Papers

17-18.9.2010 International Workshop on Requirements Analysis, Middlesex University, London

Towards Lightweight Requirements Documentation, Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, Vol 3, Number 9 (Sep. 2010)

Abstract. Most requirements management processes and associated tools are designed for document-driven software development and are unlikely to be adopted for the needs of an agile software development team. We discuss how and what can make the traditional requirements documentation a lightweight process, and suitable for user requirements elicitation and analysis. We propose a reference model for requirements analysis and documentation and suggest what kind of requirements management tools are needed to support an agile software process. The approach and the reference model are demonstrated in Vixtory, a tool for requirements lightweight documentation in agile web application development.

25-26.9.2008 BIR2008 conference, Poland

AgileTool – Managing requirements in Agile WWW projects

Abstract. Active user involvement and customer collaboration are essential yet hard to achieve in software development projects. Therefore, tools that effectively support communication and collaboration between customers and developers have a real need. In this paper we describe a requirements management tool, AgileTool, which effectively supports customer collaboration in agile web application development projects. Requirements can be attached directly into web pages under development by navigating the pages with a browser. AgileTool is a communication platform that improves product quality by facilitating requirements consistency, traceability, and testability.

Talks

13.10.2008 AKVA boat seminar

Matias Muhonen had a talk at the AKVA boat seminar organized by HETKY ry. The slides are in Finnish.

21.4.2008 MINE workshop, Kaunas, Lithuania

Mike Arvela and Matias Muhonen from Ambientia were at the MINE conference in Lithuania presenting AgileTool.

Theses

30.6.2010 University of Tampere, M.Sc. thesis

Lightweight requirements engineering in agile web development projects.

Mike Arvela

Abstract. Web applications have become more commonplace, but it is still common for development projects to fail to meet their intended goals either in terms of budget, time-to-market or quality. Although increasingly popular in the recent years, the introduction of agile software development methodologies does not seem to make a significant difference as far as project success is concerned.

I present that the problems are often due to failures or shortcomings in the discipline of Requirements Engineering (RE), a set of practices present in all software projects regardless of the development model being used. This thesis attempts to gather data and present a set of concepts and ideas which, introduced in an agile web development project, help to discover and maintain requirements critical for the success of the project. Vixtory, a prototype of a web-based tool for lightweight requirements documentation, is also presented and evaluated.