A Requirements Specification Method: An Experience Report in Aerospace

Abstract

Context: Aerospace projects need well-written requirement documents. However, it is challenging to transform an abstract thought that has insufficiently detailed specifications into a requirement. Tracking the evolution of abstract thoughts and writing a requirements document during the product life cycle is complicated without a specific requirement tool; for the most part, the available requirement tools would be expensive. Objective: Apply a methodology in a real aerospace project to overcome the expensive requirements of engineering tools; this study relates a practical experience to creating a methodology to generate and track the requirements using Excel. However, due to the confidential information, some characteristics of the project must be omitted. Method: The method consists of taking the standard 29148 as a reference and using Excel formulas to semi-automate the requirements writing by raising flags to aid the requirements engineer by suggesting possible mistakes. Moreover, the hyperlink function is used to track and combine the requirement ID with the text document related to the requirement. Results: From unstructured requirements writing, where the linguistic construction used violates, for example, the ISO/IEC/IEEE-29148. A requirements document was created to track the aerospace project needs and to respect the characteristics of a well-written requirement. Conclusions: For the most part, this practical approach contributes to the implementation of requirements mentality without expending capital on expensive requirements engineering tools. Furthermore, it reduces technical requirements debt.