Interdisciplinary Requirement Engineering for Hardware and Software Development : from a Hardware Development Perspective

Abstract: Complexity in products is increasing, and still there is lack of a shared design language ininterdisciplinary development projects. The research questions of the thesis concern differencesand similarities in requirement handling, and integration, current and future. Futureintegration is given more focus with a pair of research questions highlighting obstacles andenablers for increased integration. Interviews were performed at four different companieswith complex development environments whose products originated from different fields;hardware, software, and service. Main conclusions of the thesis are: Time-frames in different development processes are very different and hard to unite. Internal standards exist for overall processes, documentation, and modification handling. Traceability is poorly covered in theory whilst being a big issue in companies. Companies understand that balancing and compromising of requirements is critical fora successful final product. The view on future increased interdisciplinary development is that there are more obstaclesto overcome than enablers supporting it. Dependency is seen as an obstacle inthis regard and certain companies strive to decrease it.The thesis has resulted in general conclusions and further studies is suggested into morespecific areas such as requirement handling tools, requirement types, and traceability.