A domain specific modelling language for specifying and visualizing requirements

Abstract

Requirements can cause substantial problems in large software projects if not handled correctly and efficiently. The problems of missing requirements or incorrect de-scoping of projects are virtually the most prominent ones. Combining graphical representation of requirements and organizing these requirements in several abstraction levels was identified as one of the potential solutions to such issues in our research project conducted with one of major automotive companies in Sweden. The objective of the research reported in this paper is to improve requirements engineering activities by using a graphical modelling language for managing requirements based on Requirement Abstraction Model (RAM). We evaluated our results via a pilot controlled experiment and the results show a statistically significant improvement in the time required to assess the impact of changes by 37% with the same accuracy.