Requirements elicitation. Architecture Requirements Autonomy requirement Decoupling of a DPF from the processes that manage it: In a data space with a large diversity of data-items the duplication of data-items needs to be prohibited. On the other hand, it cannot be avoided that a single data-item is part of more than one complex data item. And that these complex data-items may be managed by independent processes and that these processes may change over time. To cope with the dynamics on the management process side, the data space should not be an integral part of the software that executes the product management tasks. Hence a complete separation of concerns and implementation between the management logic and the data-space logic is necessary. Sustainability requirement For this requirement, the reasoning is similar to the one about the Autonomy. In a data space with a large diversity of data-items the duplication of data-items needs to be prohibited. However, single data-items can be part of more than one complex data item. Because the future management of product-related aspects may demand the construction of new complex data-items, sustainability of the DPF dictates that is it must be possible to add an arbitrary number of complex data-items in which the same data-item is a part, without any consequence for the management of earlier complex data-items. Scalability requirement The scalability requirements covers both the physical scalability of the data space and the functional scalability of the number and type of management processes that act on the data space and the data items and the accessibility constraints that are in effect at any moment in time. Another important scalability issue is that individual data-items can have arbitrary size Distribution of a DPF requirement Because a product has multiple parts, it is possible that these parts have different owners and hence, that the data that describes these different parts is originally generated and stored in different places. The construction of a DPF should not necessitate that all these individual data items must be copied to a central storage place. Notification of Change requirement From the perspective of a DPF, every data-item is part of a string of linked data items. The last added element of that string has one of two states: ‘last known’ or ‘obsolete’. All previously added data-items in the string have the state ‘changed’ and a link to the next linked data-item. This notion of state and a state change are stric...
Requirements elicitation. Workflow Generation and Management system Requirements WG.1 Collaboration A WFGM system shall be usable in a collaborative setting, meaning that the system generates workflows in a shared workflow language in an iterative fashion. This requirement implies that candidate systems must be designed to generate and manage workflows in collaboration with other systems, originating from other developers. the WFGM system of systems will standardize on output, which means requirements on the partial workflows produced in terms of syntax and semantics need to be met by each of the contenders. WG.2 Openness A WFGM system shall be open to process workflow statements generated to specification by other partners, and tolerant for expression element that are outside the domain of expertise of an individual service. In a multi-disciplinary BPM environment, not all the domain knowledge will reside with one partner: for considerations of integrity, autonomy and strategy, knowledge will be applied in workflows in line with the expertise of each stakeholder. This will, in general result in workflow representations that contain information that cannot be understood by all service providers. A service provider that encounters elements in a workflow that it cannot process, must: 1. not fail on the incomprehensible element 2. not modify or tamper with the incomprehensible element 3. not remove or discard the incomprehensible element. WG.3 Completeness A WFGM system shall provide a complete set of services for workflow generation and management, specifically services for generation, selection, instantiation and execution of workflows. This requirement ensures that a candidate system contains all the functionality to perform WFGM responsibilities. However, some concepts provide workflow generation services, but not, for example instantiation services. In case we want to use this candidate anyway, additional providers for the lacking services need to be found; this is specified in the relaxed requirement WG.3r: WG.3r Partial Completeness In case a WFGM system provides just part of the required services generation, selection, instantiation and execution, it must be extended with services (from other providers) that cover the lacking capabilities. This requirement states that it must be possible to achieve a complete (and compatible) set of services in case only some of them are provided by a candidate.
Requirements elicitation. This deliverable shall provide an overview of the requirements coming from the living labs and therefore consolidate this deliverable from the user needs point of view
Requirements elicitation. Here the objective is to capture user requirements using a combination of methods from the relevant literature. The detailed methodology for doing this is explained below. The requirements elicitation phase of Optique is crucial for setting the directions towards which the project will work. The framework will first identify the proper combination of methods for requirements elicitation to be used. These will include interviews, focus groups and field observation [36]. The stakeholder requirements will then be documented in terms of use case scenarios and user stories, taking into account different stakeholder perspectives and requirement category, and they will be grouped into three categories: functional requirements, non-functional (or performance) requirements, and organisational fitness requirements. The next step is to recast the end user requirements, initially expressed in scenarios and user stories, into technical requirements directed at Optique''s technical work packages. In the context of this phase it is also to important to establish a user performance baseline for each use case, enabling meaningful identification of improvements due to Optique when the user evaluations have been concluded. For this, we will identify a small number of key performance indicators for each use case, and determine what levels these will need to reach in order for us to achieve our goals. We will continuously monitor and report these key performance indicators, thus providing an easy to understand summary of the project current status and rate of progress towards its goals. The requirements elicitation process will run in multiple iterations. By the end of this activity, the user requirements in the Statoil and Siemens use case have been recorded in detail. In addition, the technical means of meeting the user requirements have been documented for technical partners so that the strictly scientific and technical project work can begin.
