Problem Analysis and the Problem Frames Approach

Discussions by Michael Jackson

Books

• Software Requirements and Specifications (1995) was Jackson's first description of problem analysis in book form.
• Problem Frames: Analyzing and Structuring Software Development Problems (2000) develops the ideas more fully.

Articles

• Michael Jackson's home page and his page at the Open University have links to a number of papers.
• The Preface to Problem Frames is available on-line here
• Description is Our Business (1991) (HTML)
• Software Development Method (1993) (PDF) - perhaps Jackson's first published use of the expression "problem frame".
• Problem Decomposition for Reuse (1995) (PDF)
• Four dark corners of requirements engineering (1997) (PDF)
• A Discipline of Description - Jackson's keynote talk at CEIRE (Conference on European Industrial Requirements Engineering) (1998) (PDF)
• The Real World (1999) (PDF) - Paper for Hoare Symposium
• Problem Analysis using Small Problem Frames (1999) (PDF)
• Problem Analysis and Structure (1999) (PDF)
• Problem Frames and Software Engineering (2005) (PDF)
• Problem Structure and Dependable Architecture (2005) (PDF)

Articles and Papers on Problem Analysis and the Problem Frames Approach

• Wikipedia entry on the Problem Frames Approach gives a brief overview of the approach

• Relating Software Requirements and Architectures using Problem Frames (pdf)
• Problem Frames: A Case for Coordination (pdf)
• Using Problem Frames with Distributed Architectures (pdf)
• Introducing Abuse Frames for Analysing Security Requirements (pdf)
• Geographic Problem Frames (pdf)
• From Process Model to Problem Frame — A Position Paper (pdf)

• Are Problem Frames and XP Compatible? — an e-mail exchange suggestiong that the Problem Frames approach is useful... but not compatible with XP
• Adapting Problem Frames to eXtreme Programming (pdf) — a paper showing how Problem Frames can be coupled with XP's "stories method"

Other Useful Links

• Michael Jackson's home page is a way to get papers from Michael himself by request.
• Agenda for the First International Workshop on Advances and Applications of Problem Frames, May 24, 2004, in conjunction with ICSE 2004. Proceedings will be published by Elsevier: click here and here for further information.
• Lecture on problem frames by David Garlan (Carnegie-Mellon University, 1998)
  
• What's Wrong with Use Cases? — Steve Ferg discusses the problems with Use Cases from a JSD/Problem Analysis perspective
• Daniel Jackson is working on an MIT research project on software design for an air traffic control system called Direct-To. The web page for papers for the project is http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/D2/index.html. Follow the link for PAPERS, The first paper, "Direct-To Requirements", is a nice example of a short, high-level requirements statement. Most requirements statements spend all their time describing the software, and no time at all describing the "problem context". But this paper gets it right: it starts out talking about airplanes and air-traffic, not about the machine to be built.