ENHANCING PROBLEM FRAMES WITH SCENARIOS AND HISTORIES: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Problem frames are a very interesting approach to requirements modelling that is gaining increasing attention and popularity. This paper reports a few preliminary investigations concerning the possibility of enhancing the problem frames methodology with concepts derived from requirements modelling techniques based on scenarios and histories. The goal of this research is to make problem frames even more appealing for the software developers, who are generally familiar with the ideas underlying scenario-based modelling. The results presented here are encouraging: a well known problem, often used to illustrate problem frames (the sluice gate control) was studied with the help of scenarios, modelled by means of histories. Scenarios were also employed to support the merging of sub-problems. In these activities the proposed approach was quite helpful. Nevertheless, some research is still needed to adequately explore the actual applicability and value of the proposed approach.