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Knowledge-Assisted Ontology-Based Requirements Evolution

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Managing Requirements Knowledge

Abstract

Reaching common level of understanding of a problem domain is one of the key challenges that stakeholders face during the requirements phase of a project. The stakeholders involved in requirements engineering (RE) attempt to achieve this goal through communication and knowledge sharing. The process of clarifying business problems and arriving at a specification necessitates developing a common vocabulary, assigning meanings to various business concepts, determining their interrelations, and reconciling stakeholders’ viewpoints. Oftentimes, knowledge exists in organizations, but is not maintained in a reusable form. To address the knowledge and collaboration needs of RE stakeholders, we have developed a Knowledge-Assisted Ontology-Based Requirements Evolution (K-RE) method and toolset. We demonstrate creation of a knowledge repository and its reuse in two contexts: (1) to resolve change requests (CR) with better speed and accuracy and (2) to jump-start a new project. We combine the social software principles and semantic Web concepts to achieve this.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous referees of our previously published work in MaRK 10 and MaRK 11 workshops at previous RE conferences. One of us (SG) would like to thank Vijaya Deepti, TCS, for her solid support to this project and very many practical insights during the course of this work. The authors acknowledge inputs from Mini Jain and Preethu Rose (TCS) and reviews from V. S. Sivakumar and C. Sudheer of the Insurance unit of TCS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tata Consultancy Services, Pune, India

    S. Ghaisas

  2. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    N. Ajmeri

Authors
  1. S. Ghaisas
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  2. N. Ajmeri
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Correspondence to S. Ghaisas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics / MOBIS, University of Hamburg, Vogt-Kölln-Str. 30, Hamburg, 22527, Germany

    Walid Maalej

  2. Harman Becker Automotive Systems GmbH, Moosacher Str. 48, Munich, 80809, Germany

    Anil Kumar Thurimella

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Ghaisas, S., Ajmeri, N. (2013). Knowledge-Assisted Ontology-Based Requirements Evolution. In: Maalej, W., Thurimella, A. (eds) Managing Requirements Knowledge. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34419-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34419-0_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-34418-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-34419-0

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