A case study on rapid systems prototyping and its impact on system evolution

The requirements specification phase of the software lifecycle has been recognized as being critical for the development of large complex software systems. Rapid prototyping techniques can be applied to develop executable models to help eliminate the ambiguity, inconsistency and incompleteness in requirements specifications, which are often the source of errors and inefficiencies in subsequent lifecycle phases. The Requirements Engineering Environment (REE) provides a suite of software tools to rapidly prototype functional and user interface requirements. This paper provides an overview of the REE tools and focuses on how the REE was applied to prototype part of a real-world space debris hazard analysis system. Among the prototype activities discussed include user interface design exercising domain specific analytical models and algorithms and iterative prototype evaluation with customers. Future prototyping work towards further system evolution is addressed