1. Sam Supakkul Lawrence Chung The University of Texas at Dallas
Extending Problem Frames to Deal with Stakeholder Problems: An Agent- and Goal-Oriented Approach
Sam Supakkul
Lawrence Chung
The University of Texas at Dallas

2. A storm is coming… Is it a problem?

3. Yes, if we want outdoor fun

4. No, if we’re dying for it want healthy crops

5. Same phenomenon problem blessing

6. situational phenomenon
“Being wet”
situational phenomenon
“have outdoor fun”
goal
negatively
affect
cause
phenomenon
negatively affects
someone’s goals
“Storm”
causal phenomenon

7. How to deal with
stakeholder problems in software related applications?

8. London Ambulance Services (LAS) 1994 manual dispatch debacle

9. “Ineffective manual dispatch” situation Nasima’s “safety” goal
negatively affect
a sub-problem of
cause
“Ineffective comm. in the call center”
situation
“Physical movement of incident forms”
operation
Source:

10. LAS was developing a CAD system in early 90’s
solves?
How to ensure system solves stakeholder problem?

11. Requirements and specifications = software problem
domains
specifications
requirements
phenomena
Software problem = what to be built by developers

12. How to make sure
solves?
software problem solves stakeholder problem?

13. “A problem unstated is a problem unsolved”
-- Douglas Ross, 1977

14. Concepts to represent soft-problem softgoal Undesirable Situation
“Ineffective manual dispatch” situation
Nasima’s “safety” goal
soft-problem
negatively affect
softgoal
Undesirable
Situation
Sub-problem of
cause
sub-problem
Undesirable
Mechanism
“Ineffective comm. in the call center”
situation
“Physical movement of incident forms” operation

15. Type[Topic] stakeholder problem =
Phenomenon…negatively affects someone’s goals
Ineffective manual dispatch breaks patient’s safety
Type[Topic]

16. stakeholder problem =
phenomenon…hurts someone’s goals
Ineffective manual dispatch breaks patient’s safety

17. stakeholder problem =
phenomenon…affects someone’s goals
Ineffective manual dispatch affects patient’s safety

18. Problem Interdependency Graph
Root-cause analysis
Problem Interdependency Graph
(PIG)

19. Solving stakeholder problems
Recover
“Ineffective manual dispatch” situation
Nasima’s “safety” goal
negatively affect
Detect
Sub-problem of
Prevent
cause
“Ineffective comm. in the call center”
situation
“Physical movement of incident forms” operation
Contain/quarantine

20. Solving stakeholder problem
Integrated Problem Interdependency Graph (PIG)
and Softgoal Interdependency Graph (SIG)

21. Stakeholder problem sufficiently addressed?OR
AND
AND OR
v (OR)
^ (AND)

22. How to make sure
solves?
software problem solves stakeholder problem?

23. Extended problem diagram
Integrated PIG - SIG

24. Benefits of integrated problem- and goal-oriented analysis
Ineffectiveness[ManualDispatch] problem vs CAD solution

25. Limitations behavioral solutions not traceable to domain and phenomena
non- behavioral solutions not traceable

26. Observations Syntactic Semantic Problem ≠ negated goal Soft-problem
Softgoal
Solution ≠ negated problem

27. Conclusion Contributions Future Work
stakeholder problems representation
Soft-problem (Undesirable Situation, Undesirable Mechanism)
Integrated root-cause and solution analysis
PIG - SIG
Traceability: agents, goals, stakeholder problems, s/w problems
Extended problem diagram
Future Work
Detailed traceability solutions and domains/phenomena
Integration with negative models
e.g. anti-goal and abuse frames

28. no
problem
PIG – Problem Interdependency Graph
Thank you

30. Benefits of using goal-oriented reasoning
Recover
affect
Crew’s “safe return” goal
“Loss of power and oxygen” situation
Detect
caused by
caused by
A number of ways to address stakeholder problems:
We could try to prevent the root causes, so the undesirable situation cannot be realized.
Or we could detect the undesirable situations, then recover from it like what Apollo 13 did successfully although in a little too exciting fashion.
But how do we deal with stakeholder problems in software related applications?
Contain/quarantine
Prevent the cause
“explosion of fuel cells” phenomenon

31. Fishbone Diagram

32. Fault Tree

33. The i* Framework
Lin Liu, Eric Yu, and John Mylopoulos, “Security and Privacy Requirements Analysis within a Social Setting“, RE’03

34. Anti-goal
Axel van Lamsweerde, “Elaborating Security Requirements by Construction of Intentional Anti-Models”, ICSE’04

35. Misuse Cases
Guttorm Sindre and Andreas L. Opdahl, “Eliciting security requirements with misuse cases”, RE Journal, 2005

36. Abuse Frames
L.Lin, et. al, “Analysing Security Threats and Vulnerabilities Using Abuse Frames”, Technical Report, October 2003

37. An integration of goals and problem frames
Steven J. Bleistein, Karl Cox, and June Verner, “Validating strategic alignment of organizational IT requirements using goal modeling and problem diagrams”, Journal of Systems and Software, 2005