Lection 9 - Requirement analysis and modeling

Question 1

How would a waterfall and agile team do a requirements analysis?

Answer 1

Plan based will plan as much as possible and analyze on requirements before writing them all at once
while agile will do it in steps, it’s broken down into iterations of smaller parts.
The difference between plan based and agile is also who does the requirements analysis. In plan based it’s the software team, in agile it’s the customer involved describing the requirements in collaboration with the development team.
So in Agile the customer is in focus defining the requirements.

Question 2

How is a use-case used? and can you describe the black-box perspective of use-cases?

Answer 2

Use case uses real life scenarios to see what the software can support. What will the needs missing be after the customer interacted with the software, that needs to be addressed in the system. There can be several actors involved, but normal one primary actor.
Use cases should be made as black-box perspective of the user, meaning that they don’t know how the system is working, and we should remember this, when designing a use case.

Question 3

Explain the three properties of knowledge at a boundary.

Source: presentation group 15

Answer 3

Difference: Difference in knowledge refers to the difference in the amount of knowledge accumulated.
Example from the article: When creating a complex product/service it requires differences in the amount and type of knowledge needed for creating this product. The company will need employees specialized in different areas.
Dependence: Example from the article: When there’s two authors in one book the two of them depend on each other in order to complete the book. Another example is workers at a factory. The workers on step 1 must finish before the worker on step 2 can begin his work.
Novelty: How novel are the circumstances at a boundary? Novelty can be related to uncertainty. Novelty arise when there is a lack of common knowledge. Example from the article: New customer needs that generate new requirements of the actors/employees in their specialized “area” in the company – this can be a source of novelty.

Question 4

Mention the three levels of communication complexity

Source: Presentation group 15

Answer 4

pragmatic, semantic, syntactic

Question 5

Mention the four characteristics of a “Pragmatic” Boundary Capability and explain these
Source: Presentation group 15

Answer 5

Iterative
Transforming
Translating
Transferring

Question 6

Explain the informative processing approach, an interpretive approach and the political approach
Source: Presentation group 15

Answer 6

Informative processing approach: Focuses on knowledge as a thing to store a retrieve.
Interpretive approach: Emphasizes the importance of a common meaning to share knowledge between actors.
Political approach: Acknowledge how different interest impede knowledge sharing.

Question 7

Why is it important to transfer knowledge?

Source: Presentation group 15

Answer 7

Because most innovation occur at the boundary between specialized domains.

Question 8

What is a boundary object?

Source: Presentation group 16

Answer 8

A boundary object is a project-related artefact. It can be either abstract or material, but is commonly understood as material. Examples of boundary objects could be industry roadmaps, technical specifications, assembly drawings, computer-aided design tools, prototypes, solution designs, requirements specifications a project management tools like status reporting tools or project timelines.

Question 9

What is the purpose of using boundary objects in information systems development?
Source: Presentation group 16

Answer 9

Boundary objects enables knowledge sharing across communities of practice. They offer a common focus without necessarily enforcing a shared meaning among project participants

Question 10

How does sociomateriality implicate the way we understand boundary objects?
Source: Presentation group 16

Answer 10

Sociomateriality has five implications for how boundary objects are understood:

• Boundary objects are both produced in practice and configure this practice in particular ways
• Boundary objects are dynamic and open, emerging temporally in practice
• The usefulness of a boundary object is neither inherent in its material properties nor exclusive to the intentionality of human agency, but arises from the sociomaterial agency that is realised in the constitutive entanglement of the two
• A boundary object is performed differently across different occasions, sites of use and associated practices
• A boundary object can be recognisable as a common object between different groups, while its local meaning and use are tailored within each group

Question 11

What makes a boundary object open and dynamic?

Source: Presentation group 16

Answer 11

The construction and use of a boundary object is an open-ended process of ‘becoming’, involving the possibility of future adjustments and reconfigurations as either obstacles in the integration of knowledge across different groups are encountered or new directions for extensions are explored.

Question 12

In what way does boundary objects effect IS development?

Source: Presentation group 16

Answer 12

Integrating project-related artefacts into IS development practices shapes those practices and influences interactions between project participants. This has implications for who is included or excluded, how responsibility and control are allocated, and how sociomaterial assemblages might be configured to produce constructive and critical engagements with information technology.

Question 13

What are the two main goals of requirements analysis?

Source: slide 3

Answer 13

- Completeness
examples:
 Exact analysis of requirements
 Using projection to account for different perspectives
 Prototyping
 Case-studies

- Consistency
examples:
 Projection
 Continuos testing
 Formal specification languages (very complex, cost/benefit has to be considered)

Question 14

Which are the two types of requirements?

source: slide 4

Answer 14

- Functional
 What is the system supposed to do?
 What processes are to be supported and which functions?
- Qualitative requirements
 Processing time
 Numerical accurateness
 Datasecurity
 Maintainability
 Integration with legacy systems

Question 15

Mention the 3 models of Requirements analysis?

Source: slide 5

Answer 15

 Goal modeling
 Solution models (Technical)
 Scenario analysis (different scenarios e.g. use-cases)