Requirements Engineering Tool Evaluation Approach

Abstract

Requirements engineering (RE) is a complex activity, potentially involving stakeholders participating in the elicitation, documentation, validation and management of system requirements. For such a complex activity, powerful tool support is clearly useful [10, 12]; however, the mainstream of RE practice relies on office and modelling tools rather than targeted RE-tools (e.g. DOORS, CaliberRM, and RequisitePro). Reasons for not using the RE-tools include financial causes, like high RE-tool price and low return on investment. Hofmann and Lehner [8]stress that a lack of well-defined RE process and a lack of team training in the selected tools cause the insufficient RE support. An infrastructure must be set for tool acquisition, and a company must be willing to invest in putting such an infrastructure [2]. However, the management of such companies usually has the unrealistic expectations, e.g., immediate pay-off.