A Case Study on Evaluating the Relevance of Some Rules for Writing Requirements through an Online Survey

Maxime Warnier (1, 2) , Anne Condamines (2)

1 CNES - Centre National d’Études Spatiales [Paris]
2 CLLE-ERSS - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie

As part of a research project that aims at proposing a new methodology for defining a series of rules for writing good requirements – often referred to as a Controlled Natural Language (CNL) – for the French Space Agency (CNES, Centre National d'Études Spatiales), we asked both experienced engineers and non-experts to fill in an online questionnaire in order to gather their perception about requirements written according to recommendations commonly found in CNLs, and to compare them with seemingly more natural and less restrictive formulations. The examples we used for this case study were adapted from genuine requirements in French, extracted from several specifications of a recent space project. Our main goal is to evaluate whether (and to what extent) the writing rules we considered may be relevant for the engineers at CNES. In particular, we try to identify cases where the experts' opinions differ from the recommended use and where these rules could thus probably be adapted.

Mots clés: requirements; technical writing; controlled language; evaluation; survey

Domaines: Linguistique

Maxime Warnier, Anne Condamines. A Case Study on Evaluating the Relevance of Some Rules for Writing Requirements through an Online Survey. 25th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, Sep 2017, Lisbonne, Portugal. ⟨hal-01543005⟩