Early Requirements Traceability with Domain-Specific Taxonomies-A Pilot Experiment
2020 (English)In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering / [ed] Breaux T.,Zisman A.,Fricker S.,Glinz M., IEEE Computer Society , 2020, p. 322-327, article id 9218209Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Background: Establishing traceability from requirements documents to downstream artifacts early can be beneficial as it allows engineers to reason about requirements quality (e.g. completeness, consistency, redundancy). However, creating such early traces is difficult if downstream artifacts do not exist yet. Objective: We propose to use domain-specific taxonomies to establish early traceability, raising the value and perceived benefits of trace links so that they are also available at later development phases, e.g. in design, testing or maintenance. Method: We developed a recommender system that suggests trace links from requirements to a domain-specific taxonomy based on a series of heuristics. We designed a controlled experiment to compare industry practitioners' efficiency, accuracy, consistency and confidence with and without support from the recommender. Results: We have piloted the experimental material with seven practitioners. The analysis of self-reported confidence suggests that the trace task itself is very challenging as both control and treatment group report low confidence on correctness and completeness. Conclusions: As a pilot, the experiment was successful since it provided initial feedback on the performance of the recommender, insight on the experimental material and illustrated that the collected data can be meaningfully analysed. © 2020 IEEE.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE Computer Society , 2020. p. 322-327, article id 9218209
Series
International Requirements Engineering Conference, ISSN 2332-6441
Keywords [en]
Domain-specific Taxonomy, Pilot Experiment, Recommender, Requirements, Traceability, Heuristic methods, Taxonomies, Controlled experiment, Development phasis, Early requirements, Experimental materials, Initial feedback, Perceived benefits, Requirements document, Requirements engineering
National Category
Computer Sciences Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-20667DOI: 10.1109/RE48521.2020.00042ISI: 000628527900033Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85093918392ISBN: 9781728174389 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-20667DiVA, id: diva2:1498862
Conference
28th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE 2020, Zurich, Switzerland, 31 August 2020 through 4 September 2020
Part of project
SERT- Software Engineering ReThought, Knowledge Foundation
Funder
Swedish Transport Administration
Note
open access
2020-11-052020-11-052021-05-25Bibliographically approved