Requirements Management with Semantic Technology: An Empirical Study on Automated Requirements Categorization and Conflict Analysis

Abstract

Abstract.Requirements managers aim at keeping the set of requirements consistent and up to date throughout the project by conducting the following tasks: requirements categorization, requirements conflict analysis, and requirements tracing. However, the manual conduct of these tasks takes significant effort and is error-prone. In this paper we propose to use semantic technology as foundation for automating the requirements management tasks and introduce the ontology-based reporting approach OntRep. We evaluate the effectiveness and effort the OntRep approach based on a real-world industrial empirical study with professional Austrian IT project managers. Major results were that OntRep provides reasonable capabilities for the automated categorization of requirements, was when compared to a manual approach considerably more effective to identify conflicts, and produced less false positives with similar effort.

Software Requirements Conflict Identification: Review and Recommendations

“…Moser et al [13] [18] defined three types of conflicts that could be detected: conflict between a requirement and a constraint (CRC), conflict between a requirement and a guideline (CRG), and conflict between requirements (CRR). They also gave two classifications for conflicts based on the number of requirements, simple conflicts (between two requirements), and complex conflicts (between three or more).…”

“…In negotiation techniques, stakeholders and software engineers manually discuss and analyze requirements to detect any conflicts [13]. Some call this approach an informal technique that can be achieved by hiring experts to detect inconsistencies using their experience [22].…”

“…Additionally, hiring experts can be very expensive and leave the process to be prone to errors. While in automation approaches, software engineers can use some tools to help with analyzing and managing requirements [13].…”

“…Liu [13] utilized an ontological approach to analyze conflicts in the requirements specification of activity diagrams. The requirements conflict process starts by building an action state ontology and drawing the activity diagram for existing requirements.…”

An empirical study of the complexity of requirements management in construction projects

“…Sinha, Sengupta and Chandra (2006) studied and identified difficulties and challenges of managing requirements in a collaborative environment and proposed a tool to support software developments teams in collaborating on requirements management. Moser et al (2011) conducted an empirical study on automated requirements categorization and conflict analysis with the aim of lowering the efforts associated with requirements management, in particular tracing requirements, conflicts and impact analysis amongst others. Previous research has considered the development of models that can facilitate the process.…”