Abstract
Software inspections are an effective method for early detection of faults present in software development artifacts (e.g., requirements and design documents). However, many faults are left undetected due to the lack of focus on the underlying sources of faults (i.e., what caused the injection of the fault?). To address this problem, research work done by Psychologists on analyzing the failures of human cognition (i.e., human errors) is being used in this research to help inspectors detect errors and corresponding faults (manifestations of errors) in requirements documents. We hypothesize that the fault detection performance will demonstrate significant gains when using a formal taxonomy of human errors (the underlying source of faults). This paper describes a newly developed Human Error Taxonomy (HET) and a formal Error-Abstraction and Inspection (EAI) process to improve fault detection performance of inspectors during the requirements inspection. A controlled empirical study evaluated the usefulness of HET and EAI compared to fault based inspection. The results verify our hypothesis and provide useful insights into commonly occurring human errors that contributed to requirement faults along with areas to further refine both the HET and the EAI process.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE 2016 |
| Publisher | IEEE Computer Society |
| Pages | 65-76 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781467390019 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 5 Dec 2016 |
| Event | 27th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE 2016 - Ottawa, United States Duration: 23 Oct 2016 → 27 Oct 2016 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings - International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE |
|---|---|
| ISSN (Print) | 1071-9458 |
Conference
| Conference | 27th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE 2016 |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| City | Ottawa |
| Period | 23/10/16 → 27/10/16 |
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Keywords
- human error
- requirements inspection
- taxonomy
Cite this
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Using a Cognitive Psychology Perspective on Errors to Improve Requirements Quality : An Empirical Investigation. / Anu, Vaibhav; Walia, Gursimran; Hu, Wenhua; Carver, Jeffrey C.; Bradshaw, Gary.
Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE 2016. IEEE Computer Society, 2016. p. 65-76 7774508 (Proceedings - International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution
TY - GEN
T1 - Using a Cognitive Psychology Perspective on Errors to Improve Requirements Quality
T2 - An Empirical Investigation
AU - Anu, Vaibhav
AU - Walia, Gursimran
AU - Hu, Wenhua
AU - Carver, Jeffrey C.
AU - Bradshaw, Gary
PY - 2016/12/5
Y1 - 2016/12/5
N2 - Software inspections are an effective method for early detection of faults present in software development artifacts (e.g., requirements and design documents). However, many faults are left undetected due to the lack of focus on the underlying sources of faults (i.e., what caused the injection of the fault?). To address this problem, research work done by Psychologists on analyzing the failures of human cognition (i.e., human errors) is being used in this research to help inspectors detect errors and corresponding faults (manifestations of errors) in requirements documents. We hypothesize that the fault detection performance will demonstrate significant gains when using a formal taxonomy of human errors (the underlying source of faults). This paper describes a newly developed Human Error Taxonomy (HET) and a formal Error-Abstraction and Inspection (EAI) process to improve fault detection performance of inspectors during the requirements inspection. A controlled empirical study evaluated the usefulness of HET and EAI compared to fault based inspection. The results verify our hypothesis and provide useful insights into commonly occurring human errors that contributed to requirement faults along with areas to further refine both the HET and the EAI process.
AB - Software inspections are an effective method for early detection of faults present in software development artifacts (e.g., requirements and design documents). However, many faults are left undetected due to the lack of focus on the underlying sources of faults (i.e., what caused the injection of the fault?). To address this problem, research work done by Psychologists on analyzing the failures of human cognition (i.e., human errors) is being used in this research to help inspectors detect errors and corresponding faults (manifestations of errors) in requirements documents. We hypothesize that the fault detection performance will demonstrate significant gains when using a formal taxonomy of human errors (the underlying source of faults). This paper describes a newly developed Human Error Taxonomy (HET) and a formal Error-Abstraction and Inspection (EAI) process to improve fault detection performance of inspectors during the requirements inspection. A controlled empirical study evaluated the usefulness of HET and EAI compared to fault based inspection. The results verify our hypothesis and provide useful insights into commonly occurring human errors that contributed to requirement faults along with areas to further refine both the HET and the EAI process.
KW - human error
KW - requirements inspection
KW - taxonomy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013230415&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ISSRE.2016.41
DO - 10.1109/ISSRE.2016.41
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85013230415
T3 - Proceedings - International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE
SP - 65
EP - 76
BT - Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE 2016
PB - IEEE Computer Society
ER -