A major activity of the REFRame working group and community was the REFrame 2/2023 workshop at the International IEEE RE 2023 conference on September 4, 2023, in Hannover. The workshop’s title and key topic area was “REFraming Elicitation”, which refers to frameworks for requirements elicitation.
In spring 2024, a workshop summary report has appeared. It has been published in the Softwaretechnik-Trends Journal of the German Computer Society. The summary report gives a concise overview of the workshop and its results.
The following text is an excerpt from the workshop report, introducing motivation and the workshop’s main characteristics and contents.
“The Second International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Frameworks (REFrame 2/2023) took place on September 4, 2023, at the 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2023) in Hannover, Germany. Under the slogan “REFraming Elicitation” the workshop focused on requirements elicitation frameworks [1] (pp. 343–344) [2]. Workshop organizers were Andrea Wohlgemuth, Andrea Herrmann, and Andreas Birk.
Workshop Motivation
The core motivation of the workshop was to bring together a broad spectrum of experts interested in requirements elicitation, both in terms of practical experience and scientific findings. The workshop reviewed and discussed the participants’ understanding(s) of elicitation in requirements engineering (RE) and the role that methodological frameworks can play in the context of elicitation.
Requirements Frameworks & Requirements Elicitation
The workshop investigated guidelines, concepts, and structures for requirements elicitation, summarized under the term framework (FW). The aim is to better understand the application, orchestration, and design of elicitation frameworks and to collect knowledge about them. In this context, a requirements framework (ReqFW) – including the more specific requirements elicitation framework (EReqFW) – shall be defined as “a structure for a topic area that collects elements of the topic area and relates them to each other. It is semi-complete and must be supplemented and/or adapted context-specifically for a concrete application” [3].
Elicitation is “the process of seeking, capturing, and consolidating requirements from available sources, potentially including the reconstruction or creation of requirements” [4]. Over time, as software and software engineering processes have evolved, the challenges of elicitation and the techniques and methods used have evolved, too.
The aim of the workshop was to gain a better understanding of what elicitation and elicitation framework mean today. Specific questions concerning methodological frameworks in the context of elicitation included for instance: How have frameworks evolved over time? What are the current needs for guidance? What are important challenges and relevant experiences?
Workshop Context
The workshop has been related to other ongoing activities that provide a community and an environment supportive of research and collaboration on the REFrame topic. These include a sister workshop at REFSQ 2023 that addressed ReqFW in general and provided the basis for the specific focus on elicitation and EReqFW [5][6]. In addition, the workshop has been related to a working group of the German Computer Society (GI, Gesellschaft für Informatik) on requirements frameworks [7] and an emerging international community [8]. This REFrame working group provided results that seeded and enriched the workshop discussions. On the other hand, the workshop provided contributions onto which the working group and the community can follow up further.
Workshop Key Facts and Agenda Overview
The workshop attracted about 25 participants from industry and academia. The number of participants partly changed during the day due to the RE 2023 conference’s open workshop program, which included several parallel events. During most of the workshop duration, a group of 15 to 20 people was present in the room. The participants engaged actively both during the presentations’ questions and answers (Q&A) discussions and in the dedicated interactive discussion sessions.
The agenda contained five presentations selected from eight peer-reviewed submissions: one keynote presentation (invited and reviewed), three scientific papers, and one position paper (short presentation). Each submission was reviewed by at least three reviewers from a program committee with 15 members.
The first of four workshop sessions started with …”
Check out the original workshop summary journal article from Softwaretechnik-Trends to learn about the workshop details and contributions.
Literature References
These are the literature references that appear in the article excerpt above:
[1] K. Schneider, F. Dalpiaz, and J. Horkoff, Eds., 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW 2023): 4-5 September 2023, Hannover, Germany. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Services (CPS), 2024. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/servlet/opac?punumber=10260706
[2] The second international workshop on requirements engineering frameworks: REFraming Elicitation (REFrame 2/2023). https://reframe-community.org/ws2-2023/
[3] A. Birk, H. Dreyer, A. Herrmann, A. Hess, D. Janzen, and A. Wohlgemuth, Bericht des Arbeitskreises „Software Requirements Frameworks“, Softwaretechnik-Trends, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 31–32, Aug. 2022.
[4] M. Glinz, A glossary of requirements engineering terminology, International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB), Karlsruhe, Germany, Jul. 2022.
[5] A. Wohlgemuth, A. Hess, and S. A. Fricker, “Preface: First Workshop on Requirements Engineering Frameworks (REFrame’23) – ‘Human Values in RE,’” in Joint Proceedings of REFSQ-2023 Workshops etc. co-located with the 28th International Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2023), Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, April 17-20, 2023.
[6] The first international workshop on requirements engineering frameworks (REFrame 1/2023). https://reframe-community.org/ws1-2023/
[7] GI Working Group Software Requirements Frameworks. https://ak-reqframe.gi.de/
[8] REFrame Community website. https://reframe-community.org
Links to Softwaretechnik-Trends
Links to Softwaretechnik-Trends journal and the workshop summary article there:
Link to Softwaretechnik-Trends Issue 2, Volume 44, May 2024:
https://fb-swt.gi.de/publikationen/softwaretechnik-trends/band/band-44-heft-2
Direct download link of the workshop summary PDF:
https://fb-swt.gi.de/fileadmin/FB/SWT/Softwaretechnik-Trends/Verzeichnis/Band_44_Heft_2/REFrame_2_Report.pdf