This presentation shows the Airbus success case, and how the Requirements Quality Suite helped this company to enhance the quality of their requirements specifications in huge projects dealing with commercial airplanes, satellites and missiles.

1. Requirements Quality Management
at the Airbus Group
Jean Claude Roussel:
Airbus Group
Jose Fuentes:
The REUSE Company
www.reusecompany.com

2. 2 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
AIRBUS GROUP AT A GLANCE

3. 3 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
WHY AIRBUS PROMOTES RE?
Source: INCOSE Handbook
Time
Cumulativepercentage
LifecylceCost
Operations
through
Disposal
100%
Production
and test
50%
8%
Design
15% 20%
Concept
Commited Costs
3-6x
500-1000x
20-100x
Development

4. 4 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
WHY AIRBUS PROMOTES RE?
50%
29%
21%
30%
52%
18%
20%
22%
58%
Requirements Engineering Capability
ProjectPerformances
Correlation between Project Performances and
Requirement Engineering Capability
Source : Report on SE Effectiveness Survey NDIA-IEEE-SEI/CMU-INCOSE Nov 2012

5. 5 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
 70% of defects are introduced during requirements phases
 It is important to write effective Requirements
 Experiences show that about 25% of system Requirements are critical
and can be improved (re-written)
 No Shall: 8 to 10%
 Forbidden words: 10 to 15%
 Subject, multiple objects, design: 15%
 Incorrect grammar: 50%, …
 Requirements error costs are high
 Fixing requirements after delivery may cost up to 100 times the one for fixing a
requirement error
 Training, best practices and verifying requirements by reviews can help to
get complete and consistent requirements:
 But the process is costly and time consuming
THE PROBLEM

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 Increase and improve the requirements quality control process to produce
better (Correct – Consistent – Complete) requirements Specifications
 Reduce the number of iterations of the internal review processes
 Reduce the number of iterations between System Engineers and sub-
contractors and improve the verification activities
 Promote requirements quality management during authoring (before control
activities)
 Produce CCC requirements “right the first time”
THE GOAL

7. 7 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
A FIRST ANSWER:
Requirements Quality Analyzer (RQA)Tool
 Delivered byTRC (The Reuse Company)
– Completely linked with IBM DOORS RMS
– Focusing on Syntactic analysis and Semantic analysis
 Tool evaluation
– Airbus Group Innovations
– Airbus Defense and Space
 Close cooperation withTool vendor in order to improve the tool
 Tool deployment
– Airbus (Commercial Aircraft)
 A320neo Cabin Flex,A330neo
– Airbus Defense and Space
 Satellites,ARIANE 6 and M51 (English and French version)

8. 8 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
AIRBUS DEPLOYMENT SCENARIO:
Provide End Users (requirements authors) with the capability
to improve their requirements quality.
 Context :
• A320neo: around 250 users (100 Requirements Modules)
 Constraints:
• No additional trainings for end users
 Request:
• All information available in IBM DOORS environment
 Our retained solution:
• Tool used in batch mode, on weekly basis for instance
• Results of analysis available in DOORS modules thanks to specific views and a detailed
report available outside DOORS
Our next expectation:
• Real time analysis of the Requirements quality in DOORS environment
• Real time support to elicit a requirement

9. 9 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
PROS & CONS
of Requirements Quality Analysis
 RQAV14.1
 Good tool (Airbus feedback) but quite complex to use and parameterize
 Process Approach
 Improve Tools integration with existing ones
 Simplify complex loop (writing  checking : traceability & quality  updating)
 Needs for future
 Switch from a posteriori quality analysis to instant checking (RAT)
 Implement on-the-fly process allowing requirements capture & checking, to be performed
simultaneously
 Assume tools evolution, tools integration
 Imply teams adherence and specially the quality teams  Not so easy!
 Define standard requirements patterns per domain to be used as statement based templates by
the writer to compose his/her system requirements (patterns/boilerplates)

10. 10 May 28, 2015© Airbus Group and The REUSE Company
V4 Control V15 Authoring V16 Global Quality
NEXT STEP: From Analysis to Authoring
RQA
V4
RQS
V15
xQS
V16
Semantics
CCC +
Authoring
Syntactic +
Semantic
Check
Full Quality
control and
Reuse

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NEXT STEP:
From Requirements Analysis to Requirements Authoring
Requirements Quality Control:
Huge review effort for quality verification
My tailor is rich
I should need RAT
Requirements Writing:
Working with requirements inside DOORS
 Share quality responsibility between Quality Control and Development
 Allow a «Right the first time» principle
 Whatever is produced, it has the best quality since the beginning
 Guide Requirements authors to write CCC requirements on the fly
 Suggest Requirements structure, subjects, errors or quality measurements

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REQUIREMENTS AUTHORING
So far RQAV4 was a verification tool:
– Checking the quality of individual requirements once they are written
– Based on +25 metrics
– Checking the consistency of the overall specification
RQA has evolved towards the Requirements Quality Suite (RQS) inV15
– Supports the CCC approach (Correctness, Consistency and Completeness)
– V15 is mainly focused on “authoring”
– RQS suite: Includes RQA, Requirements Authoring Tool (RAT) and KM
RAT:“The SMARTer* way to create requirements”:
An assistant to Engineers during the authoring process
Including a wide set of customizable boilerplates
Helping Engineers during authoring with an intellisense system
* SMART stands for Specific, Measurable,Attainable, Realisable,Traceable
12

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Requirements Quality Control:
Huge review effort for quality verification
Requirements Quality Assurance:
Authoring “right the first time” on top of DOORS
My tailor is rich
I should need RAT
Requirements Writing:
Working with requirements inside DOORS
Requirements Quality Control:
Smaller review effort for quality verification
REQUIREMENTS AUTHORING

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The Requirements Quality Suite (RQS)
The Requirements Quality Suite (RQS) intends to tackle requirements quality management by
offering a set of tools and processes
Automatic measurement of requirements quality metric
Support to Requirements Authoring
RQS models requirements quality metrics using the CCC approach (Correctness, Consistency
and Completeness)
Requirements Quality Analyzer (RQA):
to setup, check and manage the quality of a
requirements specification
Requirement AuthoringTool (RAT):
to assist authors while they are creating or
editing requirements
knowledgeMANAGER:
to manage knowledge around a requirements
specification: the ontology it is based on, the
structure of the requirements to be used in the
project, the communication between authors and
domain architects

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The Requirements Quality Suite
RQA – Requirements Quality Analyzer:
Configures RQS with the quality policies and checklist of your organization
Checks the correctness of your requirements specification
CCC: Correctness, Consistency and Completeness Analysis
RAT – Requirements Authoring Tool:
Write your requirements easily by using an assistant: pattern based
Correctness analysis on the fly
Consistency analysis on the fly
knowledgeMANAGER:
Management of all the domain knowledge behind the quality analysis
Management of glossaries, taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies
Management of requirements Patterns to be used by RQA and RAT

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Quality Features: CCC support in RQAV15
Correctness
Completeness
Consistency
Incompleteness
by comparison
(models)
Incompleteness between
High-Low level
specifications
Redundant
requirements
Text analysis
metrics
Inconsistent Units
RMS
metrics
Semantic
metrics
Structural
metrics
Over-
completeness
Inconsistent
Properties

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Quality Functions
Correctness metrics are quantitative.
Correctness metric values are calculated counting items
Example: MetricText length in words => Counts the number of words.
The process is simplified by using interval quality functions
Metrics use one of the following quality functions:
textLength()
Q
High
Med
Low
1 5 10 … 80 90

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Pattern based Features: RATV15
Patterns:
Represents the structures every correct requirement should meet
Different types of requirements  different patterns
Customizable for every domain, customer and content of each requirements
document
Libraries available with sets of patterns
Represented as a sequential set of restrictions: placeholders
When <Event> <Component> Shall <Action> <Object> Time_constraint

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Summary of features
Fully customizable
+60 out-of-the-box quality metrics for correctness
+20 out-of-the-box quality metrics for completeness and consistency
Parameterized metrics
Custom-coded metrics
Support for requirements verification
Support for Requirements authoring
Requirements identification in non-structured sources
Reporting system at different levels of detail
Knowledge management and semantic approach
Semantic search engine and requirements reuse

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The Requirements Quality Suite
Other characteristics:
Available connectors:
Available languages:
(*)

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RQA DemoVideo

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Requirements Authoring Tool – RATV15.1
Requirements
authoring
topics
On-the-fly
quality
checking
Consistent
vocabulary
Consistency in
terms of
grammar
Completeness
in terms of
requirements
Completeness
in terms of
specification
Consistency
among
requirements
Consistency
requirements
vs. Models
Requirements
reuse
Support to
traceability

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RAT DemoVideo

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CONCLUSION – KEY MESSAGES
Requirements Quality :A key element in product development
The need for Quality Analysis of Requirements in Product Development is no more
questionable, feedbacks on relevancy and efficiency are clear
Requirements Quality :An activity at operational level today
Within Airbus (A320neo and A330neo regularly)
Within Airbus Defense and Space (Satellites,ARIANE 6 and M51)
Moving from “a posteriori check” of Requirements to “on the fly check” (real time)
of Requirements
Engineers are guided in real time for Requirements Authoring to write well structured,
consistent and pertinent Requirements
A new role called “Knowledge Manager” to build and maintain Ontologies is
emerging
Setting up and maintaining Ontologies need to define a new dedicated role in the
Engineering Competencies

25. http://www.reusecompany.com
@ReuseCompany
contact@reusecompany.com
Margarita Salas, 16 2nd Floor
Innovation Center
LEGATEC Technology Park
28919 Leganés – Madrid
SPAIN – EU
Tel: (+34) 912 17 25 96
Fax: (+34) 916 80 98 26