Human activity modelling in the specification of operational requirements: work in progress

Abstract

This paper describes our experience of integrating HCI concepts and techniques into a concurrent requirements engineering process called RESCUE. We focus on the use of a model of current human activity to inform specification of a future system. We show how human activity descriptions, written using a specially designed template, can facilitate the authoring of use case descriptions to be used in the elicitation of requirements for complex socio-technical systems. We describe our experience of using descriptions of human activity, written using the template, to support specification of operational requirements for DMAN, a system to support air traffic controllers in managing the departure of aircraft from airports. We end with a discussion of lessons learnt from our experience and present some ideas for future development of work in this area.

PRiM: An i∗-based process reengineering method for information systems specification

“…Several techniques can be applied to obtain this information, including techniques used in the RESCUE process [28,29], a requirements process that combines techniques from human computer interaction and requirements engineering to gather data and describe the current process in its wider context of use.…”

“…• The RESCUE process [28,29]. • A methodology for building i * models based on activities theory [37].…”

“…The RESCUE process [28,29] -Human activity models goal refinement is comparable to the activities and actions identified in PRiM. However, this sequential order and its benefits are not explicitly mentioned and its construction relies on goal-decomposition strategies.…”

Informing the Specification of a Large-Scale Socio-technical System with Models of Human Activity

“…This paper builds on work described in [15] and focuses on the relationship between the human activity modeling and use case modeling streams.…”

“…The categories of concepts for use in human activity descriptions in the DMAN project were chosen with reference to the literature of task analysis, cognitive task analysis and cognitive work analysis as explained in [15]. In summary, concepts used in DMAN human activity models were as follows:…”