Process and Requirements Engineering Viewpoints -
Requirements Engineering
PREview-RE
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Introduction
Failings in requirements engineering activities place all subsequent life-cycle
phases at risk and may lead to cost over-runs, quality deficiencies and customer
dissatisfaction. PREview-RE proposes the use of a process based around
Requirements Viewpoints to guide the discovery, analysis and management of
software requirements. In contrast to methods where an available human source of
every requirements is naively assumed, PREview-RE recognises that domain
knowledge may be too diverse to guarantee that all requirements can be elicited
and that many requirements may be implicit in the domain itself. Techniques are
provided to focus the analysis on the domain to draw out these requirements, to
identify conflicting requirements where they occur and to help make informed
decisions to resolve these conflicts.
Summary description
PREview-RE contains:
- A description of the Requirements Viewpoint concept which underpins
PREview-RE.
- A description of the principal activities involved in identifying,
managing and analysing viewpoints and their associated requirements.
- A guide to assessing the costs and benefits to an organisation of
applying PREview-RE.
- A guide to specialising PREview-RE in order to address an organisation's
specific needs and practices.
- A start-up guide to the implementation of PREview-RE.
Examples are used to illustrate key concepts.
Benefits and application areas
Rather than providing a radical new method, PREview-RE seeks to make explicit
good practices which are frequently present but implicit in mature requirements
engineering processes. This will be of immediate benefit in terms of reduced need
for rework and improved customer satisfaction to organisations which do not
already apply these practices. PREview-RE will benefit organisations with more
mature processes by making their processes more visible, assessable and
measurable.
A reasonably mature organisation should be able to adopt the technique with
little overhead or demand for new skills or tools. Less mature organisations may
require a more substantial investment. Although PREview-RE explicitly addresses
many of the particular problems of critical (e.g. RAMSS) systems' development, it
may be equally readily applied to non-critical systems.
How to apply
PREview-RE is oriented at the earliest stages in the development of a
requirements specifcation; the discovery an analysis of the user/customer
requirements. Few preconditions exist for the application of PREview-RE other
than an organisational commitment to improve a requirements engineering process.
Other REAIMS modules such as PREview-PV (which uses viewpoints for process
analysis), and PERE may be used to analyse and measure existing processes but
these are not necessary prerequisites for PREview-RE.
More information available from:
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| Pete Sawyer
Computing Department
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YR
United Kingdom
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Phone: +44-1524-593780
FAX: +44-1524-593608
email: sawyer@comp.lancs.ac.uk
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| Stephen Shirlaw
Project Coordinator
GEC Alsthom
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Phone: +44-181-236-9254
FAX: +44-181-207-6694
email:
s.shirlaw@gasl.co.uk
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| Herbert Schippers
TÜV Informationstechnik GmbH
Im Teelbruch 122
D - 45219 Essen
Germany
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Phone: +49 201 825 5120
FAX: +49 201 825 5131
email: H.Schippers@tuvit.cubis.de
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| Robin Bloomfield
Adelard
3, Coborn Road
London E3 2DA
United Kingdom
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Phone: +44-181 983 0217
FAX: +44-181 983 1845
email: reb@adelard.co.uk
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Page last updated Thu, 18 December 1997. Please report problems to
reaims-request@comp.lancs.ac.uk
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CSEG Projects |
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Computing Department |
Lancaster University