Classification of defect types in requirements specifications: Literature review, proposal and assessment

Requirements defects have a major impact throughout the whole software lifecycle. Having a specific defects classification for requirements is important to analyse the root causes of problems, build checklists that support requirements reviews and to reduce risks associated with requirements problems. In our research we analyse several defects classifiers; select the ones applicable to requirements specifications, following rules to build defects taxonomies; and assess the classification validity in an experiment of requirements defects classification performed by graduate and undergraduate students. Not all subjects used the same type of defect to classify the same defect, which suggests that defects classification is not consensual. Considering our results we give recommendations to industry and other researchers on the design of classification schemes and treatment of classification results.