An Evaluation of the ReleasePlanner on the Treatment of Security and Evolving Requirements

Bin Saleem, Saad; Yu, Yijun; Nuseibeh, Bashar and De Roeck, Anne (2010). An Evaluation of the ReleasePlanner on the Treatment of Security and Evolving Requirements. Technical Report 2010/19; Department of Computing, The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0001609b

Abstract

The ReleasePlanner is a state-of-the-art release planning tool which generates the `optimal' plan for developing a given list of system requirements. It does so by `maximising' the utilisation of resources such as developers' time and skills within the given constraints such as projects' cost and duration. For a system that is both security-sensitive and evolving, however, it is unclear whether such treatments of general requirements in the ReleasePlanner can still optimise the activities without considering that security requirements are often constraints on functional requirements, and that all these requirements are subject to change. To clarify this, we exemplified a project in this report using the meeting scheduling system for offices in the Janie Lee Building. Specifically, we listed both security and functional requirements as the inputs for the ReleasePlanner to generate the plans that were `optimal', yet found impractical in the reality. As a result, we identified several pitfalls that might help adopters of the ReleasePlanner to avoid when security and evolving requirements are important to their projects.