Elicitation of Requirements from User Documentation

This paper describes an approach for elicitation of requirements based on existing user documentation. The approach we describe in this paper supports capturing of the information found in user documentation of legacy systems, e.g., user manuals, and the specification of this information in requirements specifications, using, e.g., Use Cases. We propose a conceptual model describing the transition from user documentation to requirements artifacts describing common and variable elements of a product line model or requirements specification. We present heuristics that allow an easy identification of text elements in user documents that are then used to create a significant part of the requirements specification and product line model, respectively.