Requirements Engineering for Services

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Credits
6
Types
Specialization compulsory (Service Engineering)
Requirements
This subject has not requirements
Department
ESSI
The term 'service' has been defined as "a provider/client interaction that creates and captures value". Value can be considered the quality that renders something desirable or worthwhile. Central to this definition is an understanding of the business context, the stakeholders involved in an exchange and their respective goals and needs. This is the major concern of the course on Requirements Engineering for Services. It covers both requirements elicitation and requirements specification for services. Additionally, since IT is the main driver for innovation in Services, we focus on IT service-oriented requirements engineering.

Teachers

Person in charge

  • Maria Ribera Sancho Samso ( )

Others

  • Sergio Morales Garcia ( )

Weekly hours

Theory
1
Problems
0
Laboratory
2
Guided learning
0
Autonomous learning
5.5

Objectives

  1. To learn how to discover, determine and specify the requirements of a service system.
    Related competences: CEE5.1,
  2. Understand the need for, the importance, the objectives and the context of requirements in service engineeering
    Related competences: CEE5.1,
  3. Ability to formally specify the requirements of a service system using BPM notation
    Related competences: CEE5.1,
  4. To undesrtand the role and possibilities of some IT-intensive techniques for service innovation.
    Related competences: CEE5.1,
  5. Understand the main methods for determining requirements and the situations in which they can be applied. Learn how to use some of them in a Service engineering context
    Related competences: CEE5.1,
  6. To learn the importance of ensuring service quality and the role of Service Level Agreements
    Related competences: CEE5.1,
  7. Understand some real example cases of service desing where IT-based innovation and/or requirements engineering play a significant role
    Related competences: CEE5.2,
  8. Ability to effectively participate in project teams for working on complex services systems
    Related competences: CTR3, CEE5.3,

Contents

  1. Introduction to Requirements Engineering for Services.
    Service and service system definition.
    Life Cycle for Service Design.
    Requirements engineering process for services.
  2. Domain understanding.
    Business context.
    Business Goals.
    Business Stakeholders.
    Business use cases.
  3. Service identification.
    Service context.
    Service system goals.
    Service stakeholders (provider, customer, actors).
    Service value and satisfaction argument.
    Service blueprinting
    Service system use cases
  4. Service specification.
    Business Process Modeling
    BPM
    BPMN
    Data-centric BPMN
  5. Service Design Techniques.
    Service Encounters & Touch Points (orchestration and choreography).
    Person to Person (P2P), Tech Enhanced P2P, & Self-Service.
    Multi-Channel & Multi-Device Contexts.
    Context-Aware & Computational Contexts.
  6. Requirements Elicitation Techniques.
    Ethnography Continuum & Techniques (Observation, interviews, focus groups).
    Document anthropology and archeology.
  7. Service Quality and Service Level Agreement.
    Service Quality and Service Level Agreement.
  8. Course Retrospective.
    Course Retrospective.

Activities

Activity Evaluation act


Course Presentation



Theory
1h
Problems
0h
Laboratory
0h
Guided learning
0h
Autonomous learning
0h

Course Retrospective



Theory
1h
Problems
0h
Laboratory
0h
Guided learning
0h
Autonomous learning
2h

Teaching methodology

The course will be taught using the PBL (Project-Based Learning, or Problem-Based Learning) approach.

There is a conventional class (one hour a week) in which the teacher explains general themes, formulate and discuss central points of the course or aspects not completely covered in the other course activities.

One of the main parts of the course is the determination of the requirements of a given service system. The teacher will set out a specific situation (which will vary between courses) in which students have to determine and specify the requirements, using previously learnt methods and languages. This work will be carried out in groups. The number of students in each group and its precise composition will be established at the beginning of the course. Each grup nominates a coordinator,and a secretary. Each group will meet at least once a week for one or two hours, at a pre-arranged time. There will be at least two submissions of the group's work during the course.

The other important part of the course involves carrying out short exercises and papers reading. The teacher will set around ten exercises and/or papers during the course. Each student must submit his or her own solution to the exercises within the set deadlines (students are given roughly a week to do each exercise). The papers have to be shortly presented by an appointed student during a preestablished project class. This presentation will open a discussion and all the students are expected to participate. Carrying out the exercises or reading and presenting the papers involves the learning of new knowledge.

Finally, the students will be exposed to real experiences covering different aspects of service requirements. Some individual exercises will remark the lessons learned through this real cases.

Evaluation methodology

Continuous assessment comprises three parts: Group work (30%), individual exercises and paper presentations (35%), student participation (25%) and the cross competence (10%).

Assessment of group work is applied equally to all the group members. It is based on the work done (documents or, where applicable, deliverables). As indicated earlier, there will be at least two submissions of the group's work during the course.

Each student is assessed on the individual exercises and presentations about research papers. At least six exercises/presentations must be done during the course and before the deadline established in each case. The grade awarded is the average of all delivered/presented exercices and presentations.

Students are also graded on their individual participation. This is based on their contribution to group work, the role in the group, the level of assistance to the work meetings and classes, and their general participation in the various activities making up the course. A student is evaluated on participation only if the student attends at least the 80% of the scheduled meetings and classes.

The evaluation of the cross competence is also individual.

Bibliography

Basic:

  • Requirements engineering - Axel van Lamsweerde, Willey, 2009.
  • Requirements Engineering - Pohl, Klaus, Springer, 2010.
  • Designing Service Systems by Bridging the Front Stage & Back Stage - Glushco; Tabas,
  • Service Blueprinting: a Practical Technique for Service Innovation - Bitner et al.,
  • Business Process Management: Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations - Jeston, John; Nelis, Johan, Elsevier, 2006.
  • Business Process Modeling Notation Specification, version 2.0. - Object Management Group (OMG), 2011.