****************REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING NEWSLETTER******************** No. 29. Contents 1. Abstracts REFSQ Workshop 6/94(Reqts Eng Foundations of Software Quality) 2. Abstracts RESS Workshop 7/94 (Reqts Elicitation for Software-based Systems) 3. AAAI-94 Conflict Mgmt Workshop Papers by ftp (Susan Lander) 4. RE95 Doctoral Consortium Details (Anthony Finkelstein) 5. BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group (Neil Maiden & Bashar Nuseibeh) 6. Opportunity in Knowledge-based SE R&D at GTE Labs (Sol Greenspan) 7. Funded Research Studentship in Requirements Engineering (Chris Roast) If you have questions about particular items appearing in the newsletter - send them to the originators. If you wish to contribute send your material to: re-list@doc.ic.ac.uk (will be moderated). Subscription or Removal requests should be sent to: re-request@doc.ic.ac.uk Back issues can be obtained via anonymous ftp from ftp-host: dse.doc.ic.ac.uk (IP number: 146.169.2.20). Directory: requirements. Files are called renl1, renl2, etc. If you cannot use ftp then you can get any back issues using email. Send email containing the following to ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk open dse.doc.ic.ac.uk cd requirements get quit The Requirements Engineering Newsletter and its archive is also accessible through WWW. The URL is: http://web.doc.ic.ac.uk/req-eng/index.html You may wish to link any Internet software engineering information resource you maintain to this and/or notify the manager of your local Web server by passing this message on to them. If you wish your requirements or software engineering ftp archive to be linked to the RE Newsletter archive please inform me. If you are unfamiliar with WWW you may wish to obtain a copy of the Mosaic public domain internet browser which is available for X-Windows, Macintosh or Microsoft Windows. The RE Newsletter can be conveniently accessed through the Imperial College, Department of Computing, United Kingdom, WWW Home Page (http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/). Requirements Engineering Newsletter is published solely as an educational service. Copyright (c) 1994, Anthony Finkelstein; All Rights Reserved. ********************************************************************** Subject: Abstracts REFSQ Workshop 6/94 Requirements Engineering: Foundations of Software Quality REQUIREMENT ENGINEERING FOR SOFTWARE PERFORMANCE Andreas L. Opdahl andreas@fi.uib.no The need for performance engineering during information system development is pointed out. In particular, performance demands must be quantified as part of requirement specification. These demands must ideally be validated or at least proven feasible before development proceeds. Also, they should be optimal with regard to cost-efficiency in the organisation, which necessitates dynamic analysis of the surrounding organisation and an understanding of the psychological impact of bad performance on computer end-users. The conclusion points out major unresolved paths for further work. TIMING-CONSTRAINTS FOR REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION OF HARD REAL-TIME SYSTEMS Tereza G. Kirner & Alan M. Davis tkirner@lalo.uccs.edu,adavis@vivaldi.uccs.edu This paper focuses on software requirements specification of Hard-Time Systems (HRTS). A set of timing-constraints is proposed, aiming to obtain a high-quality requirements specification. Timing-constraints are formally expressed by algebraic formulae. The goal is more easily to validate specifications and to develop more reliable hard real-time systems. REACHING OUT FOR QUALITY: CONSIDERING SECURITY REQUIREMENTS IN THE DESIGN OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS Hubert F. Hofmann & Ralph Holbein hofmann@ifi.unizh.ch Security requirements are a fundamental ingredient for an information system's quality. Despite their importance, security requirements play the role of a "stepchild" in software engineering. If considered at all they cover the technical dimension of information processing. This view is insufficient to deal with the requirements of the "real world", ie. the organisational practice. It is not just the technical criteria which are decisive in specifying security requirements. We have extended these criteria to incorporate the social and the economic dimension of information exchange in organisations. We will illustrate this extension of the additional security criteria with traditional approaches. QUALITY REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING: FIRST SPECIFICATION, THEN REALISATION Jos J. M. Trienekens jtr@bdk.tue.nl This paper is a position paper that focuses on quality in the information systems requirements engineering domain. The objective is to improve the applicability of the concept of quality for both users on information systems and information system designers. After an introduction this paper summarises the main characteristics of a new approach for the identification and the specification of software quality factors. This approach has been developed and validated in a number of empirical research projects of the University of Technology Eindhoven, The Netherlands, eg. (Heemstra, Kusters and Trienekens, 1993) WE NEED TO IDENTIFY THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE STATEMENTS OF NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS Rui Gustavo Crespo rgc@inesc.pt In this paper we advocate the prior to the identification of the non-functional