Towards a system for the construction, clarification, discovery and formalisation of requirements

Requirements engineering is fraught with possibilities for misunderstanding and mistakes and it is well known that the earlier such errors occur in the lifecycle the more costly the consequences. Formal specifications provide from a developer´s perspective a clear, concise and unambiguous statement of the system requirements. Prototyping enables effective user participation in the validation of requirements The authors report on work towards a system that judiciously combines the strengths of formal specification and prototyping to assist in the construction, negotiation, clarification, discovery and formalisation of requirements that could make the crucial activity of requirements engineering less problematic