2009 World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering
A Framework for Requirements Engineering in End-User Computing
Esmaeil Kheirkhah Aziz Deraman
Department of Computer Department of Computer
Science, Faculty of Science, Faculty of
Information Science and Information Science and
Technology, National Technology, National
University of Malaysia University of Malaysia
e.kheirkhah@gmail.com a.d@umt.edu.my
Abstract
In any software development process, Requirements
Engineering (RE) has been recognized as a critical
factor in determining the quality of the software
projects. On the other hand, the efficiency of user
involvement in Software Development Process is an
undeniable fact. Therefore, End-User Computing
(EUC) deserves more research attention in the area of
requirements engineering. But due to particular
characteristics of the End-User Computing (EUC)
context, existing methodologies and techniques require
to adapt to these characteristics of EUC. Therefore,
providing end-users with an easy-to-understand RE
process and tools with seldom failure can greatly
increase the efficiency of the software development and
also decrease the risk of the project failure. In this
paper, requirements engineering in EUC will be
discussed and a framework for matching Requirements
Engineering techniques to End-User Computing will
be proposed.
1. Introduction
Despite significant progress that has been made in
software development, software projects still suffer
from some problems like over-budget, late delivery,
and poor quality. The success of a software system
depends on how well it fits the needs of its users and its
environment [1, 2]. Requirements engineering is
accepted as one of the most crucial stages in software
design and development. Requirements engineering
first defines the problem scope and then links all
subsequent development information to it. Several
tasks and techniques have been proposed to accomplish
the RE Process. Using appropriate requirements
engineering techniques during software development
978-0-7695-3507-4/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE 701
DOI 10.1109/CSIE.2009.517
Zahra Sadri Tabatabaie
Department of Computer
Science, Faculty of
Computer Science and
Information Technology,
University Putra Malaysia
sadri_taba@yahoo.com
process has the potential of making a software system
successful.
With the recent growth of practical information
technology in such an area as engineering, the End-
User Computing (EUC) deserves more attention. By
definition, EUC is end-user involvement in the process
of software development. Due to particular
characteristics of End-User Computing environment,
which will be discussed in the next sections,
requirements engineering (RE) in EUC requires more
study to ensure the quality of software produced in the
area of software development.
A substantial amount of research has been conducted
to develop new methods, techniques, and tools for
requirements engineering (RE). But very little work
has been done regarding the Requirements Engineering
in End-User Computing (EUC). This paper aims to
study RE in the field of End-User Computing, and
proposes Screen-Based Requirements Engineering
Approach as a solution to carry out requirements
engineering tasks in End-User Computing
environment.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.
Sections 2 describe End-User Computing environment
and presents related research studies in the domain of
EUC. Section 3 introduces the framework of Screen-
Based approach for requirement engineering in EUC.
Finally, conclusion and future research are described in
section 4.
2. End-User Computing
End-user Computing has been a significant topic for
more than two decades and remains critically important
with the rapid growth of new technologies. Although
EUC is a mature concept, it is apparent that end-users
do not become independent over time, but instead
require additional resources and support [3]. EUC has
provided users with a sense of control over their
working environments by enabling them to set their
own priorities and satisfying their own information
requirements. On the other hand, EUC entails risks and
concerns, namely controlling (i.e., purchasing policies
and procedures, sharing of resources, raising the
quality of systems and information) and end-user
support [4, 5].
End-User Computing can be defined as a process in
which end-users involve directly and actively in the
software development lifecycle. Specifically, it is this
active participation and collaboration during the
development process which distinguishes end-user
developers from typical end-users [6].
Identification and classification of end-users can
help to develop or adapt better techniques and practices
for Requirements Engineering task in EUC. End-Users
are different due to their culture, education, training,
experience, age, abilities and disabilities [7]. It is
obvious that there are several categories of end-users,
for instance depending on whether the computer
system is used for work, for personal use, for pleasure,
for overcoming possible disabilities, etc. We can also
divide them into different communities based on their
goals, tasks, and activities.
J. Segal, in [8] classified end-user developers into
professional end-user developers and other end-user
developers. She argued that professional end-user
developers such as mathematicians, scientists and
engineers are distinguished from other end-users, but
they cannot be considered to be the same as
professional software engineers. Anders I. Mørch, et al,
classified developer-users into Regular users, Super
users, Local developers, Professional developers. S.
