11. Resolving Inconsistency and Incompleteness Issues in Software Requirements

In this chapter, we present an approach toward better understanding and analyzing significant aspect of software – the requirements. Comprehending the semantics of requirements is crucial to the success of the intended software. In order that the software requirements be well understood, it is imperative that these must be complete and consistent. But, the elicited requirements are often incomplete, inconsistent, and, consequently, ambiguous in nature. Requirements engineer is presented with the task of examining and analyzing such requirements and detecting these issues, i.e., instances of incompleteness and inconsistency. We present here courteous logic-based representations of requirements as an approach toward resolving the issues of incompleteness, inconsistency, and ambiguity in the elicited requirements and assisting improved understanding of elicited requirements. We explain how courteous logic can be an effective solution to requirements interpretation in terms of observable behavior of the system and can be a useful tool for requirements engineer toward improving the quality of software requirements. We will be more concerned toward inconsistency and incompleteness issues in this chapter.