requirements of software systems, we must select the requirements that such identification must satisfy. Bearing in mind the ISO9126 standard we then select the requirements of completeness, correctness, reasonability and traceability. Finally, we discuss some possible strategies that may contribute for the satisfaction of the selected requirements. ADDRESSING NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS Dieter Landes landes@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de The main goal of a knowledge-based system (KBS) or, specifically, an expert system is the ability to adequately perform a task which normally requires expert knowledge to be carried out. For the type of problems considered, expertise dose not only comprise knowledge about the application domain, but also knowledge about how the problem in question can be solved. Therefore, the specification of the system must, in contrast to specifications in conventional software engineering, not only address what functionality can be exhibited, ie. which steps have to be performed in order to solve the given problem. Yet, aspects concerning the realisation of the required functionality are still at a different level. Therefore, issues of realisation can be neglected as long as the focus is on identifying the required functionality and may rather be addressed at a different stage of development (cf.(1), (2)). MIKE (Model-based Increment knowledge Engineering) (3) is a framework for the development of knowledge-based systems which tries to integrate the benefits of lifecycle models, prototyping, and formal specification techniques. In particular, the above-mentioned types of considerations are carried out in different phases of the MIKE life cycle: While functional requirements are addressed in the knowledge acquisition phases, aspects concerning the appropriate computational realisation of the required functionality are emphasised in the design phase. This means in turn the decisions in the design phase are primarily motivated by non-functional requirements, or conversely, non-functional requirements constitute, the justifications of design decisions. In order to improve the transparency of the design process, a models for describing the design rationale has been integrated in MIKE (1). By the explicit consideration of non-functional requirements, MIKE differs form many other knowledge engineering approaches which mostly focus on functional aspects while non-functional issues only pay a minor, if any, role. Furthermore, MIKE explicitly ties non-functional requirements to those portions of the system design they effect. In following, non-functional requirements that turned out to be relevant for the development of knowledge-based systems will be briefly characterises before their treatment in the MIKE framework is sketched. In particular, the model for describing the rationale behind design decisions and the role of non-functional requirements in this model will be outlined. Finally, the approach taken in MIKE is discussed and put in relation to similar work. MODELLING THE CONTRIBUTION STRUCTURE UNDERLYING REQUIREMENTS Orlena C. Z. Gotel & Anthony Finkelstein oczg@doc.ic.ac.uk, acwf@doc.ic.ac.uk Improvements in requirements traceability (RT) are essential for developing better quality software systems. Based upon empirical investigations with practitioners, and an extensive survey of techniques and tool support for requirements engineering (RE). We explain why conventional RT can only support limited improvements in quality, and suggest extensions required to provide further improvements. These extensions revolve around the ability to continuously model, and hence trace, those who have contributed in the production and refinement of the requirements specification (RS). In this paper, we propose on approach to support such modelling, outline preliminary details, and discuss how it provides the foundations for developing quality software. REQUIREMENTS AND TRACEABILITY Phillip Morris, Andrew Coombes & John McDermid philipm@minster.york.ac.uk Ensuring an appropriate degree of traceability is widely recognised to be an important aspect of software engineering (eg. Davis et. al identify a number of instances of traceability as important properties of a quality requirements specification (Davis93). Unfortunately, there are two major problems which are encountered in achieving this aim: 1. Ensuring relevance in traceability. Gotel and Finkelstein (GOTEL93) note that, while traceability is widely recognised to be important, there is some considerable dispute as to the ultimate purpose of traceability. This can lead to traceability relationships of limited relevance (or worse still, irrelevant traceability). 