Daniel M. Berry

Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, Canada

Abstract:

Requirements engineering (RE) is not just eliciting requirements; it is also inventing requirements. Without creativity, we would use computers to only print five copies of a report in an existing process rather than to invent a whole new process that takes advantage of the computer's capabilities and avoids printing any copies of the report. This talk first describes the place of creativity in RE.

The talk then focuses on describing EPMcreate (EPM Creative Requirements Engineering TEchnique), an innovative creativity enhancement technique based on a model of the pragmatics of communication, the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM). The EPMcreate technique consists of sixteen steps, each of which has the analysts look at the problem from a different logical combination of two stakeholders' viewpoints.

EPMcreate was empirically validated to be more effective than brainstorming for requirements idea generation.

An optimization of EPMcreate, the Power-Only EPMcreate has been empirically validated to be even more effective than EPMcreate.

Joint work with Luisa Mich and Victoria Sakhnini