Bringing objectivity to requirements – Using property networks for a more complete requirement acquisition

The acquisition of requirements is a crucial phase during the product development process. The created list of requirements determines costs, necessary time and iterative steps needed during the product creation. However the level of standardization during the acquisition of requirements is very low due to the vastly different circumstances in every project. This paper elaborates a new systematic approach to acquire a more complete list of requirements based on the use of objective requirement clusters. The use of property networks as basis for the clustering of requirements allows to define clusters in a standardized and highly automated manner. By improving the standardization during the requirement acquisition the amount of unnoticed implicit requirements can be reduced, and incomplete or incorrect requirements can be prevented.