An empirical investigation of requirement evolution in an industrial project

In the development process of complex systems, a range of design and system engineering methods are typically applied to analyse and validate requirements. This paper has reported an empirical investigation of documents which have been generated as a result of applying these methods. The investigation focuses on requirements evolution, one of the components of requirement analysis. Requirement evolution involves checking and structuring of requirements and leads to their refinement. The aim of this research is to understand how requirements evolve as a result of applying engineering methods, and to draw insights towards capturing requirement evolution. The motivation behind this work is to establish gaps in the current requirement analysis support tools in order to create an effective requirement analysis workflow. Four operations performed on requirements were used to characterise requirement evolution. The research has revealed that current computational support for design and systems engineering methods lacks means of visualising and capturing requirement evolution. The paper has also highlighted the opportunities to provide justification and clarification in the requirement analysis process.