A pair-oriented requirements engineering approach for analysing multi-lingual requirements

• Main Authors: Kamalrudin, Massila, Sidek, Safiah, Salleh, Norsaremah, Hosking, John, Grundy, John
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Verlag 2014
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/37844/1/A_Pair-Oriented_Requirements_Engineering_Approach.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/37844/; http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-43610-3_12#page-1

Requirements written in multiple languages can lead to errorproneness, inconsistency and incorrectness. In a Malaysian setting, software engineers are exposed to both Malay and English requirements. This can be a challenging task for them especially when capturing and analyzing requirements. Further, they face difficulties to model requirements using semi-formal or formal models. This paper introduces a new approach, Pair-Oriented Requirements Engineering (PORE) that uses an Essential Use Case (EUC) model to capture and analyze multi-lingual requirements. This approach is intended to assist practitioners in developing correct and consistent requirements as well as developing teamwork skills. Two quasi-experiment studies involving 80 participants in the first study and 38 participants in a subsequent study were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach with respect to correctness and time spent in capturing multi-lingual requirements. It was found that PORE improves accuracy and hence helps users perform better in developing high quality requirements models.