An intelligent assistant for requirements validation

The process of determining user requirements for software systems is often plagued with uncertainty, ambiguity, and inconsistency. Rapid prototyping offers an iterative approach to requirements engineering that can be used to alleviate some of the problems with communication and understanding. Since the systems development process is characterized by changing requirements and assumptions, involving multiple stakeholders with often differing viewpoints, it is beneficial to capture the justifications for the decisions in the development process in a structured manner. Thisdesign rationale captured during requirements engineering can be used in conjunction with the rapid prototyping process to support various stakeholders involved in systems development. CAPS (the Computer Aided Prototyping System) has been built to help software engineers rapidly construct prototypes of proposed software systems. REMAP (Representation and MAintenance of Process knowledge) provides a conceptual model and mechanisms to represent and reason with (design) rationale knowledge. In this paper, we describe how in the context of evolving requirements, the CAPS system augmented with REMAP helps firm up software requirements through iterative negotiations via examination of executable prototypes and reasoning with design rationale knowledge.