NASA software tools for high-quality requirements engineering

Abstract

Extensive research has been conducted on writing quality software requirements in a natural language, resulting in the development of guidelines for writing effective requirements and a tool for evaluating them. Concepts from this application, the Automated Requirements Measurement (ARM) tool, which scans a requirements document for specific key words and phrases that impact the quality of the requirements, were then applied to the area of systems safety, resulting in the creation of the Safety Critical Analysis Tool (SCAT). Current research states that use cases provide a more methodological basis for specifying and managing quality functional requirements than the traditional natural language approach. Therefore, the Requirements Use case Tool (RUT) was developed to provide a template and repository for high-quality use cases. The paper describes the contribution to generating high-quality requirements made by each of these three tools.