Applying semiotic methods to requirements recovery

K. Liu

A. Alderson

H. Shah

B. Sharp

A. Dix

pp. 142-152

in: Trevor Wood Harper, Nimal Jayaratna, Bob Wood (eds), Methodologies for developing and managing emerging technology based information systems, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

One of the most difficult, yet crucial, tasks in any project of reengineering or extension of a legacy system is to understand the system and to recover the original requirements. To develop an effective method of requirements recovery for legacy information systems, the AMBOLS project proposes a semiotic framework. In complement to other conventional methods of systems engineering, two semiotic methods, Semantic Analysis and Norm Analysis, have been adopted for elicitation, derivation and representation of users' requirements. The AMBOLS method recovers the requirements by analysing the normative behaviour of the legacy system in its context, and observing and modelling the interactions of its users.