Change Impact Analysis based on Formalization of Trace Relations for Requirements

Evolving customer needs is one of the driving factors in software development. There is a need to analyze the impact of requirement changes in order to determine possible conflicts and design alternatives influenced by these changes. The analysis of the impact of requirement changes on related requirements can be based on requirements traceability. In this paper, we propose a requirements metamodel with well defined types of requirements relations. This metamodel represents the common concepts extracted from some prevalent requirements engineering approaches. The requirements relations in the metamodel are used to trace related requirements for change impact analysis. We formalize the relations. Based on this formalization, we define change impact rules for requirements. As a case study, we apply these rules to changes in the requirements specification for Course Management System.

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