integrate the necessary functionality so that the organizational actors perform their tasks and fulfill their goals.
In this paper we propose an approach that can be used to generate traceability relations between organisational models specified in i* and software systems models represented in UML (in particular use case and class diagrams). Our approach proposes different types of traceability relationships between i* and UML models and uses traceability rules to generate the different types of traceability relations between them. The traceability rules and traceable models are represented in XML. This makes possible the use of our approach in settings where the models are created and managed autonomously. The approach is supported by a prototype tool that interprets the rules and generates traceability relations.
Organizational modeling with the i* framework has widely been used for model-driven software development adopting a transformational approach, notably within the Tropos process. Its high-level representation elements allow to partition the software problem into adequate and manageable elements (actors, goals, tasks, resources and dependencies) leading to an agent-oriented design, and eventually an implementation with agent technologies (JACK, Jadex, Chimera Agent, ...). This paper proposes to use the i* framework for iterative software planning; each of the goals from the i* strategic dependency model are evaluated on the basis of the (high-level) threats they face and the expected quality factors. This allows to determine a priority among the model goals and “feed” an iterative template to plan the whole project realization. This framework is thus meant to be applied during the first iteration of the project for model-driven software project management. The development of a production management system in the steel industry is used as an example.
[Context and motivation]
i* is one of the most popular modelling languages in Requirements Engineering. i* models are meant to support communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders about the goals of the future system. Recent research has established that the effectiveness of model-mediated communication heavily depends on the visual syntax of the modelling language. A number of flaws in the visual syntax of i* have been uncovered and possible improvements have been suggested. [Question/problem] Producing effective visual notations is a complex task that requires taking into account various interacting quality criteria. In this paper, we focus on one of those criteria: Semantic Transparency, that is, the ability of notation symbols to suggest their meaning. [Principal ideas/results] Complementarily to previous research, we take an empirical approach. We give a preview of a series of experiments designed to identify a new symbol set for i* and to evaluate its semantic transparency. [Contribution] The reported work is an important milestone on the path towards cognitively effective requirements modelling notations. Although it does not solve all the problems in the i* notation, it illustrates the usefulness of an empirical approach to visual syntax definition. This approach can later be transposed to other quality criteria and other notations.
ï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Master winï¾win techniques for managing outsourced and offshore projects, from procurement and risk mitigation to maintenanceï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Use RUP to implement best-practice project management throughout the software development lifecycleï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Overcome key management challenges, from changing requirements to managing user expectationsThe Hands-On, Start-to-Finish Guide to Managing Software Projects with the IBM® Rational Unified Process®This is the definitive guide to managing software development projects with the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP®). Drawing on his extensive experience managing projects with the RUP, R. Dennis Gibbs covers the entire development lifecycle, from planning and requirements to post-mortems and system maintenance. Gibbs offers especially valuable insights into using the RUP to manage outsourced projects and any project relying on distributed development teams-outsourced, insourced, or both.This “from the trenches” guidebook is invaluable for anyone interested in best practices for managing software development: project managers, team leaders, procurement and contracting specialists, quality assurance and software process professionals, consultants, and developers. If you're already using the RUP, Gibbs will help you more effectively use it. Whatever your role or the RUP experience, you'll learn ways toï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Simplify and streamline the management of any large-scale or outsourced projectï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Overcome the challenges of using the RUP in software project managementï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Optimize software procurement and supplier relationships, from Request for Proposals (RFPs) and contracts to deliveryï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Staff high-performance project teams and project management officesï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Establish productive, consistent development environmentsï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Run effective project kickoffsï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Systematically identify and mitigate project risksï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Manage the technical and business challenges of changing requirementsï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Organize iterations and testing in incremental development processesï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Transition new systems into service: from managing expectations to migrating dataï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Plan system maintenance and implement effective change controlï¾·ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ ï¾ Learn all you can from project post-mortems-and put those lessons into practice
From the Publisher:The Unified Modeling Language (UML), the standard graphical notation for modeling business and software application needs, has emerged as an effective modeling tool for database design. When used as a common modeling language for the many facets of system development, the UML can serve as a unifying framework that facilitates the integration of database models with the rest of a system design. This pragmatic guide introduces you to the UML and leads you through the process of UML-based database modeling and design. The book presents the different types of UML diagrams, explaining how they apply to the database world, and shows how data modeling with the UML can be tied into the Rational Unified Process. UML for Database Design is structured around the database design process: business use case modeling, business object modeling, database requirements definition, analysis and preliminary design, and, finally, detailed design and deployment. For each phase of development the book describes the overall objectives and workflow of that phase, the status of the case study, the relevant UML constructs, and the nuts and bolts of database modeling and design with the UML. Drawing on their extensive industry experience, the authors reveal the trials and tribulations of database development teams, lessons learned, and pointers for success. Topics covered include: The business use case model Activity and sequence diagrams for modeling database functions and tasks Moving from the business to system model Class diagrams and statecharts Mapping classes to tables Transformation of attributes Rational's UML Profile for Database Design Creating tables from classes DDL scripts, component diagrams, and deployment diagrams Jump starting the database design process A case study runs throughout the book to illustrate key concepts and techniques, and appendixes containing the actual UML models from this case study are used to catalog the type and extent of models that would be developed for such a system. Practical, concrete, and based on real-life experience, UML for Database Design brings you exactly the information you need to begin working with the UML and take full advantage of the technology for high-quality database modeling and design.