Requirements Reasoning for Distributed Requirements Analysis Using Semantic Wiki

In large-scale collaborative software projects, thousands of requirements with complex interdependencies and different granularity spreading in different levels are elicited, documented, and evolved during the project lifecycle. Non-technical stakeholders involved in requirements engineering activities rarely apply formal techniques; therefore it is infeasible to automatically detect problems in requirements. This situation becomes even worse in a distributed context when all sites are responsible to maintain their own requirements list using various requirements models and management tools, and the detection of requirements problems across multiple sites is error-prone, and unaffordable if performed manually. This paper proposes an integrated approach of basing distributed requirements analysis on semantic wiki by requirements reasoning. First, the functions concerning reasoning support provided by semantic wiki for requirements analysis are proposed. Second, the underlying requirements rationale model for requirements reasoning is presented with sample reasoning rules. Third, our rationale model is mapped to the WinWin requirements negotiation model which further adds to its credibility.