@inproceedings{wang-chen-2026-conjecture,
title = "Conjecture and Inquiry: Quantifying Software Performance Requirements via Interactive Retrieval-Augmented Preference Elicitation",
author = "Wang, Shihai and
Chen, Tao",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2042/",
pages = "41080--41098",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Since software performance requirements are documented in natural language, quantifying them into mathematical forms is essential for software engineering. Yet, the vagueness in performance requirements and uncertainty of human cognition have caused highly uncertain ambiguity in the interpretations, rendering their automated quantification an unaddressed and challenging problem. In this paper, we formalize the problem and propose IRAP, an approach that quantifies performance requirements into mathematical functions via interactive retrieval-augmented preference elicitation. IRAP differs from the others in that it explicitly derives from problem-specific knowledge to retrieve and reason the preferences, which also guides the progressive interaction with stakeholders, while reducing the cognitive overhead. Experiment results against 10 state-of-the-art methods on four real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of IRAP on all cases with up to 40x improvements under as few as five rounds of interactions."
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Conjecture and Inquiry: Quantifying Software Performance Requirements via Interactive Retrieval-Augmented Preference Elicitation
%A Wang, Shihai
%A Chen, Tao
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F wang-chen-2026-conjecture
%X Since software performance requirements are documented in natural language, quantifying them into mathematical forms is essential for software engineering. Yet, the vagueness in performance requirements and uncertainty of human cognition have caused highly uncertain ambiguity in the interpretations, rendering their automated quantification an unaddressed and challenging problem. In this paper, we formalize the problem and propose IRAP, an approach that quantifies performance requirements into mathematical functions via interactive retrieval-augmented preference elicitation. IRAP differs from the others in that it explicitly derives from problem-specific knowledge to retrieve and reason the preferences, which also guides the progressive interaction with stakeholders, while reducing the cognitive overhead. Experiment results against 10 state-of-the-art methods on four real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of IRAP on all cases with up to 40x improvements under as few as five rounds of interactions.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2042/
%P 41080-41098
Markdown (Informal)
[Conjecture and Inquiry: Quantifying Software Performance Requirements via Interactive Retrieval-Augmented Preference Elicitation](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2042/) (Wang & Chen, Findings 2026)
ACL