Abstract Demonstrating software early and responding to feedback is crucial in agile development. However, it is difficult for stakeholders who are not on‐site customers but end users, marketing people, or designers, and so forth to give feedback in an agile development environment. Successful graphical user interface (GUI) test executions can be documented and then demonstrated for feedback. In our new concept, GUI tests from behavior‐driven development (BDD) are recorded, augmented, and demonstrated as videos. A GUI test is divided into several GUI unit tests, which are specified in Gherkin, a semi‐structured natural language. For each GUI unit test, a video is generated during test execution. Test steps specified in Gherkin are traced and highlighted in the video. Stakeholders review these generated videos and provide feedback, for example, on misunderstandings of requirements or on inconsistencies. To evaluate the impact of videos in identifying inconsistencies, we asked 22 participants to identify inconsistencies between (1) given requirements in regular sentences and (2) demonstrated behaviors from videos with Gherkin specifications or from Gherkin specifications alone. Our results show that participants tend to identify more inconsistencies from demonstrated behaviors, which are not in accordance with given requirements. They tend to recognize inconsistencies more easily through videos than through Gherkin specifications alone. The types of inconsistency are threefold: The mentioned feature can be incorrectly implemented, not implemented, or an unspecified new feature. We use a fictitious example showing how this feedback helps a product owner and her team manage requirements. We conclude that GUI test videos can help stakeholders give feedback more effectively. By obtaining early feedback, inconsistencies can be resolved, thus contributing to higher stakeholder satisfaction.

In software projects, stakeholders can give valuable feedback on software demonstrations. Demonstrating software early and responding to feedback is crucial in agile development. However, it is difficult for stakeholders who are not on-site customers but end users, marketing people, or designers, etc. to give feedback in an agile development environment. Successful Graphical User Interface (GUI) tests, which show the working GUI with expected software behaviors, can be documented and then demonstrated for feedback. In our new concept, GUI tests are recorded, extended, and demonstrated as videos. A GUI test is divided into several GUI unit tests, which are specified in Gherkin, a semi-structured natural language. For each GUI unit test, a video is generated during test execution. Test steps specified in Gherkin are traced and highlighted in the video. Stakeholders review these generated videos and provide feedback, e.g., on misunderstandings of requirements or on inconsistencies. To evaluate the impact of videos in identifying inconsistencies, we asked 22 participants to identify inconsistencies between (1) given requirements in regular sentences and (2) demonstrated behaviors from videos with Gherkin specifications or from Gherkin specifications alone. Our results show that participants tend to identify more inconsistencies from demonstrated behaviors which are not in accordance with given requirements. They tend to recognize inconsistencies more easily through videos than through Gherkin specifications alone. We conclude that GUI test videos can help stakeholders give feedback more effectively. By obtaining early feedback, inconsistencies can be resolved, thus contributing to higher stakeholder satisfaction.

Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are not easy to elicit and formulate. Technology development and social media platforms made videos one of the primary means to communicate different information. Also, for software products, videos are used to, e.g., validate the idea of products before development-vision videos, to present them-product videos. Thus, a question arises can we use videos to communicate NFRs within Requirements Engineering activities? We designed an empirical study to answer the stated question and conducted an early investigation of 5 vision videos. We found that requirements about interoperability, time behavior, and usability were the most frequently mentioned in vision videos. We identified also several methods of expressing NFRs, e.g., by showing end-user reactions, using captions or narrator. Our study is the first attempt to investigate the research question. It follows from it that videos seem to be a useful means to communicate NFRs. We identified several challenges in using this medium and in analyzing videos that allowed us to suggest areas that can be included in the roadmap for further research in this area.

Software-intensive systems often consist of cooperating reactive components. In mobile and reconfigurable systems, their topology changes at run-time, which influences how the components must cooperate. The Scenario Modeling Language (SML) offers a formal approach for specifying the reactive behavior such systems that aligns with how humans conceive and communicate behavioral requirements. Simulation and formal checks can find specification flaws early. We present a framework for the Scenario-based Programming (SBP) that reflects the concepts of SML in Java and makes the scenario modeling approach available for programming. SBP code can also be generated from SML and extended with platform-specific code, thus streamlining the transition from design to implementation. As an example serves a car-to-x communication system. Demo video and artifact: http://scenariotools.org/esecfse-2017-tool-demo/