Ambiguity in Requirements Engineering: Towards a Unifying Framework

Gervasi, V; Ferrari, A; Zowghi, D; Spoletini, P

Ambiguity in Requirements Engineering: Towards a Unifying Framework

Gervasi, V Ferrari, A Zowghi, D

Spoletini, P

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Publication Type:: Chapter
Citation:: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2019, 11865 LNCS pp. 191 - 210
Issue Date:: 2019-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Gervasi, V	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Ferrari, A	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Zowghi, D https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6051-0155	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Spoletini, P	en_US
dc.date.issued	2019-01-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2019, 11865 LNCS pp. 191 - 210	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/135836
dc.description.abstract	© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. A long stream of research in RE has been devoted to analyzing the occurrences and consequences of ambiguity in requirements documents. Ambiguity often occurs in documents, most often in natural language (NL) ones, but occasionally also in formal specifications, be it because of abstraction, or of imprecise designation of which real-world entities are denotated by certain expressions. In many of those studies, ambiguity has been considered a defect to be avoided. In this paper, we investigate the nature of ambiguity, and advocate that the simplistic view of ambiguity as merely a defect in the document does not do justice to the complexity of this phenomenon. We offer a more extensive analysis, based on the multiple linguistic sources of ambiguity, and present a list of real-world cases, both in written matter and in oral interviews, that we analyze based on our framework. We hope that a better understanding of the phenomenon can help in the analysis of practical experiences and in the design of more effective methods to detect, mark and handle ambiguity.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1007/978-3-030-30985-5_12	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing	en_US
dc.title	Ambiguity in Requirements Engineering: Towards a Unifying Framework	en_US
dc.type	Chapter
utslib.citation.volume	11865 LNCS	en_US
utslib.for	0803 Computer Software	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/DVC (Research)
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/DVC (Research)/Graduate Research School
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology/School of Software
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - HCTD - Human Centred Technology Design
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - STEM Education Futures
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	11865 LNCS	en_US

Abstract:

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. A long stream of research in RE has been devoted to analyzing the occurrences and consequences of ambiguity in requirements documents. Ambiguity often occurs in documents, most often in natural language (NL) ones, but occasionally also in formal specifications, be it because of abstraction, or of imprecise designation of which real-world entities are denotated by certain expressions. In many of those studies, ambiguity has been considered a defect to be avoided. In this paper, we investigate the nature of ambiguity, and advocate that the simplistic view of ambiguity as merely a defect in the document does not do justice to the complexity of this phenomenon. We offer a more extensive analysis, based on the multiple linguistic sources of ambiguity, and present a list of real-world cases, both in written matter and in oral interviews, that we analyze based on our framework. We hope that a better understanding of the phenomenon can help in the analysis of practical experiences and in the design of more effective methods to detect, mark and handle ambiguity.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/135836