Requirement Conflict Restructuring

Requirements engineering necessitates the analysis of relationships among the requirements of system stakeholders. Poor analysis of these relationships has led to numerous failures. To improve such analysis, researchers have created models and methods for recording, analyzing, and modifying stakeholder requirements. However, the critical aspect of resolving conflicts among stakeholder requirements remains relatively implicit. Herein, we explicitly define: (1) an ontology for capturing stakeholder requirements, (2) restructuring transformations that generate alternative requirements that remove stakeholder conflicts, and (3) a strategy for guiding the resolution generation process. To validate the utility of our approach, we have applied it to the analysis of a distributed meeting scheduler. We conclude that good quality resolutions and substantial automated support can be had through a transformation approach to removing requirement conflicts.