Multimedia Requirements Engineering Beyond MeRE Descriptions

Name of Workshop (W5)

First International Workshop on

Multimedia Requirements Engineering (MeRE'06) — Beyond Mere Descriptions

Tuesday, 12th of September 2006

Printable Call for Participation (pdf/plain text)

Printable Call for Papers (pdf/plain text)

Photos, Proceedings, and Presentation Slides

Photos taken during our workshop have been uploaded. Please contact us if you want to have your photo removed from the web.

Proceedings and presentation slides have been uploaded to our official RE'06 website.

If you would like to get access, please send your contact information to MeRE06@gmail.com.

Themes

Most requirements development and management efforts focus on the production of accessible and validated descriptions. Several methods and tools are in use today that aid the requirements engineer in writing, revising, and communicating requirements as text. This approach has several disadvantages. First, text constitutes a language barrier, particularly a challenge for global companies with distributed product teams. Second, text is an abstract form of communication and as such requires the audience to interpret what is written. This interpretation is always based on past experience, preconceptions, and digestibility of the text (style, amount, intended audience). Third, without apposite use of supporting tools, even the most carefully crafted requirements text may quickly become outdated, inconsistent, or overwhelmingly long.

This workshop explores the possibility to base the requirements development and management effort on multimedia representations, limiting the use of text to areas where it belongs: Rather than making the textual description and its structure the starting point of analysis, the audiovisual depiction now serves as the big picture of and framework for requirements analysis. Text as just another medium may still be employed for detailed, technical requirements or for legal concerns.

A particularly well-suited use of multimedia technology seems the capture of stakeholders' requests during requirements development. Approaches that integrate novel uses of portable devices for this task are of special concern for this effort. They may alleviate the common concern that the effort commanded by handling multimedia might outweigh the gained benefits. The general theme of the workshop is communication and modeling of requirements that are expressed in media other than text.

Topics

Topics of interest include experiences, formal methods, emerging technologies, best practices, research proposals, evaluations and comparisons that focus on multimedia use in requirements development/analysis. Typical topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Media languages/techniques for requirements development/analysis
• Semiological modeling
• Metadata annotation and harvesting technologies
• Case studies of multimedia requirements development/analysis
• Multimedia techniques and tools to facilitate evolution of representations
• Use of portable devices for realtime media capture and annotation

Goals

The workshop aims to provide a collaborative session in which ideas related to multimedia use for requirements engineering are shared, reviewed and debated. The controversy surrounding the practicality of emerging requirements engineering techniques will also be discussed. The workshop will be used to identify future work, issues, problems and priorities, and to propose recommendations around these dimensions for multimedia requirements research.

Targeted Attendees

• RE researchers working in the development of RE tools, techniques and methods
• RE researchers and practitioners investigating the deployment of products of RE research in industry
• RE practitioners with experiences in selection of RE tools, techniques and methods for specific projects
• Multimedia experts who wish to explore scientific and professional use of multimedia technology
• Backgrounds in pedagogy, semiology, or communication design a plus!

Workshop Format

MeRE'06 will provide attendees with an opportunity to become familiar with a new topic and establish a good foundation for discussions about multimedia in requirements engineering. We intend to make the workshop discussion- and interaction-oriented. Paper presentations will be used to provoke discussion and participants will break out into small groups for more detailed discussion. These small groups will be organized around common themes or goals identified either from the papers, or by the participants during the workshop. At the end of the day, there will be a plenary session where the groups report back to the workshop as a whole on the results of their discussion and future work. Results may be used as a basis for continued publications.

Agenda

Summary

Research into multimedia requirements engineering is still somewhat in its infancy. This first international workshop brings together leading experts to set up a research agenda of this subject. An important outcome is the definition of a common vision for requirements engineering that goes beyond mere descriptions: An appropriate use of various media, supported by proper tools, can mitigate some of the challenges requirements engineers are presently facing when describing complex systems. Increasing volumes of requirements texts, often cross-linked for traceability reasons, become a burden to create, manage, and understand. Instead of considering development and managment of requirements as the foremost subject of requirements engineering, we wish to stress the understanding and evolution of requirements. Based on the way humans can process information to create and exchange knowledge, a more humane approach towards this goal could be to employ multimedia to describe requirements.

Program Committee

Len Bass, Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, USA

Jeremy Dick, Integrate Systems Engineering Ltd, UK

Heinrich Hußmann, Media Informatics Group, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

Ana Ivanovic, Healthcare Systems Architecture, Philips Research Europe, the Netherlands

Filippo Lanubile, Università degli Studi di Bari, Dipartimento di Informatica, Italy

Martin Purvis, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Michael Stal, Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, SE 2 (Software Architecture), Germany

Organizers

Oliver Creighton

Siemens AG

Corporate Technology (CT)

Software & Engineering 1 (SE 1) - Development Techniques

Otto-Hahn-Ring 6

D-81730 München, Germany

Oliver Creighton is an Engineer at Siemens AG, a global company with earnings in excess of $90 Billion. Mr. Creighton's responsibilities include consulting, training, and further developing requirements engineering techniques for several operating units within Siemens. He received his diploma in computer science from Technische Universität München in 2001 and his doctoral degree with distinction on a video-based requirements engineering technique in 2006. He is co-author of the book "Open-Source-Software" published in 2004 by Springer-Verlag. His research interests include requirements & development techniques, knowledge modeling, and cinematic communication.

Bernd Bruegge

Applied Software Engineering - Institut für Informatik / I1

Technische Universität München

Boltzmannstraße 3

D-85748 Garching, Germany

Bernd Bruegge is university professor of computer science with a chair for Applied Software Engineering at the Technische Universität München and adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Diploma from the University of Hamburg in 1978, and his masters of science in 1982 and his Ph.D in computer science in 1985 from Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught object-oriented software engineering project courses for 15 years. In 1995, he won the Herbert A. Simon Excellence in Teaching Award at the CMU. Prof. Bruegge has also been serving as an international consultant. He is the co-author of the book "Object-Oriented Software Engineering: Using UML, Patterns and Java" published by Prentice Hall. His research interests include software architectures for dynamic systems, agile software development processes, and software engineering education. His educational focus is in how to teach students software development competence by involving them in the development of large complex systems for real clients.