人机协作的用户故事场景提取与迭代演进

敏捷软件开发中常用用户故事表达需求：用户故事讲述了具体的用户角色希望软件完成的功能.系统新版本的需求常常来自多个用户故事的整合.随着版本的迭代,不断会有新的用户故事出现.用户故事的迭代式管理和整合是敏捷开发成功的关键.为帮助开发者掌握项目的用户故事需求,提出人机协作的用户故事理解、整合和管理方法,支持需求的迭代更新.具体而言,提出用户故事元模型和带场景细粒度描述的用户故事表示,从故事描述、功能特征属性以及场景3个维度表达用户故事.便于开发者理解用户故事所表达的功能需求.提出基于元模型的用户故事理解,以及用户故事表达元素的自动提取方法.提出人机协同式用户故事整合方法,使用功能场景图辅助开发者确定用户故事间的关联关系.提出基于功能场景图的用户故事迭代更新方法.案例研究展示了方法的可行性.     

一种用户故事需求质量提升方法

敏捷开发采用用户故事表达用户需求.一般采用格式受限的自然语言编写,但在用户故事编写过程中经常出现一些表述上的缺陷.典型的缺陷包括缺失必要信息、意思表达含糊不清、故事间有重复或存在冲突等.这很大程度上影响了需求的质量,影响软件开发项目的进行.提出一种用户故事需求质量提升方法.从故事缺陷定位的角度出发,该方法构建了用户故事概念模型,并根据实际案例总结并提出11条用户故事应遵循的质量准则.从而提出故事结构分析、句法模式分析以及语法分析等技术,用于自动构建带场景用户故事的实例层模型,并根据准则进行故事缺陷检测,进而提升用户故事质量.在包含36个用户故事84个场景的实际项目中进行实验,自动检测出173个缺陷,缺陷检测的准确率和召回率分别达到88.79%和95.06%.     

Extracting conceptual models from user stories with Visual Narrator

Extracting conceptual models from natural language requirements can help identify dependencies, redundancies, and conflicts between requirements via a holistic and easy-to-understand view that is generated from lengthy textual specifications. Unfortunately, existing approaches never gained traction in practice, because they either require substantial human involvement or they deliver too low accuracy. In this paper, we propose an automated approach called Visual Narrator based on natural language processing that extracts conceptual models from user story requirements. We choose this notation because of its popularity among (agile) practitioners and its focus on the essential components of a requirement: Who? What? Why? Coupled with a careful selection and tuning of heuristics, we show how Visual Narrator enables generating conceptual models from user stories with high accuracy. Visual Narrator is part of the holistic Grimm method for user story collaboration that ranges from elicitation to the interactive visualization and analysis of requirements.     

The campfire storytelling system – automatic creation and modification of a narrative

This paper presents and evaluates a method for automatically generating a narrative that includes initial input from the listener, without forcing him/her to become an actual character in the story. More importantly, the story can be modified by the listener during the course of the story being narrated. This latter feature works without pre-defining alternative paths, thereby permitting the changes to take place at any time throughout the course of the story. This system, called the Campfire Storytelling System, employs a contextual approach to narrative generation called the Cooperating Context Method (CCM). Campfire STS was assessed for its functionality and its user acceptance. Thirty-eight human test subjects evaluated stories generated by Campfire STS. They responded to a survey stating their opinions about the generated stories, their entertainment value for adults, their creativity, and other similar issues. Furthermore, 20 of these subjects who self-reported non-trivial experience with children were additionally asked to evaluate the generated stories with respect to how much children would enjoy them. The results of these evaluations suggest that Campfire STS is able to create interesting and novel stories, as well as change them seamlessly in mid-stream while still maintaining interesting and entertaining stories.     

一种XP项目迭代周期估计方法

XP项目开发周期依赖于项目团队的开发效率。这个效率可以用每个迭代开发阶段加入的用户Story被成功实现的概率来描述。提出了一种简单、实用的估计XP项目开发效率和迭代周期的数学方法。该方法可用于项目开发成本和工作量估计。用一组数据对该方法进行了模拟验证。     

一种软件开发过程的工作量评估模型

提出一个评估模型用以估算软件生产过程的工作量。模型依据用户故事的规模及复杂度来预估工作量,根据团队开发能力以及开发过程可能遇到的多种负面和突发性因素计算开发速度,结合工作量和开发速度计算得到预计的开发时间,方便软件项目管理者在项目初期准确的估计完成时间,以便提高生产率以及在行业中的信誉度。     

Emphasizing the communication aspects for the successful development of electronic business systems

