Limitations of Present-Day Requirements Engineering Tools

Critical Assessment of Present-Day Systems Engineering Tools (e.g., DOORS and SLATE). How do we capture, represent and use knowledge through requirements engineering activities? Figure: Requirements Engineering WBS and Industry Toolset Weakensses. (For details, see Ramesh and Jarke, 2001) Specific Limitations of Present-Day Tools (Selberg, 2002) Thick Descriptions. Current tools lack the ability to store informal representations (i.e., so-called thick descriptions) of systems conveying information along subtle or implied lines. Model Driven Trace Capture and Usage. Current tools lack mechansms for "easy linking" of models into the design environment (e.g., SLATE). Abstraction Mechanisms. Current tools lack the ability to search and explore requirements at various levels of abstraction. Inference Services. Current tools are incapable of analyzing requirements for completeness or consistency. Search mechanisms are limited to keywords, which can be limiting for custom jargon in multidisciplinary and multilingual projects. Observations The glue that holds the system together is the basic modeling methodology. The loose coupling between knowlede domains and between CAD applications, and between knowledge repositories supports robust ad-hoc incremental development. Basic web-based infrastructure, which includes web-servers, application servers, and web browsers is already ubiquitous. References Ramesh B., and Jarke M., "Toward Reference Models for Requirements Traceability," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 27., No. 1., January 2001, pp. 58-93.