=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2584/CreaRE-paper2
|storemode=property
|title=Let’s get “InspiRE-D” for RE by Other Disciplines – A Creativity-Based Approach
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2584/CreaRE-paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-2584
|authors=Anne Hess,Marcus Trapp,Oliver Karras,Norbert Seyff
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/refsq/HessTKS20
}}
==Let’s get “InspiRE-D” for RE by Other Disciplines – A Creativity-Based Approach==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2584/CreaRE-paper2.pdf
Let’s get “InspiRE-D” for RE by Other Disciplines –
A Creativity-Based Approach
Anne Hess Marcus Trapp
Fraunhofer IESE Fraunhofer IESE
Kaiserslautern, Germany Kaiserslautern, Germany
anne.hess@iese.fraunhofer.de marcus.trapp@iese.fraunhofer.de
Oliver Karras Norbert Seyff
Leibniz Universität Hannover Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz &
Software Engineering Group University of Zurich
Hannover, Germany Windisch & Zurich, Switzerland
oliver.karras@inf.uni-hannover.de norbert.seyff@fhnw.ch
Abstract
[Context and Motivation] In the context of designing the next gen-
eration of digital systems, it is more important than ever to holisti-
cally understand future system stakeholders within RE. This includes
thorough elicitation, analysis, and documentation of their motivation,
their fears, their social relationships, their life experience, and last
but not least, their needs regarding future systems within RE. [Ques-
tion/problem] Due to this situation, a new and challenging context
arises for RE, which opens up new research questions and activities
aimed at the development of skills, knowledge, methods and tech-
niques that support the aforementioned core RE activities. [Principal
ideas/results] Our current research aims to get inspired by best prac-
tices, strategies, or techniques from non-SE disciplines such as psychol-
ogy, criminology, law, marketing, or acting that support RE-specific
goals and to ultimately adapt and incorporate these into RE activities.
[Contribution] Learning from other disciplines offers huge potential
for improving the field of RE, but bridging the gap between the different
worlds is surely challenging due to expertise and effort required to make
the necessary abstractions. We consider creativity as a strong enabler
for overcoming these boundaries and share in this paper our experiences
of applying the “InspiRE-D” method, which supports systematic iden-
tification and elaboration of synergies between RE and other fields with
the help of creativity techniques. While the outcomes of this method
are mainly visionary ideas, they serve as a valuable starting point for
first evaluation activities and for the identification of promising future
cross-disciplinary research and collaboration possibilities.
Copyright c 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International
(CC BY 4.0).
In: M. Sabetzadeh, A. Vogelsang, S. Abualhaija, M. Borg, F. Dalpiaz, M. Daneva, N. Fernández, X. Franch, D. Fucci, V.
Gervasi, E. Groen, R. Guizzardi, A. Herrmann, J. Horkoff, L. Mich, A. Perini, A. Susi (eds.): Joint Proceedings of REFSQ-2020
Workshops, Doctoral Symposium, Live Studies Track, and Poster Track, Pisa, Italy, 24-03-2020, published at http://ceur-ws.org
1 Introduction
In this age of digitization, a new and challenging context arises for RE [1]. This argument is well in line with
the special theme of this year’s REFSQ conference, which claims that the next generation of digital systems will
strongly affect the daily and social life of a multitude of people as they will have to interact with these systems in
many different ways. Hence, it is essential for the RE community to provide suitable skills, knowledge, methods,
and techniques that enable gaining a deep understanding of the needs and fears as well as the social and living
context of a diversity of stakeholders, who may even have a negative attitude towards digital solutions. This
situation poses new challenges to RE, which make it necessary to reflect on and assess existing RE methods with
regard to their suitability for this new and highly relevant context [1]. This reflection might ultimately require
the improvement or development of new skills, knowledge, methods, and techniques supporting the elicitation,
documentation, and analysis of stakeholder requirements [1].
