Applying Acceptance Requirements to Requirements Modeling Tools via Gamification: A Case Study on Privacy and Security

Abstract

Requirements elicitation, analysis and modeling are critical activities for software success. However, software systems are increasingly complex, harder to develop due to an ever-growing number of requirements from numerous and heterogeneous stakeholders, concerning dozens of requirements types, from functional to qualitative, including adaptation, security and privacy, ethical, acceptance and more. In such settings, requirements engineers need support concerning such increasingly complex activities, and Requirements Engineering (RE) modeling tools have been developed for this. However, such tools, although effective, are complex, time-consuming and requiring steep learning curves. The consequent lack of acceptance and abandonment in using such tools, by engineers, paves the way to the application of RE techniques in a more error-prone, low-quality way, increasing the possibility to have failures in software systems delivered. In this paper, we identify main areas of lack of acceptance, affecting RE engineers, for such tools, and propose an approach for making modeling tools more effective in engaging the engineer in performing RE in a tool-based way, receiving adequate feedback and staying motivated to use modeling tools. This is accomplished by performing acceptance requirements analysis (through the Agon Framework) and using gamification to increase the engagement of engineers during the usage of RE modeling tools. Towards this end, we performed a case study, within the VisiOn European Project, for enhancing a tool for modeling privacy and security requirements. Our case study provides preliminary evidence that our approach supports in making RE modeling tools more engaging from the engineer perspective.

A Data Scope Management Service to Support Privacy by Design and GDPR Compliance

“…The internal and external key stakeholders, such as DPOs, IT managers, and citizens, were identified. For each user category, a questionnaire was prepared in a systematic way [35,36], aiming to capture the legal, functional, security, privacy and technology acceptance needs [28,29]. Specifically, we followed the approach of [4] for customer development, including steps such as Customer Segmentation, Problem Discovery and Validation, Product Discovery and Validation [35,36].…”