Role-Specific Views on Software Requirements Specifications

To increase the efficiency of SRS analysis and the acceptance of SRS from the viewpoint of their readers, we investigated role-specific information needs of downstream engineers in a series of empirical studies. Based on the empirical data we defined role-specific views and illustrated resp. validated their utilization with the help of a tool-based solution, that is capable of filtering information in SRS in accordance with the information needs.

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Software requirements specifications (SRS) serve as an important source of communication and information for a variety of roles involved in downstream development activities. This situation poses a challenge to requirements engineers: Different information needs have to be addressed, which are strongly dependent on the particular role(s) that the document stakeholders have within a project. We revealed a taxonomy of role-specific defects in SRS that are not sufficiently addressed by today's requirements engineering approaches and that negatively influence the efficient usage and acceptance of SRS. To contribute to this situation, we collected empirical data about role-specific information needs in a series of empirical studies that served as a baseline for a secondary analysis towards the definition of role-specific views. Moreover, we realized a proof-of-concept implementation of our envisioned solution that is capable of generating role-specific views on SRS. The results of a case study revealed that role-specific views have the potential to efficiently support SRS consumers during the analysis of a given SRS as well as requirements engineers during specification activities.