Driving Requirements Evolution by Engineers’ Opinions

Abstract
Requirements are often incomplete or imprecise. Especially when innovation is a pronounced aspect of product development, sufficiently refined requirements can only be obtained by leveraging engineering knowledge gained through the exploration of innovative designs. However, such innovative designs often contradict prevalent requirements and might be deemed incorrect unless requirements evolve. In this paper, we present a method to drive requirements evolution by engineering opinions—early indicators of emergent engineering knowledge. Opinions about the suitability of a new design emerge earlier than hard evidence can be produced, potentially accelerating the evolution of requirements and saving time and costs. In this work, we develop a sound formal framework to inform requirements engineers about the potential need for requirements evolution based on engineering opinions. We formalize engineering opinions in terms of subjective logic and unify them with key concepts of model-driven engineering.