Systematic requirements recycling through abstraction and traceability

Ad-hoc recycling between requirements documents of product variants is a major source of requirements defects. We present an approach for systematic requirements recycling based on a combination of abstraction (in terms of a template) and traceability (between requirements). The main features of our approach are the use of conceptual models to determine relationships necessary for correct recycling and the focus on minimizing link selling. This approach can also be used to develop abstraction and traceability guidelines tailored to other application domains and traceability goals, such as change or project management.