Implementing aspect-oriented requirements analysis for investment banking applications

Abstract

Aspect-oriented requirements engineering (AORE) introduced an artifact called Requirements Composition Table (RCT). RCT presents a holistic view of an application's functionality structured by core features and crosscutting concerns. As AORE remains little known to most practitioners in the software development field, the purpose of this chapter is to explain the RCT concept to practitioners and discuss its benefits. The RCT technique has been implemented for a number of Wall Street applications at various investment banks. RCT can serve as a common frame of reference for all parties on a project team and it has proven to be one of the most valuable artifacts of a software project. This chapter discusses the steps to develop an RCT and provides RCT examples of two financial applications. RCT can effectively support various project tasks. This chapter illustrates how RCT can help us (a) perform change impact analysis for releases and (b) assess test coverage of existing regression test suites. The chapter concludes with describing experiences using RCTs in practice and discussing lessons learned on projects implementing the RCT technique.