Listens Learned (8 Lessons Learned Applying EARS)

Mavin, Alistair; Wilksinson, Philip; Gregory, Sarah; Uusitalo, Eero

doi:10.1109/re.2016.38

Cited by 27 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The EARS (Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax) language, created at Rolls-Royce to improve expressing natural language requirements [6], is also central to the translation process explained in this paper. There is some evidence on the usefulness of EARS for large scale requirements from multiple domains [27] [28]. Similar to our effort, different other extensions to EARS have been proposed, such as EARS-CTRL by Lúcio et al [29] for writing and analyzing EARS requirements for controllers and Adv-EARS for derivation of use case models by Dipankar et al [30].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 58%

From Natural Language Requirements to Passive Test Cases Using Guarded Assertions

Flemström¹,

Eduard²,

Wasif³

et al. 2018

2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)

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In large-scale embedded system development, requirements are often expressed in natural language. Translating these requirements to executable test cases, while keeping the test cases and requirements aligned, is a challenging task. While such a transformation typically requires extensive domain knowledge, we show that a systematic process in combination with passive testing would facilitate the translation as well as linking the requirements to tests. Passive testing approaches observe the behavior of the system and test their correctness without interfering with the normal behavior. We use a specific approach to passive testing: guarded assertions (G/A). This paper presents a method for transforming system requirements expressed in natural language into G/As. We further present a proof of concept evaluation, performed at Bombardier Transportation Sweden AB, in which we show how the process would be used, together with practical advice of the reasoning behind the translation steps.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 58%

From Natural Language Requirements to Passive Test Cases Using Guarded Assertions

Flemström¹,

Eduard²,

Wasif³

et al. 2018

2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)

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“…The condition structures WHILE, WHEN, WHERE and IF that we use in our grammar are inspired by the EARS template (Mavin et al 2009). EARS is considered by practitioners as beneficial due to the low training overhead and the quality and readability of the resultant requirements (Mavin et al 2016). Additionally, we proposed the rule TEMPORAL STRUCTURE to be used when the system responses are triggered before or after an event.…”

Section: Condition Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

On systematically building a controlled natural language for functional requirements

et al. 2021

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Natural language (NL) is pervasive in software requirements specifications (SRSs). However, despite its popularity and widespread use, NL is highly prone to quality issues such as vagueness, ambiguity, and incompleteness. Controlled natural languages (CNLs) have been proposed as a way to prevent quality problems in requirements documents, while maintaining the flexibility to write and communicate requirements in an intuitive and universally understood manner. In collaboration with an industrial partner from the financial domain, we systematically develop and evaluate a CNL, named Rimay, intended at helping analysts write functional requirements. We rely on Grounded Theory for building Rimay and follow well-known guidelines for conducting and reporting industrial case study research. Our main contributions are: (1) a qualitative methodology to systematically define a CNL for functional requirements; this methodology is intended to be general for use across information-system domains, (2) a CNL grammar to represent functional requirements; this grammar is derived from our experience in the financial domain, but should be applicable, possibly with adaptations, to other information-system domains, and (3) an empirical evaluation of our CNL (Rimay) through an industrial case study. Our contributions draw on 15 representative SRSs, collectively containing 3215 NL requirements statements from the financial domain. Our evaluation shows that Rimay is expressive enough to capture, on average, 88% (405 out of 460) of the NL requirements statements in four previously unseen SRSs from the financial domain.

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“…EARS is an industrially pragmatic approach based on using five structured templates and keywords. Studies [15,13] have shown that use of EARS reduces requirements errors while improving requirement quality and readability. The EARS keywords and templates are illustrated in Figure 2.…”

Section: Clear Notation For Requirementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge-Assisted Reasoning of Model-Augmented System Requirements with Event Calculus and Goal-Directed Answer Set Programming

Hall

Varanasi

Fiedor

et al. 2021

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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We consider requirements for cyber-physical systems represented in constrained natural language. We present novel automated techniques for aiding in the development of these requirements so that they are consistent and can withstand perceived failures. We show how cyber-physical systems' requirements can be modeled using the event calculus (EC), a formalism used in AI for representing actions and change. We also show how answer set programming (ASP) and its query-driven implementation s(CASP) can be used to directly realize the event calculus model of the requirements. This event calculus model can be used to automatically validate the requirements. Since ASP is an expressive knowledge representation language, it can also be used to represent contextual knowledge about cyber-physical systems, which, in turn, can be used to find gaps in their requirements specifications. We illustrate our approach through an altitude alerting system from the avionics domain.

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Listens Learned (8 Lessons Learned Applying EARS)

Cited by 27 publications

References 2 publications

From Natural Language Requirements to Passive Test Cases Using Guarded Assertions

From Natural Language Requirements to Passive Test Cases Using Guarded Assertions

On systematically building a controlled natural language for functional requirements

Knowledge-Assisted Reasoning of Model-Augmented System Requirements with Event Calculus and Goal-Directed Answer Set Programming

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