Generating requirements from systems models using patterns: a case study

Academic research has produced many model-based specification and analysis techniques, however, most organisations continue to document requirements as textual statements. To help bridge this gap between academic research and requirements practice, this paper reports an extension to the RESCUE process in which patterns for generating requirements statements from i* system models were manually applied to i* models developed for a complex air traffic control system. The paper reports the results of this application and describes them with examples, the benefits of the approach to the project, and ongoing research to implement these patterns in the REDEPEND modelling tool to make requirements engineers more productive. We review similar work on requirements modelling and expression, and compare our work to it to demonstrate the proposed advance in the state of the art. Finally the paper discusses future uses of requirements generation from model patterns in RESCUE.