The project was done as part of my summer internship at University of Applied Sciences, Western Switzerland (HES-SO) under the guidance of Prof.(Dr.) Florian Evequoz. The objective of project was to on the design an E-Government Application called CARES( Computer-Aided Requirements Engineering Software).It is a cloud-based requirements engineering (RE) tool allowing Swiss public administrations to create WTO-conform procurement documents towards their business processes. With CARES, authorities will be able to: • Document and model their business processes (BP) as recommended by Swiss E-Government standards • Use the BP represented in BPMN as a basis for Requirements Engineering (RE) • Enrich the process documentation in case BPMN would not be sufficient for RE • Generate a complete requirements report that can be published as a request for proposal Following a UX design lifecycle literature and online study was done and comparative analysis of the related software (Signavio) in the domain was performed. Next user interviews and contextual inquiry were carried out by travelling to Swiss cities and meeting the users from Swiss IT companies, public administrations etc. The interviews were recorded and documented. Affinity analysis of the user interviews was done and several ideas and insights were generated through Brainstorming .New goals were defined, two user personas were identified and information architecture was build. Finally prototypes were made in form of high fidelity wireframes and visuals

1. CARES
An application for Requirement Specification through BPMN
Design Process and Results
By
Vikas Luthra
Bachelor’s of Design,
Department of Design,
Indian Institute of Technology,
Guwahati
Under the Guidance of
Professor Florian Evequoz
Hesso Valais

2. Overview
Introduction
Design
Process
Prototypes Conclusion Future works
My experience
and learnings
start
end

3. Introduction-Background
Concept of Cares comes from the Master Thesis done by
Daniel Hadrian under Professor Florian Evequoz.at Hesso,
Valais, Switzerland.
In his thesis he had proposed a methodology to enhance the
business process diagrams in BPMN with requirements thus
allowing to generate a consistent requirement specification
CARES is an E-GOV application for public administration of
Switzerland which aims to improve the process of requirement
specification during WTO Procurement by using this
methodology

4. Introduction-Initial Design Brief
In Switzerland there are clearly defined Business Processes for doing a particular government activity, work, tasks.
The country also follow the WTO guidelines for documenting their processes.
The aim of this project was to design an application which assists the government in procurement of software
requirements from the processes expressed in Business Process Management Notation(BPMN v-2.0) and these
requirements have to be gathered and produced according to prescribed guidelines of WTO.
Government
Organization
Investigation
of Needs
Requirement Specification
Weighted
Requirement
Lists
Request for
Proposal
Continuing
process
CARES

5. Design Process
Prototype
Analyze and
Ideate
Research Evaluate

6. Research
Secondary Research
Primary Research
Literature study
Comparative analysis
User Interviews
Contextual Inquiries

7. Literature Study
Goals
To acquire understanding related to area of Requirement
specification and Requirement Engineering
To know more about BPMN modelling notation and its
advantages as well disadvantages
To know about the other works done related to area of
requirement specification through processes
To understand the process of WTO procurement and
guidelines

8. Literature Study-BPMN
Business Process Modeling Notation .
Developed by Business Process Management Initiative
(BPMI), and is currently maintained by the Object
Management Group since the two organizations
merged in 2005
Supports business process management for technical
and business users
Bridge communication gap between business process
design and implementation Basic Elements-BPMN

9. Literature Study-Requirement Engineering
Investigating Analyzing Documenting Administrating
Requirements
Validating
Requirements
Business User
with Needs
IT User fulfilling
the needs
Communicating your needs through
process promote more effective and
exact communication
$ @
Requirements
Functional
Interface
Related
Business rule
Related
Non-
Functional
Etc….
Classification of Requirements

10. Comparative analysis

11. Comparative analysis

12. Contextual inquiry and User Interviews
Goals or Key area of interest were:
Work and Roles of the user
Requirement specification and Request for proposal
document
Weighting of the requirements
Collaboration between different stakeholder or people
involved
Use of BPMN and other modelling languages

