SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ANALYZING REQUIREMENTS

• US 20120030198A1
• Filed: 07/30/2010
• Published: 02/02/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited (Accenture PLC)
• Original Assignee: Accenture Global Services GmbH (Accenture PLC)
• Inventors: BECK, Andrew E., Boeing, Geoffrey, Shannon, Debra L.
• Granted Patent: US 8,650,186 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3338 Query expansion
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/374 Thesaurus
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for improving the management of requirements in systems and systems of systems. Multiple requirements databases may be interfaced, and language processing tools may be used to identify requirements having related content. The relevancy of requirements may be based on the semantic distance between terms in the network, their semantic relations, the number of related terms in the requirements, etc. A user may be presented with a navigable cross-section of requirements data relevant to search terms. Thus, added visibility and ease of access is provided for systems and systems of systems.

Claims

1. A system for analyzing requirements data, comprising:

a requirements database storing partially-structured data related to a subject matter domain;

a semantic network linking partially-structured data in the requirements database to related data; and

an analytic tool, comprising;

a user interface configured to receive a query from a user; and

an analyzer configured to;

parse the query into search terms;

identify related terms in the semantic network;

identify a requirement in the requirements database that contains at least one related term; and

provide the requirement to the user.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the analyzer is configured to identify a requirement in the requirements database that contains at least one search term and at least one related term.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the semantic network comprises a database linking partially-structured data related to the subject matter domain to related requirements data.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the partially-structured data comprises requirements related to the subject matter domain.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the related terms are determined by a subject matter expert or technician.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising a scoring tool, the scoring tool configured to:

assign scores to requirements in the requirements database in accordance with their relationship with at least one search term and at least one related term; and

rank requirements in the requirements database by their scores.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the ranked requirements are presented to the user via the user interface in order of their rank.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the analyzer locates a linked requirement in the requirements database related to the identified requirement based on a soft link between the linked requirement and the identified requirement.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the analyzer provides the linked requirement to the user.

10. A method for analyzing requirements data, comprising:

receiving a search query comprising search terms;

accessing a semantic network to add related terms to the search terms, wherein at least one of the related terms was not included in the search terms;

comparing the search terms and related terms to requirements data in a requirements database;

identifying a requirement in the requirements database including at least one search term and at least one related term; and

providing the identified requirement to a user via a computer device.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the computer device comprises a search interface configured to receive the search query, connect to the requirements database, and to the semantic network, and provide requirements to a user.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

assigning scores to requirements in the requirements database in accordance with their relationship with at least one search term and at least one related term;

ranking requirements in the requirements database in accordance with their scores; and

presenting requirements to the user via the computer device in accordance with their rankings.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising locating a requirement in the requirements database related to the identified requirement based on a soft link between the located requirement and the identified requirement.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein accessing the semantic network to add related terms to the search terms comprises adding a related term that is determined by a subject matter expert or technician to be related to a search term.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the at least one search term is a synonym of the at least one related term.

16. A method for analyzing requirements data, comprising:

receiving a search query comprising a requirement;

comparing the textual content of the requirement to a requirements database;

identifying a requirement in the requirements database, wherein the identified requirement has at least one term in common with the textual content of the requirement;

identifying a soft link between the identified requirement and a linked requirement; and

providing the linked requirement to a user via a computer device.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the soft link is determined by a subject matter expert or technician.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein identifying a requirement in the requirements database comprises identifying a requirement in the requirements database that has at least a number of terms in common with the textual content of the requirement that exceeds a threshold.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein identifying a soft link between the identified requirement and the linked requirement comprises:

determining a score associated with the soft link;

determining whether the score exceeds a threshold; and

identifying the soft link if the score exceeds the threshold.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the score is associated with a strength of the relationship between the identified requirement and the linked requirement.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein the soft link is stored in a semantic network database.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the semantic network database is stored in the requirements database.

23. A computer-readable storage medium comprising a plurality of code segments, comprising:

a code segment for receiving a search query comprising search terms;

a code segment for accessing a semantic network to add related terms to the search terms, wherein at least one of the related terms was not included in the search terms;

a code segment for comparing the search terms and related terms to requirements data in a requirements database;

a code segment for identifying a requirement in the requirements database including at least one related term; and

a code segment for providing the identified requirement to a user via a computer device.

24. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 23, further comprising:

a code segment for assigning scores to requirements in the requirements database in accordance with their relationship with at least one search term and at least one related term; and

a code segment for ranking requirements in the requirements database by their scores.

25. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 24, further comprising:

a code segment for providing the ranked requirements to the user in accordance with their rankings.

26. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 23, further comprising:

a code segment for locating a linked requirement in the requirements database related to the identified requirement based on a soft link between the linked requirement and the identified requirement.