IT SUPPORT FOR THE CREATION AND VALIDATION OF REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATIONS – WITH A CASE STUDY FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Dong, A.
Author: Reichel, Thomas; Rünger, Gudula; Steger, Daniel; Xu, Haibin
Section: Design Methods and Tools Part 2
Page(s): 238-247
Abstract
Complete, clear, and valid requirements specifications are the foundation for a successful product development. For technical products, these specifications have to take into account several factors, including customer needs, the market, governmental regulations, international standards, and manufacturer-specific policies. Lately, the environmental impact of products has become an additional important factor. Various domain experts are necessary to cope properly with all these factors and, therefore, IT support for creating and validating requirements specifications is highly recommended. This article proposes a workflow that supports the creation and validation of requirements specifications as well as the collaboration between domain experts. The workflow utilizes existing approaches of requirements management in the engineering domain and can be used for an appropriate IT support for the validation of completeness, integrity, and consistency of requirements specifications. A reference architecture for an IT solution implementing the workflow and the corresponding IT support is proposed. In a case study, the workflow is applied to the requirement increase energy efficiency .
Keywords: WORKFLOW; REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION; ENERGY EFFICIENCY; CLARIFICATION; CHECKLIST