Expressing Customer Requirements Using Natural Language Requirements Templates and Patterns

Abstract

Expressing customer requirements so they can be understood not only by requirements engineers but also by noncomputer professional customers is not an easy task. Natural language is frequently the usual choice for expressing customer requirements in spite of its well–known problems, but using more formal notations too early is a risky choice that can make requirements impossible to understand for customers and users. In addition, using natural language do not guarantee understanding. Requirements engineers do not usually have good writing skills, and sometimes requirements expressed in natural language are not understood because of the poor way they are written. In this paper, we propose to use requirements templates and patterns to improve requirements expression. We have identified two types of requirements patterns: linguistic patterns, which are very used, well– understood, sentences in natural language requirements descriptions that can be parameterized and integrated into templates, and requirements patterns, which are generic requirements templates that are found very often during the requirements elicitation process and that can be reused with some adaptation.