A Requirements Measurement Program for Systems Engineering Projects: Metrics, Indicators, Models, and Tools for Internal Stakeholders
Abstract
Software engineering (SE) measurement has shown to lead to improved quality and productivity in software and systems projects and, thus, has received significant attention in the literature, particularly for the design and development stages. In requirements engineering (RE), research and practice has recognized the importance of requirements measurement (RM) for tracking progress, identifying gaps in downstream deliverables related to requirements, managing requirements-related risks, reducing requirements errors and defects, and project management and decision making.
However, despite the recognized benefits of RM, research indicates that only 5\% of the literature on SE measurement addresses requirements. This small percentage is reflected in the lack of well-defined and ready to use requirements metrics, approaches, tools, and frameworks that would enable the effective implementation and management of a RM program. Such a program would, in turn, provide the various internal stakeholders with various quantitative requirements-driven information (e.g., measures, indicators, and analytics, etc.) in order for them to better manage, control, and track their respective process activities. This shortage makes the process of RM, at best, complicated and, at worst, non-existent in most projects. The RM process is further complicated in large systems engineering projects due to large project sizes, numerous internal stakeholders, time pressure, large numbers of requirements, other software artifacts, to name a few.
This integrated-article thesis aims to address the aforementioned problem through the following main contributions that have been researched and validated within the context of a large systems engineering project in the rail-automation domain: (i) an empirically derived and validated structured requirements metric suite; (ii) an approach for deriving and organizing requirements metrics and related information; (iii) a requirements-centric, measurement-based health assessment framework; (iv) a meta-model for managing requirements -driven information for internal stakeholders; (v) a prototype requirements dashboard that builds upon and automates the concepts in i, ii, iii, and iv.
These contributions have implications for research on RM through extending the body of work on RM and promulgating further research. For practice, the results of this thesis are anticipated to facilitate the implementation and management of RM programs in real-world projects.