Clarke, in [16], discussed different personas based on
work styles, characteristics and motivations of software
developers. He classified them into three classes: The
systematic developers (who write code defensively,
develop a deep understanding of a technology before
using it and pride themselves on building elegant
solutions), the pragmatic developers (who write code
methodically, develop a sufficient understanding of a
technology to enable them to use it and pride
themselves on building robust applications) and the
opportunistic developers (who write code in an
exploratory fashion, develop a sufficient understanding
of a technology to understand how it can solve a
business problem and pride themselves on solving
business problems).
3. Screen-Based approach
Due to particular characteristics of End-user
Computing environments and end-users, as stated
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above, in most cases end-users do not employ
requirement engineering techniques and tools in the
process of software development. Most of RE
techniques and tools are designed for computer experts
and need technical prerequisite to do RE tasks in
software development process using these techniques
and tools.
It seems that visual methods are more efficient and
acceptable by end-users. There are numerous
techniques and tools that support RE tasks in visual
ways. One of the best-known methods is Use-Case
approach in the UML which is a standardized visual
specification language for object modeling. Moreover,
there are many techniques and tools for requirements
engineering based on end-user involvement approach.
For instance, Li et al, [9] develop a solution, which
uses natural language processing. Reeves and Shipman
[10] describe a combination of visual and textual
elements. Rick Rabiser et al [11], report on two
different approaches enabling mobile analysts and end-
users to add multimedia descriptions to requirements.
Mark Gall et al [12], proposed a framework to solve
the problem of eliciting complete and correct
requirements by using video to record the requirements
elicitation meetings and automatically extract
important stakeholder statements.
Our proposed solution for requirements engineering
in EUC is to provide end-users with a Screen-Based
approach to carry out the RE tasks effectively. In this
approach, which necessarily will be supported by a
toolset, end-users will be able to do their RE tasks
easily without needing specific technical prerequisite
in a screen-based manner. Everything required in RE
tasks will be available on screen and end-users will be
able to drag and drop objects on screen to create
models, scenarios, use cases, user interfaces, etc. Also
they will be able to design prototype of project at hand
in a screen-based fashion, that we call it Screen-Based
Prototyping.
The main components of our approach are as
follows:
• RE knowledge Base
• Supporting tool set
• Intelligent process control
Figure 1 demonstrates the framework of screen-based
approach to requirements engineering for End-User
Computing.
3.1. RE Knowledge Support
Requirements Engineering is a very knowledge-
intensive discipline, therefore building a RE
Knowledge Base System can be very useful for both
end-users and computer experts in software
engineering. There are a large number of process
models and techniques designed for RE. In order to
help end-users to do RE tasks we identified, classified,
analyzed and selected an appropriate set of RE process
models and techniques based on characteristics of EUC
environment. RE knowledge base includes all the
selected RE process models and techniques.
Furthermore, this knowledge base provides end-users
with guidelines to use RE process models and
techniques.
Figure1. Overall Framework of Screen-Based
Approach for Requirements Engineering in
EUC
3.2. Supporting Toolset
Supporting tool set is the most important component
of our approach, because without this toolset it will be
impossible to employ the screen-based requirements
engineering approach. This toolset has some features to
support requirements engineering tasks, i.e.
requirements elicitation, modeling, requirements
analysis, requirements validation and verification and
requirements management. Furthermore, the
supporting toolset provides end-users with a very
useful feature i.e. software prototyping. Prototyping, as
an economic way to build a small scale of software
models and products, has been proved to be an
efficient and effective methodology to evaluate
proposed systems if acceptance by the customer or the
feasibility of developments is in doubt [13].
The advantages of using web-based applications are
clear due to the ability to update and maintain Web
applications without distributing and installing
software on client computers. The Web Engineering
approach is adopted in our tool design which focuses
on the following main issues and principles:
• Good user interface design
• Easy to use and understand.
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• High usability of the system.
• Good facilities for RE tasks.
• Flexibility.
The toolset also uses the RE knowledge gathered in
knowledge library and proposes suitable RE techniques
to end-users based on project attributes, end-user
categories, and organization attributes. This feature
helps end-user developers to select and apply a proper
set of techniques to do requirements engineering tasks.
3.2.1. RE Knowledge Base tool support. Followings
are main components of RE knowledge base in
general:
• User Interface
The user interface is used to exchange information
with the requirements engineers or end-users, for
example, for input of projects attributes and output
of applicable and suitable set of RE techniques.
• Inference engine
The inference engine is a program that conduct the
reasoning process for solving problems based on the
knowledge contained in the RE knowledge base. The
reasoning process can also provide extra knowledge
from existing rules and facts.
