Reuse of Requirements: An Approach with a Generic Requirements Pool

This paper deals with the implementation of a methodology which describes how to reuse given requirements in an industrial company. Nowadays, companies face shorter life-cycles and increased complexity of their products. This puts a challenge to planning and designing departments. Requirements are used to set and communicate goals for new products. For every new product or a variant, there have to be developed requirements which represent both the strategic intentions and the technical feasibility of a new concept. With an increasing rate of new products projects and an increased number of variants or product family members, the amount of requirements gets unmanageable. New functions need to be implemented, some requirements remain unchanged or are more ambitious and some become obsolete. With the increase of product complexity, there is often connected an increase in stakeholders and responsibilities. Therefore, there is a demand in the industry for an approach for how to get the raising amount of requirements manageable. In the case study, we focused on a department in the automotive industry which was responsible for the stability of the electrical power system of a vehicle. We observed several challenges of handling the design process of a battery-electrical car. We took into account organizational aspects of introducing the reusing of requirements. Further, in order to deal with the challenges, we propose a generic requirements list out of which there can be derived specific product specification lists. Additionally, we depict a process model which addresses the essential activities of the requirements engineering and management. Finally, we describe how this process was implemented in the observed department. The proposed approach reduces the time which is needed to achieve a validated specification list and enhances the correctness of the chosen specifications through known description of the planned concept.     «

This paper deals with the implementation of a methodology which describes how to reuse given requirements in an industrial company. Nowadays, companies face shorter life-cycles and increased complexity of their products. This puts a challenge to planning and designing departments. Requirements are used to set and communicate goals for new products. For every new product or a variant, there have to be developed requirements which represent both the strategic intentions and the technical feasibili...     »