Requirements analysis for information web (IWEB) : an issue-based, information modeling and management environment for software engineering

Abstract: "The IWEB project is focused on creating an improved management environment for team-based software engineering. This includes support for information structuring and communication during a project as well as maintenance and (re)use of project histories across projects. With this in mind, we are experimenting primarily within the context of the project based software engineering courses 15-413 (the basic course offered each Fall semester) and 15-499 (the advanced course offered each Spring) in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. These courses reflect much that is typical of the 'state of the art' and outstanding issues in the current practice of software engineering. They are large (60 students, teaching assistants and instructors in F'93), require the delivery of a running prototype to a real client, and generally attempt to provide, as realistic as possible, software engineering experience to the participants. This document summarizes the requirements for IWEB based on general case studies of engineering work conducted at the EDRC (and elsewhere) and integrates the experience of the authors as students, teaching assistants and instructors in the courses. We accumulated insights and studied information problems and communication breakdowns from three different perspectives: direct observation, student surveys, and quantitative analysis of project communication records and documents. IWEB incorporates ideas from previous issue-based support systems, such as gIBIS (graphical issue-based information system), and intends to build on top of a more general information modeling perspective by adapting a prototype of the n-dim (n-dimensional information modeling) environment. To capture the functional requirements for IWEB we employ a development method structured around the viewpoint of prospective users of the system (actors) and that produces descriptions of all of the transactions these actors will engage in with the system as use cases. Though we are focusing on software engineering for the initial prototype of IWEB, we expect that it will have broader application within any team- based or collaborative work context."