SiREN SIGNAL MEETING 2013 (SIGNAL’13)

Location: Malmö Högskola
Time: 30-31 May, 12 to 12.
Host: Dr. Annabella.Loconsole

VENUE information

The meeting will be held at Malmö Högskola,"Gäddan",  sal G8325, , Citadellsvägen 7
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=202701198113229463805.0004d81e989a11f769013 http://mah.se/Om-Malmo-hogskola/Hitta-oss/Kartor/
Building number 3 on the map

Gäddan is located  a few minutes walk from the Malmö central train/bus station. The recommended hotels are also within walking distance, as will the dinner restaurant be. Distance to Gäddan building:
Buss/Flygbuss   station 700 m
Järnvägsstation 700 m
Centrum 900 m
Flygplats (Kastrup/Sturup) 33 km/37 km
In the Map here:
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=202701198113229463805.0004d81e989a11f769013
You will find the central station, the building Gäddan and  some suggested hotels near the central station. 

AGENDA (tentative - subject to change)

General Notes: All talks are scheduled for 45min. This implies a MAXIMUM of 30 min presentation then 15 min QnA.

Day One: May 30th
**12-13: Welcome, coffee, mingling

**13-13.30 (maybe less): Introduction  (Tony Gorschek)

**13.30-14.15: Developing Enterprise-aligned Information Systems Using Model-Driven Development – A Prototype (Iyad Zikra)
Abstract: Relying on models as the main development artifacts in Information Systems (IS) development projects is becoming increasingly popular. Many existing Model-Driven Development (MDD) approaches provide means for creating and managing models, as well as for transforming models through various stages of the development process. On a higher plane of abstraction, enterprise-level models provide useful tools for representing organizational knowledge, which facilitate understanding, analyzing, and improving the organizations. Nevertheless, the connection between the two modeling worlds is still, for the most part, being managed manually. Enterprise models provide sources of information that modelers can rely on when developing IS models to support the organization. In an effort to bridge this gap, we present a prototype tool that implements EMDDx, a unifying meta-model that extends over two, usually separate, modeling levels. The prototype demonstrates the feasibility of 1) developing EMDDx-based inter-connected enterprise and IS models, and 2) generating an IS skeleton from the models. The resulting IS skeleton is derived from the organizational knowledge captured by the enterprise models, and is therefore aligned with the organizational goals and intentions. The skeleton can be populated and modified by the developers to arrive at the final IS.

**14.20-15.05: Views and ideas from the IREB certification front line (Stefan Ekenulv)
Abstract: IREB CPRE is one of the major initiatives to invigorate further education in Requirements Engineering (RE). It incorporates the ambition to create an open platform for fundamental knowledge and concepts, an arena for industry and academic sharing, exchange  and inspiration. The certification model with syllabi and exams follows the  ISO/IEC 17024:2012 standard, but many challenges lies ahead. How can we increase the use of research results in the RE work done in companies today? Can IREB have an impact on this? Stefan has run the Foundation Level courses more than 10 times since 2011, and will talk about his view on the syllabus, the response from the industry, the certification program, statistics and the development of the IREB and what could be done better.  INCEPTIVE is a consultancy firm that recognize the importance ot requirements and has a mission to create more consultancy services in the RE domain. IREB is one part of this strategy.

**15.05-15.20: Coffee and Refreshments - mingling

**15.20-16.05: Requirements engineering and testing: the not-so-trivial pursuit for coordination (Michael Unterkalmsteiner)
Abstract: Requirements Engineering and Software Testing are mature areas and have seen a lot of research. Nevertheless, their interactions and overlaps have been sparsely explored beyond the concept of traceability. To better understand how requirements engineers and testers collaborate and coordinate we developed REST-bench, a lightweight assessment framework that aims at identifying bottlenecks and gaps that hinder effective and efficient collaboration. We present lessons learned from the assessment of four companies.

**16.10-16.55: What is the difference between RE in Software Engineering and RM in Systems Engineering? (Lena Johansson)
Abstract: After 1 year as Requirement Management Expert Advisor at Tetra Pak I have a few reflections about the difference in how requirements are handled in a System engineering context as opposed to a SW engineering context where I have my background. I would like to share and discuss these reflections with you to understand where the different fields can learn from each other. Some of the reflections relate to non-functional requirements, the cascade of requirements, and interface requirements

**17.00-17.45: Enabling Traceability Reuse for Impact Analyses: Toward a Recommendation System in a Safety Context (Markus Borg)
Abstract: Engineers working on safety critical software development must explicitly specify trace links as part of Impact Analyses (IA), both to code andnon-code development artifacts. In large-scale projects, constituting information spaces of thousands of artifacts, conducting IA is tedious work relying on extensive system understanding. We propose to support this activity by enabling engineers to reuse knowledge from previously completed IAs. We do this by mining the trace links in documented IA reports, creating a semantic network of the resulting traceability. We studied anIssue Management System (IMS), from within a company in the power and automation domain, containing 4,845 IA reports from 9 years of development relating to a single safety critical system. The domain has strict process requirements guiding the documented IAs. We used link mining to extract trace links, from these IA reports to development artifacts, and to determine their link semantics. We constructed a semantic network of the interrelated development artifacts, containing 6,104 non-code artifacts and 9,395 trace links. We provide initial suggestions as to how the knowledge embedded in such a network can be used in a recommendation system to advance support for IA.

