Funded thesis position in OpenReq project

OpenReq is an EU Horizon 2020 framework project that aims to provide better requirements engineering practices. The project is driving for improvements in the areas of requirements identification, classification and decision-making support. The improvements can be achieved through improved processes, methods and tools. OpenReq is also looking at topics like artificial intelligence methods to help with managing requirements and requirement extraction from natural language like social media posts.

Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) group of University of Helsinki focuses on the contexts that already contain a large number of existing and dependent requirements, such as large distributed open source projects or large systems engineering projects. In particular, we work in co-operation with the Qt Company, which has about one hundred-thousand items in its Jira. We manage the entire body of requirements in a single "requirements model"as a declarative representation.

On one hand, our open problems are related to basic researchon studying and innovating the analyses and inferences for such a requirements or domain model. On the other hand, our problems are related to applied researchon understanding practical needs and testing the value of technical solutions empirically. In either case, the problems typically involve a constructive part of providing the solution proposal with a prototype realization.

The thesis would focus on the following topic areas:

• Requirements model and data analysis
• Model diagnosis including explanations and repair actions for inconsistent models
• The constraints of a model, constraint language, constraint programming
• Model visualization and user experience
• The exact focus will be agreed with the applicant based on interests and skills.

CONTACT for further details

proj. manager Mikko Raatikainen and prof. Tomi Männistö

(firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi)