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Requirements quality control: a unifying framework

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Abstract

Literature tends to discuss software (and system) requirements quality control, which includes validation and verification, as a heterogeneous process using a great variety of relatively independent techniques. Also, process-oriented thinking prevails. In this paper, we attempt to promote the point that this important activity must be studied as a coherent entity. It cannot be seen as a rather mechanical process of checking documents either. Validation, especially, is more an issue of communicating requirements, as constructed by the analysts, back to the stakeholders whose goals those requirements are supposed to meet, and to all those other stakeholders, with whose goals those requirements may conflict. The main problem, therefore, is that of achieving a sufficient level of understanding of the stated requirements by a particular stakeholder, which may be hindered by, for example, lack of technical expertise. In this paper, we develop a unifying framework for requirements quality control. We reorganize the existing knowledge around the issue of communicating requirements to all the different stakeholders, instead of just focusing on some techniques and processes. We hope that this framework could clarify thinking in the area, and make future research a little more focused.

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Acknowledgements

The major part of this work was performed in the KOTEVA project, which was financially supported by the National Technology Agency of Finland (TEKES) (project number 676/31/01) and industrial partners TietoEnator, Elisa, Yomi, and Systeemiratkaisu. We would like to thank the referees for their insightful comments.

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  1. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Artem Katasonov & Markku Sakkinen

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  1. Artem Katasonov
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  2. Markku Sakkinen
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Correspondence to Artem Katasonov.

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Katasonov, A., Sakkinen, M. Requirements quality control: a unifying framework. Requirements Eng 11, 42–57 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-005-0018-1

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