Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008. / Thesis Advisor(s): Kamel, Magdi N. "June 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on August 26, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-253). Also available in print.

Chemnitz, Techn. Univ., Diplomarb., 2003.

In order to mitigate the ever-increasing trend in software failures with far reaching consequences, research has suggested close coordination of requirements engineering (RE) and testing. The literature also advocates the notion of requirements-based testing (RBT) focusing on checking both the quality attributes and implementation of requirements. As requirements reside in the environment comprised of certain problem domain phenomena, the environment assertions connecting some of these phenomena in the indicative mood play a critical part in determining the correctness of a software solution. Although several investigations emphasize the role of environment assertions in testing and QA activities, including RBT, current literature provides manual techniques of formulating environment assertions. Such an approach is extremely time consuming and highly dependent on an individual's domain knowledge. In addition, developers often struggle to formulate good assertions from scratch. To address this issue, in this thesis, we develop a boilerplate with certain placeholders that can be replaced with relevant attributes to formulate individual environment assertions. Leveraging this boilerplate, we further present a framework to capture environment assertions in an automated manner.

Software developers dedicate a major portion of their development effort towards testing and quality assurance (QA) activities, especially during and around the implementation phase. Nevertheless, we continue to see an alarmingly increasing trend in the cost and consequences of software failure. In an attempt to mitigate such loss and address software issues at a much earlier stage, researchers have recently emphasized on the successful coordination of requirements engineering and testing (RET). Jackson points out that requirements reside in the environment which is comprised of certain phenomena, also known as environment assertions, and a large number of software issues stem from faulty environment assertions. Current literature doesn’t provide any explicit emphasis on the environment assertions during QA activities. In order to address this gap, in this thesis, we present a detailed empirical study on the prominence of environment assertions in RBT and further propose an automated support to capture environment assertions.

One of the most essential parts of any software requirements analysis effort is the exploration of alternative ways by which stakeholder problems can be solved. Systematic modeling and analysis of requirements variability allows better decision making during the early requirements phase and substantiates design choices pertaining to the configurability aspect of the system-to-be. This thesis proposes the use of goal models for capturing and reasoning about requirements variability. The goal models we adopt consist of AND/OR decompositions of stakeholder goals and express alternative ways by which stakeholders may wish to achieve them. By capturing goal variability using such models, we propose a shift of focus from variability of the software design, to variability of the problem that the design is intended to solve. This way, we ensure that every important variation of the problem is identified and analyzed before variations of the solution are specified. The thesis exploits opportunities that arise from this new viewpoint. Firstly, a variability-intensive goal decomposition process is proposed. The process is based on associating each high-level goal to a set of variability concerns that must be addressed through decomposition. We introduce a universal categorization of such concerns and also show how domain-specific variability concerns can be identified by annotating domain corpora. Concern-driven decomposition offers a structured way of thinking about problem variability, while systematizing its identification process. Further, an expressive LTL-based preference language is introduced to support leverage of large spaces of goal alternatives. The language allows the expression of preferences over behavioral and qualitative properties of solutions and a reasoning tool allows the identification of alternatives that satisfy these preferences. This way, individual stakeholders can get the solution that exactly fits their needs in a particular situation, through simply specifying desired high-level characteristics of these solutions. Finally, a framework for connecting alternatives at the goal level to alternative configurations of common desktop applications is presented. The framework shows how a vast number of configurations of a software application can be evaluated and ranked with respect to a small number of quality goals that are more intuitive to and comprehensible by end users.

One of the most essential parts of any software requirements analysis effort is the exploration of alternative ways by which stakeholder problems can be solved. Systematic modeling and analysis of requirements variability allows better decision making during the early requirements phase and substantiates design choices pertaining to the configurability aspect of the system-to-be. This thesis proposes the use of goal models for capturing and reasoning about requirements variability. The goal models we adopt consist of AND/OR decompositions of stakeholder goals and express alternative ways by which stakeholders may wish to achieve them. By capturing goal variability using such models, we propose a shift of focus from variability of the software design, to variability of the problem that the design is intended to solve. This way, we ensure that every important variation of the problem is identified and analyzed before variations of the solution are specified. The thesis exploits opportunities that arise from this new viewpoint. Firstly, a variability-intensive goal decomposition process is proposed. The process is based on associating each high-level goal to a set of variability concerns that must be addressed through decomposition. We introduce a universal categorization of such concerns and also show how domain-specific variability concerns can be identified by annotating domain corpora. Concern-driven decomposition offers a structured way of thinking about problem variability, while systematizing its identification process. Further, an expressive LTL-based preference language is introduced to support leverage of large spaces of goal alternatives. The language allows the expression of preferences over behavioral and qualitative properties of solutions and a reasoning tool allows the identification of alternatives that satisfy these preferences. This way, individual stakeholders can get the solution that exactly fits their needs in a particular situation, through simply specifying desired high-level characteristics of these solutions. Finally, a framework for connecting alternatives at the goal level to alternative configurations of common desktop applications is presented. The framework shows how a vast number of configurations of a software application can be evaluated and ranked with respect to a small number of quality goals that are more intuitive to and comprehensible by end users.

Zugl.: Wien, Techn. Univ., Diplomarbeit, 2001

Zugl.: München, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008

Diss., Techn. Univ. München, 2008.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-44). Also available on the World Wide Web.