MSc Project specification 2021/22

University of the West of Scotland

School of Computing, Engineering and Physical Sciences

MSc Project Specification

Student name:
Banner ID:
Email:
MSc Programme/stream: MSc Information Technology
MSc Programme Leader:

Project Title:
An exploration of the potential use of SSM to support the development of User Stories for
Requirements Elicitation

Research Question to be answered:

Can Soft System Methodology support in writing an effective user story?

Outline (overview) and overall aim of project:

There are many methodologies and tools that can be used for software development, however
these have been mostly ‘software focused’ meaning the development has been primarily stressed
on how the product will work with the stakeholders. These approaches may fail users as they fail
to understand the stakeholders’ requirements and/or could lead to more software development
iterations that can be resource-hungry and time consuming.

Soft system methodology (SSM) puts a great emphasis on a ‘systems thinking’, tackling
problematical situations with different stakeholders. In the past SSM has been used by
Information systems practitioners to help in the design/develop process, mainly by supporting the
exploration of potential computer-based information systems to serve some complex human
activity system. User stories are a simplified tool to convey a user requirement. They are a form
of scenario used in design to capture users’ requirements. A story is typically written and
submitted for consideration by customers and intended users.

A literature review will be conducted into user story, soft system methodologies, and application
of SSM in requirements gathering including previous use of SSM to support and improve IS
design/development work. The primary research will involve rerunning a previous study
(presented as a Case Study) using SSM modelling to investigate if (i) the methodology helps in
developing user stories and (ii) whether the usage of SSM improves the quality of the user stories.
The quality of the user stories will be measured using a user story quality framework reported in
the literature. The result from the quality measure of user stories from the case study will
evaluate if SSM was effective in terms of generating a better-quality user story.

Objectives (list of tasks to be undertaken to achieve overall aim of the project and to answer the
research question posed):

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 MSc Project specification 2021/22

The project involves literature review on topics regarding user stories, soft system methodology.
To achieve the project, the following activities are listed below:

 Literature review to understand the use of user stories

 Literature review to understand Soft System Methodology
 Literature review to understand requirement gathering
 Practice use of SSM in research planning
 Develop Case study for use of SSM based upon previous experience
 Use SSM models to develop User Stories from the Case Study
 Evaluation of the user stories produced using quality measurement criteria from the
literature
 Recommendations/critical analysis regarding the use of SSM in writing a user story

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Relationship of proposed project to MSc programme/stream:

The project proposed falls into the category of Information Technology as it relates to project
management in software development and Object-Oriented Analysis & Design. Project
Management and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design can both help plan products according to
the user needs. The absence of project management and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design in a
project could result in software developers not understanding the product’s purpose, which could
result in errors, several iterations, and even product failure.

The most used project methodology in software development today is DevOps/DevSecOps

followed by Agile Methodology, both project methodologies require the use of user stories. User
stories are used to vision user needs and help software developers visualise the product being
built. The project proposed will be exploring if the use of Soft System Methodology may help in
using a good user story. Understanding methodologies for capturing user stories and exploring
ways to incorporate different methodologies could be useful in software development as user
stories are a powerful tool in software project management.

Indicative reading list and resources:

Initial reading list:

Bucy, M., Finlayson, A., Kelly, G. and Moye, C. (2016). The “how” of transformation. [online]
McKinsey Digital. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-how-
of-transformation [Accessed 3 Dec. 2021].

Buglione, L. and Abran, A. (2013). Improving the User Story Agile Technique Using the INVEST
Criteria, 2013 Joint Conference of the 23rd International Workshop on Software Measurement
and the 8th International Conference on Software Process and Product Measurement, 2013, pp.
49-53, doi: 10.1109/IWSM-Mensura.2013.18.

Bustard D., Keenan F. (2009) Soft Systems Methodology: An Aid to Agile Development?. In:
Wojtkowski W., Wojtkowski G., Lang M., Conboy K., Barry C. (eds) Information Systems
Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-68772-8_3 [Accessed 3
Dec. 2021].

Bustard D. W., Dobbin T. J. and Carey B. N. (1996), Integrating soft systems and object-oriented
analysis, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Requirements Engineering, 1996,
pp. 52-59, doi: 10.1109/ICRE.1996.491429.

Bustard, D.W. (1995). Progress Towards RACE: a “Soft-Centred” Requirements Definition Method.
Software Quality and Productivity, pp.29–36.

Cao, & Ramesh, B. (2008). Agile Requirements Engineering Practices: An Empirical Study. IEEE
Software, 25(1), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.1109/ms.2008.1

Checkland, P. and Holwell, S. (1998). Information, systems, and information systems : making
sense of the field. Chichester ; New York: Wiley.

Checkland, P. and Poulter, J. (2010). Learning for action a short definitive account of soft systems
methodology, and its use for practitioners, teachers, and students. Hoboken, N.J. [U.A.] Wiley.

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Checkland, P. and Scholes, J. (2007). Soft systems methodology a 30-year retrospective.

Chichester [U.A.] Wiley.