2. The inclusion of traceability in documents as they are developed. When traceability has to be added to specification manually, the work is treated as having a low priority, since the results of the work will have little (if any) direct impact upon the developers (the benefits of traceability not being seen until much later in the life cycle). Clearly, the second of these problems can be encountered easily by the provision of automated tool support. Therefore, the significant problem if the first. This paper describes research which has been carried out into a framework for requirements analysis. This framework provides the basis for a rich set of traceability relationships, which as we shall see assists the user of requirements in a number of ways. The description makes no attempt to introduce any formal or mathematical concepts but it should be noted that work underpinning the approach described here with a fairly extensive formal notation is ongoing . The structure of the paper is as follows: Section 2 describes the principle of goal-structuring as it is applied to requirements definition. In section 3, we discuss the issues of traceability, finally, in section 4, we discuss the users of the richer traceability which is provided. CLASSIFYING REQUIREMENTS ERRORS FOR IMPROVED SRS REVIEWS Tsuyoshi Nakajima & Alan Davis nakajima@sy.isl.melco.co.jp, adavis@vivaldi.uccs.edu In most cases, a formal review conducted during software development compares a document with previously agreed-upon baselines, as well as checks the document for internal errors. Reviews of software requirements specifications (SRS) are more difficult than other documents because (1) there is usually no previously agreed-upon baseline, and (2) the SRS is usually written in natural language. This paper explores the difficulties associated with reviewing SRSs, provides two classification of SRS errors based on the premise that no earlier baselines exist, and provides some ideas on how to increase the quality of an SRS. METHOD INTEGRATION AND ABSTRACTION FROM DETAILED SEMANTICS TO IMPROVE SOFTWARE QUALITY Michael von der Beeck beeck@i3.informatil.rwth.aachen.de This paper describes how the semantics of an informal requirements engineering method can be defined more precisely in order to avoid the main disadvantage of informal methods with respect to formal ones - suffering from inaccurate or incomplete semantics - without accepting the formal methods disadvantages. Therefore, a special kind of method integration between an informal requirements engineering method and a formal description technique is introduced. Furthermore, the development of semantic consistency relations is proposed which realise a kind of abstraction from a detailed tracing of semantics. This abstraction simplifies the application and the comprehension of the refined method. Hereby the usual decision of requirements engineers to use a conventional informal method can be avoided, resulting in an improvement of quality in the phase of requirements engineering. A PROCESS META-MODEL IMPROVING SOFTWARE QUALITY Veronique Plihon vplihon@masi.ibp.fr Our claim is that the software quality depends on the guidance abilities of the CASE environment. The guidance provided by current CASE tools is low. Most of the tools have not integrate the method guidelines of methodologies, probably because those are poorly expressed, not formal, vague and based on weak meta-model. We advocate, in this position paper, that the software quality goal can be achieved only if formal definition of the way-of working is made. Our approach consists in three steps: first to define a basic meta-model and refine it for providing a guidance meta-model, then to define the way-of-working by instantiation of the process guidance meta-model, and finally to develop a guidance mechanism based on the way-of -working. We shall present the key elements of the guidance meta-model, and illustrate how the way-of-working of an ER - Entity-Relationship - modelling approach can be defined by instantiation. ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF USER-ORIENTED REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING Matthias Rauterberg & Oliver Strohm RAUTERBERG@rzvax.ethz.ch The current state of traditional software developments is surveyed and essential problems are investigated on the basis of empirical data and theoretical considerations. The concept of optimisation cycles to the specifications, the communications, and the optimisation problem is integrated into a concept of participatory software development. Software development without integrated work and/or task organisational development is suboptimal. User participation and prototyping decrease significantly cost and time exceedings. The more effort development stages, the less effort in the maintenance phase. PARADIGMS, FRAMEWORKS, AND DESIGN UNIVERSES Peter Holm & Jan Ljungberg jan@sisu.se, pholm@sisu.se In this paper we introduce and discuss the notion of "design universe" in the context of information systems development. Such a universe is indirectly defined by a framework describing different aspects of the system to be designed and its relation to the environment. It is meant to be used as a methodological vehicle to identify different theories, methods, and tools needed in a development project. We argue that it will be rewarding to ground such a framework in theories from the areas of semiotics and language philosophy. ********************************************************************** Subject: Abstracts RESS Workshop 7/94 Requirements Elicitation for Software-based Systems REQUIREMENTS CAPTURE Michael Jenkins mjjenki@relay.nswc.navy.mil The purpose of this document is to describe techniques for the capture of requirements, both the initial operational requirements, and the maintenance, modification, and addition to the initial set. The requirements capture method is intended to provide: 1. a means of communication between stakeholders, domain experts, and requirements specifiers; 2. guidance in the refinement of requirements (clarification, maintenance of consistency, incompleteness checking); and 3. a repository for information about the system and related to the system; 4. the generation of textual and graphical