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Goal-driven requirements analysis for hypermedia-intensive Web applications

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Abstract

Requirements analysis for Web applications still needs to employ effective RE practices to accommodate some distinctive aspects: capturing high-level communication goals, considering several user profiles, defining hypermedia-specific requirements, bridging the gap between requirements and Web design, and reusing requirements for an effective usability evaluation. Techniques should be usable, informal, require little training effort, and show relative advantage to project managers. On the basis of the i * framework, this paper presents a proposal for defining hypermedia requirements (concerning aspects such as content, interaction, navigation, and presentation) for Web applications. The model adopts a goal-driven approach coupled with scenario-based techniques, introduces a hypermedia requirement taxonomy to facilitate Web conceptual design, and paves the way for systematic usability evaluation. Particular attention is paid to the empirical validation of the model based on the perceived quality attributes theory. A case study developed with industrial partners is discussed.

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Notes

  1. Ubiquitous Web Applications (UWA) IST-2000-2531 (http://www.uwaproject.org) is a two-year EU-funded project aiming at developing a set of design methodologies and tools for supporting the development of multi-channel Web applications. Part of the AWARE model was conceived and validated as an integral part of the project.

  2. In case of a very limited number of top-level goals and stakeholders, it may be more useful to assign priorities directly to requirements, and then employing prioritization techniques such as QFD [25]. A method for using prioritization in goal models is also shown in [26].

  3. MiLE is in turn an evolution of SUE (Systematic Usability Inspection) [31], mainly used for hypermedia usability analysis.

  4. Web projects includes Banca121 credit card catalogue and Punto commercial e-business marketplace. Requirements specifications of these pilot applications are available at http://www.uwaproject.org.

  5. The document assigned for the evaluation is the Deliverable D6 [33] of the UWA EU-funded project.

  6. The complexity value may appear as a negative judgment. Reviewers disagreed when asked whether the method is too complex. Thus, the value is to be read as a positive appreciation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all partners of the UWA consortium, especially to the research group of Anthony Finkelstein at the University College London (UCL) for the contribution to the definition of a goal-driven requirements methodology within the UWA project, and to Lorenzo Cantoni at the University of Lugano for his essential contribution to the evaluation of the methodology. A special thank to John Mylopoulos for his insightful support and suggestions that stimulated the development of this work during the visit of Davide Bolchini at the University of Toronto. We also thank Annie Antón, Qingfeng He, and William Stufflebeam at North Carolina State University for their collaboration while Davide Bolchini was visiting. Both visits were funded by a grant for prospective researchers of the Swiss National Fund (FNSRS). A special thank to Julio Leite and William Stufflebeam for reviewing and commenting on the manuscript. We also thank the Requirements Engineering reviewers for their useful comments that helped enhance the quality of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tec Lab, Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano, Via G. Buffi, 13 6900, Lugano TI, Switzerland

    Davide Bolchini

  2. Hypermedia Open Centre, Department of Electronics and Informatics, Politecnico di Milano, Via Ponzio, 64/A 20120, Milano, Italy

    Paolo Paolini

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  1. Davide Bolchini
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  2. Paolo Paolini
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Correspondence to Davide Bolchini.

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Bolchini, D., Paolini, P. Goal-driven requirements analysis for hypermedia-intensive Web applications. Requirements Eng 9, 85–103 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-004-0188-2

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