Skip to main content

Evaluating Presentation of Requirements Documents: Results of an Experiment

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 432))

Abstract

There are diverse stakeholders for requirements documents in many development environments, and yet these requirements documents should be presented in such a way that all stakeholders will be able to engage them successfully. In order to produce effective requirements documents, analysts need guidance when developing new documents. They also need a convenient and accurate way to evaluate the effectiveness of existing documents. We have been exploring whether our three-factor measurement of document “transparency” would be useful in these ways. Our experimental results, presented in this article, support the hypothesis that transparency can be usefully characterised by accessibility, understandability, and relevance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Tu, Y., Tempero, E., Thomborson, C.: Evaluating transparency of requirements documents (March 2014) (unpublished manuscript)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Tu, Y.: Transparency in Software Engineering. PhD thesis, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Thesis under examination (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bubenko, J.A.: Challenges in requirements engineering. In: Second IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Al-Rawas, A., Easterbrook, S.: Communication problems in requirements engineering: A field study. In: Professional Awareness in Software Engineering (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Saiedian, H., Dale, R.: Requirements engineering: Making the connection between the software developer and customer. Inform. Software Tech. 42(6) (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Forward, A., Lethbridge, T.C.: The relevance of software documentation, tools and technologies: A survey. In: ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Leffingwell, D., Widrig, D.: Managing Software Requirements: A Unified Approach. Addison-Wesley Professional (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Abran, A., Bourque, P.: SWEBOK: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. IEEE Computer Society (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Cheng, B.H.C., Atlee, J.M.: Current and future research directions in requirements engineering. In: Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., Robinson, B. (eds.) Design Requirements Engineering. LNBIP, vol. 14, pp. 11–43. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Hansen, S., Berente, N., Lyytinen, K.: Requirements in the 21st century: Current practice and emerging trends. In: Lyytinen, K., Loucopoulos, P., Mylopoulos, J., Robinson, B. (eds.) Design Requirements Engineering. LNBIP, vol. 14, pp. 44–87. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Davis, A., Overmyer, S., Jordan, K., Caruso, J., Dandashi, F., Dinh, A., Kincaid, G., Ledeboer, G., Reynolds, P., Sitaram, P., Ta, A., Theofanos, M.: Identifying and measuring quality in a software requirements specification. In: IEEE First International Software Metrics Symposium (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Oliver, R.: What is transparency?. McGraw-Hill (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Bickerstaff, K., Tolley, R., Walker, G.: Transport planning and participation: The rhetoric and realities of public involvement. J. Transp. Geogr. 10(1) (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Rowe, G., Frewer, L.: Public participation methods: A framework for evaluation. Science, Technology, & Human Values 25(1) (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Vaccaro, A., Madsen, P.: Transparency in business and society: Introduction to the special issue. Ethics and Information Technology 11(2), 101–103 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Clarke, R.: Internet privacy concerns confirm the case for intervention. Communications of the ACM 42(2) (February 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Awad, N., Krishnan, M.: The personalization privacy paradox: An empirical evaluation of information transparency and the willingness to be profiled online for personalization. MIS Quarterly 30(1) (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Santana, A., Wood, D.: Transparency and social responsibility issues for wikipedia. Ethics and Information Technology 11 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Fleischmann, K., Wallace, W.: A covenant with transparency: Opening the black box of models. Communications of the ACM 48(5) (May 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Fleischmann, K., Wallace, W.: Ensuring transparency in computational modeling. Communications of the ACM 52(3) (March 2009)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Ingalls, P., Frever, T.: Growing an agile culture from value seeds. In: Agile Conference, AGILE 2009 (August 2009)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Bird, C.: Top 10 tips for better agile. Information Professional 2(6) (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Schwaber, K., Sutherland, J.: The scrum guide (July 2012), http://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf

  24. Fowler, M.: UML distilled: A brief guide to the standard object modeling language. Addison-Wesley Professional (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Anda, B., Sjøberg, D., Jørgensen, M.: Quality and understandability of use case models. In: Lindskov Knudsen, J. (ed.) ECOOP 2001. LNCS, vol. 2072, pp. 402–428. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Norman, G.: Likert scales, levels of measurement and the “laws” of statistics. Advances in Health Sciences Education 15(5) (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Tu, YC., Tempero, E., Thomborson, C. (2014). Evaluating Presentation of Requirements Documents: Results of an Experiment. In: Zowghi, D., Jin, Z. (eds) Requirements Engineering. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 432. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43610-3_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43610-3_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-43609-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-43610-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics