Improvement of requirements quality and software process efficiency

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The proposed research program is in the field of software engineering, more specifically in the study of software requirements written in natural language, their quality and their measurability. It is well recognized that natural language requirements are defect-prone and a number of techniques aim to verify and validate the requirements quality through the identification of defects early in the software life cycle for efficiency purposes. Two research axes are related to quality and measurability of functional requirements, more specifically: 1) Specification methods, and 2) Verification methods of requirements written in natural languages. Our research program is aligned with these two axes. Indeed, our research goal is to first improve the quality of functional requirements by using functional size measurement (FSM) as a means to identify defects in these requirements. Then, our long-term goal is to improve requirements specification methods by including FSM early in order to avoid certain types of defects that could have a negative impact on the software engineering process efficiency.The long-term goal of our proposed research program is to improve methods for specifying requirements in order to prevent defects in the requirements. Our hypothesis is that improving requirements quality using FSM will have a positive impact on the software engineering process efficiency. Software process efficiency is measured by comparing the project effort with the software Functional Size (FS) resulting from that process and can be expressed as a number of hours spent per functional size unit. FSM is normally applied on requirements once they are completed. By moving the measurement earlier within the requirements phase, it would prevent some defects and contribute to requirements of a higher quality, hence better measureable software engineering process efficiency. To achieve this goal, we propose the following research objectives:Objective 1. To design techniques for defect identification in completed software requirements using FSM, in order to improve requirements quality. Objective 2. To investigate early defect detection within the requirements engineering phase and its relationship to the software engineering process efficiency.To achieve these objectives, research projects are defined in collaboration with industry partners and research groups and laboratories.The proposed research program is a natural evolution from progress reported in my recent Ph.D. thesis.