Updating requirements from tests during maintenance and evolution

Abstract

Keeping requirements specification up-to-date during the evolution of a software system is an expensive task. Consequently, specifications are usually not updated and rapidly become obsolete and unreliable. The goal of our research is to preserve the alignment between requirements and the implementation by supporting the maintenance of the specification. In this proposal, we explore the idea of using tests to automatically generate hints about the evolution of requirements. We discuss the main research questions that need to be addressed, and propose ideas to approach them.