Requirements Discovery during the Testing of Safety-Critical Software

	This Article
	Subscribers, please Login Purchase article: $19 PDF IEEE Xplore Subscribers RSS feed
	Share
	Email this Article to a friend
	Bibliographic References
	ASCII Text BibTex RefWorks Procite/RefMan
	Add to:
	Digg Furl Spurl Blink Simpy Google Del.icio.us Y!MyWeb
	Search
	Similar Articles Articles by Robyn R. Lutz Articles by In?s Carmen Mikulski

25th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'03)

Portland, Oregon

May 03-May 10

ISBN: 0-7695-1877-X

	ASCII Text	x
	Robyn R. Lutz, In?s Carmen Mikulski, "Requirements Discovery during the Testing of Safety-Critical Software," Software Engineering, International Conference on, pp. 578, 25th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'03), 2003.

	BibTex	x
	@article{ 10.1109/ICSE.2003.1201240, author = {Robyn R. Lutz and In?s Carmen Mikulski}, title = {Requirements Discovery during the Testing of Safety-Critical Software}, journal ={Software Engineering, International Conference on}, volume = {0}, year = {2003}, issn = {0270-5257}, pages = {578}, doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ICSE.2003.1201240}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA}, }

	RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote	x
	TY - CONF JO - Software Engineering, International Conference on TI - Requirements Discovery during the Testing of Safety-Critical Software SN - 0270-5257 SP EP A1 - Robyn R. Lutz, A1 - In?s Carmen Mikulski, PY - 2003 KW - null VL - 0 JA - Software Engineering, International Conference on ER -

Robyn R. Lutz, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Iowa State University

In?s Carmen Mikulski, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ICSE.2003.1201240

This paper describes the role of requirements discovery during the testing of a safety-critical software system. Analysis of problem reports generated by the integration and system testing of an embedded, safety-critical software system identified four common mechanisms for requirements discovery and resolution during testing: (1) Incomplete requirements, resolved by changes to the software, (2) Unexpected requirements interactions, resolved by changes to the operational procedures, (3) Requirements confusion by the testers, resolved by changes to the documentation, and (4) Requirements confusion by the testers, resolved by a determination that no change was needed. The experience reported here confirms that requirements discovery during testing is frequently due to communication difficulties and subtle interface issues. The results also suggest that "false positive" problem reports from testing (in which the software behaves correctly but unexpectedly) provide a rich source of requirements information that can be used to reduce operational anomalies in critical systems.

Citation:

Robyn R. Lutz, In?s Carmen Mikulski, "Requirements Discovery during the Testing of Safety-Critical Software," icse, pp.578, 25th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'03), 2003

Peer Review Notice | Give Us Feedback

Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use.