Applying system families concepts to requirements engineering process definition

Abstract

In this paper, some experiences gained during the definition of a unified, common software development process for several companies in Telvent are presented. Last year, Telvent made the decision of developing a unique software development process which was flexible enough to be adapted to specific practices and needs of the different companies. In this paper we focus mainly on the experiences gained during the definition of the requirements engineering process, al-though many of them are also applicable to other software development processes. One of the most interesting experiences from our point of view is that, al-though the definition process was started using a top-down approach and well-know techniques like data flow diagrams, we eventually end up applying requirements engineering techniques like glossaries, scenarios or conflict resolution for the definition of the requirements engineering process itself. On the other hand, the need of having adaptable processes for the different companies in Telvent made us adopt a process family approach, i.e. adopting an approach similar to the system families development, thus defining a core process that could be adapted to specific needs of specific companies in a predefined, controlled manner. The experiences gained in the definition of the process family were applied to the definition of requirements engineering process for product line development, which is briefly presented in this paper. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.