Analyzing requirements on software tools according to the functional engineering phase in the technical systems engineering process
Nicole Schmidt, Arndt Lüder, Heinrich Steininger, Stefan Biffl · 2014
The capability to shorten the process of engineering technical systems, from the mission to build the system to the final commissioning of the system, has become a critical factor for company success. This engineering process has become a time and money consuming part of the overall life cycle of a technical system. Common approaches for tackling this problem are the improvement of functions of isolated tools and the improvement/provision of the interoperability between tools. However, there is only little information on needs and preferences of domain experts. In this paper we report on a questionnaire-based survey to elicit the needs and preferences of domain experts. We analyze the answers of 88 domain experts from different disciplines with a variety of backgrounds on the importance of tool functionalities during functional engineering and discuss improvement aspects of three major functionalities rated as most important: version management, data exchange, and consistency checking.