Back in 2005, Susan Robertson already promoted the ideas that the field of RE as a sociotechnical discipline
can be improved by learning from other disciplines or professions, as these might have already solved problems
and come up with techniques that we can reuse [2]. In her column, several authors reported on lessons learned
from disciplines such as technical writing [3], family therapy [4], psychology [5], or medicine [6] within RE.
To the best of our knowledge, such published experiences on learning from other disciplines are sparse, despite
the huge potential that best practices or techniques from other disciplines could offer to improve the field of
RE. This could be attributed to the fact that the identification of synergies between other disciplines and RE
is challenging and differs from our daily business, as it requires expertise and effort to make the necessary
abstractions.
To tackle this challenge, we consider creativity as a strong enabler for building a bridge between the different
worlds, and hence we would like to share our experiences of applying the so-called “InspiRE-D” method, which
supports systematic identification and elaboration of such synergies with the help of creativity techniques. We
successfully applied the “InspiRE-D” method during the interactive breakout sessions in three editions of the
D4RE workshop series [7], which we established in 2018 and which aims to answer the question “What can RE
learn from other disciplines?”.
In the remainder of this paper, we introduce the various creativity activities and corresponding templates of
the “InspiRE-D” method in section 2 and discuss experiences and limitations in section 3. The paper concludes
in section 4 with a summary as well as an outlook on future work.
Our work contributes to the goals of the CreaRE workshop by supporting the topic of creative use of techniques
originally designed for other purposes that could be applied as techniques in RE. Moreover, we aim to motivate
and enable both researchers and practitioners to take the first step into different worlds and apply our method
(or parts of it) in their particular work context in order to get inspired for RE by other Disciplines (“InspiRE-D”)
and ultimately incorporate best practices into RE techniques, which is surely a worthwhile endeavor [2].
2 The “InspiRE-D” Method
This section introduces the different activities of the current version of the “InspiRE-D” method that supports
the identification and elaboration of synergies between RE and other disciplines. We applied and continuously
improved this method in the aforementioned D4RE workshop series [7], which were all organized as full-day
workshops. In each of these workshops, the first part was dedicated to keynotes / inspirational talks as well as
paper presentations in order to introduce the participants to the workshop goals and themes and to inspire them
for the subsequent breakout sessions. In these breakout sessions, we organized the participants into groups of
4–6 people for collaborative discussion of the following leading questions:
• Which best practices / techniques of other disciplines have synergy potential for RE-related activities and
could be adapted in an RE technique?
• What would the application of the adapted RE technique look like?
• Which benefits would the adapted RE technique provide?
• Are there any risks related to the application of the adapted RE technique?
• Which open issues exist that require future research?
• Which next steps are required to realize a first proto-version of the envisioned RE technique?
To support these group discussions, we guided the participants through four different creativity activities that
will be introduced in the remainder of this section:
• Activity 1: Idea Collection (Duration ≈ 45 Minutes)
• Activity 2: Elaborating Synergies (Duration ≈ 45 Minutes)
• Activity 3: Minimal Version of RE Technique (Duration ≈ 45 Minutes)
• Activity 4: Wrap Up (Duration ≈ 45 Minutes)
Each of the described activities will be illustrated by a continuous example that is inspired by the discipline
criminology. Particularly, the example illustrates the usage of conspiracy walls in RE. As illustrated in Figure 1,
these walls typically store and visualize collected evidence data, assumptions and gained insights about a crime
including their relations (e.g., by connecting the data with the help of pins and stitches). All this information is
continuously updated and analyzed by detectives to solve a crime [8].
Figure 1: Conspiracy Wall
2.1 Activity 1: Idea Collection
Based on a given workshop theme or discipline (like psychology, criminology, or law), the goal of this brain-
storming activity is to first collect as many ideas as possible with regard to best practices of the given discipline
with synergy potential for RE. To document these ideas, we created a template that formulates the idea in the
form of a simple statement:
Learn from .
Use applied by / in / at / during for .
The corresponding template and example are visualized in Figure 2.
