creativity in requirement engineering

1. CREATIVITY IN REQUIREMENT ENGINEERING
Presented By
Shafaq Riaz Bhatti(171-1047)
Tehreem Shabbir(171-1076 )

2. Content
 Creativity in Requirement Engineering
 Framework and Model for understanding creativity in Requirement Engineering
 Creativity Techniques
 Creativity Tools
 Crowd Creativity
 Future Work

3. CREATIVITY
 The use of imagination or original ideas to create something
 According to Robert Sternberg
“Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original and unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful
and adaptive to the task constraints)”.
R. J. STERNBERG, HANDBOOK OF CREATIVITY. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999.

4. CREATIVITY IN RE
 Creativity in RE is the capturing of requirements that are new to the project stakeholders but may not be
historically new to humankind.
 For example, Internet browsing using smartphone has become a very basic requirement for the
smartphone domain.
 Even though the commercial Internet Service Providers emerged in the late 1980s, internet service on
cell phones was not available until late 1990s. In 1999, when NTT DoCoMo in Japan introduced the first
full internet service on mobile phones, it was a creative requirement to the stakeholder
N. MAIDEN, S. JONES, K. KARLSEN, R. NEILL, K. ZACHOS, AND A. MILNE, “REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AS CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING: A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR IDEA FINDING,” IN PROCEEDINGS OF THE
INTERNATIONAL REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (RE), 2010, PP. 57–66.

5. Why We Need Creativity In RE?
 Software industry has become extremely competitive.
 In order to sustain and grow in the market, a software system needs to distinguish itself from other
similar products and enchant customers with novel and useful features.
 Creativity techniques have been applied to Requirements Engineering (RE) in order to find novel
requirements, facilitating system and business innovation.
 Creativity is needed to identify the unexpected requirements which make a product outperform its
competitors
HORKOFF, J., & MAIDEN, N.A. (2015). CREATIVITY AND CONCEPTUAL MODELING FOR REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING. REFSQ WORKSHOPS.

6. How To Obtain Creative Requirements?
Creative requirements could be obtained in three different ways.
 Exploratory Creativity: Involves the generation of new idea by exploration of structured concept
 Combinational Creativity: New combinations of familiar ideas
 Transformational Creativity: Transforming the existing rules to identify a new subspace of the solution
M.A . BODEN, THE CREATIVE MIND, A BA CUS, LONDON, 1990.

7. FRAMEWORK AND MODEL UNDERSTANDING
CREATIVITY IN REQUIREMENT ENGINEERING

8. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY IN
REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING
 This paper builds a theoretical framework to provides a systematic means of understanding creativity in
requirements engineering
 It comprises five elements
• Product is a creative outcome,
• Process
• Domain
• People
• Socio-organizational context
GUYEN, LEMAI & SHANKS, GRAEME. (2009). FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY IN REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING. INFORMATION AND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY. 51. 655-
662. 10.1016/J.INFSOF.2008.09.002.

9. Product
Novelty
• A creative product
should be new and
original
Value
• A creative product
workable and
effective in solving a
problem
Surprisingness
• Impact of the
creative product
which ‘‘may shock or
amaze us”
Process
Inspirationalist
• The magical ‘‘Aha!”
moment, occurs and
emphasize
an individual’s
creative cognitive
processes
Structuralist
• Considered
generation and
evaluation of ideas.
Situationalist
• The role of the
human and social
environment and
professional domains
Domain
Creativity domain-
general
• Creativity abilities
• Ease in idea
generation,
sensibility to
problems, and
analytical and
synthetic skillsCreative domain-
specific
• RE specific
knowledge and skills
• Elicitation and
modeling
techniques
People
A list of common
personal
characteristics
identified and
examined
Socio-
organizational
Context
Supporting creative
teams
• Systems analysts
should be informed
about
• Types of group
conflicts, group
processes how to
overcome
undesirable group
conflicts in RE
Socio-organisational
factors in creativity
It include stakeholder,
organization,
management, project
group behavior, and
national culture
GUYEN, LEMAI & SHANKS, GRAEME. (2009). FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY IN REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING. INFORMATION AND SOFTWARE
TECHNOLOGY. 51. 655-662. 10.1016/J.INFSOF.2008.09.002.

