Perhaps one of the most important quality attributes necessary for a requirement is to be able to verify the requirement. Some of the phrases and words that we use in every-day language, because they are ambiguous or cannot be verified, should never be used in requirements; some should only be used in exceptional and justified cases. There are also non-specific phrases, pronouns, indefinite pronouns, unmeasured quantifications, indefinite temporal keywords and other grammatical constructs that also should never be used in a requirement.
This DXL script will identify any banned words (or rather terms that should be avoided) in a layout DXL column.
It does not prevent mistakes as you type but if combined with a view to filter on requirements and ‘not equal to “OK”’ (which is the default) then it is a simple task to quickly identify areas of concern and correct. The banned word list is currently hardcoded into the DXL script but it could be enhanced to read the list from a specialist module to provide more visibility and ease the maintenance task. The list could be tailored for individual companies.
It is interesting to note that IBM have recently launched their own Requirements Quality Assistant for DOORS Next.
“Using Watson Natural Language Service and pre-trained AI, the Requirements Quality Assistant has 10 built in quality indicators designed to be consistent with guidelines from the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and NASA for writing complete, clear and testable requirements to accelerate your review process, increase requirement quality and reduce training for junior requirements engineers.”
https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/requirements-quality-assistant
Although this DXL script is not as sophisticated as IBM’s, it nevertheless will highlight words that should be avoided – and at over 150 terms, our list is longer than in the INCOSE guide!