Behaviour Engineering based Approaches to Requirements Change Management and Requirements Defects Detection

Abstract

The main goal of software development is to produce software that fulfils users’ needs. Users’ needs are usually expressed as system requirements that are elicited during the Requirements Engineering (RE) phase of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). In real-world systems, it is difficult to elicit all the requirements early in development. As a result, in practice, changes to the initial requirements occur frequently. Moreover, some other factors may also trigger Requirements Changes (RCs) such as technological advancements and changes in stakeholders’ needs. RCs can also be made even after the system has been deployed. To manage RCs, systematic approaches, which usually fall under the umbrella of Requirements Change Management (RCM), are required. Efficient RCM is essential for the success of large software projects. To develop efficient RCM, challenges that might be faced during the execution of RCM processes need to be investigated and then suitable approaches must be designed to address them. The objective of this thesis was to investigate RCM challenges and to provide approaches and guidelines to address these challenges. To achieve the objectives, we carried out an evidence-based study to identify RCM challenges and then developed a suitable RCM process, proposed in the format of an ISO/IEC standard. Subsequently, we used some semi-formal modelling languages and formal languages to tackle two key RCM challenges.