Essays on Requirements Optimization Problems in the Core Ontology for Requirements Engineering

Abstract

In contemporary societies, Information Systems have become ubiquitous. We use them, for instance, in accounting, marketing, human resource and also beyond the business world in health care, education or even daily life activities. It has become common to say that such systems should be of high quality, that is, they should ensure the satisfaction of the needs they were intended for.

Requirements Engineering is the field dedicated to investigate those requirements as well as the conditions for their satisfaction. However, previous and current research has mainly concentrated its effort on methods and concepts able to prove that a particular system could fulfill the requirements. In contrast, few effort had the purpose of discussing about how we should compare alternative solutions and select the optimal one.

This thesis suggests a new formulation of the Requirement Problem which sets the process of optimization in the center of concerns. It shows how different criteria can be used to design optimization models and provides tools to resolve them. Through those models, we describe how the fields of Requirement Engineering and Mathematical Optimization can be connected.

Date of Award	26 Jun 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Supervisor	Stephane Faulkner (Supervisor), Monique Snoeck (Co-Supervisor), Ivan Jureta (Jury), Yves Wautelet (Jury), Nauman Qureshi (Jury) & Annick Castiaux (President)