Tailoring a COTS group support system for software requirements inspection

Abstract

The inspection of early life-cycle artfacts such as requirements documents promises great benejts. However, research demonstrates that the inspection process is complex and expensive and that tool support would be highly desirable. Existing inspection tools focus largely on the inspection of source code. We have therefore devised groupware support for inspecting requirements. Based on our experience with adopting a Group Support System (GSS) for requirements negotiation we decided to tailor this commercial GSS to support inspection of requirements. This paper discusses our concept of a Groupwaresupported Requirements Inspection Process (GRIP) andshows that tailoring a COTS GSS works well to automate this process.

A Framework for Supporting the Software Architecture Evaluation Process in Global Software Development

“…Studies have also indicated that computer tools may improve inspections [39]. Groupware-supported inspection processes have been successfully evaluated as a promising way to minimise meeting costs, maximise asynchronous work and conserve a number of precious organisational resources [18,23]. Moreover, it has also been shown that the software inspection process can be improved with group process support [42].…”

An empirical study on groupware support for software inspection meetings

“…In the inspection meeting they rely on decision support tools to agree on collated annotations. Figure 1: The GRIP framework [15].…”

“…In our research on software inspections to date we have been pursuing the following objectives: (1) Development of collaborative tools and techniques covering the entire inspection process [15]; (2) Integration of technical inspection aspects with management activities such as planning, monitoring, or process analysis [12]; (3) Empirical studies to validate the usefulness, effectiveness, and efficiency of our approach [14]; and (4) the improvement of inspection support for informal requirements [13]. Figure 1 shows the GRIP framework which has been guiding our research and covers the complete inspection life-cycle.…”

“…A detailed description of the tailoring process is given in [15]. Three tutorials were prepared to teach the inspection process and the tool to participants: 1) a UML tutorial to ensure the proper understanding of the notations used in the requirements document, 2) a tutorial to teach the checklist-based reading technique, and 3) a tutorial explaining the use of the groupware tool.…”

“…We have been addressing these issues in our previous research on GRIP (GRoupware Supported Inspection Process) [15]. GRIP provides a framework and collaborative tools for an inspection team.…”