In order to be successful, web-based electronic business systems have to be developed in such a way that both the customers needs and the business intentions of the provider are met. As human-to-human interaction is partly replaced by human-computer interaction in such systems, this requires anticipating the users behaviour and paying a lot of attention to the communication aspects.In this article a development method is suggested that emphasizes the communication aspects in web-based systems. It is based on user profiling and story boarding. User profiles can be used to classify user needs as well as the various kinds of system support for them. The story board describes stories, i.e. navigation paths of users through the system, which can be used to model the behaviour of users.To discover user profiles and stories, two interleaved activities are suggested: communication analysis and linguistic analysis. Communication analysis addresses typical human-to-human interaction in the application domain and classifies typical communication barriers. We argue that using localisation abstraction and metaphors can help to overcome communication barriers, implying that their use may enhance the users understanding and successful navigation through a web site. Linguistic analysis addresses how the activities of the users would be described in natural language. Analysing the used word fields and metaphorical structures may provide guidance for centering the story board around the central activities. We use a typical banking application, on-line loan systems, as an example to illustrate our method.Acknowledgement The research reported in this article is supported by the Massey University Academy of Business Research Fund (Project Story boarding for web-based services, 2002/03). The authors would like to thank Bernhard Thalheim and Heinrich Mayr for their helpful and constructive comments on preliminary versions of this article.     

Automating test oracles from restricted natural language agile requirements

Manual testing of software requirements written in natural language for agile or any other methodology requires more time and human resources. This leaves the testing process error prone and time consuming. For satisfied end users with bug‐free software delivered on time, there is a need to automate the test oracle process for natural language or informal requirements. The automation of the test oracle is relatively easier with formal requirements, but this task is difficult to achieve with natural language requirements. This study proposes an approach called Restricted Natural Language Agile Requirements Testing (ReNaLART) to automate the test oracle from restricted natural language agile requirements. For this purpose, it uses an existing user story template with some modifications for writing user stories. This helps in identifying test input and expected output for a user story. For comparison of expected and observed outputs it makes use of a regex pattern and string distance functions. It is capable of assigning different types of verdicts automatically depending upon the similarity/dissimilarity between observed and expected outputs of user stories. ReNaLART is validated using several case studies of different domains, namely, OLX Pakistan, Mental Health Tests, McDelivery Pakistan, BlueStacks, Power Searching with Google, TensorFlow Playground, w3Schools 2018 offline and Touch'D. It revealed several faults in five of the above listed eight applications. Plus, the proposed test oracle on an average took 0.02 s for test data generation, expected output generation and verdict assignment. Both these facts show the fault revealing effectiveness and efficiency of ReNaLART.     

Effective Communication in Requirements Elicitation: A Comparison of Methodologies

The elicitation or communication of user requirements comprises an early and critical but highly error-prone stage in system development. Socially oriented methodologies provide more support for user involvement in design than the rigidity of more traditional methods, facilitating the degree of user–designer communication and the ‘capture’ of requirements. A more emergent and collaborative view of requirements elicitation and communication is required to encompass the user, contextual and organisational factors. From this accompanying literature in communication issues in requirements elicitation, a four-dimensional framework is outlined and used to appraise comparatively four different methodologies seeking to promote a closer working relationship between users and designers. The facilitation of communication between users and designers is subject to discussion of the ways in which communicative activities can be ‘optimised’ for successful requirements gathering, by making recommendations based on the four dimensions to provide fruitful considerations for system designers.     

A comparative study of software tools for user story management

ContextUser stories have become widely accepted in agile software development. Consequently, a great number of software tools that provide, inter alia, support for practices based on user stories have emerged in recent years. These tools may have different features and focus in terms of support for agile requirements engineering (RE) concepts and practices.ObjectiveThe present study aims to provide a deep insight into the current capabilities and future trends of software support for agile RE practices based on user stories.MethodA comparative qualitative study of a set of agile software tools has been conducted according to the following criteria: coverage of the key functional requirements, support for basic agile RE concepts and practices, and user satisfaction with the tool. The criteria for tool selection were: diversity of software tools, high rating on the user-stories community Web site (http://www.userstories.com), and availability for review.ResultsThe results show a generally good coverage of key functional requirements related to management of user stories and epics, high-level release planning and low-level iteration planning. On the other hand, user-role modeling and persona support have not been addressed at all, and it has been found that requirements for acceptance testing support were completely covered by only one tool. More importantly, the study has revealed significant differences in the way different tools support agile RE concepts and practices (if at all). Finally, qualitative analysis of user reviews has demonstrated that practitioners prefer tools that are easy to set up, easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to customize, over more sophisticated but simultaneously more demanding tools.ConclusionAlthough the progress that has been made since the inception of these tools is quite clear, there is still room for improvements in terms of support for various agile RE practices within a specific agile process.     