**17.50-18.35: Improving Requirements Effort Estimation using an Expert-Centred Approach (Emilia Mendes)

Abstract: Effort is forecasted and used as basis to predict costs and allocate resources effectively, so enabling projects to be delivered on time and within budget. Effort estimation is a very complex domain where the relationship between factors is non-deterministic and has an inherently uncertain nature, and where corresponding decisions and predictions require reasoning with uncertainty. Numerous organisations need not only to estimate effort for the entire project, but also to focus on the requirements phase, in particular whenever such organisations outsource their projects. One example of such Organisation is the Brazilian navy. This talk will detail our experience applying an expert-centred approach to improving the requirements effort estimation process in the Brazilian navy, and how such an approach can be advantageous to software companies. The methodology focus of this talk, which focuses on expert knowledge elicitation and participation, can be employed not only to improve a requirements and software effort estimation processes, but also to improve other aspects such as quality and risk.

**18.35--> Hotel Check-in etc.

**20.00: SIREN dinner
Abstract: Food and excellent company. After dinner we can stay and mingle, and be merry. Details: to come

Day Two: May 31
**08.30-09.15: Flexibility of a Software Organization: A Concept Map (Indira Nurdiani)
Abstract: Flexibility is an invaluable characteristic for a software organization. It enables the organization to adapt to change and maintain a competitive edge. Though flexibility has been extensively researched in manufacturing, studies from the software engineering perspective are still immature. Currently there is no aggregated view for software organizations to manage and improve flexibility. We performed an iterative literature review in combination with grounded theory to gather the primary studies and the analysis. We reviewed literature in flexibility from various disciplines, including, manufacturing, information systems, management, and software engineering. From the literature, we identified various definitions of flexibility, four of which is within software engineering. From consolidated results, we identified different types of flexibility, dimensions of flexibility, and properties of change. By combining concepts from literature in flexibility and organizational theory, we formulated a conceptual model of software organization flexibility. The proposed conceptual model provides a holistic view aimed to aid managers, product owners, and other decision makers to assess changes that impact their organizations and understand the various flexibility implementation options.

**09.20-10.05: Capturing Consumer Preference in System Requirements Through Business Strategy (Eric-Oluf Svee, Constantions Giannoulis, Jelena Zdravkovic)
Abstract: A core concern within Business-IT alignment is coordinating strategic initiatives and plans with Information Systems. Substantial work has been done on linking strategy to requirements for IS development, but it has usually been focused on the core value exchanges offered by the business, and thus overlooking other aspects that influence the implementation of strategy. One of these, consumer preferences, has been proven to influence the successful provisioning of the business’s customer value proposition, and this study aims to establish a conceptual link between both strategy and consumer preferences to system requirements. The core contention is that reflecting consumer preferences through business strategy in system requirements allows for the development of aligned systems, and therefore systems that better support a consumer orientation.

**10.05-10.30 Coffee and Refreshments - mingling

**10.35-11.20: Flexible Requirements Modeling with reqT - a hands-on tutorial (Björn Regnell)
Abstract: reqT.org is an open source initiative to enable flexible and concurrent requirements modeling that combines informal natural language specifications with graph-oriented semantics by codifying requirements into semi-formal computational entities in the Scala language for the Java Virtual Machine. With reqT, computer science students can model software requirements in many different styles, while being confronted with important requirements engineering trade-offs such as proper level of detail, good-enough completeness and adequate mix of abstraction levels. Requirements models by concurrently working agile teams can be managed in distributed version control systems such as Git. In addition, software engineering researchers can use reqT to implement demonstrators of research results for illustrating novel concepts and solutions. This talk gives a hands-on demo of reqT and guides the participants in a joint, live encoding of requirements and test cases into reqT models. The talk also invites the SiREN community to evaluate reqT in their teaching and research and to contribute to the future development of reqT.

**11.25-11.45: SARE (Micael Åkesson)
Swedish Association for Requirement Engineer(SARE) is a new organization based on non-profit organization. SARE is geographical divided into south (Malmö), west (Gothenborg) and east (Stockholm), for more information, please browse www.sare. The idea behind the organization is amongst other knowledge transfer regarding requirement management and also networking. We arrange seminars and workshops with invited speakers from both the academi and the industry. The meetings is a popular arena for new face to face contacts. Furthermore we drive discussions fora on LinkedIn on different topics.

**11.50-12.20: Wrap up and RE'14 Information (Tony Gorschek)

Participants
See: http://doodle.com/poll/k28txx49aqzxys8r
(If you are not on the list you are not planned to be a participant! If you want to come then you need to email me ASAP).

Questions
Contact: tony.gorschek [AT] gmail.com