Towards Development of Complete and Conflict-Free Requirements 
Abha Moitra, Kit Siu, Andrew Crapo, Harsh Chamarthi, Michael Durling, Meng Li, Han Y, Panagiotis Manolios and Michael Meiners.
RE, 2018 © IEEE
(Best Industrial Innovation Paper Award)
Abstract
Writing requirements is no easy task. Common problems include
ambiguity in statements, specifications at the wrong level of
abstraction, statements with inconsistent references to types,
conflicting requirements, and incomplete requirements. These pitfalls
lead to errors being introduced early in the design process. The
longer the gap between error introduction and error discovery, the
higher the cost associated with the error. To address the growing cost
of system development, we introduce a tool called ASSERT (Analysis of
Semantic Specifications and Efficient generation of Requirements-based
Tests) for capturing requirements, backed by a formal requirements
analysis engine. ASSERT also automatically generates a complete set
of requirements-based test cases. Capturing requirements in an
unambiguous way and then formally analyzing them with an automated
theorem prover eliminates errors as soon as requirements are
written. It also addresses the historical problem that analysis
engines are hard to use for someone without formal methods expertise
and analysis results are often difficult for the end-user to
understand and make actionable. ASSERT's major contribution is to
bring powerful requirements capture and analysis capability to the
domain of the end-user. We provide explainable and automated formal
analysis, something we found important for a tool’s adoptability in
industry.
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