output. This work is performed as part of the Engineering of Complex Systems (ECS) Project. This project is sponsored by the U S Office of Naval Research. TRUST AND CO-OPERATION IN SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT: APPLYING RESPONSIBILITY MODELLING TO THE PROBLEM OF CHANGING REQUIREMENTS J Chudge & D Fulton j.s.chudge@lut.ac.uk, dfulton@uk.ac.ucl.cs In today's turbulent economic environment one of the fundamental problems that systems developers have to face is the alarming increase in the total cost of software based systems. The emphasis on the importance of accurate requirements capture has increased as increasing complexity in software systems, unpredictability of requirements change and tighter contractual controls have placed mounting restraints on developing budgets. A burgeoning set of tools and methods have been developed in order to help solve this software crisis. Formal methods have been developed in order to accurately interpret requirements and to model future changes. Risk analysis methods have been created in order to predict the impact of change on requirements models. Increasingly complex sets of verification and validation tools have been developed in order to handle growing requirements tracking difficulties. Emerging standards with relevance to the development process have led to the adoption of a range of quality procedures in order to show that an organisation follows an accepted procedure to control change and document the changing of requirements. This paper presents some of the interim results from a DTI project looking at requirements change in British Industry (PROTEUS). Two sets of case study results, one drawn from collaboration with an industrial partner and the other looking at requirements handling experiences in a range of companies, present a disturbing picture of the state of requirements change practice. The results, contrary to established research belief, point to social rather than technical problems, primarily in the professional relationships between client and developer on software development projects and the paper concludes by arguing that contractual relationships on fixed cost projects, the lack of trust between partners, and the overwhelming level of software control required to handle change, marginalises the opportunity to create efficient software systems. KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION TECHNIQUES FOR REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING N A M Maiden & G Rugg n.a.m.maiden, g.rugg@city.ac.uk This paper argues for the application of knowledge acquisition techniques during requirements engineering. There has been little reported use of these techniques during elicitation of functional and non-functional requirements for new computer systems. This paper makes some recognised as well as some less obvious recommendations about requirements engineering practice and research results from the ESPRIT 6353 'Nature' project. It concludes with the need for a framework of knowledge acquisition techniques for different requirements engineering activities and situations. MAKING REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION TRACEABLE Orlena Gotel & Anthony Finkelstein oczg@doc.ic.ac.uk, acwf@doc.ic.ac.uk The crux of the so-called "requirements traceability problem" is the inability to locate and access the (human) source(s) of requirements, requirements-related information, and requirements-related work. To actively support this somewhat evident working practice, it is necessary to augment any information that is obtained about requirements production (and similarly about requirements development, use, and maintenance), with details of those who have contributed, i.e., with the accompanying social infrastructure. We have proposed a scheme for dynamically modelling and managing what we refer to as the contribution structure underlying the artifacts produced in requirements engineering. In the context of this workshop, we are predominantly interested in how the contributor details can be extracted and coupled to information produced both about, and as a consequence of, the requirements elicitation process. We view this as critical information to elicit, especially if we are to later deal with the inevitable problems that will arise, but information that is currently either overlooked, not maintainable, or not oriented to the purposes for which it is required. ADDRESSING ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT IN REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS USING COGNITIVE MAPPING Matthew Jones & Laurence Brooks mrj1@eng.cam.ac.uk, lsb@minster.york.ac.uk The growing recognition of the importance of organisational issues in requirements analysis and of how participants' interpretations, often influenced by their organisational context, affect requirements has highlighted a limitation of traditional elicitation approaches. This paper discusses an interpretative model of requirements analysis and considers the potential of cognitive mapping as a way of addressing organisational issues. A particular cognitive mapping approach for which software support has been developed is described, and its use to map the perceptions of a number of different groups of analysts in a large software multinational is discussed. The relationship between the analyst and the client is identified as being an important influence on the character of the requirements analysis process. AN INDIRECT APPROACH TO INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS DETERMINATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXECUTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS Adrian Fox & Helen Smith foxy@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au, hsmith@ponderosa.is.monash.edu.au This paper introduces an indirect approach to the process of determining the information requirements in the development of an Executive Information System. The proposed approach is based on incorporating the Repertory Test technique within a Critical Success Factor type method and is particularly relevant to that subset of situations in EIS requirements determination when executives have difficulty identifying and communicating their information needs. AN EXPERIMENT IN REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING USING CONCEPTUAL GRAPHS Kevin Ryan & AnneMarie O'Beirne ryank@ul.ie, obeirnea@ericsson.se A method for representing and validating a requirements specification is presented. A prototype requirements engineering CASE tool which supports this method is described. Initially, the requirements specification is converted by an analyst to conceptual graphs. The tool, using the conceptual graph representation and pre-existing assumptions, detects some incompleteness, inconsistencies and ambiguities in the requirements specification. The prototype tool also supports requirements re-use, through a process of conceptual graph matching. A case study was undertaken to support this work [OBE93]. The study involved taking a real requirements specification for a communications billing system, mapping it to conceptual graphs and testing two related hypotheses. Firstly, that conceptual graphs can be used to improve the quality of a requirements specification. Secondly, that Mathews' matching algorithm can be used to assist in the retrieval of reusable components from a library of conceptual graphs. An assessment of the experimental results is presented. BORIS-R SPECIFICATION OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF A LARGE SCALE SOFTWARE INTENSIVE SYSTEM P Curran, P G O'Donoghue, K Jackson, M E C Hull & L Griffiths ccm123@uk.ac.ulster BORIS is an integrated system development method for real-time systems that addresses the requirements, design and implementation phases. BORIS-R is the specific part of BORIS that addresses the requirements phase. This paper uses the requirements for a large-scale software-based system to evaluate BORIS-R as a requirements method. The case study shows how BORIS-R is capable of eliciting and specifying functional and non-functional requirements as well as concrete constraints. It shows the use of the various notations and techniques adopted and outlines the target system information generated during requirements phase. PRACTICAL EXPERIENCES IN AUTOMATIC REQUIREMENTS IN ELICITATION: THE REAL ISSUES Laurence James james@mstuk.co.uk Over the last 5 years, Marconi Systems Technology have been involved in developing a state-of the-art software product for requirements elicitation, traceability and management, able to interface with other best-of-breed CASE tools. The product, known as RTM, has achieved critical worldwide acclaim and is currently in use on some of the most advanced systems under development. One of the more talked about RTM functions provides engineers with an ability to automatically "capture" requirement statements from specifications using effective but simple heuristic paradigms which are not Al based. This paper describes some of the main issues in automatic requirements elicitation, the potential role for Al and provides the Author's experiences in using RTM for the automated requirements capture process. USING ENTERPRISE MODELLING TO ELICIT REQUIREMENTS FOR LARGE COMPLEX SYSTEMS Peter Houghton & John Thompson peterh@green.dra.hmg.gb This paper presents a set of techniques for improving requirements elicitation through the use of enterprise modelling. The problems encountered with the development of large complex information systems are briefly described and proposals made suggestion how enterprise modelling might assist with their solution. A few of the underlying concepts to the modelling are presented together with an example of how they might be used. The example demonstrated how the concepts described should provide the claimed benefits. ********************************************************************** From: lander@cs.umass.edu (SUSAN LANDER) Subject: AAAI-94 Conflict Mgmt Workshop Papers available through ftp The papers, table of contents for the workshop notes, schedule, and the list of participants for the AAAI-94 Conflict Management workshop are now available by anonymous ftp. To access the files: ftp ftp.cs.umass.edu login as anonymous with your email address as your password cd pub/aaai Papers with a .ps suffix are in postscript format, those with .asc are in ascii. Not all of the workshop papers appear in the directory as yet, others will be added as electronic versions become available. ********************************************************************** From: acwf@doc.ic.ac.uk (Anthony Finkelstein) Subject: RE95 Doctoral Consortium Details Second IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE95) 27-29 March 1995 York, England DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM The idea of the doctoral consortium is to give students an opportunity to present ideas and work-in-progress which may not be ready for full presentation at the symposium but which