Venue & metadata

• Journal/Proceedings: Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
• Volume: 309
• Pages: 561 – 571
• Note: Cited by: 1
• Author keywords: Behavior-driven development; ERTMS/ETCS L3; Natural language processing; Requirement engineering

Abstract

A proper requirement definition phase is of a paramount importance in software engineering. It is the first and prime mean to realize efficient and reliable systems. System requirements are usually formulated and expressed in natural language, given its universality and ease of communication and writing. Unfortunately, natural language can be a source of ambiguity, complexity and omissions, which may cause system failures. Among the different approaches proposed by the software engineering community, Behavioural-Driven Development (BDD) is affirming as a valid, practical method to structure effective and non-ambiguous requirement specifications. The paper tackles with the problem of measuring requirements in BDD by assessing some traditional Natural Language Processing-related metrics with respect to a sample excerpt of requirement specification rewritten according to the BDD criteria. This preliminary assessment is made on the ERTMS-ETCS Level 3 case study whose specification, up to this date, is not managed by a standardisation body. The paper demonstrates the necessity of novel metrics able to cope with the BDD specification paradigms. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Keywords

Boolean functions GS Natural language processing systems GS Requirements engineering GS Software engineering GS Systems engineering GS Behavior-driven development GS Case-studies GS Definition phase GS ERTMS/ETCS l3 GS Language processing GS Natural language processing GS Natural languages GS Requirement definitions GS Requirement engineering GS Requirements specifications GS Specifications GS

Links & artifacts

DOI Publisher Copy BibTeX Download .bib

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Suggested citation

Campanile, L., Biase, M. S. de, Marrone, S., Raimondo, M., & Verde, L. (2022). On the Evaluation of BDD Requirements with Text-based Metrics: The ETCS-L3 Case Study [Conference paper]. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 309, 561–571. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3444-5_48