Australian Computer Society: ACS Digital Library
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Practical and Tacit Knowing as a Foundation of Information Systems
Get PDFThe importance of the human subject (and subjectivity) with its inherent capacity for intuition as a foundational concept for Information Systems is explored in this paper. The paper considers two philosophical contributions: (1) Michael Polanyi's distinction between Practical and Tacit Knowing, and (2) Rudolf Steiner's distinction between Intellectual Thinking and Intuitive Thinking. Intuition as it arises from subjectivity for an Information System is the key to determining the appropriate balance between practical and intuitive considerations necessary for the continued evolution of an Information System. Given this balance the theme of an Information System can emerge. Since an Information System is a social system bound to technology, it is the tacit capacities of an individual's subjectivity within an Information System that allow us to connect with the culture and the wider perspective of decision making in an Information System
Towards the Proper Integration of Extra-Functional Requirements
Get PDFIn spite of the many achievements in software engineering, proper treatment of extra-functional requirements (also known as non-functional requirements) within the software development process is still a challenge to our discipline. The application of functionality-biased software development methodologies can lead to major contradictions in the joint modelling of functional and extra-functional requirements. Based on a thorough discussion on the nature of extra-functional requirements as well as on open issues in coping with them, this paper emphasizes the role of extra-functional requirements in the software development process. Particularly, a framework supporting the explicit integration of extra functional requirements into a conventional phase-driven process model is proposed and outlined
Using Abduction to Evolve Inconsistent Requirements Specification
Get PDFRequirements specifications are often inconsistent. Inconsistencies may arise because multiple conflicting requirements are embodied in these specifications, or because the specifications themselves are in a transient stage of evolutionary development. In this paper we argue that such inconsistencies, rather than being undesirable, are actually useful drivers for changing the requirements specifications in which they arise. We present a formal technique to reason about inconsistency handling changes. Our technique is an adaptation of logical abduction - adapted to generate changes that address some specification inconsistencies, while leaving others. We represent our specifications in quasi-classical (QC) logic - an adaptation of classical logic that allows continued reasoning in the presence of inconsistency. The paper develops a sound algorithm for automating our abductive reasoning technique and presents illustrative examples drawn from a library system case study
A Case Study on the Application of PVS to Requirements Analysis
Get PDFThis paper presents the results of a formal methods case study in which the Prototype Verification System (PVS) has been used for requirements analysis of one module of a physical access control system. PVS is a tool for writing formal specifications and constructing proofs. Previously, the same requirements have been analyzed by means of testing supported by the IFAD Toolbox for VDM-SL. The capabilities of the two formal methods are compared
A Hybrid Parallel Execution Model for Logic Based Requirement Specifications (Invited Paper)
No full textIt is well known that undiscovered errors in a requirements specification is extremely expensive to be fixed when discovered in the software maintenance phase. Errors in the requirement phase can be reduced through the validation and verification of the requirements specification. Many logic-based requirements specification languages have been developed to achieve these goals. However, the execution and reasoning of a logic-based requirements specification can be very slow. An effective way to improve their performance is to execute and reason the logic-based requirements specification in parallel. In this paper, we present a hybrid model to facilitate the parallel execution of a logic-based requirements specification language. A logic-based specification is first applied by a data dependency analysis technique which can find all the mode combinations that exist within a specification clause. This mode information is used to support a novel hybrid parallel execution model, which combines both top-down and bottom-up evaluation strategies. This new execution model can find the failure in the deepest node of the search tree at the early stage of the evaluation, thus this new execution model can reduce the total number of nodes searched in the tree, the total processes needed to be generated, and the total communication channels needed in the search process. A simulator has been implemented to analyze the execution behavior of the new model. Experiments show significant improvement based on several criteria
Object Oriented Analysis: a voyage of discovery
Get PDFIn this paper the experiences of a business analyst who worked on several projects using the object-oriented (O O)
approach are described. The business analyst in question had initially no background whatsoever in O-O and worked within organisations which were also making the same transition. Her reflections on the events that transpired are discussed and some suggestions made for organisations migrating to O-O
Addressing Organisational Issues in Requirements Engineering Practice: lessons from action cases
Get PDFThe requirements phase of information systems development is arguably the most organizationally dependent phase and as such it could be contended that the methods used in this phase ought to explicitly address organizational issues. However the authors would maintain that there is a weakness in many of the methods that are employed in requirements engineering in that they arc not explicitly embedded within any social scientific perspective. We argue that such a perspective would enable the systems developer to address organizational contexts and to engage with users (social actors) in such a way that it may be possible to find out about their social situations and as a consequence better inform the systems development process. In this paper we present the arguments for an explicit organizational perspective in the requirements phase of information systems development. We illustrate the argument through the presentation of action case studies in which one of the authors intervened in two situations with an explicit sociological perspective and analysis methods more commonly associated with qualitative social science methods. We conclude that there is an imperative need for those involved in the requirements phase to be explicit in their assumptions about organizations and critically reflective about the methods they use if they wish to understand the domain in which they operate
Applying Quality Costs in a Software Development Environment
Get PDFThis paper shows how Quality Costs can be a measure of software quality. The relationship between Quality Costs and other software quality metrics is briefly explained, and software development oriented versions of the two principal Quality Cost models are described. Finally the paper discusses the major issues involved in setting up a software Quality Cost programme. The concepts are based on previous research on Quality Costs in manufacturing, coupled with work on software metrics and the work currently being undertaken by the authors in a number of industries