Separating concerns in requirements analysis: an example

  • Authors:
  • Daniel Jackson;Michael Jackson

  • Affiliations:
  • Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;Independent Consultant, London, England

  • Venue:
  • Rigorous Development of Complex Fault-Tolerant Systems
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Often, a requirements document is structured as a long list of individual ”requirements”, each describing an anticipated function or user interaction. An alternative approach is to identify a collection of subproblems, each representing an aspect of the larger problem, and to describe each subproblem in isolation, deferring their composition to a later stage. This paper illustrates the approach by applying it to the requirements of the positioning functions of a proton therapy installation. It explains how a flaw in the design of the system can be isolated to a single subproblem, which can be formalized and subjected to automatic analysis.