Towards a Generic Method for Articulating Design-time Uncertainty

By: Mouna Dhaouadi, Kate M. B. Spencer, Megan H. Varnum, Alicia M. Grubb, Michalis Famelis

Abstract

Modelers encounter different kinds of uncertainty in their designs and models of software systems. One such type concerns uncertainty about how to build a model. This is called design-time uncertainty, and existing research has studied how modelers can work in its presence. However, the process by which they come to elicit and express their uncertainties remains unclear. In this paper, we take steps towards addressing this gap by introducing DRUIDE (Design and Requirements Uncertainty Integrated Development Environment), a language and workflow for articulating design time uncertainty. We present and illustrate our proposal on a software design example. Additionally, we conduct a real life case study of domain analysis related to the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluate DRUIDE with it. Our evaluation shows that DRUIDE is sufficiently expressive to articulate design time uncertainty.

Keywords

Uncertainty language, modeling language, model-driven engineering, requirements models, design-time decisions.

Cite as:

Mouna Dhaouadi, Kate M. B. Spencer, Megan H. Varnum, Alicia M. Grubb, Michalis Famelis, “Towards a Generic Method for Articulating Design-time Uncertainty”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 20, no. 3 (June 2021), pp. 3:1-14, doi:10.5381/jot.2021.20.3.a3.

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The JOT Journal   |   ISSN 1660-1769   |   DOI 10.5381/jot   |   AITO   |   Open Access   |    Contact