Requirements dependencies: The emergence of a requirements network

We believe that the requirements at the leaf-node level of the requirements tree structure cannot be viewed in isolation and that dependencies between them exist. We pursued this notion in order to find a coherent set of requirement dependencies that would facilitate the formation of a requirements network at the leaf-node level. This network could well be aristocratic or egalitarian. An aristocratic network will highlight a vital few nodes (requirements) with a high degree of connectivity. Such vital few requirements work as 'hubs' and are expected to have a decisive influence on the success of the product/system, to which the requirements structure points. Such critical information may provide a more effective resolution to issues such as release planning, prioritization, reuse, change management and so on, enhance systems engineering implementation and thereby make system development more effective.In this paper, we discuss the formulation of a mechanism to identify the dependencies between requirements and we discuss the process to connect them using a series of steps in order to form a network of requirements at the leaf-node level of the requirement tree structure.