Precise scenarios: a customer-friendly foundation for formal specifications

  • Authors:
  • Oliver Au;Roger Stone;John Cooke

  • Affiliations:
  • Loughborough University, England;Loughborough University, England;Loughborough University, England

  • Venue:
  • IFM'07 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Integrated formal methods
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

A formal specification, written in a mathematical notation, is beyond the comprehension of the average software customer. As a result, the customer cannot provide useful feedback regarding its correctness and completeness. To address this problem, we suggest the formalism expert to work with the customer to create precise scenarios. With only a few simple Z concepts, a precise scenario describes an operation by its effects on the system state. The customer would find a concrete precise scenario easier to understand than its corresponding abstract schema. The Z expert derives schemas based on the precise scenarios. Precise scenarios afford user involvement that improves the odds of a formal specification fully capturing the user requirements.