10. Element Implications for RE
Product How can novelty, surprisingness and value be defined and
determined in RE
Need to develop a collective, interactive approach to
assessing and recognising S-level creative ideas
Process These three views are not mutually exclusive. An integration
of views is needed to support different creative thinking
styles and processes in RE
An integrated RE support environment with creativity
techniques and tools to foster the creative requirement
process is needed
Domain RE involves multiple domains. Research needs to clarify
domain-general and domain-specific aspects of creativity
in RE. RE education needs to address different levels of
domain-general and domain-specific creativity with
appropriate education frameworks
People Need to identify common personal characteristics (traits,
cognitive abilities, and problem solving approaches) possessed
by creative systems analysts
Can creativity techniques and tools be integrated within
RE to prompt and boost P-level creativity abilities of systems
analysts?
Socio-organizational context Need to understand and support collaborative creative
team process in RE
Need to create an organisational environment to support
intrinsic motivations and appropriate reward scheme to
foster creativity
GUYEN, LEMAI & SHANKS, GRAEME. (2009). FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY IN REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING. INFORMATION AND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY. 51. 655-662. 10.1016/J.INFSOF.2008.09.002.

11. Requirements Engineering And Creativity:
An Innovative Approach Based On A Model Of The Pragmatics Of
Communication
 The paper propose an innovative creativity technique, called EPMcreate, based on a model of the
pragmatics of communication, the Elementary Pragmatic Model (EPM)
LUISA MICH, CINZIA ANESI, AND DANIEL M. BERRY, REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND CREATIVITY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH BASED ON A MODEL OF
THE PRAGMATICS OF COMMUNICATION

12. ELEMENTARY PRAGMATIC MODEL (EPM)
 To analyze the interactions between two people in order to determine the psychological bases for their
interaction behaviors
A single interaction between two persons, P1 and P2 consists of four steps.
1. Person P1 proposes an action A1.
2. Person P2 proposes an action A2.
3. P1 insisting on his own proposal, P1 changing his proposal to match P2’s, P1 changing his proposal to
one contrary to P2’s
4. P2’s response could be equally varied

13. ELEMENTARY PRAGMATIC MODEL (EPM)
 There are 16 possible patterns of responses, corresponding to the 16 Boolean functions on two variables
These functions are named f i for 0 ≤ i ≤ 15
 f names the function for which i is the decimal numeral corresponding to the 4-digit binary numeral,
R1R2R3R4, obtained from the response column of the table for function.
 Some representative function names and their corresponding tables, abbreviating “P n’s Proposal” as “P
n” and “P1’s or P2’s Response” as “R”
LUISA MICH, CINZIA ANESI, AND DANIEL M. BERRY, REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND CREATIVITY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH BASED ON A MODEL OF
THE PRAGMATICS OF COMMUNICATION

14. EPM
Each function can be considered as representing one pattern of response
 Assuming that the responder is P1
 f0 represents a totally pessimistic person who always says “No” to any proposal regardless of his and the
other’s original proposal.
 f5 represents a person, a so-called yes man, who always says the same as what the other says, regardless of his
own original proposal.
 f10 represents a person, a so-called contrarian, who always says the opposite of what the other says,
regardless of his own original proposal

15. THE EPMCREATE TECHNIQUE
 EPMcreate is based on sort of an inverse use of the EPM.
 Rather than trying to deduce an individual’s behavior pattern by observation of his interactions with
others, EPMcreate uses the EPM as a means to help a requirements elicitor (RE) to generate all possible
reactions to two stakeholders’ positions.
 Thus, each of the 16 Boolean functions represents one method of combining two stakeholders’
viewpoints to generate yet another viewpoint from which creative ideas can flow.
LUISA MICH, CINZIA ANESI, AND DANIEL M. BERRY, REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND CREATIVITY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH BASED ON A MODEL OF
THE PRAGMATICS OF COMMUNICATION

16. CONT…
 A creative session supported by EPMcreate starts with the identification of two stakeholders, or classes
thereof, that are relevant for the software system to be developed. For example, for an e-learning
application, two possible stakeholders are students and lecturers.
 Then a multi-step process is started in which the RE has to assume different attitudes towards the
stakeholders’ viewpoints. The steps actually follow the boolean functions f0, . . . , f15 in order of
increasing index
LUISA MICH, CINZIA ANESI, AND DANIEL M. BERRY, REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND CREATIVITY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH BASED ON A MODEL OF
THE PRAGMATICS OF COMMUNICATION

