Using Argumentation to Explain Ambiguity in Requirements Elicitation Interviews
Using Argumentation to Explain Ambiguity in Requirements Elicitation Interviews
复制标题
DOI：
10.1109/re.2017.27
复制
发表时间：
2017-09
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Yehia Elrakaiby;Alessio Ferrari;P. Spoletini;S. Gnesi;B. Nuseibeh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Yehia Elrakaiby;Alessio Ferrari;P. Spoletini;S. Gnesi;B. Nuseibeh
需求引出过程通常从客户和需求分析师之间的访谈开始。在这些访谈中，对话话语中的歧义可能揭示了需要明确的隐性知识的存在。因此，重要的是要了解访谈中模糊性的本质，并为分析人员提供识别和减轻模糊性的认知工具。分析师所感知到的歧义有时是由客户使用的特定术语类别引发的，例如代词、量词和模糊或未指定的术语。然而，在实践中出现的许多含糊不清的现象不能以单一术语为根源。更确切地说，需要考虑的是整个言语片段及其与分析者精神状态的关系。在本文中，我们证明了特定类型的歧义可以用论证理论来表征。论证是研究如何通过逻辑推理得出结论。在论证理论中，陈述被表示为论点，陈述之间的冲突关系被表示为攻击。基于从访谈中提取的一组模糊片段，我们定义了分析师在访谈期间的心理状态模型，并将其转化为论证理论。然后，我们展示了许多歧义可以用对论点的“攻击”来描述。这项工作的主要新颖之处在于，通过使用论证理论对分析师的心智模型进行形式化建模，解决了在需求引出访谈中解释片段级歧义的问题。我们的贡献为更全面地理解歧义现象提供了基于数据的理论基础，并为设计能够自动识别歧义的基于计算机的智能代理奠定了基础。
The requirements elicitation process often starts with an interview between a customer and a requirements analyst. During these interviews, ambiguities in the dialogic discourse may reveal the presence of tacit knowledge that needs to be made explicit. It is therefore important to understand the nature of ambiguities in interviews and to provide analysts with cognitive tools to identify and alleviate ambiguities. Ambiguities perceived by analysts are sometimes triggered by specific categories of terms used by the customer such as pronouns, quantifiers, and vague or under-specified terms. However, many of the ambiguities that arise in practice cannot be rooted in single terms. Rather, entire fragments of speech and their relation to the mental state of the analyst need to be considered.In this paper, we show that particular types of ambiguities can be characterised by means of argumentation theory. Argumentation is the study of how conclusions can be reached through logical reasoning. In an argumentation theory, statements are represented as arguments, and conflict relations among statements are represented as attacks. Based on a set of ambiguous fragments extracted from interviews, we define a model of the mental state of the analyst during an interview and translate it into an argumentation theory. Then, we show that many of the ambiguities can be characterized in terms of 'attacks' on arguments. The main novelty of this work is in addressing the problem of explaining fragment-level ambiguities in requirements elicitation interviews through the formal modeling of the analyst's mental model using argumentation theory. Our contribution provides a data-grounded, theoretical basis to have a more complete understanding of the ambiguity phenomenon, and lays the foundations to design intelligent computer-based agents that are able to automatically identify ambiguities.