The Systems Engineering Process Activities (SEPA) - supporting early requirements analysis and integration prior to implementation design

Abstract

The Systems Engineering Process Activities (SEPA) methodology and supporting tool suite addresses critical issues for software development practices: traceability between requirements, design, and implementation; requirements reuse, code reuse; and integration. SEPA focuses on requirements analysis and integration prior to implementation design by supporting the capture of a spectrum of user inputs/requirements that are narrowed, refined, and structured into a system design. User inputs require refinement for a number of reasons, including the need to (1) merge inputs from multiple sources, (2) discard irrelevant information, and (3) distinguish between general domain requirements and those relating to a specific implementation. Tools currently under development support (i) synthesizing requirements into a functional domain model, (ii) deriving object-oriented classes from the domain model, and (iii) producing a system design specification satisfying functional, performance, and infrastructure requirements.