Patterns in Software Requirements Reuse

Requirements reuse is an emerging field of software engineering research. This article introduces its fundamental concepts. It begins with a brief review of the selected approaches to reusing software requirements. Then, the article builds a reuse framework for the requirements engineering process. Subsequently, it evaluates various methods and techniques that can be used to assist the process of requirements reuse. In our analysis, we look at the way requirements documents are created, manipulated and used across the entire cycle of requirements engineering. We consider activities preceding formulation of software requirements, such as elaboration of needs and objectives in the software project. We include requirements acquisition, specification and modelling. Generation and evaluation of alternative interpretations of requirements is also taken into consideration. Finally we review the tasks associated with the verification and validation of requirements specifications. In the process we describe reuse of enterprise and domain information, reuse of information sources, raw and formalised requirements, reuse of document structure, text and annotations, reuse of various requirements engineering byproducts, and finally, reuse of techniques and processes associated with the management of software requirements.