skip to main content
10.1145/1869459.1869529acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessplashConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Flexible modeling tools for pre-requirements analysis: conceptual architecture and research challenges

Published: 17 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

A serious tool gap exists at the start of the software lifecy-cle, before requirements formulation. Pre-requirements analysts gather information, organize it to gain insight, en-vision possible futures, and present insights and recom-mendations to stakeholders. They typically use office tools, which give great freedom, but no help with consistency management, change propagation, or information migration to downstream tools. Despite these downsides, office tools are still favored over modeling tools, which are constrain-ing and difficult to use. We introduce the notion of flexible modeling tools, which blend the advantages of office and modeling tools. We propose a conceptual architecture for such tools, and outline research challenges to be met in realizing them. We briefly describe the Business Insight Toolkit, a prototype tool embodying this architecture.

References

[1]
}}S. Abrams et al, Architectural thinking and modeling with the Architects' Workbench. IBM Systems Journal 45(3), July, 2006.
[2]
}}R. Balzer, Tolerating inconsistency. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Software Engi-neering (ICSE 1991), IEEE, pp. 158--165, 1991.
[3]
}}P. Bertrand et al, GRAIL/KAOS: An Environment for Goal-Driven Requirements Engineering. In Proceed-ings of the 19th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 1997), pp. 612--613, 1997.
[4]
}}D. Beyer, Relational programming with CrocoPat. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2006), pp. 807--810, 2006.
[5]
}}A. F. Blackwell and T.R.G. Green, A Cognitive Dimensions questionnaire optimised for users. In A.F. Blackwell & E. Bilotta (Eds.), In Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Pro-gramming Interest Group, pp. 137--152, 2000.
[6]
}}S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay and B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
[7]
}}A. Finkelstein et al, Viewpoints: A framework for integrating multiple perspectives in system development. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering 2(1), pp. 31--58, 1992.
[8]
}}A. C. W. Finkelstein, D. Gabbay, A. Hunter, J. Kramer, and B. Nuseibeh, Inconsistency Handling in Multi-perspective Specifications, IEEE TSE 20(8), pp. 569--578, 1994.
[9]
}}E. Gamma, R. Helm, R. Johnson and J. Vlissides, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley, April 2005.
[10]
}}E. R. Gansner and S. C. North, An Open Graph Visualization System and its Applications to Software Engineering. Software-Practice and Experience, 30(11), pp. 1203--1233, 2000.
[11]
}}J. Grundy and J. Hosking, Supporting generic sketching-based input of diagrams in a domain-specific visual language meta-tool. In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2007), pp. 282--291, 2007.
[12]
}}D. Harel, and B. Rumpe, Meaningful Modeling: What's the Semantics of "Semantics"? IEEE Computer 37(10), pp. 64--71, 2004.
[13]
}}S. Hupfer, L-T. Cheng, S. Ross and J. F. Patterson, Introducing collaboration into an application devel-opment environment. In Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 21--24, 2004.
[14]
}}H. Kilov and J. Ross, Information Modeling: an Object-Oriented Approach. Prentice Hall, 1994.
[15]
}}J.H. Larkin and H.A. Simon, Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words. Cognitive Science 11(1), pp. 65--99, 1987.
[16]
}}C. Nentwich, L. Capra, W. Emmerich and A. Finkelstein, xlinkit: a consistency checking and smart link generation service. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology 2(2), pp. 151--185, 2002.
[17]
}}C. Nentwich, W. Emmerich and A. Finkelstein, Consistency management with repair actions. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2003), pp. 455--464, 2003.
[18]
}}G. Nordstrom, J. Sztipanovits, G. Karsai, and A. Ledeczi, Metamodeling -- rapid design and evolution of domain-specific modeling environments. In Proceed-ings of the IEEE ECBS '99 Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, pp. 68--74, April, 1999.
[19]
}}H. Ossher et al, Business Insight Toolkit: Flexible pre-requirements modeling. Informal demonstration paper in ICSE 2009 Proceedings Companion, May 2009.
[20]
}}H. Ossher et al, Using tagging to identify and organize concerns during pre-requirements analysis. Workshop paper in ICSE 2009 Proceedings Companion, May 2009.
[21]
}}S. P. Reiss, PECAN: Program Development Systems that Support Multiple Views. IEEE TSE 11(3), pp. 276--285, 1985.
[22]
}}Y. Wand and R.A. Weber, Research commentary: information systems and conceptual modelling--a research agenda. Information Systems Research 13(4), pp. 363--376, 2002

Cited By

View all

Index Terms

  1. Flexible modeling tools for pre-requirements analysis: conceptual architecture and research challenges

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    OOPSLA '10: Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications
    October 2010
    984 pages
    ISBN:9781450302036
    DOI:10.1145/1869459
    • cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
      ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 45, Issue 10
      OOPSLA '10
      October 2010
      957 pages
      ISSN:0362-1340
      EISSN:1558-1160
      DOI:10.1145/1932682
      Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 17 October 2010

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. business analysis
    2. flexible modeling
    3. modeling tools
    4. pre-requirements analysis

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    SPLASH '10
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,244 submissions, 22%

    Upcoming Conference

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)7
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 14 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)How are informal diagrams used in software engineering? An exploratory study of open-source and industrial practicesSoftware and Systems Modeling10.1007/s10270-024-01252-3Online publication date: 20-Dec-2024
    • (2022)Integration of Software Architecture in Requirements Elicitation for Rapid Software DevelopmentIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.317765910(56158-56178)Online publication date: 2022
    • (2019)FlexiSketchSoftware and Systems Modeling (SoSyM)10.1007/s10270-017-0623-818:2(1513-1541)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
    • (2013)Supporting the Co-evolution of Metamodels and Constraints through Incremental Constraint ManagementProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems - Volume 810710.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_18(287-303)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2013
    • (2013)FlexiSketch: A Mobile Sketching Tool for Software ModelingMobile Computing, Applications, and Services10.1007/978-3-642-36632-1_13(225-244)Online publication date: 2013
    • (2012)Enabling dynamic metamodels through constraint-driven modelingProceedings of the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering10.5555/2337223.2337502(1622-1624)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2012
    • (2012)Automatically generating and adapting model constraints to support co-evolution of design modelsProceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/2351676.2351730(302-305)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2012
    • (2012)Flexible, lightweight requirements modeling with Flexisketch2012 20th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE.2012.6345826(323-324)Online publication date: Sep-2012
    • (2012)Enabling dynamic metamodels through constraint-driven modeling2012 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)10.1109/ICSE.2012.6227223(1622-1624)Online publication date: Jun-2012
    • (2011)An architectural approach to end user orchestrationsProceedings of the 5th European conference on Software architecture10.5555/2041790.2041839(370-378)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2011
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media