A multistrategy framework for analyzing system requirements
Ioannis N. Savvidis · 1996
The identification of user needs and definition of system requirements is essential for the timely and correct implementation of software systems. Incorrect results during the identification of user needs or the definition of system requirements leads to errors that are difficult and expensive to correct, thus it is important to correctly capture the system level requirements, and analyze and refine these, as a prerequisite for the accurate implementation of the system. One of the software development life-cycle phases (definition of requirements) involves a thorough and careful review of the system requirements document (SRD). This document is a systems description of the functionality or performance characteristics of the proposed software or system product. A complete and accurate SRD is essential to the success of any project. Omissions, inconsistencies, ambiguities or contradictions not discovered and corrected during the initial review of the SRD will propagate through the software life cycle and can result in either an improperly functioning system, a low quality system, or an expensive and time consuming redesign. Early detection and correction of faults in the SRD are key to keeping development costs down and to building correct, reliable software. To analyze requirements and systems, and identify potential weaknesses such as these described, mechanisms are needed that assist in the process of requirements analysis. The usefulness of these mechanisms is that they may help the requirements engineer trace requirements, and the requirements maintainer ensure that changing requirements will not introduce conflicts. The objectives of this research are to provide a framework for automated support to tracing software requirements and the gathering together of requirements in sets that are able to more effectively/efficiently assess for potential errors. The research approach is to identify such mechanisms and develop a prototype that incorporates these. The contributions to the field are: the identification of a method for semantically correlating software requirements, the identification of a method for tracing software requirements, and the establishment of foundations for a framework to aid assessment of software requirements. These contributions are enabled through: the identification of a morphosemantic classification scheme (a scheme that depends on both surface and deep features of the language) that can be utilized to analyze requirements, the identification of a discourse structure; the identification of a method for the context based grouping of requirements through the creation of word sequences; the identification of a method for context based retrieval of semantic information from a set of requirements; and a foundation for an environment that helps with the analysis of software requirements.