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Reducing the Distance Between Requirements Engineering and Verification
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Software Engineering.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8142-9631
2022 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Background Requirements engineering and verification (REV) processes play es-sential roles in software product development. There are physical and non-physicaldistances between entities (actors, artifacts, and activities) in these processes. Cur-rent practices that reduce the distances, such as automated testing and alignmentof document structure and tracing only partially close the above mentioned gap.Objective The aim of this thesis is to investigate solutions w.r.t their abilityto reduce the distances between requirements engineering and verification. Twotechniques that are explored in this thesis are automated testing (model-basedtesting, MBT) and alignment of document structure and tracing (traceability).Method The research methods used in this thesis are systematic mapping, soft-ware requirements mining, case study, literature survey, validation study, and de-sign science.Results MBT and traceability are effective in reducing the distance between re-quirements and verification. However, both activities have some shortcoming thatneeds to be addressed when used for that purpose. Current MBT techniques inthe context of software performance do not attain all the goals of MBT: 1) require-ments validation, 2) checking the testability of requirements, and 3) the generationof an efficient test suite. These goals are essential to reduce the distance. We de-veloped and assessed performance requirements verification and test environmentgeneration approach to tackle these shortcomings. Also, traceability between re-quirements and verification suffers from the low granularity of trace links and doesnot support the verification of all requirements. We propose the use of taxonomictrace links to trace and align the structure of requirements specifications and ver-ification artifacts. The results from the validation study show that the solution isfeasible in practice. However, this comes with challenges that need to be addressed.Conclusion MBT and improved traceability reduce multiple distances betweenactors, artifacts, and activities in the requirements engineering and verificationprocess. MBT is most effective in reducing the distances when the model used isbuilt from the requirements. Traceability is essential in easing access to relevantinformation when needed and should not be seen as an overhead. When creatingtrace links, we need to consider the difference in the abstraction, structure, andtime between the linked artifacts

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Karlskrona: Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, 2022.
Series
Blekinge Institute of Technology Licentiate Dissertation Series, ISSN 1650-2140 ; 4
Keywords [en]
Requirements, Model-Based Testing, Traceability.
National Category
Software Engineering
Research subject
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-23570OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-23570DiVA, id: diva2:1690065
Presentation
2022-10-05, J1630, Valhallavägen 1, 371 41, Karlskrona, 09:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Swedish Transport Administration, DCAT
Note

Chapter 3 and 4 are papers submitted to journals, and therefore removed from the fulltext file.

Available from: 2022-08-25 Created: 2022-08-24 Last updated: 2022-09-14Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. An approach for performance requirements verification and test environments generation
Open this publication in new window or tab >>An approach for performance requirements verification and test environments generation
2023 (English)In: Requirements Engineering, ISSN 0947-3602, E-ISSN 1432-010X, Vol. 28, no 1, p. 117-144Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Model-based testing (MBT) is a method that supports the design and execution of test cases by models that specify theintended behaviors of a system under test. While systematic literature reviews on MBT in general exist, the state of the arton modeling and testing performance requirements has seen much less attention. Therefore, we conducted a systematic map-ping study on model-based performance testing. Then, we studied natural language software requirements specificationsin order to understand which and how performance requirements are typically specified. Since none of the identified MBTtechniques supported a major benefit of modeling, namely identifying faults in requirements specifications, we developed thePerformance Requirements verificatiOn and Test EnvironmentS generaTion approach (PRO-TEST). Finally, we evaluatedPRO-TEST on 149 requirements specifications. We found and analyzed 57 primary studies from the systematic mappingstudy and extracted 50 performance requirements models. However, those models don’t achieve the goals of MBT, whichare validating requirements, ensuring their testability, and generating the minimum required test cases. We analyzed 77 Soft-ware Requirements Specification (SRS) documents, extracted 149 performance requirements from those SRS, and illustratethat with PRO-TEST we can model performance requirements, find issues in those requirements and detect missing ones.We detected three not-quantifiable requirements, 43 not-quantified requirements, and 180 underspecified parameters in the149 modeled performance requirements. Furthermore, we generated 96 test environments from those models. By modelingperformance requirements with PRO-TEST, we can identify issues in the requirements related to their ambiguity, measur-ability, and completeness. Additionally, it allows to generate parameters for test environments