13. Contextual inquiry and User Interviews
Conduction of Interviews:
Interviews of five users were conducted from people working
both in private and public sectors across Switzerland
Two Requirement and Process engineers were interviewed
from public administration who are involved in WTO
procurement
Two business analyst were interviewed from an IT company
who acts as a vendor for the public administration
One user was the CEO of start up company involved in
business consultancy for WTO procurement.
The interviews were conducted like contextual enquiry where
user shared information about their work and roles and the
questions were asked related to their tasks. All the interviews
were recorded for documentation

14. Analyze
Ideate
User Interview Analysis
Affinity analysis and
Diagram
Proposed Solution
New Design Brief
Analyze and
Ideate
User Persona
Information Architecture

15. User Interview Analysis
Extraction of important user needs and problems:
On completion of Interviews all recordings interviews were
heard and user statements were divided into three categories:
User Problems,
General Important statements
Process or work related terminologies

16. Affinity Analysis
User Problems: Brainstorming
A brainstorming session was conducted in a group where all
the user problems were discussed in details and solutions to
those problems were generated.
Affinity Diagram:
Finally an affinity diagram was prepared where every user
problem was put under certain category with solutions and
some of the system features were generated:

17. Affinity Diagram
Requirement Gathering
• Extract the information from interviews
into user requirements
• 60% time spent on requirement gathering
Requirement Specification
• Difficult to know exactly what they
need and how to express it
• Dealing with non functional requirements
and how to relate them
• Customers try to put processes that
don’t understand correctly
• Making user learn to use phrase pattern
for requirement specification
• Tracing and consolidating requirements
coming from different requirements or
sources
Weighting of requirements
• Difficult and time consuming to weight
each requirement as many stakeholders
are involved and negotiations take place
• Many approvals and manual steps
involved in weighting of each
requirements
• Weighting scale differs from project to
project
• A lot of time consumption in specifying a
requirement in excel sheet in small
phrase manner and working with large
set of requirements in an excel sheet
• Interviews, workshop other canton
examples are looked upon for
requirement gathering
• Many similar projects are done within
different cantons which could have
same requirements. But due to non
availability of communication channel
between them these projects could not
be searched upon easily

18. Affinity Diagram
Request for Proposal
• Too many appendix and Irrelevant
information
• No particular format for preparing a
Request for Proposal document
Evaluation of Proposal
• Vendors are asked to evaluate their
system by answering yes /no to
questions
• Evaluation is done on the basis of
requirements, prices as well as
presentation about how they are going
to fulfil those requirements
• Evaluation is filled manually by the
vendors
• EVAL+ is used sometimes in evaluating
the proposal of vendors
Modelling + Vendors
• Where to attach requirements in a
process
• Business process by customers doesn’t
show the reality for the vendors
• Vendors prepare their own specification
document which is more precise than
requirement specification by customers
• Problem is faced while merging
requirement list from different vendors
• Difficult to estimate cost of project
• Request for proposal has the evaluation
criteria as well as the guideline for
presentation
• All the requirements are framed as
questions having YES/NO answer
• Too many documents given by the
customers and have to go through lot of
documents to find out exact
requirements
• Teaching customers to model their
process correctly
• Customers know their process very well
but they don’t know to express the
requirement in an exact manner.

