Measuring System Usability during Requirement Engineering: Requirements Engineering

Abstract

It is extensively acknowledged that Requirements Engineering (RE) has critical implication for overall success of program and project systems development. This research examines and presents a framework that demonstrates how System Usability can be measured to improve decision-making during RE phases as valuable input to feed-follow-on Systems Engineering (SE) activities throughout system development life cycle stages. This paper discusses research for a systematic approach in developing a decision framework based upon four major requirement specification factors: requirement text quality, complexity, completeness and capacity to identify system usability prior to being delivered into system operations per documented requirement specification. The objective of the research is to identify the utility of the defined stakeholder requirements during the earliest stages of system development to measure system usability prior to investing or allocating significant resources to deliver an end-system that satisfies customer expectations. The decision framework is a convergence of multiple fields of research that include requirements text analysis, quality attributes, problem complexity, and requirements metrics as input for decision analysis to assist researchers and practitioners with delivery of end-systems that meet the stakeholder expectations. The operational specification statements within requirement documentation will be analyzed to measure text quality attributes for metrics. The decision framework bridges the gap amongst the stakeholder and system engineer during RE phases to identify issues on the front of the systems engineering process to develop quality end-systems.