Visual Scenarios for Validation of Requirements Specification

The development of a large information system is generally regarded as one of the most complex activities undertaken by organisations and it is dependent on the communication and understanding among the actors of the system (i.e. managers, users, developers, etc.). Users are predicted to use requirements and purpose as most natural descriptors of domains, while analysts use more formal representations. The Validation phase of Requirements Engineering, involves checking the formal description of the universe of discourse, against the non formal description of the user's needs and domain knowledge. Once a requirements specification has been produced, most organisations require formal reviews, in which the behaviour of the future system is communicated between the users and the analyst. This paper advocates that many benefits can be accrued from the use of visual scenarios for the purpose of validating conceptual specifications during Requirements Engineering. To this end, the paper descr..