Systems Engineering & Evaluation Centre
SECOE Project 04-02
PETS - Prototype Educational Tools for Systems and Software Engineering
Researching the properties of object-oriented requirements
Tool to InGest and Elucidate Requirements PROfessional (TIGER PRO)
TIGER PRO performs the following functions:
- Ingesting of requirements from text documents and the keyboard into requirement databases.
- Elucidating requirements based on a set of “poor words” and pointing out up to five types of (potential) defects in each of the requirements (multiple requirement in a paragraph, possible multiple requirement, unverifiable requirement, use of “will” or “must” instead of “shall”, and the existence of a user defined “poor word”).
- Modifying existing requirements.
- Allowing for additional “poor words” to be added as they are identified.
- Allowing for “poor words” to be used in a requirement when their use is appropriate. For example, the requirement that “the system shall display the combined total of A and B” is a good requirement.
- Providing a Built-in Agent using Deterministic Grammar for the Engineering of Requirements (BADGER) that facilitates the correct format for writing requirements by, prohibiting many “poor words”, and minimizing the need for retyping by the use of drop down lists (Scott et al 2004).
- Producing a report documenting each occurrence of a “poor word” in the requirements.
-
Producing the FRED Figure of Merit.
- Allowing users to view, document/assign and modify (for each requirement):
o keywords (up to three),
o acceptance criterion,
o rationale,
o traceability (to source(s) and sideways),
o priority (level and basis),
o risk (severity, probability, basis and mitigation), and
o cost (estimates, basis and totals) for each requirement.
- Producing summary reports on elucidation of requirements, priority allocation, risk assignment and cost estimation in textual and graphical formats.
Please send suggestions for additional features and defect reports to Associate Professor Joseph Kasser (Joseph.Kasser@unisa.edu.au)
The PETS project
The PETS project for the development and use of a suite of prototype educational tools and classroom materials for systems and software (PETS) engineering that
· Have the potential to transfer the solution to the problem of poor requirements management from academia to industry and consequently reduce cost and schedule overruns.
· Are as simple to use as a slide rule.
· Can be used in the classroom and in the workplace.
The plan is to develop and use an initial simple suite of tools with a similar user interface. The tools would then continue to evolve into intelligent agents using the Blackboard approach as more is learnt about their use. Each tool is currently targeted for use in one or more postgraduate courses
Research perspective
The research is based on identifying the properties of object-oriented requirements from the viewpoint of Total Quality Management. Candidate properties and functionality have been identified and built into the concept demonstration tools, the PETS.
Reference material providing further information
Additional published material can be found at
·
Researching the Properties of Object-Oriented Requirements
·
Object-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Management
· Prototype Educational Tools for Systems and Software (PETS) Engineering
Background
The systems and software development industry is characterized by a paradigm of project failure (Standish 1995). The situation has been described by Cobb’s Paradox (Voyages 1996), which stated “We know why projects fail, we know how to prevent their failure --so why do they still fail?” While the problem of poor requirements engineering and management has been repeatedly and widely discussed and documented for at least 10 years as a contributing cause of project failures (Hooks 1993; Kasser and Schermerhorn 1994; Jacobs 1999; Carson 2001; etc.), the continual documentation and discussion of the problem of poor requirements engineering and management has not resulted in a practical solution to the problem.
The First Requirements Elucidator
Demonstrator (FRED).
(FRED has been replaced by TIGER in the PETS suite
of tools)
An early prototype of FRED was presented by Kasser (2002) as a tool that ingested requirements from documents and identified potential defects in requirements by parsing the text for the presence of a set of “poor words”. FRED performed a syntax check on the text of the requirement pointing out potential defects. This is a similar function to the way in which a word processor grammar and style checker is used, the tool points out that there may be a defect, and it is up to the user to determine if the defect is there and how best to correct it. FRED was based on automating and improving the manual process performed during a Requirements Workshop held in courses leading to the Master of Software Engineering degree at the Graduate School of Management and Technology at University of Maryland University College. FRED produced a Figure of Merit (FOM) for the document. The FOM is a simple one-dimensional measurement for the quality of a document based on the presence or absence of “poor words”. The FOM allows comparisons to be made of the quality of documents of different sizes. The FOM was calculated using the formula
FOM = 100 * (1 - number of
defects / number of requirements).
A document without any defects can achieve a FOM of 100. A document with a large number of defects can receive a negative FOM. This situation arises if the requirements in the document contain more than one defect.