Final Thesis: A Metamodel for Code Systems
Abstract: Requirements elicitation is an important factor in software engineering. Mainly the information needed is elicited through interviews and other qualitative sources. The analysis that follows is often an ad-hoc process that relies on expertise of the analyst(s) and therefore is hardly replicable. Additionally, the process is not transparent as the resulting modeling elements cannot be mapped to the initial data. First attempts to solve this issues by adapting the clearly defined steps of Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) suggest that the approach should be followed up. In order to further formalize the process this thesis suggests a metamodel which allows to derive structure and behavior models from the same coding process. The metamodel is derived by analyzing an existing metamodel and by comparing different existing coding systems and their resulting modeling artifacts. The metamodel is extended with a rule system and tested on an exemplary data set. For validation the resulting models are compared to models from an ad-hoc modeling process and evaluated by experts. Results show that utilizing QDA with a code system metamodel allows for an increase in transparency and makes it more easy to vary detail levels of the derived models.
Keywords: Domain Model, Domain Analysis, Requirements Engineering, Qualitative Data Analysis, QDA, QDAcity
PDFs: Master Thesis, Work Description
Reference: Sindy Salow. A Metamodel for Code Systems. Master Thesis, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: 2016.