Understanding and Modelling Behavioural Requirements: an Exploratory Study

Abstract: Clear understanding of system requirements is necessary to achieve quality in the architectural design and in the development process of a software system. Several studies focus on the comprehensibility of graphical modelling languages. Contributions to other areas in Software Engineering use empirical investigation to explore how individuals approach collaborative learning tasks in different phases of software development. This paper describes an exploratory case study we conducted with 10 undergraduate students to investigate how subjects approach modelling of system requirements. We used the method of constructive interaction to identify the most common difficulties and to explore whether different requirements specification formats affect the approach of the subjects. We observed that the most common difficulties were related to misuse of UML syntax elements. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the approach of the subjects is affected by the completeness of the requirements specification they use.