College of Computing and Mathematics

Information and Computer Science Department

SWE $216$: Software Requirements Engineering

Individual Assignment $-$ Due Date May $18,2024$

Meeting Scheduling System Description

With the advent of globalization, companies and organizations are increasingly distributed over multiple sites and countries. Dhahran Software Services $($DSS$)$ has identified a large potential market for meetingscheduling software exploiting internet$-$based communications technologies. In general, meetings tend to be organized poorly and late; important people sometimes do not show up$,$ and the scheduling process has a significant, unnecessary overhead.

Meetings are typically scheduled as follows. A meeting initiator informs potential participants about the need for a meeting and specifies a date range within which the meeting should occur, asking people to return their availability constraints within the interval. Constraints are typically expressed as two sets: an exclusion set specifying dates within the date range when the participant could not attend and an optional preference set specifying dates within the date range on which the participants would prefer the meeting to take place $($date may refer to a full day or a period in a day$).$ In some cases, the initiator may also ask participants who will play an active role in the meeting for specific requirements regarding the meeting room $($e$.$g$.,$ projector, laptop, network connections, videoconferencing facilities, etc.$).$ 'Important' participants may optionally be asked to state preferences for meeting locations.

The scheduled meeting date should belong to the stated date range and none of the exclusion sets; it should ideally belong to as many preference sets as possible. The meeting venue should ideally fit the preferences of important participants. A date conflict occurs when no date can be found outside all exclusion sets. A room conflict occurs when no room can be found at any date outside all exclusion sets that meet the room requirements. Conflicts can be resolved in several ways: the initiator may extend the date range, some participants may remove dates from their exclusion set, or some participants may decline the invitation to attend. A new scheduling cycle may thus be required in case of conflict.

The new meeting scheduler must be able to handle multiple meeting requests in parallel. Meeting requests can compete by overlapping in time or space. Concurrency must thus be managed under physical constraints; a person may not be in two different places at the same time, and a meeting room may not be allocated to more than one meeting at a time.

To allow as much flexibility as possible, dynamic preplanning of meetings should be supported. On the one hand, participants should be allowed to modify their exclusion set, preference set, and $/$or preferred location until the meeting is scheduled. On the other hand, exceptional constraints should be accommodated after a meeting is scheduled, such as the need to schedule an urgent, more important

meeting. The original meeting date or location may need to be changed; sometimes, it may even be canceled. In all cases some way of preplanning should be set up$.$

Tasks are as follows:

Identify key functional requirements $($at least $10)$ from the meeting scheduling description as user stories.

Identify key non$-$functional requirements $($at least five$)$ for the given scenario. Provide the type of the non$-$functional requirements

In GRL context, three important goals of the meeting scheduler system and four design tasks. Map each task to its corresponding goal.

Using UCM, model the scenario where the meeting scheduler system receives a meeting request from the meeting initiator, checks availability of important participants on the requested date, then availability of requested meeting location. If important people are not available, the meeting scheduler system rejects the meeting request and ask for a new range of dates. If the requested meeting location is not available, the meeting scheduler system recommends other available locations and wait for the approval from the meeting requester. If the dates and location are available, the meeting scheduler system sends a confirmation to the meeting initiator.

Explore the design thinking methodology and how it can used to elicit requirements for the given scenario.

Use ChatGPT to elicit requirements from the given scenario and compare your findings with the requirements you elicited in Q$1.$ Discuss your findings. Do you think it is a good tool to elicit requirements? Briefly elaborate.