• Developer's interface
Developer's interface provides the links between the
system and knowledge engineer to maintain verify and
validate the knowledge-based system
• Knowledge Base
The most important part of a RE Knowledge-Based
System is Knowledge Base. It stores Requirements
Engineering knowledge in the form of facts and rules.
Usually predicate logic is used for this purpose. The
knowledge base may also store the confidence level
that a fact or rule is true or valid.
3.2.2. Screen-Based Prototyping. Prototyping as a
useful technique can be used in most of software
development methodologies [14, 15]. Using
prototyping method helps software developer to find
and specify requirements, feasibility study of
development strategies, design user interface, narrow
the communication gap among stakeholders, increase
level of end-user involvement in software development
process, and visualize future application for
stakeholders.
Our proposed approach for prototyping, i.e. Screen-
Based prototyping, prepares users with a very easy to
use prototyping tool which helps them to design a
prototype of the software system at hand in a rapid and
straightforward fashion. Screen-Based prototyping
apply use-case driven approach in creating prototypes.
One prototype is designed for each use case selected
for prototyping. The description of the prototype
environment presented in the user’s language, as a
context will be constructed for the prototype during
prototyping. Storylines will be generated and user
classes are created in order to illustration the
relationship among use-cases, user's actions, and
interaction between users and use-cases. Scenarios are
generated using the prototype context that can be
documented as scenario descriptions.
Figure2. Overall schema of Prototyping
Session
We recommend that the prototyping accomplish
through a series of sessions with participation of
software system stakeholders which can be called
prototyping sessions. Figure 2 demonstrates overall
schema of prototyping session.
3.2.3. Requirements Validation and Verification.
After prototyping of use-cases, validation and
verification of elicited and identified requirements is
applicable. These tasks can be done through
prototyping session or after that. Validation and
Verification of the requirements can be done using
designed prototypes checking and reading the
scenarios, or V&V techniques offered by RE
Knowledge-Base subsystem of Screen-Based RE
toolset. Due to iterative nature of Requirements
Engineering, Requirements Validation and Verification
can be done also on subsequent rounds through the RE
process. The toolset supports some popular techniques
for V&V, e.g. Requirements Verification checklists
and Issues lists.
3.2.4. Requirements Management. Requirements
management prepares users to track changes of
requirements and manage requirements with a range of
capabilities in a screen-based fashion. Followings are
some key features of Screen-based Requirements
Management tool:
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• Define and manage Requirement items, which
include the following:
¾ Summary and Detail
¾ ID, version and phase
¾ Requirements Type
¾ Requirements Status
¾ Requirements Priority
¾ Requirements tracking
¾ Assigned stakeholders
¾ Change Log
¾ Relationships between Requirements
¾ Related Use-Cases
¾ Refer and edit relationships between
Requirements and Use-Cases in Matrix View
• Document Generation for the entire project in the
following formats:
¾ HTML
¾ Word
¾ Excel
• Requirements view:
¾ Requirements in any use-case or whole
project
¾ Requirements which are assigned to a
specified stakeholder
¾ Requirements based on Priority level
¾ Requirements Based on type
¾ Requirements Based on status
¾ Project Stakeholders
3.3. Intelligent Process Control
Intelligent process control is the next important
component of our approach. In order to help end-users
and prevent their mistakes we provided a feature which
will control end-users during the process of
requirements engineering. In this component, rules and
flow of the processes are defined to lead the end-users
in right ways and prevent their probable mistakes.
Intelligent support also contains a set of executable
checking rules that offer warnings and guidance to the
tool user. Moreover, a decision support system has
been provided to help end-users for making decision
through requirements engineering process.
4. Conclusion and future work
This paper intended to highlight the necessity of
Requirements Engineering in End-User Computing
and to also propose a solution for the problem. We
described End-User Computing environments and a
variety of End-Users. Screen-Based Requirements
Engineering was proposed in this paper as a solution
for Requirement Engineering in EUC. The framework
of our approach was also demonstrated and its main
components were discussed. Irrespective of the
usefulness of the Screen-Based Requirements
Engineering in EUC, this approach is capable of being
employed by End-Users in the area of End-User
Computing (EUC) and also by requirements engineers
in a typical Requirements Engineering environment.
The completion of the Screen-Based RE approach,
its toolset and its usability in a real industrial setting
requires further research, which focuses on refinement
of the framework, its design and implementation of its
supporting toolset.
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