SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AND PRACTICE Softw. Process Improve. Pract. 2008; 13: 63–73 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/spip.364 Evaluating the Impact of Requirements Analysis Tools Using Simulation Research Section David Raffo, 1,2 * ,† Robert Ferguson, 3 Siri-on Setamanit 4 and Bhuricha Sethanandha 2 1 School of Business Administration, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 97201, USA 2 Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 97201, USA 3 Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA 4 Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand Adopting new tools and technologies on a development process can be a risky endeavor. Will the project accept the new technology? What will be the impact? Far too often the project is forced to adopt the new technology without planning how it will be applied on the project or evaluating the technology’s potential impact. In this article, we provide a case study evaluating a new technology. Specifically we assess the merits of an automated requirements analysis tool. First, we provide a background on automated requirements analysis tool technology. Then, using Process Simulation (P-SIM), we find situations where the use of this new technology is useful and situations where the use of this new technology is useless for large-scale NASA projects that utilize a process similar to the IEEE 12207 systems development life cycle. The method can be applied in assessing the impact (including Return on Investment), breakeven point, and the overall value of applying any tool on a project. Copyright  2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: process improvement; economic impact analysis of new technologies; evaluation of new software tools; process simulation 1. INTRODUCTION Competition in the software industry and the con- tinuing pressure from low-cost economies is press- ing companies to improve their efficiency and to * Correspondence to: David Raffo, School of Business Adminis- tration, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 97201, USA † E-mail: raffod@pdx.edu Copyright  2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. find ways to optimize their development and qual- ity assurance activities, both locally and globally. New tools and new technologies offer promise for speeding software development tasks, reducing costs and improving quality along the full devel- opment life cycle. Over the years, development organizations have invested heavily in these tools with some success. But there have also been some failures. How can managers determine whether a new tool or technology will be beneficial to their development environment? Under what project