Abstract
[Context & motivation] Many requirements documents contain graphical and textual representations of requirements side-by-side. These representations may be complementary but oftentimes they are strongly related or even express the same content. [Question/problem] Since both representation may be used on their own, we want to find out why and how a combination of them is used in practice. In consequence, we want to know what advantages such an approach provides and whether challenges arise from the coexistence. [Principal ideas/results] To get more insights into how graphical and textual representations are used in requirements documents, we conducted eight interviews with stakeholders at Daimler. These stakeholders work on a system that is specified by tabular textual descriptions and UML activity diagrams. The results indicate that the different representations are associated with different activities. [Contribution] Our study provides insights into a possible implementation of a specification approach using mixed representations of requirements. We use these insights to make suggestions on how to apply the approach in a way that profits from its advantages and mitigates potential weaknesses. While we draw our conclusions from a single use case, some aspects might be applicable in general.
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Beckmann, M., Reuter, C., Vogelsang, A. (2018). Coexisting Graphical and Structured Textual Representations of Requirements: Insights and Suggestions. In: Kamsties, E., Horkoff, J., Dalpiaz, F. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10753. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77243-1_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77243-1_16
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