Report Series 1996
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All reports are in PDF and postscript format compressed using gzip. 
Missing reports will be added soon or contact authors directly.   

             
            Coordinating Distributed Organizational Knowledge (CREWS-96-03) 
            
                M. Jarke, M. Jeusfeld, P. Peters, K. Pohl 
                appeared in
                Data and Knowledge Engineering, Vol.23(3), September, 1997 
                Abstract 
                As organizations move from hierarchical towards market-like 
                structures, their distributed units also take a larger role in 
                the design and evolution of organizational information systems. 
                This requires strategies which support the cooperative creation, 
                evaluation and evolution of global information flow structures 
                among autonomous organizational units through local knowledge 
                acquisition and maintenance. Three such strategies are 
                presented: cooperative conceptual modeling, multi-simulation, 
                and explicit process support. These strategies are formally 
                embedded in a meta modeling framework and implemented with a 
                repository-based architecture. They are intended for the 
                analysis of business processes in networked organizations, and 
                as a basis for designing and evolving their federated 
                information systems.
             
            Requirements Engineering: An Overview (CREWS-96-02) 
            
                Klaus Pohl
                appeared in
                Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, A. Kent, J. 
                Williams (editors), Volume 36, Supplement 21, Marcel Dekker, 
                Inc., New York, 1997 
                Abstract 
                Traditionally, requirements engineering (RE) has been seen as 
                the first phase of the software life cycle in which a 
                specification is produced from informal ideas. This paper 
                provides an overview on requirements engineering. 
                We first reflect on some definitions of RE, characterize typical 
                RE products and discuss the four main RE-tasks. We then define 
                RE as a process of "establishing vision in context" which can be 
                characterized by three orthogonal dimensions, namely the 
                agreement, representation, and specification dimension. These 
                dimensions reflect that RE is faced with social, technical, and 
                cognitive problems. Finally, the consequences of these 
                definitions on the RE process, its products, and requirements 
                traceability are outlined.
                 
            A Proposal for a Scenario Classification Framework (CREWS-96-01.ps)  (PDF)
            
                C. Rolland, C. Ben Achour, C. Cauvet, J. Ralyt‰, A. Sutcliffe, 
                N.A.M. Maiden, M. Jarke, P. Haumer, K.Pohl, E. Dubois, P. 
                Heymans 
                appeared in
                Requirements Engineering Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Springer 
                Verlag, pp.23-47, 1998
                Abstract 
                Use of examples, scenes, narrative descriptions of contexts, 
                mock-ups and prototypes have attracted considerable attention in 
                Requirements Engineering, Human Computer Interaction and 
                Information Systems communities. Loosely all these ideas can be 
                called scenario based approaches, although exact definitions are 
                not easy beyond saying these approaches emphasise some 
                description of the real world. Experience seems to tell us that 
                people react to 'real things' and that this helps clarifying 
                requirements. Indeed the widespread acceptance of prototyping in 
                system development points to the effectiveness of scenario based 
                approaches. However, we have little understanding about how 
                scenarios should be constructed, little hard evidence about 
                their effectiveness and even less idea about why they work. 
                The paper is an attempt to explore some of the issues underlying 
                scenario based approaches in Requirements Engineering (RE) and 
                to propose a framework for their classification. Motivations for 
                developing the framework are threefold : (a) to help 
                understanding and clarifying existing scenario based approaches, 
                (b) to situate the industrial practice of scenarios and (c) to 
                relate typical RE situations to classes of scenarios. 
             
 
            
                
            
             
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