2.2 Activity 2: Elaborating Synergies
The goal of this activity is to elaborate synergies in more detail by outlining and sketching a future RE technique
that incorporates and adapts one or two best practices from other disciplines selected from the idea collection
(see section 2.1).
To achieve this, the participants are asked to elaborate a storyboard with the help of a template (see Figure 3)
structured into three parts. In the upper part (i.e., boxes in first row), the participants should textually describe
different steps of the envisioned technique. This textual description should be supplemented with a visualization
of the steps in the form of simple sketches in the middle part (i.e., boxes in second row). Finally, the third part
(i.e., boxes in last row) offers the possibility to annotate any open issues, such as possible risks, ideas for future
research, people to involve, etc. related to particular steps of the envisioned method.
LEARN FROM Criminology
USE Conspiracy Walls
APPLIED BY Detectives
Criminal Investigation
IN/AT/DURING
/ Profiling
FOR Requirements Analysis
Figure 2: Template and Example of Idea Collection in Activity 1
Figure 3: Template and Example Excerpt for Elaborating Synergies in Activity 2
When elaborating the new RE technique, the participants are instructed to explicitly think about preparation
steps, (“What do we have to do every time the new technique will be executed? ”), execution steps (“How do we
execute the new technique? ”) and wrap-up (“How do we wrap up after each execution of the new technique? ”).
Figure 3 illustrates the structure and the different parts of the template, including an extract of an elaborated
storyboard example for a new RE technique inspired by the idea of using conspiracy walls for requirements
analysis (see Figure 1 and Figure 2).
2.3 Activity 3: Minimal Viable Version of RE Technique
In the previous activity, the participants elaborated envisioned RE techniques inspired by best practices of other
disciplines. But how to realize these techniques? What steps should be taken? Who should be involved? Which
resources are required to realize these techniques? We consider such reflections a very important outcome of the
“InspiRE-D” method, as the realization and application of the envisioned RE techniques might take a very long
time – possibly even years – which might be demotivating.
Hence, we incorporated the activity “Minimal Viable Version of RE Technique” into the “InspiRE-D” method.
The goal of this activity is to discuss and describe activities and related assets that could be executed within a
month (“4-week sprint”) in order to be able to develop and run a proto-version of the envisioned RE technique
(see Figure 4). This proto-version could be subjected to first evaluation activities towards expected benefits
of the technique and continuously be improved based on the insights gained during its application in real projects.
„4*1 WEEK MINIMAL VIABLE VERSION SPRINT“
ACTIONS ‐ WHO DOES WHAT ASSETS / RESULTS
• Identify internal project
• Explore and collect ideas for information • Project information
visualization • Visualization ideas
• Identify first set of leading questions • Initial set of leading
• Organize room, board, material (e.g., questions
sticky notes)
• Schedule discussion meeting (for week 3)
ACTIONS ‐ WHO DOES WHAT ASSETS / RESULTS
• Collect data (from existing project data) • Board with data
• Visualize requirements‐related
information on board
ACTIONS ‐ WHO DOES WHAT ASSETS / RESULTS
• Discussion meeting with project • New leading
stakeholders / team questions
• Observation during discussion • Lessons learned
Missing information
Improvement ideas
(visualization)
ACTIONS ‐ WHO DOES WHAT ASSETS / RESULTS
• Wrap‐up • Validated leading
• Meeting among researchers questions and data
visualization
guidelines ready to
be used for new
project
PROTO‐VERSION IS READY FOR 1ST USE
Figure 4: Template and Example of Minimal Viable Version Sprint in Activity 3
2.4 Activity 4: Wrap-up
The goal of this activity is to summarize the core ideas of the newly elaborated RE techniques inspired by best
practices from another discipline while particularly highlighting their expected benefits. To support this activity,
we provided the participants with a template to create a tweet briefly summarizing the main idea, the challenges
addressed, and the expected benefits of the technique with a maximum number of 280 characters. The template
and an example tweet are illustrated in Figure 5.
