REQAnalytics: A Recommender System for Requirements Maintenance

Abstract

In the context of SaaS, where the change requests can be frequent, there is the need for a systematic requirements management process so as to maintain requirements updated and ease the management of changes required to improve the service to provide. Changes to perform need to be prioritized and their impact on the system should be assessed. The extraction and analysis of the use of the services provided through the web and their relationship to the requirements can help identify improvements and help keep the service useful for longer period of time. This paper presents REQAnalytics, a recommender system that collects information on the usage of a web service, relates that information back to the requirements, and generates reports with recommendations and change suggestions that can increase the quality of that service. The proposed approach aims to provide reports of the analysis made in a language closer to the business where, for example, it indicates new workflows and navigation paths, identifies the features that can be removed and presents the relationship between requirements and the proposed changes helping to maintain the software requirements specification updated and useful.