Browse Theses

In the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Requirements Engineering is the first step from which the design of the proposed system evolves. It is important during this phase to correctly capture the system level requirements and to refine and decompose these system level requirements into detailed level requirements. It is these detailed level requirements that feed the remaining phases of the SDLC. In addition, as the system evolves, the requirements change. Regardless of why requirements change, changes to detailed level requirements need to be reflected in their relationship to the composite system level requirements. This decomposition and composition process can be better termed as Requirements Tracing.

In order to trace requirements forward or to decompose them from systems level to detailed level and backward or to compose them from detailed level to systems level, one needs mechanisms that assist in the process of Requirements Tracing. The importance of these mechanisms is to support the Requirements Engineer in ensuring that the requirements are correctly decomposed, the Requirements Maintainer in ensuring that changing requirements correctly compose, and the Systems Reviewer in verifying and validating that the system meets its requirements.

The objectives of this research are to identify a process and the associated methods to support the forward and backward tracing of requirements. The research approach is to: identify mechanisms for forward tracing, develop a prototype incorporating these forward tracing mechanisms, identify mechanisms from the forward tracing dimension that can be utilized in backward tracing, and incorporate these backward tracing mechanisms into the prototype.

The contributions of the research to the field of Information Technology are: an identification of mechanisms to be utilized to forward trace requirements, an identification of mechanisms to be utilized to backward trace requirements, a process and methods to conduct requirements tracing, and a foundation for an environment that assists the Requirements Engineer and Requirements Maintainer in tracing requirements.