twitter FORM
Y_ o_ _
u_r _ _t _
e a_ m
_ _s _ _d _o _n‘ _t _ _e _f _f _i _c _i e_ _n _t _l _y _
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
_c _o m_ _m _u _n _i _c _a _t _e _ _t _o _ _e _a _c _h _ o_ t_ h_ _e _r _ _ _
29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
_a _n _d _ d_ o_ _n’ _t _ k_ _n _o _w _ w_ _h _a t_ _ _o _t _h _e r_ _s _ _ _
57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
_a _r e_ _ _d o_ _i _n _g ?_ _ _D _o _ _i _t _ _l _i _k _e _ _d e_ t_ e_ _c ‐_
85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 11028 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112
_t _i _v _e _s _ _a _n _d _ _u _s _e _ _c _o _n _s _p _i _r _a _c _y _ _ _ _
113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140
w_ _a _l _l _s _ _t _o _ _s _h _a _r _e _ y_ _o _u _r _ “e_ _v _i _d _e _n _c _e”
141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168
a_ n_ _ d _ c_ _ o _l _l _
a _b _o _r _a _ t _
i _v _ e _l _
y _ _i _ d_ e_n_ t _
i f_ _
y
169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196
_t _h e_ _ _b _e _s _t _ _r e_ _q _u _i _r _e m
197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204
_ _e _n _t _s _ _t _h _a _t _ _
205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224
_s a_ _t _i _s _f _y _ _y _o _u _r _ _s _t _a _k _e h_ _o _l _d e_ r’_ _s _ _ _
225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252
_n _e _e _d _s _! _# _s _o _l _v _e _t _h _e _R _E _p _u _z _z _l _e _ _ _ _ _
253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280
Figure 5: Template and Example Summary Tweet Description in Activity 4
To supplement the wrap-up activity, we also prepared a so-called profiteer template (see Figure 6), which
can be used to briefly describe the role, responsibilities, and challenges of persons benefiting directly from the
method.
PROFITEER
Requirements Engineer
RE‐RELATED RESPONSIBILITIES
• Analyze elicited requirements
• Document elicited requirements
• Communicate requirements to
other team members
CURRENT CHALLENGES
• Identify relations / conflicts
between requirements
• Address information needs of
other team members
• Foster a shared understanding
of requirements in team
Figure 6: Template and Example for Profiteer Description in Activity 4
3 Discussion
As already mentioned above, we applied the “InspiRE-D” method during three editions of the D4RE workshop
series that were collocated with RE’18 in Banff, Canada; with REFSQ’19 in Essen, Germany; and with RE’19 on
Jeju Island, South Korea [7]. At the end of each workshop session, we asked the participants for their feedback
and incorporated this feedback into the method. This especially applies to activity 3 (“Minimal Viable Version
of RE Technique”, see section 2.3), which had not been included in the first edition of the workshop. The
participants of this first edition liked the story-boarding activity but missed having a list of concrete next steps
at hand. Such an outcome would have motivated them to realize and apply the ideas they had elaborated in
the workshop in their particular project contexts. In addition, they said that it would really be beneficial to
elaborate the synergies collaboratively with experts from other domains. We were able to address this important
issue in the second edition of the D4RE workshop series, where a former police officer working as a RE consultant
at that time gave the audience insights into the daily work of a police officer, sharing his experience in applying
techniques such as profiling, crime scene investigation, and how to secure evidence. Moreover, he shared his
view on how RE elicitation techniques such as interviews and workshops could benefit from (psychological)
questioning techniques typically applied during interrogations. However, while it is the best case to work with
experts right from the beginning, our experience has shown that it is also possible to elaborate great ideas for
potential synergies even without the involvement of experts when applying the “InspiRE-D” method. Surely,
the experts should then be involved at a later point in time when it comes to the realization and evaluation of
the envisioned RE technique.
