Extending telecommunications systems: the feature-interaction problem

A number of characteristics distinguish telecommunications systems from other computer systems. The authors first describe the overall function of telecommunications and then detail the more difficult characteristics that contribute to the feature-interaction problem. Many features are simple, and detecting interactions between a particular pair of them can be easy. The problem becomes difficult when rapid addition of many new features must be expedited. To determine what issues to address, the stages of adding a new feature are examined.<>