19. Proposed Solutions
Solutions from affinity analysis
• Specification of requirement through business process by each Public Department and promotion of collaboration among these
departments during this process
• Consolidation of those requirements at one place and tracing back each requirement source-workshop pictures, documents etc. by
providing separate section for each requirement or group of Requirement
• User being notified regularly about the changes being done in requirement of some business process.
• User Provided with Business process examples of other cantons ,sample projects etc..
• To tackle the problem of requirement specification in an exact manner we proposed the use of phrase of pattern which would help user in a
Specific way and it would be easier for user to comprehend their requirement..Though it is also proposed that user would get the option of
blank text to write requirments in his own way.
• Classification of requirments could be done based on user choice, functional non functional, interface related
• To maintain three to four hundred requirements in one place we would provide him with different filters that could help him in working
with large set of requirments
• For tracing back requirements which have merged with two or three other requirement into one requirement reference numbers to be
given as option of linking all these requirements

20. Use of Phrase Patterns for Requirement Specification
The système
-----------(blank)
allows the <user>
to
Is capable of
<process>
object and
complement
Under which
Circumstance
Basic Phrase Pattern

21. Goals of Cares-New design brief
Through Cares:
• Reduction of time between need identification and request for proposal
• Make users manage there requirements related to some business activity easily
• Promote collaboration between different user regarding specification of requirements related to
business process.
• Generate a specification document File (.docx) and list of weighted requirements in an excel
sheet..

22. User Persona
“It is very difficult to write all the requirements in an exact manner, for a project that
is going to be realized in two years ,which could be understand by all”
Name :Andrew Cotting Age::52 yrs. Job: Process manager and Requirement
Engineer Head in Swiss health service
Experience::25 yrs.
Motivation:
“Andrew is a Process Manager and Requirement Engineer working for Swiss Public Health Service at the city of
Zurich . Previously he has worked as a business analyst and process manager in many private IT companies. As a
Requirement Manager his role is to gather requirements for building medical software for Swiss health service
and prepare request for proposal and weighted requirement list. for WTO procurement. A typical project for him
starts with gathering requirements through the interviews, workshops, other medical software examples, business
consultant. About 60% of the time is spent for Andrew in Gathering Requirements from all sources .and after
gathering these requirements Andrew specify all the requirement in a rough document which he then discusses
with colleagues sometimes. After this Andrew prepare Request for proposal for vendors as well write requirements
in Excel Sheet in which he faces difficulty in specifying Requirements in a small phrase manner which could be
understood by vendors. Andrew also faces difficulty in weighting these Requirements as there are lot of manual
work and negotiation is involved. He feels that some part of this process could be automated easily which would
ease out his job

23. User Persona
“Customers knows their business very well but it is very difficult for them to specify
what they exactly want””
Name :Mary Whitman Age::32 yrs. Job: Business Analyst in Swiss IT firm Experience::8 yrs.
Motivation:
“Mary is a senior business analyst working in an IT company which specializes in providing business consultancy as
well as real solutions to their customers. Mary start her day by taking calls of customers of her currrent projects and
understanding about their needs. which she then documents into a specification document maintained for the
developers as well as for the other teams.She also had to go through so many documents sent by the customer to
understand their needs and Requirements. Mary feels that her customers generally know about their business very
well but they don’t have the knowledge how to specify their requirments in an exact manner. Mary has also been
involved in many business consulting projects for public administration in which she helped them in preparing
request for proposal and weighted requirement list. In one of her project she also helped user in modelling their
business process and specifying the requirements related to them. She thinks using BPMN for requirement
specification could be a good way of reducing communication gap between customers and vendors and the
requirements could be specified more consistently which could be understood by all

24. Home(login)
Projects
Requirement
Manager Collaborator
Learn
Cares
Trash
My
Projects
Shared
projects
Project 1 Project 2New Cares
Project
Add New
Files
Process Files Requirement Files
By default selectedRequirement
Specification
Project
Details
BPMN process with
requirements specified
Requirements in
Tabular manner
Folders
Information Architecture

25. Home(login)
Projects
Requirement
Manager Collaborator
Learn
Cares
Trash
By default selected
Latest Projects All
Requirements)
Tabular
View
Graphical
View
Requirement
Specification
Filters
Add/delete
/search
Edit Save/Print Customize
Projects browser
Information Architecture