Basically, the four activities of the “InspiRE-D” method follow typical phases of a creativity process, like
exploration, combination / transformation, convergence, and evaluation. That is, based on a given problem or
goal, a creativity process typically starts with the collection of as many ideas as possible that address the given
problem or goal in a brainstorming manner. In the “InspiRE-D” method, this exploration phase is supported
by activity 1 “Idea Collection” (see section 2.1), which aims to identify as many ideas as possible with regard to
the best practices of a given discipline with synergy potential for RE. In fact, this activity worked really well in
the workshops and we collected many ideas within the given time frame of 45 minutes (ca. 20 ideas per group).
Of course, not all of the brainstormed ideas might ultimately be suitable for an RE technique, but he core idea
or a combination with other ideas might be.
Such a combination of ideas and their transformation into the RE context is the goal of activity 2 “Elaborating
Synergies” (see Section 2.2), which therefore resembles the aforementioned combination / transformation phase
of a creativity process aimed at further extending the body of possible solution ideas for the given problem or
goal. The storyboarding technique was also found to be suitable for describing the envisioned method, as it
focuses on the visualization of what the execution of the RE technique would look like.
The convergence phase of a creativity process is supported by activity 3 “Minimal Version of RE Technique”
(see section 2.3). That is, the solution space is reduced to the most promising solution ideas that are realizable,
which in our case corresponds to the proto-version of the envisioned RE technique. As already mentioned, this
activity was an important addition to our initial version and helped the participants to identify concrete next
steps.
Finally, the evaluation phase of a creativity process is supported by activity 4 “Wrap-up” (see section 2.4),
which aims to evaluate selected ideas (in our case, the envisioned RE technique respectively its proto-version)
in terms of their expected benefits. Both the tweet template and the profiteer template helped the participants
focus on the addressed challenges as well as the expected benefits of the envisioned RE technique in order to
promote the synergy potential.
Overall, the “InspiRE-D” method has proven to be suitable for elaborating initial ideas for synergies between
other disciplines and RE, and we have been able to run the method in the given time frames of the interactive
breakout sessions. We are aware of the fact that the outcome of this method are “only” visionary ideas for RE
techniques that were initially sketched and not described in full detail yet, which can surely be considered a
major limitation of the method. However, we still consider the visionary ideas as a first important step towards
overcoming the boundaries between the field of RE and other domains and becoming aware of the potential that
cross-disciplinary work could offer to our community.
4 Conclusion and Future Work
To contribute to the goals and topics of the CreaRE workshop series, this paper introduced the “InspiRE-D”
methodological approach that supports the systematic identification and elaboration of synergies between best
practices from other disciplines and RE with the help of creativity techniques. We successfully applied the
approach during the three editions of the D4RE workshop series [7] and continuously incorporated feedback
given by the workshop participants. While the outcomes of this method are mainly visionary ideas, they serve as
a valuable starting point for first evaluation activities and the identification of promising future cross-disciplinary
research and collaboration possibilities.
In the future, we aim to continue our D4RE workshop series and enrich our first body of knowledge with regard
to best practices / techniques from other disciplines and their synergy potential for RE. In these future editions,
we will identify and apply further (creativity) techniques that have the potential to extend the “InspiRE-D”
method (e.g., using vision videos [9] to elaborate synergies in Activity 2). Moreover, we aim to develop and
publish a web-based tool solution that enables us to share our knowledge and experience gained in the D4RE
workshops to a larger community. A first tool concept has already been elaborated in [10], which is intended to
primarily support the D4RE workshop organizers in documenting and publishing workshop results. Researchers
and practitioners from various domains will be able to access and browse this knowledge to get inspiration for
their own work.
Finally, we aim to apply and evaluate the idea of the envisioned RE technique that we used as an illustrating
example in this paper. That is, inspired by the conspiracy walls typically used by detectives during crime
investigations or profiling, we are currently preparing and visualizing real project data on a board. We aim
to use this board to foster discussion and analysis of requirements among the project team members in the
near future in order to evaluate first ideas regarding leading questions that might guide the discussions of the
requirements from different perspectives as well as suitable visualization of requirements-related information on
the board.
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