Developing requirements in an established domain using tags and metadata

Requirements for new aerospace applications, such as missile or satellite control systems, draw heavily from similar, previously built systems. Both requirements and varied architectural artifacts from prior systems may be consulted. The application domain is quite complex, so “reuse” brings clear advantages. Unfortunately numerous problems are apparent too. For example, while prior artifacts are potentially rich in information, if they are of low quality they may hinder development of high quality requirements for new systems. The Co-Evolvable Traceable Requirements and Architecture Network (COTRAN) technique presented here addresses the challenge of productively using information from prior systems while targeting development of properly scoped, testable requirements. The technique centers on iteratively building a requirements matrix characterizing the application and tagging artifacts based upon the metadata found in the matrix. This enables information to be correlated across artifacts and used consistently. Using the requirements matrix, contextual information about the system provides the basis for capturing clear requirements.