1. Andreas Altmannsberger Frank Bühler Mike Rowe
A Rational Unified Process (RUP) Plug-in To Support Requirements Quality Assurance
Andreas Altmannsberger
Frank Bühler
Mike Rowe
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

2. Agenda Introduction to the Rational Unified Process (RUP)
Mechanisms for modifying RUP
Where software processes have problems
Requirements Quality Assurance
In Theory and in Practice – not always the same
Conclusion
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

3. IBM / Rational’s Unified Process RUP
Rational’s Unified Process (RUP) is one of the more formal and all encompassing software engineering process frameworks.
Many software engineering processes are based upon RUP
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

4. RUP is a Process Framework
The framework is composed of
Roles – that individuals perform in the performance of Activities to produce Artifacts
Activities – transform input Artifacts into output Artifacts
Artifacts – the end products of activities. The most important of which is generally the running software.
Workflows – provide sequences of Activities which make up a process.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

5. RUP from www.rational.com
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

6. RUP Customization/Tailoring
Customization of RUP involves:
deleting,
adding, and
modifying
the Roles, Activities, Artifacts and Workflows.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

7. RUP Rational Process Workbench
Rational Process Workbench (RPW) contains two tools that facilitate building new plug-ins.
The RUP Modeler supports developing and managing new process content. It is an extension of Rose XDE.
The RUP Organizer takes the outputs of the Modeler and compiles these into a Plug-in that can be applied to the RUP.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

8. RUP Builder
RUP Builder (bundled with RUP) is a tool that applies plug-ins to the RUP.
In addition to making your own plug-ins via the Rational Process Workbench, many plug-ins are available through both open source and commercial channels (see
RUP Plug-In for COTS Package Delivery V1.0
RUP Plug-In for WebSphere Business Integrator Modeler V1.0
RUP for Extreme Programming Plug-Ins -- a very interesting concept (removes everything then adds in XP)
And many, many more
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

9. So lets do a RUP Plug-in What should we do? The Plan:
Look at where software development runs into problems.
Analyze how the RUP handles this aspect of the process.
Design a plug-in to improve the process
Finally, implement the plug-in
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

10. Software Development has Problems
Standish Group’s CHAOS report (1994)
31.1 % of projects canceled before completion
52.7 % of projects completed but significantly over budget, over time estimates and offered with fewer features.
Only 16.2 % of projects delivered on time, on budget and with original feature set.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

11. Nature of Development Problems
Reasons for canceled projects
Lack of User Involvement 15.9%
Unclear Statement of Requirements 13.0 %
Reason for over budget/schedule/ fewer featured projects
Lack of User Input 12.8%
Incomplete Requirements & Specifications 12.3 %
Changing Requirements & Specifications 11.8%
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

12. Nature of Development Problems
Leffingwell and Widrig (2003) surveyed 3800 software professions:
50 % indicated two largest software engineering problem were related to:
Requirement specification and
Management of requirements
Requirements errors consume an estimated 25 to 40% of total project budget.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

13. Nature of Development Problems
Common theme in development problems relates to requirements (and user input).
How does RUP address Requirement Quality Assurance?
Only one activity is related to Requirements, that is Review Requirements, which is part of the Requirements Discipline Workflow.
Review Requirements only deals with the management of changing requirements – there is no significant V and V involved.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

14. RUP Requirements Quality Assurance Plug-in Needed
RUP is deficient with respect to Requirements Quality Assurance (RQA)
Solution – design a RUP RQA Plug-in
Add Role, Requirements Quality Controller
Add Five Activities
Add Six Artifacts
Add Requirements Quality Assurance Workflow
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

15. Requirements Quality Assurance Plug-in Activities
Specify Quality Criteria – establish catalog of quality criteria for use cases and requirements
Simulate Requirements – simulate requirements using formal language and methods
Inspect Requirements – formal review of use cases and requirements
Measure Requirements Quality – quantitatively measure quality of use cases and requirements
Execute Use Cases – execute use cases using Petri net analysis
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

16. Requirements Quality Assurance Plug-in Artifacts
The new activities produce six new artifacts:
Requirements Quality Criteria Specification – the set of criteria that must be met by requirements
Requirements Quality Report – describes approach and results of quality assurance activity
Requirements Defect List – deficiencies discovered in requirements
Formal Requirements Specification – translation of natural language based requirements to formal requirements specification language
Measurement Statistics – lists the quantitative assessment of requirements
Petri Net – Petri net used to execute use cases
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

17. Requirements Quality Assurance Plug-in Workflow Detail Verify Requirements
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

18. Integration into Requirements Workflow
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

19. Problem with Tailoring RUP
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is!” [Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut]
RUP contains 32 process components
The process components of RUP are highly coupled.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

20. RUP Component Coupling (dependency diagram)
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

21. RUP Coupling One third of the 32 components are highly coupled.
21 components have coupling of less than 25 % (low to moderate coupling)
8 components have coupling of more than 25 % (high coupling)
3 components have coupling of more than 40 % (very high)
This would generally NOT be considered good OO Design!
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

22. Consequences of Coupling
High coupling makes it hard to tailor RUP – particularly if modifying or deleting components
The output of one activity will be a set of artifacts.
These artifacts will be the inputs to other activities.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

23. Changing Activities If an activity is changed or deleted, Then
Its artifacts may not be created and / or
Its artifacts may be altered.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

24. Consequence of Changed Activities
Artifacts are the output of activities.
Artifacts are also the input of activities.
If an artifact is not available or significantly changed, then
They will not be available as input for subsequent activities and / or
The subsequent activities will need to be changed to react to changed input artifacts.
In highly coupled systems, one change can result in/require cascading changes.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville

25. Conclusion and Future Work
Rational promotes RUP as a highly customizable framework.
RUP is customizable, but with serious limitation in the case where some of the components are deleted or modified due to high coupling.
Our RQA plug-in was independent, thus it was not hampered by RUP coupling.
This work was done with RUP v6. Recently, RUP v7 has been deployed. We have yet to investigate this new version.
8/7/2019
U. of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, DE and U. of Wisconsin - Platteville