26. Home(login)
Projects
Requirement
Manager Collaborator
Learn
Cares
Trash
By default selected
Latest working
project
Share Approval Comments
Live
discussion
Customize
Projects browser
Information Architecture

27. Wireframes
Visual Design
Use Cases:
User Cases:
Creation of Requirement
Table
Prototype
Requirement Specification
Requirement Manager
Collaborator

28. Use Case: Creation of new cares project showing requirement
specification for processes
Wireframe

29. Step 1-Home(My projects)

30. Step 2-Click on new project icon

31. Step 3 -Add information in new project dialogue box

32. Step 4 –All the uploaded models opens in separate tabs

33. Step 5-Hover on activity & click on requirement specification icon

34. Step 6-Specify the Requirements in the Requirement Specification

35. Step 7-An icon appears for showing the requirement specified

36. Step 7-An icon appears for showing the requirement specified

37. Use Case: Working with Requirement Manager
Wireframe

38. Step 1-On Homepage Click on requirement manager icon

39. Step2-Requirement Manager opens with all requirements of last project

40. Step 3-Click on the row of table for selecting it

41. Step 4-The row of table is selected

42. Step 5-Click on column Requirement to edit text of requirement

43. Step 6-Click on Requirement Specification icon to make more changes

44. Step 7 –Make changes through Requirement Specifier

45. Use Case: Working with Collaborator
Wireframe

46. Step 1-Click on collaborator icon in side navigation

47. Step 2-Colloborator window is opened

48. Use Case: Creating new requirement files for Requirements
which could not be expressed through BPMN process
Visual Design

49. Step 1-On home page click on any project

50. Step 2-Click on the new icon in the project folder

51. Step 3-New Files dialog box appears

52. Step 4-Click on the Type dropdown and select Requirement List

53. Step 5-Give the name to file and click done

54. Step 6- Requirement file list table is created

55. Conclusion
• Through user interview and contextual inquiry we could conclude that business users face problems in specifying
their problems in exact manner for a project of long duration. The vendors also face difficulty in understanding
the requirement of customers. Thus there is a problem of Requirement Specification in exact manner which we
have tried to combat through the use of phrase pattern in cares.
• Customers also are very aware of their business process and it is easy for them for them to see their Requirements
through the processes
• The users also face difficulty while working with large set of requirements which was solved through the feature of
requirement manager in our prototype.
• There is also constant collaboration during the process of requirement specification which we tried to implement
through the feature of collaborator in the prototype
• Thus we could conclude through CARES the problems of requirement engineering in WTO procurement could
be solved more effectively and still there is a scope of improvement in prototype and changes could be made in
proposed methodology.

56. Future works and Ideas
The evaluation and testing of prototype with users is one of the future steps needs to be taken
As a future version of CARES some of ideas could be implemented.:
• Evaluation of Proposal submit by the vendors
• Modelling of Business processes in Cares itself
• Extensive collaborative features in CARES like live discussion, chats
• Graphical View of Seeing the list of Requirements.
• Requirement Specification for the agile project management

57. My Experience and Learnings
• This Internship is one memorable journey for me where I had many great experiences professionally and
personally
• Professionally I gained a lot of experience in conducting user interview in Business Domain by visiting the
workplace of different user and gain interesting insights from them.
• I also got a lot of Freedom and flexibility in doing my work and all my ideas were heard patiently and discussed
upon.
• I also received an abled guidance under Professor Florian and Learned a lot from him.
• I also like to thank Daniel Hadrian and Alan Duc who took part in my discussions and shared their views to me
politely and kindly.
• Personally this is the most awesome internship I had. I got to visit so many awesome places all around Europe,
have interaction with so kind and helpful Swiss people and got the chance to do many activities that I could not
have thought otherwise.
• Finally I learned to cook many Indian dishes so my mother would be so happy after this Internship 

58. MERCI
Daniel Hadrian
Alain Duc
Mohit Yadav
Prof. Alexandre Cotting