DIM - A systematic and lightweight method for identifying dependencies between requirements

Sammanfattning: Dependencies between requirements are a crucial factor for any software development since they impact many project areas. Nevertheless, their identification remains a challenge. Some methods have been proposed but none of them are really applicable to real projects due to their high cost or low accuracy. DIM is a lightweight method for identifying dependencies proposed on a previous paper. This paper presents an experiment comparing the sets of dependencies found by DIM and a method based on pair-wise comparison. The experiment was executed using a requirement specification for an open source project. These requirements were extracted by reverse engineering. Our results have provided evidence confirming that DIM finds more dependencies and its results (the dependencies identified) do not depend on the profile of the practitioner applying it. Another important result is that DIM requires fewer resources when applied, since it does not rely on pair-wise comparisons and it can be easily automated.