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On the Impact of the Model-Based Representation of Inconsistencies to Manual Reviews

Results from a Controlled Experiment
  • Marian DaunEmail author
  • Jennifer Brings
  • Thorsten Weyer
Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 10650)

Abstract

To ensure fulfilling stakeholder wishes, it is crucial to validate the documented requirements. This is often complicated by the fact that the wishes and intentions of different stakeholders are somewhat contradictory, which manifests itself in inconsistent requirements. To aid requirements engineers in identifying and resolving inconsistent requirements, we investigated the usefulness for manual reviews of two different model-based representation formats for inconsistent requirements; one that represent the inconsistent requirements in separate diagrams and one that represents them integrated into one diagram using annotations. The results from a controlled experiment show that the use of such integrated review diagrams can significantly increase efficiency of manual reviews, without sacrificing effectiveness.

Keywords

Requirements validation Inconsistencies Controlled experiment 
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Notes

Acknowledgment

This research was partly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant no. 01IS16043V and grant no. 01IS12005C). We thank Stefan Beck and Arnaud Boyer (Airbus Defence and Space), Jens Höfflinger (Bosch), and Karsten Albers (inchron) for their support regarding the adoption of industrial specifications to fit as experiment material.

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.paluno – The Ruhr Institute for Software TechnologyUniversity of Duisburg-EssenEssenGermany

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