17. CONT..
 In the first step, corresponding to f0, the RE must blank her mind. This step allows the RE to increase her
concentration for the subsequent steps.
 In the second step, the first operative step, f1 suggests that the RE focus on elements common to the
stakeholders’ viewpoints in order to seek solutions of the problem that can be shared by the identified
stakeholders.
 Then, f2 asks the RE to focus on elements that are in only the first stakeholder’s viewpoint, in order to seek
solutions favorable to only the first stakeholder, to the exclusion of the second.
 Step f3 allows the RE to concentrate on all elements that are in the first stakeholder’s viewpoint, in order to
seek solutions that are favorable to the first stakeholder, even those that are favorable to the second.
 Step f4 is symmetric to f2, having the RE switch the focal stakeholder.
 Steps f5, . . . , f15 are defined in a similar way, using the function name to chose the way to combine the
stakeholders’ viewpoints in order to look for new solutions
 An important change in the process occurs in Step f8, which represents a kind of watershed. From this step on,
the RE can draw new ideas from elements that are outside the viewpoints of the identified stakeholders
LUISA MICH, CINZIA ANESI, AND DANIEL M. BERRY, REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING AND CREATIVITY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH BASED ON A MODEL OF
THE PRAGMATICS OF COMMUNICATION

18. Creativity Techniques

19. CLASSIFICATION
 The techniques are classified according to two dimensions,
 Representation and Process Oriented Technique
 A technique is representation-oriented if it seeks to stimulate creativity by introducing a specific manner
for describing the result of the requirements elicitation task. These techniques focus on the means by
which requirements are represented
 It is process-oriented if it defines a specific manner for handling the requirements elicitation task.
Techniques in this category concern the way the requirements elicitation process is to be organized

20. Representation Oriented Technique
Topic maps
A topic map consists of a set of nodes, linked by
associations. A node may fill a specific role in an
association.
Storyboard
It combines graphics and text to describe system
behaviors in a concrete form directly observable by
stakeholders
Scenarios
Scenarios are narrative and specific descriptions of
current and future processes including actions and
interactions between the users and the system
Usecase
Description of the system, Normal flow, Alternate Flow

21. PROCESS ORIENTED TECHNIQUE
Creativity Workshops
Workshop is a generic term given to a number of
different types of group meetings where the emphasis is
on collectively developing and discovering requirements
for a software system
Within health care domain, a group of diabetes patients,
doctors and nurses created visions about the technology
and how they could be helped in their daily management
of the disease
Walt Disney
This technique decomposes the creative process into
three different steps called Dreamer, Critique, and Realist,
respectively. Each of these steps would usually lead to
prolonged sessions, which could easily need several
hours.Game mechanics
This technique provides levels and goals, which can be in the
form of awards, credits and acknowledgements, in order to
motivate and engage participants in the creative problem
solving process
Just as a game has levels that one tries to achieve, so should
each creative search activity be informed by specific goals; game
mechanics are used to provide these goals. Each subspace
reveals a new goal that compels the problem solver to continue
their creative search activity

22. Crowd Creativity

23. Crowd Creativity In RE
 Crowd RE is an emerging avenue for soliciting human intelligence for RE tasks from the members of
the public also known as the crowd.
 Its focus is on the creative task of idea generation, where stakeholders come up with useful and
novel ideas, eventually to be expressed as requirements.
 A sequential task design is described for acquiring creative requirements from the crowd.
 In the first phase, 300 participants (workers) generate ideas for smart home applications. In the
second phase, an additional 300 workers rate the ideas generated in the first phase.

24. Phase 1: Idea Generation
 We propose a sequential Crowd RE process, where workers in one stage
review requirements from the previous stage and produce additional
requirements
 Phase 1: Idea Generation
 Personality and Creativity Surveys
 Idea Generation Task
 Workers are provided with some sample requirements and their objective is to come up
with requirements that are more creative than the samples

25. Phase 2: Idea Rating
 Additional members of the crowd rated the creativities of
the ideas from the first phase
 Clarity: A clear requirement is unambiguous and provides
an appropriate level of detail
 Usefulness: A useful requirement leads to products that
provide value or utility to their users.
 Novelty: A novel requirement is something that a user finds
original and unexpected, i.e., something that is not commonplace,
mundane, or conventional

26. Literature in Crowd RE
 In Crowd RE, members of the crowd play stakeholder roles. An interesting direction is to construct a
social network consisting of the crowd members contributing ideas to a product.
 Lim and Finkelstein propose StakeRare to facilitate requirements elicitation in large scale software
projects. Their method
 Constructs a social network of stakeholders,
 Recommends requirements to stakeholders
 Prioritizes requirements based on stakeholders’ project influences (computed via network measures).

27. TAILORING GAMIFICATION TO REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION: A
STAKEHOLDER CENTRIC MOTIVATION CONCEPT
 Game-based Requirements Elicitation Research Project (GARUSO)
 This Concept addresses the challenge
 of not knowing the stakeholders,
 characterizes them with player types and
 keeps them motivated over time with rewards.
 How the stakeholders outside the organization be motivated towards requirement elicitation?

28. GARUSO

29. CREATIVITY TOOLS

30. ITHINK
 A game-based approach towards improving collaboration and participation in
requirement elicitation.
 iThink is a web-based gamified environment design for supporting
collaborative requirement elicitation. It uses creative thinking technique,
called “The Six Thinking Hats” to design the activities for users to perform
elicitation process.
 It uses a Scoring Scheme, that gives points to users if they give requirements,
rate a requirement with stars or share positive and negative comments about
certain requirement, they are motivated by giving bonus scores.

31. DMGAME
 A Gamified Collaborative Requirements Prioritization Tool is used in
Requirements Prioritization. It uses game elements to engage decision
makers who contribute to requirements prioritization, which optimizes
the time and resource utilization.
 Some players are Opinion Providers who participate to the game
by expressing their preferences of requirements, then Negotiator
manages the agreement among participants & makes authoritative
decision.
 Game elements used are Progress, that shows user completion rate,
Time Pressure, and actions done after the process expiration are
discarded. Pontification is also included which is further includes voting
for tasks.

32. IREQUIRE
 Capturing contextual information
 The tool enables end-users to take a picture of surroundings which are related to
their needs.
 Documenting the need
 allows end-users to blog their individual needs and ideas in audio or text form
 Describing the relevant task and providing the rationale
Why do user need this requirement to be implemented
 Reviewing the summary and submitting the need:
 After the final review, end-users are asked to send the captured need to a
predefined receiver.

33. CONCEPT-BASED MOTIVATION OF STAKEHOLDERS
 The Dimension of Player Type Development
 Griefer pushing every possible action to be better than others
 Opportunist or by trying to advance by taking any chance
 After having acquired the basic
 knowledge they start to cognitively process information and
 constantly update existing knowledge according to new situations
 (Scientist) create new actions by updating existing knowledge by trial and error
 (Networker) or by asking others to achieve success
 in regard to the system (Planner) or to others (Politician).
 Finally, they have mastered all tools within the environment
 and understand the co-players (Friend) or the system (Hacker).

34. Conclusion
 Regarding the RE activity, found that the majority of the studies focus on elicitation
 For the elicitation activity, studies are mainly concerned with the proposal and evaluation of techniques
for idea
generation or requirements creation
 Many papers do not tackle any specific RE activity. They discuss the role of creativity in requirements
engineering in a broader way

35. Future work
 An interesting opportunity would be to adapt such techniques to automatically classify ideas generated
by crowd workers, albeit, potentially along different dimensions.
 RE researchers and practitioners need to recognize different creativity elements and integrate them
within RE approaches
 A significant amount of research is needed in exploring, comparing and combining the various creativity
situations in order to help the practitioner answer these complex questions and choose an adequate
support accordingly.
 Further studies need to include comparisons of different creativity techniques

36. REFERENCE
 R. J. Sternberg, Handbook of creativity. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
 N. Maiden, S. Jones, K. Karlsen, R. Neill, K. Zachos, and A. Milne, “Requirements engineering as creative problem solving: A
research agenda for idea finding,” in Proceedings of the International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 2010, pp.
57–66.
 Horkoff, J., & Maiden, N.A. (2015). Creativity and Conceptual Modeling for Requirements Engineering. REFSQ Workshops.
 M.A . Boden, The Creative Mind, A ba cus, London, 1990
 Guyen, Lemai & Shanks, Graeme. (2009). Framework for understanding creativity in requirements engineering. Information
and Software Technology.
 Luisa Mich, Cinzia Anesi, and Daniel M. Berry, Requirements Engineering and Creativity: An Innovative Approach Based on a
Model of
the Pragmatics of Communication
 Áldrin Jaramillo Franco, Saïd Assar ,A Literature Review on Leveraging Creativity Techniques in Requirements Elicitation