Author: Maximilian Junker

Systems Engineering

We observe that numerous cyber-physical systems are rapidly gaining functionality and thus development gets more and more complex. Innovations are made possible in many areas by a complex interaction of sensor systems and software. Consider the development of autonomous driving, in which a multitude of different system functions must interact safely with one another in order to make complex decisions with the highest quality in order to transport people safely. In order to master the complexity, the classical, document-centered approaches of system engineering are no longer sufficient and are increasingly being replaced by model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approaches. The SPES modeling framework provides a comprehensive, tool- and modeling language-independent method for MBSE. It offers a whole range of concrete models, modeling techniques and activities. In this blog post, I will introduce you gently to SPES. I will explain the basic principles of SPES and give some pointers where to find more.

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Specmate Test Design Test Engineering

In this blog post  I am going to introduce Specmate, the result of a research project I have been involved into. It is an open-source tool to automate test-design, among others. This is the first post of a series in which I am going to show you some of the ideas behind Specmate.

What is test-design and why does it matter?

Test-Design is the activity to come up with the right test-cases for a piece of functionality. But what are the right test-cases? There are many criteria, depending on your focus. For me, there are two main points:
  • First, they should test the right content. That means, they relate to the requirements for this functionality and cover every aspect that the requirements talk about. They should hence be able to find faults: deviations of the implementation with respect to the specification.
  • Second, they should be feasible. That means, it should be possible to execute the test-cases without wasting resources.
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Requirements Engineering Requirements Quality Scout

When we look at requirements documents that are new to us, we often need some help on terms and abbreviations. Creating a glossary to explain these imporant domain terms and abbreviations is a fine idea. It helps new team members to get going, improves the readability of a requirements specification and helps to avoid misunderstandings. The main problem with glossaries is that we create them once and update them only rarely. In consequence, the majority of glossaries are not particulary useful. In this article, Qualicen consultant Maximilian Junker shows how you can get more out of your glossary and keep it always up-to-date.

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Requirements Quality     

Several roles are concerned with requirements quality. Of course, there is the  requirements author, writing the requirements. But there is also the reviewer, who proof-reads and validates the requirements. And finally, there is the QA-Engineer, responsible for the overall quality of all artifacts created during the engineering process. Each of these roles needs a different view on requirements and different tools  in order to do their work efficiently and achieve a high requirements quality. In this article I am going to show you how the Qualicen products specifically support authors, reviewers and QA-engineers in their work to keep requirements quality high.

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Requirements Quality

Why use Word for Requirements Documentation?

... you might ask. Usually, I strongly encourage our customers to use suitable tools for managing their requirements. There are plenty of reasons why I recommend using professional tools for requirements management, but an important reason is to ensure requirements traceability. For example, of the six sources of RE project failures identified by Michelle Boucher, at least three have to do with traceability. While we do recommend other tools, Word is available in most companies, documents are easy to exchange, the review mode is pretty good and sometimes using other tools is simply not an option for different reasons. Hence, many people do use Word to create requirements documents. My own experience in using Word for authoring a requirements document is that it seems to work well in the beginning, but as soon as already documented requirements begin to change things start to get nasty. Especially if there is not just one requirements document, but several.
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