A case study on value-based requirements tracing

Heindl, Matthias; Biffl, Stefan

doi:10.1145/1081706.1081717

Cited by 71 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In another effort to reduce the manpower required for requirements tracing, Heindl and Biffl [17] proposed a manual tracing technique called Value-Based…”

Section: Other Traceability Effortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Requirements Traceability: The Study of Human Analysts

Cuddeback

Dekhtyar

Hayes

2010

2010 18th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference

105

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The requirements traceability matrix (RTM) supports many software engineering and software verification and validation (V&V) activities such as change impact analysis, reverse engineering, reuse, and regression testing. The generation of RTMs is tedious and error-prone, though. Thus RTMs are often not generated or maintained. Automated techniques have been developed to generate candidate RTMs with some success. Automating the process can save time and potentially improve the quality of the results. When using RTMs to support the V&V of mission-or safety-critical systems, however, a human analyst is required to vet the candidate RTMs. The focus thus becomes the quality of the final RTM. This thesis introduces an experimental framework for studying human interactions with decision support software and reports on the results from a study which applies the framework to investigate how human analysts perform when vetting candidate RTMs generated by automated methods. Specifically, a study was undertaken at two universities and had 33 participants analyze RTMs of varying accuracy for a Java code formatter program. The study found that analyst behavior differs depending on the initial candidate RTM given to the analyst, but that all analysts tend to converge their final RTMs toward a hot spot in the recall-precision space.iv Acknowledgements

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“…In another effort to reduce the manpower required for requirements tracing, Heindl and Biffl [17] proposed a manual tracing technique called Value-Based…”

Section: Other Traceability Effortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Requirements Traceability: The Study of Human Analysts

Cuddeback

Dekhtyar

Hayes

2010

2010 18th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The dual role of tracing requirements and managing risk and hazards were appreciated, but were recognized as complex and difficult to achieve. Heindl and Biffl: 2005 [17] reports a case study on value-based requirements tracing (VBRT) that systematically supports project managers in tailoring requirements tracing precision and effort, based on the following parameters: stakeholder value, requirements risk/volatility, and tracing costs. The research question to be answered is: To what extent can VBRT reduce requirements tracing efforts (economy of requirements tracing)?…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traceability-Why Do It?

Regan

McCaffery

McDaid

et al. 2012

Communications in Computer and Information Science

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Abstract. Traceability of software artifacts, from requirements to design and through implementation and quality assurance, has long been promoted by the research and expert practitioner communities. However, evidence indicates that, with the exception of those operating in the safety critical domain, few software companies choose to implement traceability processes, in the most part due to cost and complexity issues. This paper presents a review of traceability literature including the implementation of traceability in real organizations. Through both analyzing case studies and research published by leading traceability researchers, this paper synthesizes the motivations of the organizations for implementing traceability. Given the importance of traceability in the regulated domain of safety critical software, the paper compares the motivations and benefits for organizations operating inside and outside of this domain. Finally, based on an analysis of the disparate case studies, the paper re-assesses the value of traceability motivators for more widespread adoption by firms outside of the safety critical sector.

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“…Tracing value-base requirements and their impact has always been a challenge. A case study on valuebased requirements tracing, that systematically supported project managers in tailoring requirements tracing precision and effort based on parameters stakeholder value, requirements risk/volatility, and tracking costs, illustrated this [10]. Other studies describe techniques required for distributed priority ranking of strategic requirements for information systems in economic organization [11].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 97%