SaaS usage information for requirements maintenance

Abstract

The incorrect requirements elicitation, requirements changes and evolution during the project lifetime are the main causes pointed out for the failure of software projects. The requirements in the context of Software as a Service are in constant change and evolution which makes even more critical the attention given to Requirements Engineering (RE). The dynamic context evolution due to new stakeholders needs brings additional challenges to the RE such as the need to review the prioritization of requirements and manage their changes related to their baseline. It is important to apply methodologies and techniques for requirements change management to allow a flexible development of SaaS and to ensure their timely adaptation to change. However, the existing techniques and solutions can take a long time to be implemented so that they become ineffective. In this work, a new methodology to manage functional requirements is proposed. This new methodology is based on collecting and analysis of information about the usage of the service to extract pages visited, execution traces and functionalities more used. The analysis performed will allow review the existing requirements, propose recommendations based on quality concerns and improve service usability with the ultimate goal of increasing the software lifetime. Copyright © 2014 SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications.