Verbal Use Case Specifications for Informal Requirements Elicitation

Abstract

Abstract. Constructing a software system from poor specifications may necessitate costly repairs. We introduce the notion ''satisfactory specifications'' for quality specifications that do not require costly repairs. Satisfactory specifications may be produced by a Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) team incorporating all the relevant experts and the stakeholders. It is suggested that the CSCW team develops use case specifications, where its expertise is especially useful. Specifying in a natural language understood by all team members facilitates needed intensive cooperation between different team members. Compared to specifications formulated in formal terminology, verbal formulations in domain language represent a textual visualization. Translating the verbal specifications into formal UML diagrams provides a further graphical visualization. It is suggested that each specification is provided with a separate example for each kind of the possible situations. These examples may clarify meaning of poorly formulated specifications, facilitate identifying faults in formal specifications and employed for software debugging.

Supporting the combination of agile manner and architecture based development method

“…Their paper described five rules used to deal with this issue, but to date the influence of this manner is not evaluated. Kantorowitz E also focuses the same issue and suggests a method for requirements elicitation [7] , which is different from the traditional way of UML diagrams. Still, their work needs to be evaluated.…”