Visual requirements analytics: a framework and case study

Abstract

For many software projects, keeping requirements on track needs an effective and efficient path from data to decision. Visual analytics creates such a path that enables the human to extract insights by interacting with the relevant information. While various requirements visualization techniques exist, few have produced end-to-end value to practitioners. In this paper, we advance the literature on visual requirements analytics by characterizing its key components and relationships in a framework. We follow the goal---question---metric paradigm to define the framework by teasing out five conceptual goals (user, data, model, visualization, and knowledge), their specific operationalizations, and their interconnections. The framework allows us to not only assess existing approaches, but also create tool enhancements in a principled manner. We evaluate our enhanced tool support through a case study where massive, heterogeneous, and dynamic requirements are processed, visualized, and analyzed. Working together with practitioners on a contemporary software project within its real-life context leads to the main finding that visual analytics can help tackle both open-ended visual exploration tasks and well-structured visual exploitation tasks in requirements engineering. In addition, the study helps the practitioners to reach actionable decisions in a wide range of areas relating to their project, ranging from theme and outlier identification, over requirements tracing, to risk assessment. Overall, our work illuminates how the data-to-decision analytical capabilities could be improved by the increased interactivity of requirements visualization.