Communicating Software Requirements: A Comparison of Problem Frames and the UML for Domain Modelling and Requirements Analysis in Commercial Business Projects

Vincent, Mark (2006). Communicating Software Requirements: A Comparison of Problem Frames and the UML for Domain Modelling and Requirements Analysis in Commercial Business Projects. Student dissertation for The Open University module M801 MSc in Software Development Research Dissertation.

Please note that this student dissertation is made available in the format that it was submitted for examination, thus the author has not been able to correct errors and/or departures from academic standards in areas such as referencing.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0001603a

Abstract

The communication about software requirements between software developers and business stakeholders continues to be an area of significant difficulty, and a contributing factor to the high number of projects failing to deliver their intended benefits. Both the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Problem Frames are proposed as methods to aid this communication, but there appear to be problems in gaining their widespread adoption, especially among the business stakeholders. In the case of Problem Frames, the research to date is still mostly limited to theoretical discussion, with only very few documented examples of industrial use. The UML has a wider commercial case base, but it appears from the literature that there are problems gaining widespread endorsement, especially on the business side. The research seeks to compare the two methods, to establish which better communicates the problem domain and software requirements to both software practitioners and non specialist business stakeholders. The research focuses upon the notations used and how well they convey their intended meaning, this is achieved through basic comprehension testing of some relatively simple software models using a small test group of participants. The tests were conducted during structured interviews in order to elicit feedback from those who took part. The findings suggest there are problems with the technical nature of the models, especially on the business side, and this creates a barrier to effective communication. There remains a tendency to use ordinary English text to describe software requirements at a business domain level and it seems this is due to the lack of business acceptance of the existing structured approaches. The way in which software requirements are presented is found to be an important factor in gaining business acceptance. It is proposed that greater consideration should be given to understanding the perspective of non specialist stakeholders, and only by reconciling that perspective with the needs of the software development teams will it be possible to improve the overall communication between business and IT stakeholders.