This five-part book provides a requirements engineering process and implementation and management plan that will fit align to the major assessment-based models, such as CMM, SPICE and Bootstrap. With tailoring it will also support iterative development environments, such as the Rational Unified Process.The book is structured as follows:
Part I - the framework that uses three dimensions: stakeholder agreement, requirements representation (the degree of formality with which the requirements are elicited, documented and managed) and completeness of specifications. On the surface this framework seems obvious, but I've not come across it in the large amount of literature I've read on the subject. In my opinion, the framework is among the most elegant and practical I've seen.
PART II - presents a requirements and process centered engineering environment that embodies a repository of process definitions and traceability, process execution and process methods. This environment is the requirements process support component of the framework, and also includes mechanisms for process improvement.
Part III - drills down into the process execution part of the requirements and process centered engineering environment.
Part IV - discusses the environment's process repository. This part of the book introduces a knowledge representation language called O-Telos, which is interesting, but in my opinion goes beyond the practical because O-Telos isn't a mainstream tool that organizations are going to easily assimilate. However, the formality that O-Telos lends to the process and environment illustrate how the more formal representations of the framework described in Part I can be achieved.
Part V - ties the preceding material into a prototype requirements engineering environment.
This is not a primary text on requirements engineering, and is of interest only to those who have chosen requirements engineering as a professional discipline. For that audience this book contains a wealth of ideas, as well as a conceptual approach that can be refactored into a process that meets a specific organization's goals and objectives within the context of an enterprise-wide software engineering process. I give it 5 stars because the work is innovative and makes a unique contribution to the body of knowledge.