they wish to expose to critical analysis and discussion. It also gives students a means to attend the symposium and get a feel for research progress in requirements engineering. In the doctoral consortium, students will be asked to present their work-in-progress to a panel of senior members of the requirements-engineering community, for the purposes of feedback and discussion. The consortium will be run as a one-day closed workshop within the symposium programme. Presenters will be selected on the basis of a research summary, not exceeding 2,000 words in length. The reports of presenters will be published as notes for consortium participants. Limited financial assistance, will be available for presenters. Research summaries on all aspects of requirements engineering are welcome. We would like students to send abstracts classified according to the official symposium scheme described in the symposium call for papers (available by anonymous FTP from host research.att.com (/dist/re95.cfp). Students are requested to submit the title, abstract, and classifications of their summary by E-mail to the consortium chair a month before the full paper is due. Students should submit five copies of each summary (no E-mail or FAX submissions) to the Doctoral Consortium Chair. Summaries should be accompanied by full contact information including name, postal address, E-mail address, telephone number, and FAX number. The submission schedule for the doctoral consortium is slightly different to that of the symposium. Important dates: 1st October 1994, title, abstract, and classifications requested; 1st November 1994, research summary submission; 1st December 1994, notification of acceptance; 1st February 1995, final camera-ready copy due. Doctoral Consortium Chair >From October 1st 1994 Anthony Finkelstein City University Department of Computer Science Northampton Square London EC1V 0HB UK E-MAIL: acwf@cs.city.ac.uk TELEPHONE: 44 71 477 8000 FAX: 44 71 477 8587 Before October 1st 1994 Anthony Finkelstein Imperial College Department of Computing 180 Queens Gate London SW7 2BZ UK E-MAIL: acwf@doc.ic.ac.uk TELEPHONE: 44 71 584 8261 FAX: 44 71 581 8024 ********************************************************************** From: ban@doc.ic.ac.uk (Bashar Nuseibeh) Subject BCS Requirements Engineering Specialist Group We are pleased to announce that the British Computer Society (BCS) has approved the our proposal to set up a UK Specialist Group (SG) on Requirements Engineering (RE). Initially, the group will act as a vehicle for getting the (existing and substantial) UK RE community (academia and industry) together on a regular basis. This includes the organisation of meetings, seminars and the distribution of a newsletter. Hopefully the group will complement, support and be supported by existing RE efforts such as the electronic RE Newsletter, IFIP WG 2.9, and IEEE ICRE and RE Symposium. We plan to hold an inaugral meeting later in the year, of which more detail later. If you are interested in joining the group, please contact either Neil Maiden (N.A.M.Maiden@city.ac.uk) or Bashar Nuseibeh (ban@doc.ic.ac.uk), and you will be added to our mailing list. ********************************************************************** From: greenspan@gte.com (Sol J. Greenspan) Subject: Opportunity in Knowledge-based Software Engineering R&D at GTE Labs R&D in knowledge-based tools supporting process re-engineering and systems analysis. The job will involve design, development and deployment of robust field prototype involving significant use of AI techniques. The employee will work with the existing staff of the Requirements Engineering project in their research activities. Initially, the position is short-term. Occasional travel to GTE sites may be required. Qualifications: - MS in Computer Science required. Ph.D. and an emphasis on Software Engineering preferred. - Need significant programming skills in Lisp, knowledge-based systems, and user-interfaces. Prior use of KEE a strong plus. GTE Laboratories is the central research facility that supports GTE's business units. It is located in Waltham, Massachusetts and is an equal opportunity employer, M/F/D/V. Please send resume (e-mail preferred) to: Sol Greenspan GTE Laboratories Incorporated 40 Sylvan Road Waltham, MA 02254 e-mail: greenspan@gte.com fax: (617) 890-9320 ********************************************************************** Subject: Funded Research Studentship in Requirements Engineering From: Chris Roast A three year research studentship funded by an internal bursary is available in the area of Requirements Engineering and Human Computer Interaction. The Requirements Engineering group at Sheffield Hallam University group is currently carrying out research to develop a better understanding of the new discipline of Requirements Engineering. Its main thrust is developing techniques and tools that will assist in the construction, negotiation, clarification and validation of system and usability requirements. The group is actively involved in working with colleagues from the University of Colorado Springs, U.S.A; Oxford University, U.K.; Slovak Technical University, Bratislava; University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, U.K. and York University U.K. The group currently has eight members working in five project areas. Applications by Email should be sent to: c.r.roast@shu.ac.uk. DEADLINE for submissions 22nd July 1994. **********************************************************************