A Semi-Formal Method to Verify Correctness of Functional Requirements Specifications of Complex Systems

Abstract

Many standards mandating verification of requirements correctness do not comprehensively state what information should be captured and used for verification and quality assurance activities. Therefore, a wide range of methods, from simplistic checklists to comprehensive formal methods, is used to verify correctness of system and software requirements. In this paper, a semi-formal method to verify functional requirements using a graphical logic-based structured architecture referred to as Graphical Requirement Analysis is proposed and illustrated with a case study. Its architecture allows to trace functional system requirements and to show correctness (non-ambiguity, consistency, completeness) of specifications. The support of graphical system engineering descriptions greatly facilitates to simulate requirement specifications and designs. Such capability is believed by many to be an essential aspect of developing and assuring the quality of highly complex systems requiring high integrity.KeywordsRequirements engineeringfunctional correctnessverificationqualitymodular programmingfunctional decompositionmodeling of complex embedded systems specifications.