Probing for Requirements Knowledge to Stimulate Architectural Thinking

Abstract

Software requirements specifications (SRSs) often lack the detail needed to make informed architectural decisions. Architects therefore either make assumptions, which can lead to incorrect decisions, or conduct additional stakeholder interviews, resulting in potential project delays. We previously observed that software architects ask Probing Questions (PQs) to gather information crucial to architectural decision-making. Our goal is to equip Business Analysts with appropriate PQs so that they can ask these questions themselves. We report a new study with over 40 experienced architects to identify reusable PQs for five areas of functionality and organize them into structured flows. These PQflows can be used by Business Analysts to elicit and specify architecturally relevant information. Additionally, we leverage machine learning techniques to determine when a PQ-flow is appropriate for use in a project, and to annotate individual PQs with relevant information extracted from the existing SRS. We trained and evaluated our approach on over 8,000 individual requirements from 114 requirements specifications and also conducted a pilot study to validate its usefulness.