Cohn, M. and Beck, K. (2011). User stories applied: for agile software development. Boston Etc.:
Addison-Wesley, Cop.

Lucassen G., Dalpiaz F., Werf J.M.E.M..., Brinkkemper S. (2016) The Use and Effectiveness of User
Stories in Practice. In: Daneva M., Pastor O. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for
Software Quality. REFSQ 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9619. Springer, Cham.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30282-9_14.

Lucassen G., Dalpiaz F., Werf J.M.E.M..., Brinkkemper S. (2015) Forging high-quality User Stories:
Towards a discipline for Agile Requirements, 2015 IEEE 23rd International Requirements
Engineering Conference (RE), 2015, pp. 126-135, doi: 10.1109/RE.2015.7320415.

Jackson, M.C. (2003). Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers, Chichester: England, John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Kassab, M. (2015). The changing landscape of requirements engineering practices over the past
decade, 2015 IEEE Fifth International Workshop on Empirical Requirements Engineering (EmpiRE),
2015, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/EmpiRE.2015.7431299.

Madrigal, D. and McClain, B. (2012). Strengths and Weaknesses of Quantitative and Qualitative
Research :: UXmatters. [online] Uxmatters.com. Available at:
https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/09/strengths-and-weaknesses-of-quantitative-
and-qualitative-research.php. [Accessed 3 Dec. 2021].

Mcmillan, M., Defossez, K. and Vuppala, H. (2020). Managing large technology programs in the
digital era. [online] McKinsey Digital. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/managing-large-technology-programs-in-the-digital-era
[Accessed 3 Dec. 2021].

Nerur S., Cannon A., Balijepally V., Bond P. (2010) Towards an Understanding of the Conceptual
Underpinnings of Agile Development Methodologies. In: Dingsøyr T., Dybå T., Moe N. (eds) Agile
Software Development. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12575-
1_2. [Accessed 3 Dec. 2021].

Paul, D., Cadle, J. and Yeates, D. (2014). Business analysis. Swindon: British Informatics Society
Limited.

Patel, N.V. and Hackney, R. (2010). Designing information systems requirements in context:
insights from the theory of deferred action. International Journal of Business Information Systems,
6(1), p.44.

Patton, J., Economy, P., Fowler, M., Cooper, A. and Cagan, M. (2014). User story mapping :
discover the whole story, build the right product. Beijing ; Sebastopol, Ca: O’reilly.

Stowell, F. (1995). Information systems provision : the contribution of soft systems methodology.
London ; Montréal: Mcgraw-Hill.

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Trkman, M., Mendling, J. and Krisper, M. (2016). Using business process models to better
understand the dependencies among user stories. Information and Software Technology, 71,
pp.58–76.

Wake B (2003) INVEST in good stories, and SMART tasks.

http://xp123.com/articles/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/. [Accessed 25 Jan. 2022].

Wautelet Y., Heng S., Kolp M., Mirbel I. (2014) Unifying and Extending User Story Models. In: Jarke
M. et al. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer
Science, vol 8484. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07881-6_15

Zhou, Q. (2014). User Stories and Business Impact. In: Data- and Value-Driven Software
Engineering with Deep Customer Insight. [online] Data- and Value-Driven Software Engineering
with Deep Customer Insight. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, pp.29–36. Available at:
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/152785/dvdsedci14_proceedings.pdf?
sequence=1#page=32 [Accessed 3 Dec. 2021].

Marking scheme:

Introduction - 5%
Literature review (that sets the academic/theoretical underpinning) - 25%
Methodology (Case Study design) - 25%
Evaluation of methodology and user stories - 20%
Discussion (and linkage to academic/theoretical underpinning) - 10%
Conclusions and recommendations - 5%
Critical self-evaluation- 10%

Supervisor:

Moderator:

Programme Leader:

Date specification submitted:

Please complete the ‘ethics’ form below for all projects.

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 MSc Project specification 2021/22

School of Computing, Engineering and Physical Sciences

MSc PROJECT – REQUIREMENT FOR ETHICAL APPROVAL

SECTION 1: TO BE COMPLETED BY THE STUDENT

Does your proposed research involve: research with human subjects (including requirements
gathering and product/software testing), access to company documents/records, questionnaires,
surveys, focus groups and/or other interview techniques? Does your research entail any process
which requires ethical approval? (please enter √ in the appropriate box)

YES You must submit an application for approval to the

Ethics Review Manager

NO √ You do not need to submit an application to the

Ethics Review Manager

Name of Student (Print name):

Signature:

Date:
08/02/2022

SECTION 2: TO BE COMPLETED BY THE PROJECT SUPERVISOR

I understand that the above project requires/does not require* ethical approval (*please delete as
appropriate).

Supervisor (print name):

Signature:

Date:

IMPORTANT: please note that by signing this form all signatories are confirming that any potential
ethical issues have been considered and, where necessary, an application for ethical approval has
been/will be made via the Ethical Review Manager software.
Any project requiring ethical approval but which has not been given approval will not be accepted
for marking.
Ethical approval cannot be sought in retrospect.