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Tracking requirements evolution by using issue tickets: a case study of a document management and approval system

Published: 31 May 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Requirements evolve throughout the software life-cycle. When requirements change, requirements engineers must determine what software artifacts could be affected. The history of and rationale for requirements evolution provides engineers some information about artifact dependencies for impact analysis. In this paper, we discuss a case study of requirements evolution for a large-scale system governed by Japanese laws and regulations. We track requirements evolution using issue tickets created in response to stakeholder requests. We provide rules to identify requirements evolution events (e.g. refine, decompose, and replace) from combinations of operations (e.g. add, change, and delete) specified in the issue tickets. We propose a Requirements Evolution Chart (REC) to visually represent requirements evolution as a series of events over time, and implement tool support to generate a REC from a series of issue tickets using our rules to identify requirements evolution events. We found that the REC supports impact analysis and compliance efforts.

References

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Cited By

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  • (2024)AI-Enabled Regulatory Change Analysis of Legal Requirements2024 IEEE 32nd International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE59067.2024.00012(5-17)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2024
  • (2019)Categorizing and Visualizing Issue Tickets to Better Understand the Features Implemented in Existing Software Systems2019 10th International Workshop on Empirical Software Engineering in Practice (IWESEP)10.1109/IWESEP49350.2019.00013(25-255)Online publication date: Dec-2019
  • (2018)Discovering undocumented knowledge through visualization of agile software development activitiesRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-018-0291-423:3(381-399)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2018
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    ICSE Companion 2014: Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering
    May 2014
    741 pages
    ISBN:9781450327688
    DOI:10.1145/2591062
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    Published: 31 May 2014

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    Author Tags

    1. Impact Analysis
    2. Issue Tickets
    3. Large Information Systems
    4. Requirements Evolution
    5. System Compliance

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    View all
    • (2024)AI-Enabled Regulatory Change Analysis of Legal Requirements2024 IEEE 32nd International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE59067.2024.00012(5-17)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2024
    • (2019)Categorizing and Visualizing Issue Tickets to Better Understand the Features Implemented in Existing Software Systems2019 10th International Workshop on Empirical Software Engineering in Practice (IWESEP)10.1109/IWESEP49350.2019.00013(25-255)Online publication date: Dec-2019
    • (2018)Discovering undocumented knowledge through visualization of agile software development activitiesRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-018-0291-423:3(381-399)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2018
    • (2017)How Much Undocumented Knowledge is there in Agile Software Development?: Case Study on Industrial Project Using Issue Tracking System and Version Control System2017 IEEE 25th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE.2017.33(194-203)Online publication date: Sep-2017
    • (2016)Visualizing the effects of requirements evolutionProceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion10.1145/2889160.2889237(152-161)Online publication date: 14-May-2016
    • (2016)Prediction of the Successful Completion of Requirements in Software Development—An Initial StudyAgent and Multi-Agent Systems: Technology and Applications10.1007/978-3-319-39883-9_21(261-269)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
    • (2016)Predicting the Fate of Requirements in Embedded DomainsProceedings of 4th International Conference in Software Engineering for Defence Applications10.1007/978-3-319-27896-4_25(297-306)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2016

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