what-when-how
In Depth Tutorials and Information
negotiation. his section briely explains the functionality, architecture, and imple-
mentation of this research prototype and a case study of collaborative negotiation
in software engineering design using IWANT.
8.4.1 System Functionality and
Architecture Design of IWANT
he major functionality of IWANT is to help stakeholders to systematically carry
out this negotiation process by providing a step-by-step procedure based on our
approach. When stakeholders realize that there are different implementations in
their decision tasks, they can activate the negotiation process by logging into the
IWANT system and launching a new process instance. he new instance irst col-
lects argument information from the stakeholders by identifying their objectives
and perspectives and building the objective hierarchy. After that, the IWANT sys-
tem shares the argument claims within all members in the design team. It can
also track the evolving objectives and stakeholders' perspectives, and make relevant
changes in the negotiation arguments. If the stakeholders cannot choose a claim
by themselves, IWANT can provide them with a few evaluation approach options
(e.g., weighted average) and then evaluate all the claims using the approach chosen
by the stakeholders. After that, the team takes the claim with the best score and
continues their design work.
In more details, the system is designed based on three layers, in accordance
with widely accepted Model-View-Controller standard [Alur et al. 2001] in system
design domain:
◾
he view layer is the user interface component running on the client side,
developed using various Web technology (e.g., HTML/Java Script and Java
Applet). It can display the information requested by the users for different
purposes; for example, the user initializes the baseline technical process,
launches the negotiation process when facing a conflicting issue, and reviews
the negotiation result after coming to an agreement.
◾
he controller layer implements the business logic in order to manage the
data modules (stakeholder, process, and negotiation). he process manage-
ment module manipulates the design process and models the tasks that the
stakeholders work on. he negotiation management module helps stakehold-
ers plan, enact, and complete a negotiation process centered on the argument-
based approach. It also can help the design team obtain the agreement of the
negotiation process using argument evaluation functions. he stakeholder
management module administrates the user account, background, prefer-
ence, skills, and other information.
◾
he model layer is responsible for accessing and manipulating the data for
different objects, including processes, users, and negotiations.
