How Requirements Specification Quality Depends on Tools: A Case Study

Requirements specification is a complex activity, where the automated support by the requirements engineering (RE) tools plays an important role. However, the surveys report that the mainstream practice relies on office and modelling tools rather than the targeted RE-tools. This work performs a case study, where two requirements specification processes are analyzed. In order to prepare a requirements document, standard office and modelling tools are used in the first case. In the second case, requirements specification is executed by the means of the RE-tools. Finally, the quality of both requirements documents is compared and evaluated by their qualitative properties. The results indicate that the targeted RE-tools provide better support for the RE process than the standard office and modelling facilities. The requirements document prepared using the targeted RE-tools, is substantially of better quality. The work findings suggest the RE-tool features which could be improved for the qualitative automated support of the RE process.