RGML: A Specification Language that Supports the Characterization of Requirements Generation Processes

Abstract

Despite advancements in requirements generation models, methods and tools, low quality requirements are still being produced. One potential avenue for addressing this problem is to provide the requirements engineer with an interactive environment that leads (or guides) him/her through a structured set of integrated activities that foster "good" quality requirements. While that is our ultimate goal, a necessary first step in developing such an environment is to create a formal specification mechanism for characterizing the structure, process flow and activities inherent to the requirements generation process. In turn, such specifications can serve as a basis for developing an interactive environment supporting requirements engineering.

Reflecting the above need, we have developed a markup language, the Requirements Generation Markup Language (RGML), which can be used to characterize a requirements generation process. The RGML can describe process structure, flow of control, and individual activities. Within activities, the RGML supports the characterization of application instantiation, the use of templates and the production of artifacts. The RGML can also describe temporal control within a process as well as conditional expressions that control if and when various activity scenarios will be executed. The language is expressively powerful, yet flexible in its characterization capabilities, and thereby, provides the capability to describe a wide spectrum of different requirements generation processes.