Sharing and Reuse of Requirements Knowledge

Abstract

Communication problems, and misunderstandings resulting from them, limit, the effectiveness of knowledge-based requirements analysis tools. An automated assistant may have a different model of the system being described than the analyst using the automated assistant. Likewise, in team efforts, differences in each analyst's model can lead to misunderstandings and ultimately to erroneous requirements specifications. Folders and workspeces are knowledge base organization techniques to alleviate these problems. Within folders, extended notions of specialization hierarchies and higher-order properties of concepts relate divergent concept models to each other. These mechanisms provide a structure for supporting navigation, and controlling tlie scope of requirements evolution and of mechanical inference.