Effective user involvement in product development by improving the analysis of user needs

User involvement has been shown to be beneficial in the development of useful and usable systems. The trend of software development becoming a product-oriented activity creates challenges to user involvement. Field studies appear a promising approach, but the analysis of the gathered user needs has been shown to be demanding. This study presents, on the basis of seven case studies, an early user-involvement process showing how user needs can be analysed and how the input to product development can be identified. In addition, the process is evaluated in two industrial cases with interviews and a questionnaire. The results show that the process supports effective early user involvement; the resulted requirements were evaluated as being more successful and their quality as better than average in a company. However, the case studies show that user involvement not only provides useful information about users' needs but also increases the understanding of users' values.     

基于时序结构图的视频流描述方法

通过对视频流的分解可以获得基于关键帧集的视频流表示,但这种表示方法不能反映出视频流中隐藏的故事发展关系,为揭示这种关系,提出了一种视频流的快速聚类算法,用于对视频流分解单元进行相关性分析,该算法通过检测视频镜头间的相似性和连续性,实现把来自同一摄像机的视频镜头归并入同一视频类,并帱此得到而且为矿山频流的快速浏览和检索提供了新的思路。     

基于MVC模式的Web用户界面建模

分析了企业信息系统的Web用户界面开发特性,研究了当前主流前端框架的MVC(模型-视图-控制器)设计模式应用,针对Web前端开发需求及最佳实践方法,提出了一种符合MVC用户界面开发最佳实践的组件化Web用户界面建模方法.设计一套抽象和描述Web用户界面组件的UML(统一建模语言)概要文件,从界面数据模型、界面组件模型到界面交互模型等3个方面完成Web用户界面建模.以一个装修行业定制型ERP(企业资源计划)系统为例,通过用户界面建模实践,验证了本建模方法的可行性、易用性和有效性.     

Multigroup decision-support systems in CSCW

Research in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) has concentrated on developing techniques and support systems for groups of tightly coupled individuals focused on activities such as group writing and design development. A natural extension involves group decision-support systems (GDSS) that can assist multiple groups working in different places at different times. Our work extends the GDSS approach to a multigroup decision-support system (MGDSS) and uses the advanced integrated requirements engineering system (AIRES) for support. Two case studies, including data from user questionnaires, indicate a high level of user satisfaction with the support the system provides. The MGDSS process and AIRES software support idea elicitation to solve complex problems. The system automatically organizes and assesses these ideas to help large groups build consensus     

Enhancing security requirements engineering by organizational learning

More and more software projects today are security-related in one way or the other. Requirements engineers without expertise in security are at risk of overlooking security requirements, which often leads to security vulnerabilities that can later be exploited in practice. Identifying security-relevant requirements is labor-intensive and error-prone. In order to facilitate the security requirements elicitation process, we present an approach supporting organizational learning on security requirements by establishing company-wide experience resources and a socio-technical network to benefit from them. The approach is based on modeling the flow of requirements and related experiences. Based on those models, we enable people to exchange experiences about security-relevant requirements while they write and discuss project requirements. At the same time, the approach enables participating stakeholders to learn while they write requirements. This can increase security awareness and facilitate learning on both individual and organizational levels. As a basis for our approach, we introduce heuristic assistant tools. They support reuse of existing experiences that are relevant for security. In particular, they include Bayesian classifiers that issue a warning automatically when new requirements seem to be security-relevant. Our results indicate that this is feasible, in particular if the classifier is trained with domain-specific data and documents from previous projects. We show how the ability to identify security-relevant requirements can be improved using this approach. We illustrate our approach by providing a step-by-step example of how we improved the security requirements engineering process at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and report on experiences made in this application.     

Using Character Motives to Drive Plot Resolution in Interactive Stories

One of the most important parts of a story is its ending. This is the point in which all open questions and conflicts in the narrative must be resolved. This article presents a dynamic, motive-driven resolution method for interactive stories. In the type of stories supported by this method the user participates as one of the characters and influences dynamically the development of the plot. The rest of the cast consists of discrete computer characters. The resolution method takes into account the motives of the user character to decide on: (i) the outcome of all character actions and (ii) the presentation sequence for these outcomes. The decision process is based on the current story context. In addition, it addresses the need to avoid ambiguities, to preserve consistency and to create suspense during the end. This method has been implemented and tested in DEFACTO, an EU research program for the generation of a framework for interactive story design.