Assuming two or more alternative solutions are available, to make a decision means to pick only one of these, or, equivalently here, to commit to one and ignore others. What role do requirements play in such decision making situations? In classical decision theory [1], the best solution is the one that yields the highest expected…
In expected utility models, utility quantifies preferences, probability quantifies uncertainty. Sounds simple, elegant, but tends to be expensive. What if options can be identified, but there is no information about preferences or uncertainty in a format that can be translated into, respectively, utility and probability? What is an alternative decision process, which is still structured…
Compliance to relevant laws is increasingly recognized as a critical, but also expensive, quality for software requirements. Laws contain elements such as conditions and derogations that generate a space of possible compliance alternatives. During requirements engineering, an analyst has to select one of these compliance alternatives and ensure that the requirements specification she is putting…
The requirements roadmap concept is introduced as a solution to the problem of the requirements engineering of adaptive systems. The concept requires a new general definition of the requirements problem which allows for quantitative (numeric) variables, together with qualitative (binary boolean) propositional variables, and distinguishes monitored from controlled variables for use in control loops. We…
Figures 1 and 2 show cost versus time; Figure 1 shows long iterations, Figure 2 short iterations. We choose to do something at time zero, at the origin of the graph in the Figure, and when we do so, we do it under some assumptions that we made at that time. Dashed red lines convey…