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2023
Keywords
Model-based testing, Performance requirements modeling, Performance aspects, Natural language requirements
National Category
Software Engineering Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:bth-22848 (URN)10.1007/s00766-022-00379-3 (DOI)000782347800001 ()2-s2.0-85128212480 (Scopus ID)
Funder
Swedish Transport Administration, DCAT project
Note

open access

Available from: 2022-04-21 Created: 2022-04-21 Last updated: 2023-06-19Bibliographically approved
2. Challenges of Requirements Communication and Digital Assets Verification in Infrastructure Projects
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Challenges of Requirements Communication and Digital Assets Verification in Infrastructure Projects
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Context: In infrastructure projects with design-build contracts, the supplier delivers digital assets (e.g., 2D or 3Dmodels) as a part of the design deliverable. These digital assets should align with the customer requirements. Poorrequirements communication between the customer and the supplier is one of the reasons for project overrun. To thebest of our knowledge, no study have yet investigated challenges in requirements communication in the customer-supplierinterface.Objective: In this article, we investigated the processes of requirements validation, requirements communication, anddigital assets verification, and explored the challenges associated with these processes.Methods: We conducted two exploratory case studies. We interviewed ten experts working with digital assets fromthree companies working on two infrastructure projects (road and railway).Results: We illustrate the activities, stakeholders, and artifacts involved in requirements communication, requirementsvalidation, and digital asset verification. Furthermore, we identified 14 challenges (in four clusters: requirements quality,trace links, common requirements engineering (RE), and project management) and their causes and consequences inthose processes.Conclusion: Communication between the client and supplier in sub-contracted work in infrastructure projects is oftenindirect. This puts pressure on the quality of the tender documents (mainly requirements documents) that provides themeans for communication and controls the design verification processes. Hence, it is crucial to ensure the quality of therequirements documents by implementing quality assurance techniques

Keywords
Infrastructure, requirements, digital assets, verification, validation.
National Category
Software Engineering
Research subject
Software Engineering; Systems Engineering
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:bth-23568 (URN)
Available from: 2022-08-24 Created: 2022-08-24 Last updated: 2023-08-11Bibliographically approved
3. Taxonomic Trace Links - Rethinking Traceability and its Benefits
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Taxonomic Trace Links - Rethinking Traceability and its Benefits
Show others...
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Background: Traceability is an important quality of artifacts that are used in knowledge-intensive tasks. When projectbudgets and time pressure are a reality, this leads often to a down-prioritization of creating trace links. Objective:We propose a new idea that uses knowledge organization structures, such as taxonomies, ontologies and thesauri, asan auxiliary artifact to establish trace links. In order to investigate the novelty and feasibility of this idea, we studytraceability in the area of requirements engineering. Method: First, we conduct a literature survey to investigate towhat extent and how auxiliary artifacts have been used in the past for requirements traceability. Then, we conduct avalidation study in industry, testing the idea of taxonomic trace links with realistic artifacts. Results: We have reviewed126 studies that investigate requirements traceability; ninetey-one of them use auxiliary artifacts in the traceabilityprocess. In the validation study, while we have encountered six challenges when classifying requirements with a domain-specific taxonomy, we found that designers and engineers are able to classify design objects comprehensively and reliably.Conclusions: The idea of taxonomic trace links is novel and feasible in practice. However, the identified challenges needto be addressed to allow for an adoption in practice and enable a transfer to software intensive contexts.

Keywords
equirements traceability, Taxonomy, Trace link, Classification, Building information modeling
National Category
Software Engineering
Research subject
Software Engineering; Systems Engineering
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:bth-23569 (URN)
Available from: 2022-08-24 Created: 2022-08-24 Last updated: 2023-08-11Bibliographically approved

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Abdeen, Waleed

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