Abstract
Requirements analysis is an important phase in a software project. The analysis is often performed in an informal way by specialists who review documents looking for ambiguities, technical inconsistencies and incomplete parts. Automation is still far from being applied in requirements analyses, above all since natural languages are informal and thus difficult to treat automatically. There are only a few tools that can analyse texts. One of them, called QuARS, was developed by the Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione and can analyse texts in terms of ambiguity. This paper describes how QuARS was used in a formal empirical experiment to assess the impact in terms of effectiveness and efficacy of the automation in the requirements review process of a software company.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Gray J, Schach S. Constraint animation using an object-oriented declarative language. In Proc. the 38th Annual ACM SE Conference, Clemson, SC, April 7–8, 2000, pp.1–10.
Kamsties E, Berry D M, Paech B. Detecting ambiguities in requirements documents using inspections. In Proc. First Workshop on Inspection in Software Engineering (WISE’01), Paris, France, July 23, 2001, Lawford M, Parnas D L (eds.), Software Quality Research Lab at McMaster University in Canada, pp.68–80.
Sommerville I, Sawyer P. Requirements Engineering: A Good Practice Guide. John Wiley and Sons., 1997.
Gilb T, Graham D. Software Inspection. London: Addison-Wesley, 1993.
Basili V R. Evolving and packaging reading technologies. Journal of Systems and Software, 1997, 38(1): 3–12.
Lami G. QuARS: A tool for analyzing requirements. Software Engineering Technical Report CMU/SEI-2005-TR-014, Software Engineering Institute, USA, September 2005.
Kimberly S Wasson. Requirements metrics: Scaling up. In Proc. 2nd International Workshop on Comparative Evaluation in Requirements Engineering (CERE’04), Kyoto, Japan, September 2004, Vincenzo Gervasi, Didar Zowghi, Susan Elliot Sim (eds.), FIT-UTS, Sydney, ISBN: 1-86365-866-1, pp.51–55.
Seaman C B. Qualitative methods in empirical studies of software engineering. IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering, 1999, 25(4): 557–572.
Fabbrini F, Fusani M, Gnesi S, Lami G. The linguistic approach to the natural language requirements quality: Benefits of the use of an automatic tool. In Proc. 26th Annual IEEE Computer Society — NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Software Engineering Workshop, Greenbelt, MA, USA, November 27–29, 2001, pp.97–105.
Information Technology — Software Process Assessment. ISO/IEC TR 15504:1998, pp.1–9.
Gnesi S, Lami G, Trentanni G, Fabbrini F, Fusani M. An automatic tool for the analysis of natural language requirements. International Journal of Computer Systems Science and Engineering, Special Issue on Automated Tools for Requirements Engineering. Leicester: CRL Publishing Ltd, UK, 2005, 20(1): 53–62.
Coleman M, Liau T L. A computer readability formula designed for machine scoring. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1975, 60(2): 283–284.
Lami G, Trentanni G. An automatic tool for improving the quality of software requirements. ERCIM News, 2004, 58: 18–19.
Kitchenham B, Pickard L, Pfleeger S L. Case studies for methods and tool evaluation. IEEE Software, 1995, 12(4): 52–62.
Kitchenham B. Evaluating software engineering methods and tools, part 1: The evaluation context and evaluation methods. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Jan. 1996, 21(1): 11–14.
Wohlin C et al. Experimentation in Software Engineering: An Introduction. International Series in Software Engineering, Springer Ed, 2000, Vol.6.
Fenton N. Software Metrics A Rigorous Approach. London: Chapman and Hall Ed., 1991.
Basili V R, Rombach H D. The TAME project: Towards improvement-orientated software environments. IEEE Transactions in Software Engineering, 1988, 14(6): 758–773.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lami, G., Ferguson, R.W. An Empirical Study on the Impact of Automation on the Requirements Analysis Process. J Comput Sci Technol 22, 338–347 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-007-9045-3
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-007-9045-3