Evaluating the use of model-based requirements verification method: A feasibility study

Abstract

Requirements engineering is one of the most important and critical phases in the software development life cycle, and should be carefully performed to build high quality and reliable software. However, requirements are typically gathered through various sources and represented in natural language (NL), making requirements engineering a difficult, fault prone, and a challenging task. To address this challenge, we propose a model-based requirements verification method called NLtoSTD, which transforms NL requirements into a state transition diagram (STD) that can be verified through automated reasoning. This paper analyzes the effect of NLtoSTD method in improving the quality of requirements. To do so, we conducted an empirical study at North Dakota State University in which the participants employed the NLtoSTD method during the inspection of requirement documents to identify the amibiguities and incompleteness of requirements. The experiment results show that the proposed method is capable of finding ambiguities and missing functionalities in a set of NL requirements, and provided us with insights and feedback to improve the method. The results are promising and have motivated the refinement of NLtoSTD method and future empirical evaluation.