Formal methods and requirements engineering: Challenges and synergies

Formal methods (FM) are already making important contributions to both theory and practice in the field of requirements engineering (RE). This article presents an overview of work in this area drawing on discussions and presentations which took place at an international workshop held in December 1996. Our aim is first to outline the current demonstrated capability of FM to support RE, and then to present some of the recent developments which seem most likely to result in practical methods in the near future. Some of the significant themes identified are: the use of theorem-provers and model-checking tools, the application of formally-based requirements acquisition strategies, development of reusable software architectures which can anchor requirements elaboration, and formal treatment of inconsistency and the use of multiple notations. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.