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Requirement error abstraction and classification: an empirical study

Published: 21 September 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Software quality and reliability is a primary concern for successful development organizations. Monitoring and controlling quality by helping developers detect as many faults as possible is a subjective and intricate approach. Due to the inherent difficulties and limitations, additional methods are required to obtain a more complete solution to the software quality problem. This paper analyzes the software quality problem from a different perspective involving a step back from faults to focus on the fundamental causes of faults. The first step in this direction is the application of the Error Abstraction Process (EAP) to the requirements phase of the software lifecycle to develop a Requirement Error Taxonomy (RET). This paper presents an empirical study on the application of the EAP and RET to requirement documents in a controlled classroom setting. The results show that the EAP significantly improves the productivity of subjects, that the RET is useful for improving software quality, that it provides useful insights into the requirements document, and that various context variables also impact the results. These results are promising and are important to motivate further investigation, to refine the RET, and to derive more formalized tools and methods for assisting developers. The result of this investigation will be a sound verification process for requirements phase.

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Cited By

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  • (2016)Detection of Requirement Errors and Faults via a Human Error TaxonomyProceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement10.1145/2961111.2962596(1-10)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2016
  • (2016)Using a Cognitive Psychology Perspective on Errors to Improve Requirements Quality: An Empirical Investigation2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)10.1109/ISSRE.2016.41(65-76)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2015)Classification Framework for Analysis and Modeling of Physically Induced Reliability ViolationsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/267827647:3(1-33)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2015
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ISESE '06: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM/IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering
    September 2006
    388 pages
    ISBN:1595932186
    DOI:10.1145/1159733
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 21 September 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. empirical study
    2. error
    3. error abstraction
    4. inspection
    5. root cause analysis

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    View all
    • (2016)Detection of Requirement Errors and Faults via a Human Error TaxonomyProceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement10.1145/2961111.2962596(1-10)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2016
    • (2016)Using a Cognitive Psychology Perspective on Errors to Improve Requirements Quality: An Empirical Investigation2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)10.1109/ISSRE.2016.41(65-76)Online publication date: Oct-2016
    • (2015)Classification Framework for Analysis and Modeling of Physically Induced Reliability ViolationsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/267827647:3(1-33)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2015
    • (2013)Using error abstraction and classification to improve requirement qualityEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-012-9202-318:4(625-658)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2013
    • (2010)Evaluating the Use of Requirement Error Abstraction and Classification Method for Preventing Errors during Artifact CreationProceedings of the 2010 IEEE 21st International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering10.1109/ISSRE.2010.41(81-90)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2010
    • (2010)A checklist for integrating student empirical studies with research and teaching goalsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-009-9109-915:1(35-59)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2010
    • (2009)A systematic literature review to identify and classify software requirement errorsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2009.01.00451:7(1087-1109)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2009
    • (2008)Evaluation of capture-recapture models for estimating the abundance of naturally-occurring defectsProceedings of the Second ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement10.1145/1414004.1414031(158-167)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2008
    • (2007)Requirement Error Abstraction and ClassificationProceedings of the The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability10.1109/ISSRE.2007.14(71-80)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2007
    • (2007)An Approach to Global Sensitivity AnalysisProceedings of the First International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement10.1109/ESEM.2007.15(440-442)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2007

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