Reasoning about Inconsistency in RE - Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Anna Zamansky, Irit Hadar, Daniel M. Berry

2016

Abstract

Inconsistency is a major challenge in requirements engineering. Traditionally, software requirements specifica-tions (SRSs) are expected to be consistent, with the underlying assumption that this consistency is always achievable. However, with the growing complexity of software systems it has become clear that this assump-tion is not always realistic. This has led to new paradigms for inconsistency management, acknowledging that it is not only inevitable, but also even desirable at times, to tolerate inconsistency, even temporarily. However, for these paradigms to be widely accepted in industry, practicing software engineers must thoroughly under-stand the nature of inconsistency in SRSs and the strategies for its handling. This paper proposes a research agenda for preparing practicing software engineers to accept and successfully implement inconsistency man-agement paradigms. As a first step in this direction, the paper describes an ongoing study in which we design an intervention into the perceptions of inconsistency for practicing software engineers. The intervention builds on teaching to them the Zave–Jackson requirements validation formula as an aid for analyzing the types of in-consistency they face, and conducting an empirical study of the effect of this intervention on their inconsisten-cy management.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Zamansky A., Hadar I. and Berry D. (2016). Reasoning about Inconsistency in RE - Separating the Wheat from the Chaff . In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Software Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: COLAFORM, (ENASE 2016) ISBN 978-989-758-189-2, pages 377-382. DOI: 10.5220/0005928603770382

in Bibtex Style

@conference{colaform16,
author={Anna Zamansky and Irit Hadar and Daniel M. Berry},
title={Reasoning about Inconsistency in RE - Separating the Wheat from the Chaff},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Software Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: COLAFORM, (ENASE 2016)},
year={2016},
pages={377-382},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005928603770382},
isbn={978-989-758-189-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Software Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: COLAFORM, (ENASE 2016)
TI - Reasoning about Inconsistency in RE - Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
SN - 978-989-758-189-2
AU - Zamansky A.
AU - Hadar I.
AU - Berry D.
PY - 2016
SP - 377
EP - 382
DO - 10.5220/0005928603770382