Week 07 ToDos

1. Watch Lecture Videos

Watch the week 07 lecture videos in advance of your team meeting.

Videos
Specifications Video Slides
Scenarios Video Slides

Lecture References:
See Resources→References for instructions on how to access lecture references.

  • Michael Jackson. ”The Meaning of Requirements”, in Annals of Software Engineering, vol. 3, 1997, pp. 5-21.
  • Alistair Cockburn, Paul Bramble, Andy Pols, Steve Adolph, Patterns for Effective Use Cases, Addison- Wesley Professional, 2002.
    • Chapter 6: Steps and Scenarios

2. Requirements, Specifications, and Assumptions

This task is going to be difficult to understand without having watched the lecture video on Specifications. For this question, identify the three (3) use cases that were deemed in Deliverable 6 to be the most important to your project (from the Kano prioritization exercise). But do not use use cases that the TAs have deemed to be too simple or not orthogonal to each other. For each of these key use cases

  • Indicate the use case
  • Provide two (2) textual Requirements that express important steps or phases or outcomes of the use case. You can reuse user stories as your textual Requirements.
  • For each of the above Requirements, revise the Requirement as one or more textual Specifications for a software System that aims to meet the Requirement. For each Environmental Phenomenon mentioned in the above Requirement, explain the corresponding Interface Phenomena that the System uses to indirectly monitor or control that Environment Phenomenon.
  • State any Assumptions about the behaviour of Environment Phenomena, about User or Actor behaviours, or about the Interface Phenomena introduced above (i.e., Input or Output devices, Accounts) that must hold in order for any System satisfying the Specification to be guaranteed to satisfy the corresponding Requirement.

Here are example Requirements, Specifications, and Assumptions for a system called εatsilon that allows users to share recipes and find ingredients from local vendors.

Place your writeup in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D7.pdf and submit it to LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This writeup will be marked on the basis of (1) being based on suitable use cases, (2) the Completeness, Correctness, Relevance, and Expression of Requirements, organized by use case; (3) the Completeness, Relevance, and Expression of the corresponding Specifictions (with particular attention given to the vocabulary used); (4) the Completeness and Relevance of the Interface Phenomena introduced and used in the expression of the corresponding Specifications, and the Clarity of the descriptions of the phenomena; and (5) the Completeness and Relevance of the corresponding Assumptions. For details, see the Week 7 rubric.

3. Scenarios

Agile software-development processes advocate a philosophy of just-in-time requirements elaboration in which a use case that is scheduled for a sprint in the near future is elaborated – that is, more detailed models are created, or prototypes of the use case are developed and tested, or satisfaction conditions are identified and documented.

For the same three (3) use cases for which you elaborated Specifications and Assumptions, provide elaborated Scenarios for each of these use cases. Each use case’s Scenarios should start with a header and include in tabular format: a main scenario, at least 4 notable Alternatives, and at least 2 notable Exceptions. Here is an example Scenario from the Modern Family project.

Place your Scenarios in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D7.pdf and submit it also to LEARN.

Grading Scheme: This writeup will be marked on the basis of (1) the Completeness and Relevance of your Scenarios, (2) the level of Detail of your Scenarios, and (3) the use of Correct syntax. For details see the Week 7 rubric.

4. Team Health Survey

Complete the Team Health Survey to assess your team’s health. You’ll receive summaries for your team and the class as a whole that can help you catch and correct problems early. This only works if you’re honest. Your grade depends only on completing the form. Your answers do not affect anyone’s mark.

Grading Scheme: The survey is marked out of 0..1 and is graded only with respect to Completeness (i.e., percentage of answered questions). There is no right and wrong answer for the survey; students should complete the survey by providing an honest opinion about what they think. This is worth 0.5% of your course mark, as part of your Teamwork mark in the course.

Due next Monday (Mar. 2, 8:59pm ET)

Every student: Complete the online Team Health Check survey
Every team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_D7.pdf that includes the following, and submit it to LEARN

  • Requirements, Specifications, Interface Phenomena, and Assumptions
  • Scenarios