TY - GEN
T1 - A Refinement Calculus for Requirements Engineering Based on Argumentation Theory
AU - ElRakaiby, Yehia
AU - Borgida, Alexander
AU - Ferrari, Alessio
AU - Mylopoulos, John
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - The Requirements Engineering (RE) process starts with initial requirements elicited from stakeholders – however conflicting, unattainable, incomplete and ambiguous – and iteratively refines them into a specification that is consistent, complete, valid and unambiguous. We propose a novel RE process in the form of a calculus where the process is envisioned as an iterative application of refinement operators, with each operator removing a defect from the current requirements. Our proposal is motivated by the dialectic and incremental nature of RE activities. The calculus, which we call CaRE, casts the RE problem as an iterative argument between stakeholders, who point out defects (ambiguity, incompleteness, etc.) of existing requirements, and then propose refinements to address those defects, thus leading to the construction of a refinement graph. This graph is then a conceptual model of an RE process enactment. The semantics of these models is provided by Argumentation Theory, where a requirement may be attacked for having a defect, which in turn may be eliminated by a refinement.
AB - The Requirements Engineering (RE) process starts with initial requirements elicited from stakeholders – however conflicting, unattainable, incomplete and ambiguous – and iteratively refines them into a specification that is consistent, complete, valid and unambiguous. We propose a novel RE process in the form of a calculus where the process is envisioned as an iterative application of refinement operators, with each operator removing a defect from the current requirements. Our proposal is motivated by the dialectic and incremental nature of RE activities. The calculus, which we call CaRE, casts the RE problem as an iterative argument between stakeholders, who point out defects (ambiguity, incompleteness, etc.) of existing requirements, and then propose refinements to address those defects, thus leading to the construction of a refinement graph. This graph is then a conceptual model of an RE process enactment. The semantics of these models is provided by Argumentation Theory, where a requirement may be attacked for having a defect, which in turn may be eliminated by a refinement.
KW - Argumentation theory
KW - RE calculus
KW - RE process
KW - Requirements engineering
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097431077&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85097431077&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_1
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_1
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85097431077
SN - 9783030625214
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 3
EP - 18
BT - Conceptual Modeling - 39th International Conference, ER 2020, Proceedings
A2 - Dobbie, Gillian
A2 - Frank, Ulrich
A2 - Kappel, Gerti
A2 - Liddle, Stephen W.
A2 - Mayr, Heinrich C.
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
T2 - 39th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2020
Y2 - 3 November 2020 through 6 November 2020
ER -