Viewpoints: principles, problems and a practical approach to requirements engineering

  • Authors:

  • Ian Sommerville;Pete Sawyer

  • Affiliations:

  • Computing Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, UK;Computing Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, UK

  • Venue:
  • Annals of Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

The paper includes a survey and discussion of viewpoint‐oriented approaches to requirements engineering and a presentation of new work in this area which has been designed with practical application in mind. We describe the benefits of viewpoint‐oriented requirements engineering and describe the strengths and weaknesses of a number of viewpoint‐oriented methods. We discuss the practical problems of introducing viewpoint‐oriented requirements engineering into industrial software engineering practice and why these have prevented the widespread use of existing approaches. We then introduce a new model of viewpoints called Preview. Preview viewpoints are flexible, generic entities which can be used in different ways and in different application domains. We describe the novel characteristics of the Preview viewpoints model and the associated processes of requirements discovery, analysis and negotiation. Finally, we discuss how well this approach addresses some outstanding problems in requirements engineering (RE) and the practical industrial problems of introducing new requirements engineering methods.