Requirements Analysis of Variability Constraints in a Configurable Flight Software System
Variability constraints are an integral part of the requirements for a configurable system. The constraints specified in the requirements on the legal combinations of options define the space of potential valid configurations for the system-to-be. This paper reports on our experience with the variability-related requirements constraints of a flight software framework used by multiple space missions. A challenge that we saw for practitioners using the current framework, now open-sourced, is that the specifications of its variability-related requirements and constraints are dispersed across several documents, rather than being centralized in the software requirements specification. Such dispersion can contribute to misunderstandings of the side-effects of design choices, increased effort for developers, and bugs during operations. Based on our experience, we propose a new software variability model, similar to a product-line feature model, in the flight software framework. We describe the structured technique by which our model is developed, demonstrate its use, and evaluate it on a key service module of the flight software. Results show that our lightweight modeling technique helped find missing and inconsistent variability-related requirements and constraints. More generally, we suggest that a variability modeling technique such as this can be an efficient way for developers to centralize the specification and improve the analysis of dispersed variability-related requirements and constraints in other configurable systems.
Wed 6 SepDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
10:45 - 12:15 | Formal RequirementsJournal-First / Industrial Innovation Papers / RE@Next! Papers at f142 Chair(s): Paola Spoletini Kennesaw State University | ||
10:45 30mPaper | Requirements Analysis of Variability Constraints in a Configurable Flight Software System Industrial Innovation Papers Pre-print | ||
11:15 30mTalk | The Role of Formalism in System Requirements Journal-First Link to publication DOI | ||
11:45 30mResearch paper | Understanding Fairness Requirements for ML-based Software RE@Next! Papers A: Luciano Baresi Politecnico di Milano, A: Chiara Criscuolo Politecnico di Milano, A: Carlo Ghezzi Politecnico di Milano File Attached |